> Microsoft doesn't really care if you
> pirate their software for home use.
And I'm sure they'd rather you use a pirated WinME than a paid-for Linux distribution. Anything that promotes the automatic association of computers with Windows and Office can only do them good.
The downside of piracy is that it doesn't encourage development of the GNU philosophy - why use StarOffice when you can burn a copy of Office 2000? The only factor involved here would be the desire to use free or OS software. MS will win nearly all the time. This keeps the user base - legal or otherwise - MS-focused, while they work on ways of making sure users WILL have to pay for future releases... as, of course, they should, if that's how Microsoft want to do it...
>What's wrong with adopting to Microsoft's
>IE standards?
Nothing, if they're good, useful standards that can contribute to the development of web technologies. This is one of the things the W3C is for. If Microsoft introduce a new 'feature' or 'standard', the W3C may decide to implement it in their HTML specification. All well and good, but in the meantime users of other browsers are left out in the cold. And if 'everyone' accepts Microsoft's new 'standards' before they're in the W3C's HTML spec, then the very idea of 'standards' is completely invalid. So if you really think HTML is a worthwhile cause, stick to W3C spec and don't use any 'standards' that aren't included in it.
(Of course, this leads to the problem that the browser's don't fully support the W3C spec, but that's all the more reason they should work on getting THAT done before they think about adding new and unusual features...)
>No one can be truly compelled to do anything. >They decision is ultimately theirs to make.
I believe this statement to be demonstrably false. The simplest argument against it is hypnosis. People can be compelled to do a number of things udner hypnosis. Working from this tenet, the question is how far does your definition of hypnosis extend? It may extend further if you relabel is 'suggestion'. Every day, the vast majority of people are doing things they don't really want to do, buying things they don't really want to buy, reading posts they don't really want to read, and obeying blatantly unjust laws they don't really want to obey, largely on the strength of suggestion (often reinforced by the threat of some kind of punishment). People may have their own 'will' (though it's impossible to prove it), but more often than not it's been assembled for them by a variety of agencies. This is undeniably convenient, but not necessarily desirable.
>By the way, I've never even heard
>of "apoxiutial," and apparently, neither has the
>American Heritage Dictionary, Webster's, or
>Princeton Wordnet.
See how that works? Because these 'authorities' tell you it's OK to do so, you launch an attack on someone. You are punishing them for not obeying a law. Suggestion, negative reinforcement. Was it genuinely your decision to be snotty, or was there some influence from your teachers somewhere along the line? Of course, I'm just being deliberately apoxiutial now. Sorry.
I recieved my 'unmetered' (0800 number) NTL CD this week, after a _very_ long wait - it appears that new subscribers to the service were prioritised over existing customers. The account has a pin number (helpfully printed on the address label) and a serial number for the CD inside the package. It installs something called Gearbox, which runs at bootup, replaces Dial-Up Networking and tries to make you surf in its own 'customised' window. You can fire up IE/NS after you've connected, however. The setup offers you the option to install IE 5 or NS 4, but no opt-out clause, so you have to choose one. It seems not to bother if it finds a version on your machine, but even so it's a confusing bit of interface design. The installation does place an entry in Dial-Up Networking, but I couldn't get it to work that way the couple of times I tried. The service cuts off after five minutes of inactivity, or after two hours of connection. In practice, it seems to 'freeze' after 30-60 mins, requiring a reconnection. I've tried to change my password a number of times, and had a 'connection reset by peer' error every time. I've mailed the support team and received nothing back, though presumably I could ring their _£1 per minute_ helpline for an instant response. Obviously, the CD mentions nothing about getting the service up under Linux, and also informs you that it won't work under NT or 2000.
One good tip is that despite the pin numbers/serials, you can easily install the service on several PCs (if the Dial-Up number doesn't work on its own) by choosing 'reinstall' from the setup options and putting your password in. My flatmate and I are using the same service, despite NTL's claims that this wouldn't be possible.
I know it's a free service - as in beer (providing you don't have to call the helpline) - but even so, it smacks of crap and I think I'd rather pay a set amount for a well-designed and provided service.
I don't think free net access in the UK will work out correctly until we have a phone system similar to the US's, though American readers may wish to correct me here...
- but whenever I look at that GNU image on the topic bar, I see an caped eagle with a leather face mask and an erection.
