XFree86 has handled "plug and play" (DDC capable) monitors for a while, certainly on PCs I've not had to worry about Horizontal and Vertical refresh rates for a long time.
Is that because of X itself, or because of your distro's installer? I'm running LFS and have had to edit my X config file by hand or through xconfig to have the proper refresh rate; when I ran Mandrake however, it was detected for me. It seems to me that yes, the ability is there, but X itself does not take advantage of it.
Why do you want to change the refresh rate anyway - because it was set wrong in the first place? Thats just a configuration issue.
A monitor at 60Hz vertical gives me a headache; I can't stand it for more than five minutes, but that's the default for lots of systems. Changing the refresh rate is invaluable to me, especially in a multi-user environment like a computer lab.
which allows you to change resolution on the fly (another pointless Windows concept).
I run at a high resolution when I'm programming or munging text, but when I'm fiddling with graphics I prefer a lower resolution. It helps for games too; if you have a crappy video card, drop the resolution so you get more than a handful of frames per second. Just because you don't use a feature doesn't mean it's completely worthless.*
>Why are there so many problems with different mice/smooth scrolling? There are? Name a few.
There are problems with mouse consistency (Mozilla and emacs are the two worst offenders in my experience; I have never gotten emacs to recognize my scroll wheel, I've had to get some kind soul to set up a.emacs file on every machine I've worked at), but that's an application problem, not an X problem.
*this I think is the major problem with X. It has a ton of stuff that's useful to a narrow range of people, which leads to everyone complaining about the features they don't use.
My, God the submitter needs, to learn how to use commas, properly when he writes, something that hundreds of thousands of people will potentially, read...
One thing I would really really like is if the tool palette hotkeys were mapped to the same tools in the GIMP as they are in Photoshop. I do pretty much the same tasks with the GIMP as with PS6, it all depends on what OS I'm running at the time, but I hate hitting a key which gives me the right tool in Photoshop, but something completely different in the GIMP (having to focus the pallete window first is another, minor, gripe). Does anyone know if the GIMP's keymap has changed for 1.3/2.0? Or, alternately, are there directions anywhere on how to change this mapping? When I googled, all I could find talked about changing menu shortcuts. Any help is appreciated, thanks!
This is nonsense. Of course the current Windows "curve of improvement" is shallower than that of Linux, because the Windows world already has the features that Linux (the kernel+environment) is trying to implement. Further, Windows already has most if not all of the things that people want already; there's less room to improve.
Linux was introduced in 1991, right? And this study took place over a five-year span, meaning it started in 1998. A little subtraction gives us the number 7, in that Linux had seven years to mature before the study began. Applying the same numbers to Windows (announced in 1983, or so Google tells me), the equivalent time period would be from 1991 to 1996. Going from Win 3.x to Win32 is as big a change as anything happening in the Linux world today. All either of us has "proven" is that after a seven-year period, it's still possible to make significant changes to your OS of choice. Big deal.
Do you believe that in another (1,3,5) years that Windows will either remain or have become "better" than Linux for your application?
No, but I believe Windows will be as good as Linux at whatever I need to do. Not that that's a bad thing for Linux users, but it's not the never-ending march of progress you make it out to be.
"All it took was a little of my time to..." [four sentences of technical details that nobody without years of computer experience would understand]
you talk about software for the "common man," but who the hell is going to install cygwin and use third-party (I'm assuming) addons for an IM client they've never heard of, just to be able to talk to their own family? It's way easier just to run the factory-installed OS and software, get other software from big, well-known companies like AOL and Microsoft, and then read some web page instructions or download a registry file to fix things when everything goes square-shaped. You're lucky in that you've educated your family on secure computing practices, but one case does not make a trend. There's far more users out there with no clue, and no family members or friends to provide that clue. We're a long, long way from easy to use security components built into Windows.
Why is it unfair for companies to do what they want with their patents? I'll agree that it's a dirty trick, but they are under no obligation to announce the existence of their patent to anyone. Playing the devil's advocate for a second, it can be argued that Optima gave up six years of licensing revenue by not informing anyone of their patent. I don't agree with that argument but it's a legal method of business, if more than just a bit underhanded.
If Roxio didn't do enough research on the technology, that's their fault, and they should have to pay Optima (assuming Roxio is found to be in violation of the patent).
I like how your post got modded redundant when sixty of the same damn "Microsoft Security!!1!" and "SCO infringing code" posts are at +4 or higher. And this in the one thread where a DNF post is actually on-topic...
After I cleaned the exact same group of adware off my dad's laptop for the third time in three visits back home, I gave up and installed Firebird. After grabbing the Flash plugin and showing him tabbed browsing and the built-in google search bar, he was off and running. I don't think he's used IE since. Pretty much the same deal with my mom and her computer: sick of spyware, had me install Firebird after I told her about it, and now she doesn't bother with IE.
Most people using Linux do not do so because of the "principles" or "freedoms" (in the non-economic sense) that OSS provides. They use it because:
it's used where they work.
they have a technical problem which other platforms aren't suited for.
everything is available at no cost.
They can get stuff done easier.
Personally, I use it mostly due to the first and third reasons; I'll admit it. I'd bet that only a very small minority run Linux due to mainly ideological reasons. You seem to be one of them, and I'm glad you're in a position to be able to do that. But the rest of us care more about getting the most out of hardware we paid for. Nobody is forced to download and install closed-source drivers, but many people (including myself) do anyway. The situation might be different if binary-only drivers were shipped with a kernel, but to the best of my knowledge none are. Some folks make the choice to give up their ideological position; how "free" would we be if we didn't have the ability to give up that freedom?
