With your purchase of a brand new ISO standard, you get a free, new matching anti-trust investigation from the Europeans who have already fined you BILLIONS of $ for past anti-trust violations!
Meanwhile, at Disco Stu's "Can't Stop the Learnin' Disco Academies"...
Disco Stu: [making indescribable body motions] Did you know that disco record sales were up 400[%] for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue... A-y-y-y!
As in the Robert Metcalfe whose Wikipedia article has an "Incorrect predictions" section listing where he wrongly thought that "the internet would suffer a catastrophic collapse" in 1996 and this gem:
Metcalfe is also known for his harsh criticism of open source software, and Linux in particular, predicting that the latter would be obliterated after Microsoft released Windows 2000:
The Open Source Movement's ideology is utopian balderdash [... that] reminds me of communism. [...] Linux [is like] organic software grown in utopia by spiritualists [...] When they bring organic fruit to market, you pay extra for small apples with open sores - the Open Sores Movement. When [Windows 2000] gets here, goodbye Linux.
Just because he did something really cool 35 years ago doesn't make him an expert on related matters now.
Upgraded the following packages: linux-headers-2.6.22-14 (2.6.22-14.51) to 2.6.22-14.52 linux-headers-2.6.22-14-generic (2.6.22-14.51) to 2.6.22-14.52 linux-image-2.6.22-14-generic (2.6.22-14.51) to 2.6.22-14.52 linux-libc-dev (2.6.22-14.51) to 2.6.22-14.52 ---
"The cetaceans are unusual in that they are aquatic life descended from land life. The manatees are also descended from land life (they are relatives of the giraffe). I don't know of other examples."
Manatees are NOT close relatives of the giraffe. The closest aquatic relatives of the giraffes are, again, the cetaceans.
The land to water transition among mammals isn't terribly uncommon though:
seals, walruses, sea lions and other Pinnipeds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinniped) are carnivores related to bears and dogs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caniformia)
sea otters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_otter) are marine weasels
Other mammals show distinct adaptations towards an aquatic lifestyle, e.g. rodents like the capybara, muskrat and beaver
an extinct ground sloth (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v375/n6528/abs/375224a0.html)
the monotreme platypus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus)
the marsupial yapok (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Opossum)
if you go past mammals, you have penguins (which 'fly' underwater), sea snakes, the Galapagos marine iguana, and the various giant extinct marine reptiles
etc. etc.
If there's success to be had in a given lifestyle, life will evolve branches in that direction.
"Microsoft has patented a frustration-detection help system that would monitor your computer use and biometrics to figure out when you were frustrated. [...] Is this patent a harbinger of a dystopian future where computer users' biorhythms will be monitored to increase efficiency?"
"The MPAA is scared to death that it will simply be ingrained in our culture (as it has in some other society's cultures) that piracy is perfectly OK."
Replace the word "piracy" with "sharing" and I think you have a more accurate description of what's going on...
The numbers from w3schools.com aren't necessarily indicative of the overall web, but I've found the trends they show are.
Compared to the IE5 -> IE6 transition which was rapid and fairly X shaped on the graph, the IE6 -> IE7 tansition has stalled, with IE7 having plateaued at a level *less* than IE6.
This is very bad for Microsoft, as it represents a prolonged vulnerable state. Since IE6 and 7 are different enough that they need to be treated separately by developers, the difference in market share between IE7 and Firefox is small enough that website developers must take the latter into account too and thus support it (even if you take the Net Applications numbers http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=6 to be fully accurate, and I don't, you'll note that the ratio of FF:IE7:IE6 is about 2:5:6. If it was all IE6, that would be 2:11) And if Firefox is supported, there will be less sites that are IE-specific, meaning less 'addiction' to IE. ---
Cute, but that's kind of like saying a balloon released from the ground is the same as a bowling ball released from near the top of a 100 story skyscraper as they pass each other at the 28th floor:)
"Announced on the Gaim mailing lists earlier today, the Gaim project is being renamed. This follows a lengthy and, unfortunately, secret legal process with AOL, which also prevented any code releases except betas. The project will now be known as Pidgin IM."