See, you have to think of the gaps between the horns as an eye. The leftmost horn is the beak. The blanket becomes a cape. The eagle is standing proudly with an arched back, and, as any fool can plainly see, he has an erection.
Good for him.
It's a new word; it mean "compatible, but not quite". Some uses:
"Gah, this file's not compatible - it's not even complatible!"
"My partner and I are highly complatible."
"This hardware is 100% IBM complatible, which equates to 85% IBM compatible."
etc. etc.
He would suddenly run at people, yelling and making threatening gestures, then take a picture of their expressions of fear. (A disarmed society is NOT a polite society!)
When all's said and done, though, I'd consider that kind of behaviour marginally more polite than shooting someone.
Yep, good point - it's a big name draw, and I guess Linux kinda has that power to win people over once they start using it... this makes it a question of compromise - how much are 'we' willing to compromise the GPL/FSF ideal in order to proceed? If AOL on Linux does take off and become popular, get set for more Debian inclusion debates... and hope it's not going to be a turning-the-tables thin end of the wedge...
Re:Finally! A physical graph of my apache hits
on
Lego + Linux HOWTO
·
· Score: 3
Could you build a PC case using Mindsorms components and have your machine look after itself physically? Like, you come back from work and it's taken a few bricks out of itself to reduce temperature? Or added a west wing on the side to house a couple of new hard drives? Or built itself some wheels and... uh, I've got to stop thinking about this now.
Does it, though? Does AOL still use proprietary software, or are they simply providing access? If they do use their own software, what are the chances of seeing the source code? If closed-source software draws millions to Linux, that'll be a giant leap in the wrong direction.
Disclaimer: I don't know what the deal with AOL is. I've never used it myself, but I've had to help friends' machines get over it. I ask these questions because there's a lot of discussion here which seems to imply that anything drawing users to Linux must be good, and to me Linux is more about freedom than a large user base...
>If you aren't happy with those other browsers, >perhaps you should contribute to making them >better I'm happy with other browsers. I like Lynx. I use IE at work. That doesn't mean I agree with this feeble tactic of causing pop-ups to appear on every page under Netscape 4.x, with is, like it or not, the current stable version of Netscape, and is in use by a large number of people. I agree that if you don't like how a browser functions, you should contribute to making it better (assuming the source is available...). That's a constructive act. Putting these pop-ups in a page is not constructive. It's rude and whiny. I have a lot more respect for authors who work around such problems to make their pages accessible. Isn't that what web pages are there for? To be accessed?
Users shouldn't be forced to click a pop-up box on every page informing them the author doesn't like their browser. You can use CSS in Netscape. I do. You have to be aware of Netscape's CSS limitations, but the same is true of any browser. And HTML without CSS isn't necessarily incorrect, just as the addition of CSS doesn't make HTML correct...
Well, this is WAY off-topic, but they should be making their pages accessible in accordance with the current browser situation. Mozilla has a very limited user base compared to, say, Netscape 4.x. Hopefully one day, and soon, things will be different. In the meantime, they should tailor their pages to be accessible to all. Assuming, that is, they want people to view them. Besides which, it would take about ten seconds to write a standards-compliant CSS page that looked like a dog in IE. At the end of the day, all graphical browsers ruin the web, so why pick on just one?
The TV ads for Titan AE over here in the UK actually say OUT LOUD, THROUGH THE SPEAKER "Titan AE is Star Wars". With this kind of misrepresentation, they're doomed to failure.
Nicely-done page - first thing I get is a pop-up box saying "Please come back with a CSS compliant browser such as IE or Netscape 6 (or Lynx)". How about if THEY come back with an accessible webpage?
Well, our 'official' emulator at work is Teemtalk, by Pericom. It's worth going to their homepage just to marvel at the world's longest ALT tag. Teemtalk is pretty useful, with a lot of configuration options and a wide emulation range. But, as one of the first posters said, puTTY is the way to go. It's os, it has ssh, it's lean, and it works like a dream. It's not extensively documented (except for the fact you can read the source code), but it doesn't really need to be: run it, and go. Beautiful.
It has +GOT+ to be "open source" (note: small o, small s). That's why we're here today. That's what it's all about. If you accept closed-source drivers, why not cs apps? What does it matter, as long as they run? Open, develop, grow.
