That's pretty upsetting that a major censorware project labeled Project Genesis (torah.org) as a cult. That's the big problem with using filters: it allows not parents or even librarians but large corporations the ability to decide what is an acceptible belief, practice, opinion, cause or religion. Here, Borderware is able to subtly force their religious views on thousands of people, without the parent or school involved even being aware of it.
Quite right. RedHat RPMs never showed up for the last Beta, and due to Beta3's instability, I ended up switching to Gnome for the time being. I hate to be so dependant on RPM, but once you install RPMs, you like to stick with it. Plus, the source seems to take forever to install and be impossible to uninstall (cleanly).
I think a default X should go very minimal to allow for slower machines, smaller machines, more dedicated machines to still have X.
OK, so make twm a third option on the pulldown menu. No one who installs Linux has to do a full install anyway. The point is, I should be able to decide on a distro based on technical merits, not which desktop environment they decided to bundle.
I don't think it's marketspeak. I think it's all part of healthy competition. Frankly, I think saying that Gnome needs to "catch up" would encourage the gnome folks to push forward more than if KDE had just said, "both are nice."
I think it's great that there's all this competition. I used to not, because I wanted all the development focus to be on one. But now that I'm beta-testing KDE2, it's nice to be able to log into a stable release of gnome, and switch back and forth. prefdm allows this. kdm seems to have the capability to allow you to log into either, but it doesn't seem to work. Could be a bug.
When people say that Linux is so great because of user choice, they are right. But choice should not cause the Linux world to splinter into two. I see no reason why everyone (and every distro) shouldn't have both installed by default, with a pull-down menu on the login screen. Let's move towards sharing desktops, themes, menus, etc. between the two, so when I switch from KDE to Gnome on a whim, I can still access all my menus and desktop icons. Some work is being done towards this already.
Choice is good, but it has to be easy. The main reason I don't like GNOME is because of the "choice" of window managers. If I log in cold to gnome, I have no window manager, and if I pick one, configurations and look-and-feel aren't coordinated. You can't expect users to figure out that desktop images are controlled by the window manager but screensavers are controlled by the desktop environment, or whatever. Let them default to E or whatever, and, just like KDE, I can change if it I am so inclined.
Let's show folks who are new to Linux that when they start using Linux, they'll have a choice of what their desktop looks like. Let's not tell them that, before they start using Linux, they have to pick KDE or GNOME and make a life-long commitment to be on one "side" or the other.
Clearly, the implication is that this patent affects a lot of people, and the poster's research will certainly benefit the entire industry. I'm sure a good number of readers have written applications fitting this discription, and could be charged royalty fees if the patent is not defeated.
And here I thought a googolplex was that big movie theater downtown....
Re:KDE Team Steps Up Marketing Effort
on
KDE Strikes Back
·
· Score: 2
No. If they were corporate, they would release a product to make the marketing folk happy even if it wasn't ready. KDE won't release until they're ready with a polished product.
This link goes to a CGI which redirects to a random link pulled from 2600's plain text list of links. This means that my site does not contain any DeCSS code, nor does it contain links to DeCSS code. If 2600's page is now legit, then my script links to a legal page. Yet, if you click on the above link, you get code. Hmmm...
Source code here (warning - I wrote it in about 3 minutes).
I've been wondering: if enough geeks become sufficiently upset with anti-internet legislation, can we shut down the web for the day in protest? The only way I can think of doing this (besides DDOS, which is quite anti-social) would be to shut off the root servers. Is there any other way? This would make people appreciate the medium that they are trying to supporess, and also make people realize that they don't own the internet.
I noticed that sharing seems to be a late "feature" in many clients. For example, the last version of Knapster I used and (I believe) the last version of gtk-gnutella I used both did not yet support uploading. In fact, the clients may never support it, and people may not want to upgrade to a new version that does. This is always going to be the least demanded feature, and since these types of services lend themselves to a plethora of Yet Another (tm) clients, this could be a significant problem.
The Groucho link is quite apropos - thanks for posting it. I've thought about it often in regards to all the copyright and trademark stories on Slashdot. So, seems like big companies harassing people about trademark use has been going on forever. Groucho simply responded to Warner Brothers completely in form, and Warner Brothers agreed to drop the threat and allow the Marx Brothers to use the name "Casablanca." WB's response and further details can be found in the book The Groucho Letters, ISBN 030680607X.
The point is, Groucho just took the threat as a joke, and eventually so did WB. I hope that still works today.
I agree. Anti-spam folks (mail-abuse.org for example) always argue that spam is more damaging than paper junk mail. But I delete spam very quickly, without reading it. Paper mail is disguised as credit card bills, etc. It takes much longer than email to open if you're not sure if it's junk, and it takes longer to delete (walk to the trash vs. hit 'd' in Pine). Plus, email can be forwarded to/dev/null. I'd love a dead-tree null device!
ibot is right - follow simple practices for keeping spam out of your mailbox: don't post it in newsgroups, use a throwaway account for Barnes and Noble, etc. Get familiar with the D key. And don't spend too much time worrying about it.