Step 1: Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, forcasting 6 more weeks of winter. Quickly now, 'short-sell' MS stocks. Step 2: Cold wintery weather causes MS execs to vacation in tropical latitudes. Without the authoritarian control of their glorious leaders, MS programmers rise up and kill the middle-managers. Step 3. Vista delayed again; MS stock takes a nosedive. Profit!!!;)
Someone who runs Slackware and knows how to program in multiple languages tries a distro designed with Linux newbies in mind and discovers its not his "favorite distro"... Wow; I didn't see that coming.
"Does this mean that Sun is endorsing the Debian package management system over RPM-based approaches?"
No; if you look at Sun's Java download page (http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp) the only package type available (besides the generic self-extracting one) is an RPM version; its been available in that format for quite a long time too. Note that Sun does *not* produce a DEB; what Sun is endorsing (among other things) is distros packaging Java in their own native formats. That's quite different.
Here's an analogy with biology; the reason that the diagram doesn't show Linspire to be derived from Debian is because it is not the equivalent of a phylogenetic diagram, but rather a "mind map" showing relationships based on 'morphology' (e.g. like grouping fish and whales together because they're both streamlined and live in water) rather than descent.
What you'd be more interested in is something like this page, which shows that a large number of distros trace back to Debian or Fedora.
It seems kind of revisionist for people to say 'Einstein was a founder of quantum theory' when his idea was basically 'if it were true, we should see such-and-such, but that's absurd, so it can't be right'. Just because the 'absurd thing' has been shown to exist, doesn't mean Einstein should be given credit for founding Quantum Theory:)
Consider that during Galileo's trial, Cardinal Bellarmine supposedly said "To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin." Should we say then that Bellarmine was 'a founder of heliocentrism'?;)
Its not just you; if you look at the last screenshot, you'll see they're still using OpenOffice.org 1.9.129 instead of 2.0.0 which was released over three weeks ago... If you check Ubuntu's entry on Distrowatch you'll see (under "snapshot") that they're still also using Firefox 1.0.7 instead of the nearly finished 1.5
To be fair though, after Breezy was released, a lot of the main people involved with Ubuntu went to Canada to attend UbuntuBelowZero, so they're just now getting back to business;)
I keep a list of useful extensions here of which I use the ones with a version number next to them; most of those have already been mentioned, but here are some of those that I find quite useful that I didn't see (either weren't mentioned so far or I skimmed over them, sorry;)
Slim Extension List (0.1) tidies the extension manager by reducing the display size of entries. (Good for people with too many extensions;) Stop-or-Reload Button (0.1) make more room on your toolbar by combining the stop and reload buttons. Flashblock (1.3.1) prevents autoloading of flash files; one click starts them going. BugMeNot (0.8) extremely useful for browsing news (and other) sites that normally make you 'register for free' when you don't want to. DictionarySearch (0.9.3) highlight a word and then look it up with just a couple clicks!
Finally, I should mention Cards (0.16.1) 27 Card Games for Firefox (including Solitaire ^_-) Now, you might ask how that's useful, but you'd be surprised how much that can interest some people who have never tried Firefox before... and getting them to switch from IE is a good thing, ne?;-)
The subject of Critical Mass for Firefox is an interesting one; we can perhaps estimate when it will arrive by looking at the first browser war. The start of the "Viewable With Any Browser" campaign is a good indication of when IE began reaching critical mass, so sometime between the release of IE 3.0 in 1996 and 4.0 in 1997. Similar to today, the vast majority of the market share was divided between just two browsers, so let's just look at the ratio of the top two browsers to one another. When IE 4.0 was released it was 72% NN and 18% IE, a 4:1 ratio. We can take this as the upper limit to critical mass.
Assuming that trends continue as they have (where IE declines are translated almost exclusively into FF gains), the 4:1 ratio will be reached when FF rises to 19% and IE slips to 76%. This has already happened in some countries (e.g. Germany) and is not far off for the U.S. (OneStat reports 81% IE and 14% FF) or Europe as a whole (XiTi reported 15% FF in September). The only question will be how long it takes...
