As witness the way support for the anti-war movement just melted away in the last days leading up to the war - right about the time it became really clear that Bush didn't give a flying fuck about public opinion. The vast majority of people just gave up. I don't wish to be hypocritical; I count myself among them.
The vast majority of anti-war protesters didn't have a clue as to what they were really protesting about. It was more "well... it's well... WAR man. War's not... uh cool". I didn't come across any that could coherently argue as to why the negative effects would outweigh the positive. Without a real belief and conviction it's only natural enthusiasm will wane.
That's why every government likes to create and maintain a large and comfortable middle class even if there are some people without a job or a roof over their heads.
A government that tries to get as many people as well of as possible, decently fed and housed with good jobs? Sounds like a pretty reasonable government to me. Better than one that prefers a small ruling elite and a majority poor and working class (eg China, France and Russia).
I have several hard facts that are supporting the theory that less technical users don't give a shit about eye candy:
* Less technical users used MS DOS for over half a decade when Apple and others were available as alternative
* In the late 90's, Enlightment was sure one of the most - if not the most - eyecandy infested Windowmanager. Yet it was only used by geeks, less technical users didn't care.
* The first search-engines like Yahoo put more and more eyecande (and advertisments) on their sites - and Google wiped the floor with them by providing the simplest search engine interface possible with absolutely no eye-candy, just a white page.
These are supposed to be hard facts? MS-DOS machines were far cheaper than Apple machines, so it isn't a like for like. Google didn't wipe the floor with Yahoo simply because the layout was clearer, it's because it gave back much better search results. In fact, none of your comparisons makes any like-for-like sense with respects to eye candy.
If aiming at technical people, then I agree eye-candy should be off by default. If aimed at less-technical people then leave it on. You only have to look at what WinXP and MacOS X look like, presumably based on large market research budgets, to see what the general public want.
Slashdot is a meta-blog, not a real news source. It's fun to see the best/cleverest April Fools from around the world, even if we sorta know what's coming. Though it would also be fun to have an outrageously obvious April Fools posted that turns out to be true;->
No, you've got the facts right. It's just that most people here want free as in beer and not free as in speech. I swear if Microsoft was free most of the people here would be switching to it right now.
Which is why Microsoft turned a blind eye to piracy until they had a complete monopoly, and *then* put in the activation code into WinXP. They knew that if people had to actually *pay* for sub-standard products such as Win98 then it would leave the door open to competition. Instead they let people freely pirate Windows and then used their control of the platform to leverage the profits out of the applications such as Word (whilst illegally killing off any competition).
That's in the wider world. Those here however can easily find free as in beer copies of Windows (whichever version) with activation codes disabled on p2p. It's not hard to find.
GSM? WHICH GSM? Africa, US or European frequency? GSM not as universal as most think.
It's very universal. Changing frequency doesn't mean having to change chipset design, infrastructure, etc.
CDMA is head and shoulders above - look at where the highspeed wireless is going - CDMA, not GSM.
They have different roots. GSM was specifically designed for voice data.
Plus CDMA is more efficient in its bandwidth usage than GSM. Remember GSM is still TDMA at its roots. So CDMA has better spectral efficiency.
TDMA vs CDMA was examined in depth in deciding the GSM standard. The committee decided that the TDMA system was superior (easier to build more accurate and reliable base stations was one of the factors IIRC).
Plus you should take into account the terrain and desnity - Iraq probably is not all that population dense outside of Baghdad and Basra. CDMA really comes into its element when you are out in the countryside with few sites covering large expanses of land. Under these conditions CDMA provides extremely stable audio with few frame errors to mess things up. This is because Channel Pollution is almost non-existent in these situations. Under similar conditions TDMA suffers too readily from interference and it will often blank the audio. Many people who use CDMA systems in sparsely populated areas have given this technology extremely high marks.
GSM is a compromise, which allows it to work well under both conditions. It had to satisfy all the members of ETSI, including Switzerland (sparse, all mountains) and Holland (totally flat, with large cities).