I like to have source code to test a new exploit on my box. I'd much rather verify that I am vulnerable, patch, and verify that I'm no longer vulnerable than just blindly patch my system and hope that RedHat fixed the problem for me.
I think this is an excellent bill, as people should at least be aware of what's happening. I'd much rather have an exposed camera in an elevator than a hidden one.
But, keep in mind that this only means that they have to tell you what they can or may do. It doesn't mean that every time they read one of your emails, they have to tell you that they did so. My company was straightforward in saying that they can and do read emails, web logs, etc. But I think most people operate as if they probably won't read everything.
I think this is a step in the right direction, but I bet even after being notified of the company policy, an employee would still be shocked/upset if an HR rep dragged out an email and grilled him on it.
I actually, for a fleeting moment, considered purchasing a second machine to run Windows on, mainly for development/testing and bleeding edge hardware. But I decided against this after learning that a copy of Windows would not be included. I'm certainly not going to pay for Windows if I don't get a fully usable copy of Windows on CD.
I first read about this several months ago. Have not large corporations made sufficient noise to MS for this decision to be recanted? Or is everyone just swallowing and moving right along?
We all know that there are benefits to having everything controlled by one vendor/source. It's easier to code to, it gives users a more predictable experience, etc. But is that really what we wat from Linux? If not, then it doesn't suck; it's just not going to have the benefits (and trade-offs) of being monolithic.
PHP isn't really a competitor to Perl in the CGI space. PHP is embeded in an HTML page, whereas a Perl CGI is more likely to be in the backend, or at most generating HTML. There are HTML::Embperl, ePerl, and maybe other embeded perl options, but probably the way most people use Perl is not comparable to PHP.
Perl is never going to become a strongly-typed language, if that's what you're gunning for. This is part of what makes quick scripting in Perl possible. You don't have to make your code impossible to read, either. "use English" if you like clearer default variables, for example, and don't rely on $_. But I love that I can quickly and easily parse a web form or a data file without having to start malloc'ing and casting my way around.
Just out of curiosity: how many perl programmers here upgraded old perl scripts to use Perl 5 features when Perl 5 came out? I know that where I work, most scripts are run with perl 5 but are written (with the exception of the occasional chomp) in Perl 4 syntax. Are people fully utilizing new functionality?
There is a.us TLD, but it's mainly used by gov't offices. It would be nice if people started using.us, but I don't even know if we can register them. Besides, everyone, even in non-US countries, just wants.com. There are even a lot of sites in the UK that are foouk.com, so clearly they are UK-specific, but they still want.com. But you never read trade mag articles about the.co.uk revolution, do you?
I'd assume any software manufacturer will give a free copy to a major reviewer. I'd be surprised if reviewers were more compelled to slant their reveiws in the case of free software than with commercial software.
If this whole story isn't completely baseless, then perhaps reveiwers are slanting the reviews because they want to see Open Source software succeed?
The main issue at stake, at least from the article, seems to be the lack of openness and peer-review of the voting system. They didn't say that online voting is inherently insecure, but rather that Election.com seems to be relying on security by obscurity, and are not allowing any outside evaluation of the security model. I think we should definitely be supportive of online voting, but highly suspicious of a single company that wants to commandeer the process, without conforming to basic (at least in the OSS community) security standards.
Slashdot Mirror
That's pretty upsetting that a major censorware project labeled Project Genesis (torah.org) as a cult. That's the big problem with using filters: it allows not parents or even librarians but large corporations the ability to decide what is an acceptible belief, practice, opinion, cause or religion. Here, Borderware is able to subtly force their religious views on thousands of people, without the parent or school involved even being aware of it.
Hrmpf. Packaging standards, anyone?
OK, so make twm a third option on the pulldown menu. No one who installs Linux has to do a full install anyway. The point is, I should be able to decide on a distro based on technical merits, not which desktop environment they decided to bundle.
I don't think it's marketspeak. I think it's all part of healthy competition. Frankly, I think saying that Gnome needs to "catch up" would encourage the gnome folks to push forward more than if KDE had just said, "both are nice."
When people say that Linux is so great because of user choice, they are right. But choice should not cause the Linux world to splinter into two. I see no reason why everyone (and every distro) shouldn't have both installed by default, with a pull-down menu on the login screen. Let's move towards sharing desktops, themes, menus, etc. between the two, so when I switch from KDE to Gnome on a whim, I can still access all my menus and desktop icons. Some work is being done towards this already.
Choice is good, but it has to be easy. The main reason I don't like GNOME is because of the "choice" of window managers. If I log in cold to gnome, I have no window manager, and if I pick one, configurations and look-and-feel aren't coordinated. You can't expect users to figure out that desktop images are controlled by the window manager but screensavers are controlled by the desktop environment, or whatever. Let them default to E or whatever, and, just like KDE, I can change if it I am so inclined.