We can estimate that as follows. To rise to 19%, FF needs to increase by about a third in the U.S. If that's proportional to overall FF downloads, the counter needs to reach ~133 M. In the 25 days since it hit 100M, there have been 5M more downloads (~200K/day). Doing the math, that means that critical mass will be reached no later than early April, 2006.
No surprise then that M$ had to uncouple IE7 from Vista; the estimated date for IE7's release is December 2005 with Vista not for a year after that. Yet I think IE7 is going to have a hard time slowing FF down since FF 1.5 is due out in December too:)
Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up! Who will be the first to gaze upon the amazing GORM?!? Descended from the same stock as the legendary Apple! So powerful, it can beat both Gnome and KDE with one hand tied behind its back! Setp right up! Step right up!
(and then you get inside and its just X11 with a horn glued to its forehead ):
Actually, try updating those two now that you've upgraded; Forecastfox 0.8.2.4 and IE View 1.2.7 should both work in rc1 according to addons.mozilla.org
Slashdot Mirror
With your purchase of a brand new ISO standard, you get a free, new matching anti-trust investigation from the Europeans who have already fined you BILLIONS of $ for past anti-trust violations!
Sounds familiar ;)
Meanwhile, at Disco Stu's "Can't Stop the Learnin' Disco Academies"...
Disco Stu: [making indescribable body motions] Did you know that disco record sales were up 400[%] for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue... A-y-y-y!
Metcalfe is also known for his harsh criticism of open source software, and Linux in particular, predicting that the latter would be obliterated after Microsoft released Windows 2000: Just because he did something really cool 35 years ago doesn't make him an expert on related matters now.
As per Synaptic...
---
Commit Log for Tue Feb 12 15:03:30 2008
Upgraded the following packages:
linux-headers-2.6.22-14 (2.6.22-14.51) to 2.6.22-14.52
linux-headers-2.6.22-14-generic (2.6.22-14.51) to 2.6.22-14.52
linux-image-2.6.22-14-generic (2.6.22-14.51) to 2.6.22-14.52
linux-libc-dev (2.6.22-14.51) to 2.6.22-14.52
---
linux-source-2.6.22 (2.6.22-14.52) gutsy-security; urgency=low
[Tim Gardner]
* splice: fix user pointer access in get_iovec_page_array()
(CVE-2008-0600)
- LP: #190587
-- Tim Gardner Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:01:17 -0700
---
http://nvd.nist.gov/nvd.cfm?cvename=CVE-2008-0600
"The cetaceans are unusual in that they are aquatic life descended from land life. The manatees are also descended from land life (they are relatives of the giraffe). I don't know of other examples."
Manatees are NOT close relatives of the giraffe. The closest aquatic relatives of the giraffes are, again, the cetaceans.
The land to water transition among mammals isn't terribly uncommon though:
manatees are Afrotherians, closely related to elephants (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrotheria)
seals, walruses, sea lions and other Pinnipeds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinniped) are carnivores related to bears and dogs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caniformia)
sea otters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_otter) are marine weasels
Other mammals show distinct adaptations towards an aquatic lifestyle, e.g. rodents like the capybara, muskrat and beaver
an extinct ground sloth (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v375/n6528/abs/375224a0.html)
the monotreme platypus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus)
the marsupial yapok (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Opossum)
if you go past mammals, you have penguins (which 'fly' underwater), sea snakes, the Galapagos marine iguana, and the various giant extinct marine reptiles
etc. etc.
If there's success to be had in a given lifestyle, life will evolve branches in that direction.
As per http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,88191,00.html BCF started switching to Linux c. 1998
"Microsoft has patented a frustration-detection help system that would monitor your computer use and biometrics to figure out when you were frustrated. [...] Is this patent a harbinger of a dystopian future where computer users' biorhythms will be monitored to increase efficiency?"
Yes. Yes it is. As per this Microsoft video:
"Some years ago Microsoft learned that a frustrated employee is an adrenalized employee; one, who in spite of appearance, actually accomplishes more."
Obviously, the idea is to determine when users aren't frustrated enough and add some random crashes or such. Expect this 'feature' in Windows 7!