So despite the obvious political motivations behind this decision, technologically speaking, it s actually a good decision to favor CDMA.
It's not, because you restrict the technology (handsets, base stations, etc) to a couple of US companies. With GSM you can invite tenders from every company in the world, with an already mature market providing a lot of CHOICE for both handsets and infrastructure.
GSM was pushed through as a standard by the UK (under the guise of ETSI). I think we've earned the right to poke our nose in:-P
GSM is standard in every country but the USA. I can SMS anyone anywhere in the world without any problem. GPRS can be tacked on at little cost to provide 2.5G services. The correct choice is clear. However, the US seems particularly vulnerable to lobby groups.
I had the exact same feeling when I saw the Phoenix announcement: WHY?!
I think you've just destroyed all your own arguments. Phoenix rocks.
Hey Minotaur Team, why? Hey Scott McGregor, is the ego trip more important than your contribution to Mozilla? Does it feel better to have your own pet-project than to add your (anonymous) contribution to the mail codebase?
wtf? You can't *make* someone work on Mozilla if they don't want to. And if he thinks he has a good idea, and actually has the time and energy to make it a reality, then I look forwards to seeing the results of his efforts. If it's any good then I'll use it. That was a severely misguided personal attack.
The Bat! is the best email client I have ever used on any platform, and I've tried many. I would LOVE for Minotaur to be a Bat clone. The closest thing under Linux I've found is Sylpheed-claws. I currently use Evolution but I don't rate it very highly for mail (why doesn't it use a separate inbox for each account instead of mixing up all my mail? Where is the backup/restore feature? etc). There is definately space for another email client.
Run out of lunch break so don't have time for a word-for-word. It's titled "Opinion Piece" and is a bitter letter to the world. It starts off saying that Saddam is a pretty nasty person. Then goes on to slag off the British most of the article. Apparently it's all our fault Europe is divided. How Tony Blair is a crap leader and a liar, and how Jack Straw has no credibility. Occasionally drifts back to attacking America saying they are all alone in the world. Oh and compares the french Minister Dominique de Villepin to Nelson Mandela. In short, load of vicious bile probably designed to pamper the socialist French. Nothing of importance or new in there though.
The USSR brand of authoritian communism defeated itself, it was not defeated by the US and terrorism has never been defeated by war, just ask the British in Northern Ireland.
We never went to war over terrorism in Ireland!
And the reason the Nazi's needed to be defeated was the fact that they attacked and invaded other countries, just as the US is now doing.
The US, Italy, Spain, UK and Australia, if you don't mind (though US provides about 80% of strength). And it is NOT what the US are doing now! That is the most crass thing I have ever heard. Are the US raping Iraqi women? Mass shipping people to concentration camps? Ethnically cleansing certain religions? In fact it's not even worth dignifying by going on.
Phillip.
Re:Does anyone find it odd...
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
Indeed. The flashes seem to last a long time to us because it burns into our retina for a short while. Try going outside with a normal camera and taking pictures of a spectacular lightening storm. I once wasted half a film, thinking I'd caught at least a couple. Zip. Nada. By the time they turn to catch the flash it will have faded. And if they kept trying to catch every flash the camera would be careening around making you sea-sick. The only thing you can do is plonk it down in the general direction.
Im Canadian, I live on the border, I can tell you without a doubt that Americans* are COMPLETELY out of control. They are myopic and ignorant. Watching CNN is about 1% of what its like in the street. These people *REALLY* believe that it is their RIGHT to do this, that they are special in the world, that opposition is manafest 'jealousy' - they BELIEVE this tripe about "terrorists hating their Freedom"... its like a bad, surreal movie.
Wow, that's one big chip on your shoulder. They believe it's their right to do it? Er well yes. The UN resolution 1441 gave them the legal right. They can consider themselves a bit special... they've worked/manipulated themselves into the most powerful nation on the planet. There IS a lot of jealousy and resentment against this, just look at the French. And I can well see terrorists who aim to draw us all under a yoke like the Taliban regime could be interpreted by Americans as 'hating their Freedom'.