It's as easy to use poor icons as it is to use poor words. But a well-chosen or well-designed icon will naturally be more effective than any word(s), because it won't be language-specific.
I agree that/. was a bad example to use, because 99% of it is made of English words once you get past the icons.
I'd like to hear from some comic book fans on this topic...
When a webpage author dosn't have access to IE he can only test against Netscape.
I usually find that so long as you aren't using patently idiotic Netscape-only "features", a page that behaves in Netscape will behave in IE. It won't work the other way a lot of the time, mostly due to Netscape's arsed-up CSS implementation (but then, they give you AIM to make up for it...). It's easier to make a Netscape-ready page from scratch than to create a nice (AND compliant) IE page only to discover that fscking Netscape doesn't want to play. So in a sense, that's a bad feature of Netscape, but it's a bonus when it comes to cross-browser compliance. Of course, what you should really do is make your page Lynx-compliant, and then you won't have ANY worries;^)
And how many developers are responsible? Sure, responsible ones will adhere to W3, but the rest, the vast, vast majority, will use IE-only features if it makes their life easier or profit greater. And once those features start being used, the snowball effect begins. Where we need "responsible developers" is Redmond.
I want to get to as many customers/visitors as I can, so why would I build an IE-only web site? It just doesn't make any sense. Because if you build it, they will come. Microsoft enhancements will become standard because the standard IS Microsoft. This isn't exclusively a bad thing - many W3 compliant features of today are a result of non-standard additions of yesterday. Without new, non-compliant features, there'd be no evolution. What's wrong with MS is that they don't liase with the rest of the world about their 'enhancements' - they assume that everyone will follow suit. They're not interested in the evolution of HTML/CSS/XML/whatever - they're interested in the profit of Microsoft. Which is fair enough, considering they're a business, but you don't have to sacrifice altruism and cooperation to achieve that goal. News like this is always depressing, because it emphasises what we're up against...
Slashdot Mirror
> Microsoft doesn't really care if you
> pirate their software for home use.
And I'm sure they'd rather you use a pirated WinME than a paid-for Linux distribution. Anything that promotes the automatic association of computers with Windows and Office can only do them good.
The downside of piracy is that it doesn't encourage development of the GNU philosophy - why use StarOffice when you can burn a copy of Office 2000? The only factor involved here would be the desire to use free or OS software. MS will win nearly all the time. This keeps the user base - legal or otherwise - MS-focused, while they work on ways of making sure users WILL have to pay for future releases... as, of course, they should, if that's how Microsoft want to do it...
>What's wrong with adopting to Microsoft's
>IE standards?
Nothing, if they're good, useful standards that can contribute to the development of web technologies. This is one of the things the W3C is for. If Microsoft introduce a new 'feature' or 'standard', the W3C may decide to implement it in their HTML specification. All well and good, but in the meantime users of other browsers are left out in the cold. And if 'everyone' accepts Microsoft's new 'standards' before they're in the W3C's HTML spec, then the very idea of 'standards' is completely invalid. So if you really think HTML is a worthwhile cause, stick to W3C spec and don't use any 'standards' that aren't included in it.
(Of course, this leads to the problem that the browser's don't fully support the W3C spec, but that's all the more reason they should work on getting THAT done before they think about adding new and unusual features...)
>No one can be truly compelled to do anything. >They decision is ultimately theirs to make.
I believe this statement to be demonstrably false. The simplest argument against it is hypnosis. People can be compelled to do a number of things udner hypnosis. Working from this tenet, the question is how far does your definition of hypnosis extend? It may extend further if you relabel is 'suggestion'. Every day, the vast majority of people are doing things they don't really want to do, buying things they don't really want to buy, reading posts they don't really want to read, and obeying blatantly unjust laws they don't really want to obey, largely on the strength of suggestion (often reinforced by the threat of some kind of punishment). People may have their own 'will' (though it's impossible to prove it), but more often than not it's been assembled for them by a variety of agencies. This is undeniably convenient, but not necessarily desirable.
>By the way, I've never even heard
>of "apoxiutial," and apparently, neither has the
>American Heritage Dictionary, Webster's, or
>Princeton Wordnet.