"The MPAA is scared to death that it will simply be ingrained in our culture (as it has in some other society's cultures) that piracy is perfectly OK."
Replace the word "piracy" with "sharing" and I think you have a more accurate description of what's going on...
As I commented on http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=794
---
Gates explained it in 1998
I voted for "To try to grow IE 7's marketshare by adding software pirates to the count"; to partially quote what Bill Gates said in 1998:
"we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect"
http://www.news.com/2100-1023-212942.html
The 'addiction' can only happen if IE7 gets a vast-majority market share like IE6 had.
Now look at http://members.shaw.ca/Limulus/files/w3sbw2-0706.png
The numbers from w3schools.com aren't necessarily indicative of the overall web, but I've found the trends they show are.
Compared to the IE5 -> IE6 transition which was rapid and fairly X shaped on the graph, the IE6 -> IE7 tansition has stalled, with IE7 having plateaued at a level *less* than IE6.
This is very bad for Microsoft, as it represents a prolonged vulnerable state. Since IE6 and 7 are different enough that they need to be treated separately by developers, the difference in market share between IE7 and Firefox is small enough that website developers must take the latter into account too and thus support it (even if you take the Net Applications numbers http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=6 to be fully accurate, and I don't, you'll note that the ratio of FF:IE7:IE6 is about 2:5:6. If it was all IE6, that would be 2:11) And if Firefox is supported, there will be less sites that are IE-specific, meaning less 'addiction' to IE.
---
Cute, but that's kind of like saying a balloon released from the ground is the same as a bowling ball released from near the top of a 100 story skyscraper as they pass each other at the 28th floor :)
"Try Pidgin. I find it much more usable than Gaim, atleast in the UI features."
:)
d .php?t=544498s html
y -player-096-released-last-version-ever-before-name -change/
FYI, Pidgin is the new name for (and version of) Gaim
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthrea
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/07/04/07/2014230.
"Announced on the Gaim mailing lists earlier today, the Gaim project is being renamed. This follows a lengthy and, unfortunately, secret legal process with AOL, which also prevented any code releases except betas. The project will now be known as Pidgin IM."
And BTW, the Democracy Player is going to be renamed to Miro for the 1.0 release:
http://www.getdemocracy.com/news/2007/06/democrac
Hmm... I bet you could make $ from this.
;)
Step 1: Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, forcasting 6 more weeks of winter. Quickly now, 'short-sell' MS stocks.
Step 2: Cold wintery weather causes MS execs to vacation in tropical latitudes. Without the authoritarian control of their glorious leaders, MS programmers rise up and kill the middle-managers.
Step 3. Vista delayed again; MS stock takes a nosedive. Profit!!!
"Microsoft announces another edition of Windows Vista; Windows Vista Forever."
;)
I think I like Infinite Vista better... sure everything looks pretty, but are you actually going to get anywhere today?
Someone who runs Slackware and knows how to program in multiple languages tries a distro designed with Linux newbies in mind and discovers its not his "favorite distro"... Wow; I didn't see that coming.
"Does this mean that Sun is endorsing the Debian package management system over RPM-based approaches?"
No; if you look at Sun's Java download page (http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp) the only package type available (besides the generic self-extracting one) is an RPM version; its been available in that format for quite a long time too. Note that Sun does *not* produce a DEB; what Sun is endorsing (among other things) is distros packaging Java in their own native formats. That's quite different.
Here's an analogy with biology; the reason that the diagram doesn't show Linspire to be derived from Debian is because it is not the equivalent of a phylogenetic diagram, but rather a "mind map" showing relationships based on 'morphology' (e.g. like grouping fish and whales together because they're both streamlined and live in water) rather than descent.
What you'd be more interested in is something like this page, which shows that a large number of distros trace back to Debian or Fedora.
Have you looked through Ubuntu's repositories?
;)
"libsexy1"
"pornview"
"stripclub"
Shocking!