If Iraq manages a retalitory strike on American Soil, they are going to start WWIII (nuke Iraq off the planet - the citizens will be all for it).
Uh-huh, they are going to nuke a country in which they have 250,000 troops? You seriously need to take a cold shower.
We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored.
You are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make sure Iraq fulfuls its obligations, made primarily to the US but under the auspices of the UN.
We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war.
You are going to wage war due to the impotence of the UN to enforce its own punishments.
Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right?
Spot on.
Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it.
The Security Council is not a democracy, it's a talking shop where heads of state try and steer a safe path for the common good. Co-operative effort is in the best interests of everybody. It provides a greater show of strength, is less costly, and reaffirms stability. Do you really consider Iraq to have a democracy?
Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard.
I thought you had a vote in Congress that allowed the use of force in Iraq? In which case you had every chance to dissent. The fact is the majority don't.
We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does.
That's not even near the mark. He's invaded two of his neighbours, launched missile attacks at a couple of others, suppressed, tortured, killed and gassed sections of his population... He's a fly in the ointment of world peace that is about to be extinguished.
And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition.
Opposition... you mean allies? Who actually signed up and commited to doing the thing that only the US has the guts to do now?
We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.
See couple of paragraphs above to see that he doesn't simply 'ignore' his people.
[snip]
As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident.
For a long time, many have seen the UN as a toothless, expensive talking shop that gets nothing done. The US had little to do with the weakening of the UN, it did it to itself. Usually it is the Russians automatically vetoing everything (eg action over Kosovo). I hear the US tend to veto action over Israel (need to double-check this). This time it is the French who want their 30 seconds of fame, causing the failure of diplomatic talks hence the war. The stupidity of the French is going to cost us all dearly. Much as I like the idea of the UN, I'm sick of seeing them standing by wringing their hands whilst there is so much tragedy and injustice in the world. It so seldom we get the US to look outside of itself, even in the last two world wars they were dragged in at the last minute reluctantly, that any action they take to rid the world of a brutal murdering dictator I'm going to gratefully accept. They are risking their lives and are taking at the action at great cost to themselves. Thank America for having the guts when no-one had.
I hate to say it, but this is kind of refreshing. This ins't a troll, so don't get me wrong...I'm a linux user myself. But after seeing the masses rip into MS yesterday when the thread about the IIS 5.0 hole was posted, I got a tad frustrated. Granted, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but this just goes to show you that it's NOT just Microsoft that falls prey to holes and exploits. If it runs an OS, there's a chance it'll be cracked. Simple as that.
The feeling you felt of frustration arose from a mixture of anger and helplessness. This is the same feeling a Sys Admin gets when there is a bug in IIS and MS refuses to acknowledge it or they are slow in getting a patch out. With Open Source you don't get that same helplessness, which manifests itself on forums like Slashdot in the form of less bashing.
Just remember, it happens to everyone.
That's not good enough. What happens *after* is also crucial.
A lot of people do find XML quite scary, which is why a module was created that can be compiled into mod_php which has a non-threatening interface. It's quick, Open Source, and free to use for any purpose. A quick example of opening a config file, changing a value, and saving it again:
ROX was the first thing I installed on my fresh Linux installation. Best file manager out there and quick (opening/usr/bin on a system with 4GB of stuff installed took fraction of a second).
So why are countries such as France, Germany, Russia, etc. not happily falling in line behind us? Simple, there is no compelling evidence of WMD.
ROTFL. You are slightly out of the loop, aren't you? The French actually built the Iraqi nuclear reactors, and gave them the technology for building nuclear weapons. The current French president Chirac railed against Israel for bombing the nuclear facilities in Iraq just before they obtained nuclear status, because French scientists were killed in the process. The French also have substantial oil deals with Iraq. Over here in France we see clips of Chiraq and Saddam Hussein being quite chummy, though apparently this was a few years ago.