See how that works? Because these 'authorities' tell you it's OK to do so, you launch an attack on someone. You are punishing them for not obeying a law. Suggestion, negative reinforcement. Was it genuinely your decision to be snotty, or was there some influence from your teachers somewhere along the line? Of course, I'm just being deliberately apoxiutial now. Sorry.
I recieved my 'unmetered' (0800 number) NTL CD this week, after a _very_ long wait - it appears that new subscribers to the service were prioritised over existing customers. The account has a pin number (helpfully printed on the address label) and a serial number for the CD inside the package. It installs something called Gearbox, which runs at bootup, replaces Dial-Up Networking and tries to make you surf in its own 'customised' window. You can fire up IE/NS after you've connected, however. The setup offers you the option to install IE 5 or NS 4, but no opt-out clause, so you have to choose one. It seems not to bother if it finds a version on your machine, but even so it's a confusing bit of interface design. The installation does place an entry in Dial-Up Networking, but I couldn't get it to work that way the couple of times I tried. The service cuts off after five minutes of inactivity, or after two hours of connection. In practice, it seems to 'freeze' after 30-60 mins, requiring a reconnection. I've tried to change my password a number of times, and had a 'connection reset by peer' error every time. I've mailed the support team and received nothing back, though presumably I could ring their _£1 per minute_ helpline for an instant response. Obviously, the CD mentions nothing about getting the service up under Linux, and also informs you that it won't work under NT or 2000.
One good tip is that despite the pin numbers/serials, you can easily install the service on several PCs (if the Dial-Up number doesn't work on its own) by choosing 'reinstall' from the setup options and putting your password in. My flatmate and I are using the same service, despite NTL's claims that this wouldn't be possible.
I know it's a free service - as in beer (providing you don't have to call the helpline) - but even so, it smacks of crap and I think I'd rather pay a set amount for a well-designed and provided service.
I don't think free net access in the UK will work out correctly until we have a phone system similar to the US's, though American readers may wish to correct me here...
Well, that's why he's proud.
- but whenever I look at that GNU image on the topic bar, I see an caped eagle with a leather face mask and an erection.
See, you have to think of the gaps between the horns as an eye. The leftmost horn is the beak. The blanket becomes a cape. The eagle is standing proudly with an arched back, and, as any fool can plainly see, he has an erection.
Good for him.
It's a new word; it mean "compatible, but not quite". Some uses:
"Gah, this file's not compatible - it's not even complatible!"
"My partner and I are highly complatible."
"This hardware is 100% IBM complatible, which equates to 85% IBM compatible."
etc. etc.
He would suddenly run at people, yelling and making threatening gestures, then take a picture of their expressions of fear. (A disarmed society is NOT a polite society!)
When all's said and done, though, I'd consider that kind of behaviour marginally more polite than shooting someone.
Yep, good point - it's a big name draw, and I guess Linux kinda has that power to win people over once they start using it... this makes it a question of compromise - how much are 'we' willing to compromise the GPL/FSF ideal in order to proceed? If AOL on Linux does take off and become popular, get set for more Debian inclusion debates... and hope it's not going to be a turning-the-tables thin end of the wedge...
Could you build a PC case using Mindsorms components and have your machine look after itself physically? Like, you come back from work and it's taken a few bricks out of itself to reduce temperature? Or added a west wing on the side to house a couple of new hard drives? Or built itself some wheels and... uh, I've got to stop thinking about this now.
> Linux takes a giant step in the right direction
Does it, though? Does AOL still use proprietary software, or are they simply providing access? If they do use their own software, what are the chances of seeing the source code? If closed-source software draws millions to Linux, that'll be a giant leap in the wrong direction.
Disclaimer: I don't know what the deal with AOL is. I've never used it myself, but I've had to help friends' machines get over it. I ask these questions because there's a lot of discussion here which seems to imply that anything drawing users to Linux must be good, and to me Linux is more about freedom than a large user base...
So long as you're throwing your 'e's around in honour of politicians, why not give a nod to the great statesman D. Quayle and name it ePotatoe?
"Large values of 2"?
Apples and pears are green
Therefore, for sufficiently large amounts of apples,
Oranges and lemons are green.