Let's show folks who are new to Linux that when they start using Linux, they'll have a choice of what their desktop looks like. Let's not tell them that, before they start using Linux, they have to pick KDE or GNOME and make a life-long commitment to be on one "side" or the other.
Clearly, the implication is that this patent affects a lot of people, and the poster's research will certainly benefit the entire industry. I'm sure a good number of readers have written applications fitting this discription, and could be charged royalty fees if the patent is not defeated.
And here I thought a googolplex was that big movie theater downtown....
No. If they were corporate, they would release a product to make the marketing folk happy even if it wasn't ready. KDE won't release until they're ready with a polished product.
Download DeCSS.
This link goes to a CGI which redirects to a random link pulled from 2600's plain text list of links. This means that my site does not contain any DeCSS code, nor does it contain links to DeCSS code. If 2600's page is now legit, then my script links to a legal page. Yet, if you click on the above link, you get code. Hmmm...
Source code here (warning - I wrote it in about 3 minutes).
I've been wondering: if enough geeks become sufficiently upset with anti-internet legislation, can we shut down the web for the day in protest? The only way I can think of doing this (besides DDOS, which is quite anti-social) would be to shut off the root servers. Is there any other way? This would make people appreciate the medium that they are trying to supporess, and also make people realize that they don't own the internet.
Yes; as you know, one-click decrypting has been patented and is therefore illegal.
I noticed that sharing seems to be a late "feature" in many clients. For example, the last version of Knapster I used and (I believe) the last version of gtk-gnutella I used both did not yet support uploading. In fact, the clients may never support it, and people may not want to upgrade to a new version that does. This is always going to be the least demanded feature, and since these types of services lend themselves to a plethora of Yet Another (tm) clients, this could be a significant problem.
The point is, Groucho just took the threat as a joke, and eventually so did WB. I hope that still works today.
ibot is right - follow simple practices for keeping spam out of your mailbox: don't post it in newsgroups, use a throwaway account for Barnes and Noble, etc. Get familiar with the D key. And don't spend too much time worrying about it.
I like to have source code to test a new exploit on my box. I'd much rather verify that I am vulnerable, patch, and verify that I'm no longer vulnerable than just blindly patch my system and hope that RedHat fixed the problem for me.
But, keep in mind that this only means that they have to tell you what they can or may do. It doesn't mean that every time they read one of your emails, they have to tell you that they did so. My company was straightforward in saying that they can and do read emails, web logs, etc. But I think most people operate as if they probably won't read everything.
I think this is a step in the right direction, but I bet even after being notified of the company policy, an employee would still be shocked/upset if an HR rep dragged out an email and grilled him on it.
I first read about this several months ago. Have not large corporations made sufficient noise to MS for this decision to be recanted? Or is everyone just swallowing and moving right along?
We all know that there are benefits to having everything controlled by one vendor/source. It's easier to code to, it gives users a more predictable experience, etc. But is that really what we wat from Linux? If not, then it doesn't suck; it's just not going to have the benefits (and trade-offs) of being monolithic.
PHP isn't really a competitor to Perl in the CGI space. PHP is embeded in an HTML page, whereas a Perl CGI is more likely to be in the backend, or at most generating HTML. There are HTML::Embperl, ePerl, and maybe other embeded perl options, but probably the way most people use Perl is not comparable to PHP.
Perl is never going to become a strongly-typed language, if that's what you're gunning for. This is part of what makes quick scripting in Perl possible. You don't have to make your code impossible to read, either. "use English" if you like clearer default variables, for example, and don't rely on $_. But I love that I can quickly and easily parse a web form or a data file without having to start malloc'ing and casting my way around.
Just out of curiosity: how many perl programmers here upgraded old perl scripts to use Perl 5 features when Perl 5 came out? I know that where I work, most scripts are run with perl 5 but are written (with the exception of the occasional chomp) in Perl 4 syntax. Are people fully utilizing new functionality?
He announced his vision for Perl 6. Please try to keep the headlines from being completely misleading....
There is a .us TLD, but it's mainly used by gov't offices. It would be nice if people started using .us, but I don't even know if we can register them. Besides, everyone, even in non-US countries, just wants .com. There are even a lot of sites in the UK that are foouk.com, so clearly they are UK-specific, but they still want .com. But you never read trade mag articles about the .co.uk revolution, do you?
If this whole story isn't completely baseless, then perhaps reveiwers are slanting the reviews because they want to see Open Source software succeed?
The main issue at stake, at least from the article, seems to be the lack of openness and peer-review of the voting system. They didn't say that online voting is inherently insecure, but rather that Election.com seems to be relying on security by obscurity, and are not allowing any outside evaluation of the security model. I think we should definitely be supportive of online voting, but highly suspicious of a single company that wants to commandeer the process, without conforming to basic (at least in the OSS community) security standards.