Personally I don't see what the fuss is about. France has had a long history of appeasing dictators. It's always Britain or the US that go in to do the right thing, with or without the UN.
I wouldn't hold your breath, unless inspections are given a legitimate chance.
So we hold 300,000 troops on the Iraqi border for another 12 years?
Most of the apps I install under Linux these days are far simpler to do than under Windows. As I use Gentoo, I just type "emerge {name}" and everything is done for me automatically. If I want to use the original sources, I normally type./configure && make && make install and everything just works. You can type./configure on its own to see a list of options but the default normally works for me.
Which is why 100% of web designers will save every single one of their bitmap images as GIF indefinately. Indefinately being until MSIE loses a significant market share.
Supporting PNG isn't hard. I remember Browse on the Acorn supporting PNG with full alpha transparency around a decade ago.
Unlikely. I can't remember seeing a TCP/IP stack for the BBC. More likely the beebs were connected as dumb terminals using ymodem or zmodem over the serial port, with the server acting as a gateway to telnet.
I really don't want a contained fire on my lap. I know Lithium-ion reactions are probably just as bad, but there's just a big mental difference. Do you really want something that can run your lawnmover on an airplane? Does the airline want it on your lap, either?
You don't want a contained fire on your lap, but you're willing to get on an aeroplane??? What on earth do you think a plane is these days?
Slashdot Mirror
As witness the way support for the anti-war movement just melted away in the last days leading up to the war - right about the time it became really clear that Bush didn't give a flying fuck about public opinion. The vast majority of people just gave up. I don't wish to be hypocritical; I count myself among them.
The vast majority of anti-war protesters didn't have a clue as to what they were really protesting about. It was more "well... it's well... WAR man. War's not... uh cool". I didn't come across any that could coherently argue as to why the negative effects would outweigh the positive. Without a real belief and conviction it's only natural enthusiasm will wane.
That's why every government likes to create and maintain a large and comfortable middle class even if there are some people without a job or a roof over their heads.
A government that tries to get as many people as well of as possible, decently fed and housed with good jobs? Sounds like a pretty reasonable government to me. Better than one that prefers a small ruling elite and a majority poor and working class (eg China, France and Russia).
Phillip.
I have several hard facts that are supporting the theory that less technical users don't give a shit about eye candy:
* Less technical users used MS DOS for over half a decade when Apple and others were available as alternative
* In the late 90's, Enlightment was sure one of the most - if not the most - eyecandy infested Windowmanager. Yet it was only used by geeks, less technical users didn't care.
* The first search-engines like Yahoo put more and more eyecande (and advertisments) on their sites - and Google wiped the floor with them by providing the simplest search engine interface possible with absolutely no eye-candy, just a white page.
These are supposed to be hard facts? MS-DOS machines were far cheaper than Apple machines, so it isn't a like for like. Google didn't wipe the floor with Yahoo simply because the layout was clearer, it's because it gave back much better search results. In fact, none of your comparisons makes any like-for-like sense with respects to eye candy.
If aiming at technical people, then I agree eye-candy should be off by default. If aimed at less-technical people then leave it on. You only have to look at what WinXP and MacOS X look like, presumably based on large market research budgets, to see what the general public want.
Phillip.
Version 1.4 *still* hasn't closed my three favorite bugs
:-)
But maybe you were lucky and they closed your three *least* favourite bugs instead?
Phillip.
Slashdot is a meta-blog, not a real news source. It's fun to see the best/cleverest April Fools from around the world, even if we sorta know what's coming. Though it would also be fun to have an outrageously obvious April Fools posted that turns out to be true ;->
Phillip.
No, you've got the facts right. It's just that most people here want free as in beer and not free as in speech. I swear if Microsoft was free most of the people here would be switching to it right now.