>If you aren't happy with those other browsers,
>perhaps you should contribute to making them
>better
I'm happy with other browsers. I like Lynx. I use IE at work. That doesn't mean I agree with this feeble tactic of causing pop-ups to appear on every page under Netscape 4.x, with is, like it or not, the current stable version of Netscape, and is in use by a large number of people. I agree that if you don't like how a browser functions, you should contribute to making it better (assuming the source is available...). That's a constructive act. Putting these pop-ups in a page is not constructive. It's rude and whiny. I have a lot more respect for authors who work around such problems to make their pages accessible. Isn't that what web pages are there for? To be accessed?
Users shouldn't be forced to click a pop-up box on every page informing them the author doesn't like their browser. You can use CSS in Netscape. I do. You have to be aware of Netscape's CSS limitations, but the same is true of any browser. And HTML without CSS isn't necessarily incorrect, just as the addition of CSS doesn't make HTML correct...
Well, this is WAY off-topic, but they should be making their pages accessible in accordance with the current browser situation. Mozilla has a very limited user base compared to, say, Netscape 4.x. Hopefully one day, and soon, things will be different. In the meantime, they should tailor their pages to be accessible to all. Assuming, that is, they want people to view them. Besides which, it would take about ten seconds to write a standards-compliant CSS page that looked like a dog in IE. At the end of the day, all graphical browsers ruin the web, so why pick on just one?
The TV ads for Titan AE over here in the UK actually say OUT LOUD, THROUGH THE SPEAKER "Titan AE is Star Wars". With this kind of misrepresentation, they're doomed to failure.
Nicely-done page - first thing I get is a pop-up box saying "Please come back with a CSS compliant browser such as IE or Netscape 6 (or Lynx)". How about if THEY come back with an accessible webpage?
Well, our 'official' emulator at work is Teemtalk, by Pericom. It's worth going to their homepage just to marvel at the world's longest ALT tag. Teemtalk is pretty useful, with a lot of configuration options and a wide emulation range. But, as one of the first posters said, puTTY is the way to go. It's os, it has ssh, it's lean, and it works like a dream. It's not extensively documented (except for the fact you can read the source code), but it doesn't really need to be: run it, and go. Beautiful.
It has +GOT+ to be "open source" (note: small o, small s). That's why we're here today. That's what it's all about. If you accept closed-source drivers, why not cs apps? What does it matter, as long as they run?
Open, develop, grow.
Site appears to have baulked. I got as far as page 3, and then drew a blank. Give them air!
As I said:
/. was a bad example to use, because 99% of it is made of English words once you get past the icons.
(hopefully, depending on how well you choose)
It's as easy to use poor icons as it is to use poor words. But a well-chosen or well-designed icon will naturally be more effective than any word(s), because it won't be language-specific.
I agree that
I'd like to hear from some comic book fans on this topic...
When a webpage author dosn't have access to IE he can only test against Netscape.
;^)
I usually find that so long as you aren't using patently idiotic Netscape-only "features", a page that behaves in Netscape will behave in IE. It won't work the other way a lot of the time, mostly due to Netscape's arsed-up CSS implementation (but then, they give you AIM to make up for it...). It's easier to make a Netscape-ready page from scratch than to create a nice (AND compliant) IE page only to discover that fscking Netscape doesn't want to play. So in a sense, that's a bad feature of Netscape, but it's a bonus when it comes to cross-browser compliance.
Of course, what you should really do is make your page Lynx-compliant, and then you won't have ANY worries
And how many developers are responsible?
Sure, responsible ones will adhere to W3, but the rest, the vast, vast majority, will use IE-only features if it makes their life easier or profit greater. And once those features start being used, the snowball effect begins.
Where we need "responsible developers" is Redmond.
I want to get to as many customers/visitors as I can, so why would I build an IE-only web site? It just doesn't make any sense.
Because if you build it, they will come. Microsoft enhancements will become standard because the standard IS Microsoft. This isn't exclusively a bad thing - many W3 compliant features of today are a result of non-standard additions of yesterday. Without new, non-compliant features, there'd be no evolution. What's wrong with MS is that they don't liase with the rest of the world about their 'enhancements' - they assume that everyone will follow suit. They're not interested in the evolution of HTML/CSS/XML/whatever - they're interested in the profit of Microsoft. Which is fair enough, considering they're a business, but you don't have to sacrifice altruism and cooperation to achieve that goal.
News like this is always depressing, because it emphasises what we're up against...