It seems kind of revisionist for people to say 'Einstein was a founder of quantum theory' when his idea was basically 'if it were true, we should see such-and-such, but that's absurd, so it can't be right'. Just because the 'absurd thing' has been shown to exist, doesn't mean Einstein should be given credit for founding Quantum Theory :)
;)
i an_doctrine)#Dispute_regarding_Isaiah_7:14
Consider that during Galileo's trial, Cardinal Bellarmine supposedly said "To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin." Should we say then that Bellarmine was 'a founder of heliocentrism'?
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Birth_(Christ
So... if they merge, will the new company go by the abbreviation "S&M"? (try getting your rebate *now*... go on, beg for it ;)
Its not just you; if you look at the last screenshot, you'll see they're still using OpenOffice.org 1.9.129 instead of 2.0.0 which was released over three weeks ago... If you check Ubuntu's entry on Distrowatch you'll see (under "snapshot") that they're still also using Firefox 1.0.7 instead of the nearly finished 1.5
;)
To be fair though, after Breezy was released, a lot of the main people involved with Ubuntu went to Canada to attend UbuntuBelowZero, so they're just now getting back to business
I keep a list of useful extensions here of which I use the ones with a version number next to them; most of those have already been mentioned, but here are some of those that I find quite useful that I didn't see (either weren't mentioned so far or I skimmed over them, sorry ;)
;)
;-)
Slim Extension List (0.1) tidies the extension manager by reducing the display size of entries. (Good for people with too many extensions
Stop-or-Reload Button (0.1) make more room on your toolbar by combining the stop and reload buttons.
Flashblock (1.3.1) prevents autoloading of flash files; one click starts them going.
BugMeNot (0.8) extremely useful for browsing news (and other) sites that normally make you 'register for free' when you don't want to.
DictionarySearch (0.9.3) highlight a word and then look it up with just a couple clicks!
Finally, I should mention Cards (0.16.1) 27 Card Games for Firefox (including Solitaire ^_-) Now, you might ask how that's useful, but you'd be surprised how much that can interest some people who have never tried Firefox before... and getting them to switch from IE is a good thing, ne?
The subject of Critical Mass for Firefox is an interesting one; we can perhaps estimate when it will arrive by looking at the first browser war. The start of the "Viewable With Any Browser" campaign is a good indication of when IE began reaching critical mass, so sometime between the release of IE 3.0 in 1996 and 4.0 in 1997. Similar to today, the vast majority of the market share was divided between just two browsers, so let's just look at the ratio of the top two browsers to one another. When IE 4.0 was released it was 72% NN and 18% IE, a 4:1 ratio. We can take this as the upper limit to critical mass.
:)
Assuming that trends continue as they have (where IE declines are translated almost exclusively into FF gains), the 4:1 ratio will be reached when FF rises to 19% and IE slips to 76%. This has already happened in some countries (e.g. Germany) and is not far off for the U.S. (OneStat reports 81% IE and 14% FF) or Europe as a whole (XiTi reported 15% FF in September). The only question will be how long it takes...
We can estimate that as follows. To rise to 19%, FF needs to increase by about a third in the U.S. If that's proportional to overall FF downloads, the counter needs to reach ~133 M. In the 25 days since it hit 100M, there have been 5M more downloads (~200K/day). Doing the math, that means that critical mass will be reached no later than early April, 2006.
No surprise then that M$ had to uncouple IE7 from Vista; the estimated date for IE7's release is December 2005 with Vista not for a year after that. Yet I think IE7 is going to have a hard time slowing FF down since FF 1.5 is due out in December too
Same here; details for comparison:
OS: Ubuntu 5.10
Browser: Firefox 1.0.7-0ubuntu20
Extension: Adblock 0.5.2.039
Filter: Filterset.G 2005-10-31a
Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up! Who will be the first to gaze upon the amazing GORM?!? Descended from the same stock as the legendary Apple! So powerful, it can beat both Gnome and KDE with one hand tied behind its back! Setp right up! Step right up!
(and then you get inside and its just X11 with a horn glued to its forehead ):
Actually, try updating those two now that you've upgraded; Forecastfox 0.8.2.4 and IE View 1.2.7 should both work in rc1 according to addons.mozilla.org