Which is why Microsoft turned a blind eye to piracy until they had a complete monopoly, and *then* put in the activation code into WinXP. They knew that if people had to actually *pay* for sub-standard products such as Win98 then it would leave the door open to competition. Instead they let people freely pirate Windows and then used their control of the platform to leverage the profits out of the applications such as Word (whilst illegally killing off any competition).
That's in the wider world. Those here however can easily find free as in beer copies of Windows (whichever version) with activation codes disabled on p2p. It's not hard to find.
Phillip.
GSM? WHICH GSM? Africa, US or European frequency? GSM not as universal as most think.
It's very universal. Changing frequency doesn't mean having to change chipset design, infrastructure, etc.
CDMA is head and shoulders above - look at where the highspeed wireless is going - CDMA, not GSM.
They have different roots. GSM was specifically designed for voice data.
Plus CDMA is more efficient in its bandwidth usage than GSM. Remember GSM is still TDMA at its roots. So CDMA has better spectral efficiency.
TDMA vs CDMA was examined in depth in deciding the GSM standard. The committee decided that the TDMA system was superior (easier to build more accurate and reliable base stations was one of the factors IIRC).
Plus you should take into account the terrain and desnity - Iraq probably is not all that population dense outside of Baghdad and Basra. CDMA really comes into its element when you are out in the countryside with few sites covering large expanses of land. Under these conditions CDMA provides extremely stable audio with few frame errors to mess things up. This is because Channel Pollution is almost non-existent in these situations. Under similar conditions TDMA suffers too readily from interference and it will often blank the audio. Many people who use CDMA systems in sparsely populated areas have given this technology extremely high marks.
GSM is a compromise, which allows it to work well under both conditions. It had to satisfy all the members of ETSI, including Switzerland (sparse, all mountains) and Holland (totally flat, with large cities).
So despite the obvious political motivations behind this decision, technologically speaking, it s actually a good decision to favor CDMA.
It's not, because you restrict the technology (handsets, base stations, etc) to a couple of US companies. With GSM you can invite tenders from every company in the world, with an already mature market providing a lot of CHOICE for both handsets and infrastructure.
Phillip.
GSM was pushed through as a standard by the UK (under the guise of ETSI). I think we've earned the right to poke our nose in :-P
GSM is standard in every country but the USA. I can SMS anyone anywhere in the world without any problem. GPRS can be tacked on at little cost to provide 2.5G services. The correct choice is clear. However, the US seems particularly vulnerable to lobby groups.
Phillip.
The off-beat humour reminds me of The Onion, though missing the satire aspect. Mildly droll article but missing a clever twist to make it funny.
Phillip.
I had the exact same feeling when I saw the Phoenix announcement: WHY?!
I think you've just destroyed all your own arguments. Phoenix rocks.
Hey Minotaur Team, why? Hey Scott McGregor, is the ego trip more important than your contribution to Mozilla? Does it feel better to have your own pet-project than to add your (anonymous) contribution to the mail codebase?
wtf? You can't *make* someone work on Mozilla if they don't want to. And if he thinks he has a good idea, and actually has the time and energy to make it a reality, then I look forwards to seeing the results of his efforts. If it's any good then I'll use it. That was a severely misguided personal attack.
Phillip.
The Bat! is the best email client I have ever used on any platform, and I've tried many. I would LOVE for Minotaur to be a Bat clone. The closest thing under Linux I've found is Sylpheed-claws. I currently use Evolution but I don't rate it very highly for mail (why doesn't it use a separate inbox for each account instead of mixing up all my mail? Where is the backup/restore feature? etc). There is definately space for another email client.
Phillip.
Run out of lunch break so don't have time for a word-for-word. It's titled "Opinion Piece" and is a bitter letter to the world. It starts off saying that Saddam is a pretty nasty person. Then goes on to slag off the British most of the article. Apparently it's all our fault Europe is divided. How Tony Blair is a crap leader and a liar, and how Jack Straw has no credibility. Occasionally drifts back to attacking America saying they are all alone in the world. Oh and compares the french Minister Dominique de Villepin to Nelson Mandela. In short, load of vicious bile probably designed to pamper the socialist French. Nothing of importance or new in there though.
Phillip.
The USSR brand of authoritian communism defeated itself, it was not defeated by the US and terrorism has never been defeated by war, just ask the British in Northern Ireland.
We never went to war over terrorism in Ireland!
And the reason the Nazi's needed to be defeated was the fact that they attacked and invaded other countries, just as the US is now doing.
The US, Italy, Spain, UK and Australia, if you don't mind (though US provides about 80% of strength). And it is NOT what the US are doing now! That is the most crass thing I have ever heard. Are the US raping Iraqi women? Mass shipping people to concentration camps? Ethnically cleansing certain religions? In fact it's not even worth dignifying by going on.
Phillip.
Indeed. The flashes seem to last a long time to us because it burns into our retina for a short while. Try going outside with a normal camera and taking pictures of a spectacular lightening storm. I once wasted half a film, thinking I'd caught at least a couple. Zip. Nada. By the time they turn to catch the flash it will have faded. And if they kept trying to catch every flash the camera would be careening around making you sea-sick. The only thing you can do is plonk it down in the general direction.
Phillip.
[snip list of bombings]
I don't get it. What was your point?
Im Canadian, I live on the border, I can tell you without a doubt that Americans* are COMPLETELY out of control. They are myopic and ignorant. Watching CNN is about 1% of what its like in the street. These people *REALLY* believe that it is their RIGHT to do this, that they are special in the world, that opposition is manafest 'jealousy' - they BELIEVE this tripe about "terrorists hating their Freedom"... its like a bad, surreal movie.
Wow, that's one big chip on your shoulder. They believe it's their right to do it? Er well yes. The UN resolution 1441 gave them the legal right. They can consider themselves a bit special... they've worked/manipulated themselves into the most powerful nation on the planet. There IS a lot of jealousy and resentment against this, just look at the French. And I can well see terrorists who aim to draw us all under a yoke like the Taliban regime could be interpreted by Americans as 'hating their Freedom'.
If Iraq manages a retalitory strike on American Soil, they are going to start WWIII (nuke Iraq off the planet - the citizens will be all for it).
Uh-huh, they are going to nuke a country in which they have 250,000 troops? You seriously need to take a cold shower.
Phillip.
We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored.
You are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make sure Iraq fulfuls its obligations, made primarily to the US but under the auspices of the UN.
We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war.
You are going to wage war due to the impotence of the UN to enforce its own punishments.
Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right?
Spot on.
Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it.
The Security Council is not a democracy, it's a talking shop where heads of state try and steer a safe path for the common good. Co-operative effort is in the best interests of everybody. It provides a greater show of strength, is less costly, and reaffirms stability. Do you really consider Iraq to have a democracy?
Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard.
I thought you had a vote in Congress that allowed the use of force in Iraq? In which case you had every chance to dissent. The fact is the majority don't.
We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does.
That's not even near the mark. He's invaded two of his neighbours, launched missile attacks at a couple of others, suppressed, tortured, killed and gassed sections of his population... He's a fly in the ointment of world peace that is about to be extinguished.
And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition.
Opposition... you mean allies? Who actually signed up and commited to doing the thing that only the US has the guts to do now?
We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.
See couple of paragraphs above to see that he doesn't simply 'ignore' his people.
[snip]
As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident.
Circular reasoning debunked. Next?
Phillip.
For a long time, many have seen the UN as a toothless, expensive talking shop that gets nothing done. The US had little to do with the weakening of the UN, it did it to itself. Usually it is the Russians automatically vetoing everything (eg action over Kosovo). I hear the US tend to veto action over Israel (need to double-check this). This time it is the French who want their 30 seconds of fame, causing the failure of diplomatic talks hence the war. The stupidity of the French is going to cost us all dearly. Much as I like the idea of the UN, I'm sick of seeing them standing by wringing their hands whilst there is so much tragedy and injustice in the world. It so seldom we get the US to look outside of itself, even in the last two world wars they were dragged in at the last minute reluctantly, that any action they take to rid the world of a brutal murdering dictator I'm going to gratefully accept. They are risking their lives and are taking at the action at great cost to themselves. Thank America for having the guts when no-one had.
Phillip.
I hate to say it, but this is kind of refreshing. This ins't a troll, so don't get me wrong...I'm a linux user myself. But after seeing the masses rip into MS yesterday when the thread about the IIS 5.0 hole was posted, I got a tad frustrated. Granted, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but this just goes to show you that it's NOT just Microsoft that falls prey to holes and exploits. If it runs an OS, there's a chance it'll be cracked. Simple as that.
The feeling you felt of frustration arose from a mixture of anger and helplessness. This is the same feeling a Sys Admin gets when there is a bug in IIS and MS refuses to acknowledge it or they are slow in getting a patch out. With Open Source you don't get that same helplessness, which manifests itself on forums like Slashdot in the form of less bashing.
Just remember, it happens to everyone.
That's not good enough. What happens *after* is also crucial.
Phillip.
A lot of people do find XML quite scary, which is why a module was created that can be compiled into mod_php which has a non-threatening interface. It's quick, Open Source, and free to use for any purpose. A quick example of opening a config file, changing a value, and saving it again:
m ldoc, "server.httpd.domain", "localhost");
;-)
$xmldoc = xml_load("myconfig.xml");
xml_setelementvalue($x
xml_output($xmldoc, "myconfig.xml");
There, that's not too scary is it?
Phillip.
ROX was the first thing I installed on my fresh Linux installation. Best file manager out there and quick (opening /usr/bin on a system with 4GB of stuff installed took fraction of a second).
Phillip.
So why are countries such as France, Germany, Russia, etc. not happily falling in line behind us? Simple, there is no compelling evidence of WMD.
ROTFL. You are slightly out of the loop, aren't you? The French actually built the Iraqi nuclear reactors, and gave them the technology for building nuclear weapons. The current French president Chirac railed against Israel for bombing the nuclear facilities in Iraq just before they obtained nuclear status, because French scientists were killed in the process. The French also have substantial oil deals with Iraq. Over here in France we see clips of Chiraq and Saddam Hussein being quite chummy, though apparently this was a few years ago.
Personally I don't see what the fuss is about. France has had a long history of appeasing dictators. It's always Britain or the US that go in to do the right thing, with or without the UN.
I wouldn't hold your breath, unless inspections are given a legitimate chance.
So we hold 300,000 troops on the Iraqi border for another 12 years?
Phillip.
Most of the apps I install under Linux these days are far simpler to do than under Windows. As I use Gentoo, I just type "emerge {name}" and everything is done for me automatically. If I want to use the original sources, I normally type ./configure && make && make install and everything just works. You can type ./configure on its own to see a list of options but the default normally works for me.
Phillip.
Future Energies carried this article 2nd September last year. It has a few more details and links.
Phillip.
There is no reason left but MSIE to use GIFs
Which is why 100% of web designers will save every single one of their bitmap images as GIF indefinately. Indefinately being until MSIE loses a significant market share.
Supporting PNG isn't hard. I remember Browse on the Acorn supporting PNG with full alpha transparency around a decade ago.
Phillip.
Unlikely. I can't remember seeing a TCP/IP stack for the BBC. More likely the beebs were connected as dumb terminals using ymodem or zmodem over the serial port, with the server acting as a gateway to telnet.
Phillip.
ROTFL
I really don't want a contained fire on my lap. I know Lithium-ion reactions are probably just as bad, but there's just a big mental difference. Do you really want something that can run your lawnmover on an airplane? Does the airline want it on your lap, either?
You don't want a contained fire on your lap, but you're willing to get on an aeroplane??? What on earth do you think a plane is these days?
Phillip.