(And next time, please leave out the better-than-you-since-I've-used-linux-longer pissing contest thing. It added nothing to your otherwise intelligent post.)
And who are you to decide Yahoo can't make any money from this? If they create a piece of software and want to charge for it, that's their right. If they want to isolate their email service so that you have to license their software to be able to send mail to them, that's also their right. Nobody's being forced to use Yahoo mail, and nobody's being forced to send mail to their servers. Yeah, it might not be the smartest business move ever, and it would be nice to get the whole deal for free instead of paying Yahoo for a set of APIs or whatever, but wishing won't make it so.
I know this is slashdot and we're supposed to scream about open standards at every possible opportunity, but most users won't care if it's proprietary or not. They'll just care that it helps stop spam.
What this thread needs is some javascript that detects when you scroll down to go to the next joke, waits a few seconds for you to read it, then plays a rimshot noise.
I didn't see it mentioned in the second paper, but did the AT&T employees know their IM usage was being monitored? I think that would have a pretty big effect on the study if the subjects knew about it, like artificially lowering the number and length of personal conversations recorded.
But on the other hand, I'd certainly want to know if someone was spying on my personal communications (in a manner not related to any usual workplace monitoring).
Agree with them just because you're being one of "nanny boo-boos" who say stuff like "Copying CD's is just like Communism!!!" I often marvel at people like yourself who sit around and just trying to agree with authority because somehow it makes you feel better about yourself?
If it makes you feel good to think that, go right ahead. Even though neither point was even alluded to, let's not let that stop you from putting up your straw man. And never mind the fact that my post implies I don't agree with the copyright and piracy laws on the books now. I mean, that obviously can't be the case, right, if I like to agree with authority?
I mean, what the @#$ do you care if I buy an AAC and rip it into an MP3 without wasting 5 minutes putting it on a CD-RW.
Normally, no, I don't care what you do in your own home with your own property on your own time. The problem is when lots of people take this tool and use it to help foster copyright infringement, resulting in not only harsher laws (which affect you as well as me) but the scaling back or shutting down of services like iTunes. So, go smoke crack or watch animal porn in your own house, I don't give a rat's ass, but you have no right to do something that will end up affecting me.
I don't think that computers remove the profit from producing music, just from distributing it. As long as there's a demand for music, artists can sell it for some price and make a living from it. But with iTMS, Amazon's recommended lists, fan bulletin boards, and so on, there's no need any more for a massive information and distribution network like the RIAA. People can find what they like and hear about other music from people with related tastes, and they can do this on their own. I think that's probably the biggest threat to the RIAA: informed consumers.
But I guess as long as they have money and are able to buy politicians, they'll stick around.
You've hit the nail right on the head; you should get modded up all the way. If I can pay a buck a song and be able to play the file on my computer, burn it to a CD, and listen to it on an iPod, I'd say that's a pretty good deal. But this guy (who really, really should have known better after everything he's been through) releases a tool to strip DRM info from a song, and putting the code and ideas into the the hands and heads of anyone who wants it, and for what reason? For free distribution, I assume, or lossless conversion to MP3 (as opposed to burning and re-ripping it). Neither of these grant you too much more freedom of action (without breaking any laws, at least) beyond what is allowed already.
So yeah, you're right, we cried and cried for a cheap and legal way to buy music over the internet, and now this idiot goes and cracks the DRM of the most liberal licensing scheme he could find. The RIAA is gonna scream bloody murder and foist more legislation on us, and I'm probably going to agree with them.
yep... did this once in my dorm, dropped the basketball+superball onto a hard tile floor. The superball rocketed sideways and hit my roommate right in the middle of the forehead; he damn near choked on the hot dog he was eating. Funniest thing I've ever seen...
Of course MS denied any plans to open a music store back then. The few people outside Apple who had heard of it probably expected it to tank; who was gonna bet that an Apple-only product, competing against p2p/free download services like Kazaa and using a relatively obscure file format, was going to be the success it turned out to be? But now that Apple has shown that people are willing to use services like iTMS, Microsoft will no doubt come swooping in and try to make a billion or two.
MS has nothing to do with anything until someone else has already made a ton of money in a given market segment (think Xbox after Playstation, game peripherals after Thrustmaster, IE after Netscape, and even the graphical OS after the debut of the Mac). So it's not surprising that they want a piece of the music store pie at this point in time, after others have already spent lots of money figuring out what works for the consumer and what doesn't. It's like free R&D and user testing.
My only question is how MS is going to make money from this by charging less per song, if even Apple is only breaking even on iTMS. A monthly subscription fee maybe? Who knows, we'll have to wait and see.
For $50,000 a year, sounds like a decent wage for anyone who's currently unemployed. Why not just hire a good whitehat instead of caving into blackhat demands?
Maybe because it's not a hacking attack, but a DDoS attack?
The only way businesses can protect themselves against this is to distribute their content, via Akamai or some other mechanism. Although I wonder why home ISPs don't take more notice of this problem, since every packet sent from their routing domain (by way of the zombie computers these gangs control) costs them money.
You're correct, of course, but when a candidate refuses to answer questions such as the ones you mentioned the general public will regard them as a cold, heartless bastard who can't relate at all to Joe Sixpack and his problems. Articles with questions like these go by various names: the human interest angle; the puff piece; the filler. And while some people may not care for it, a lot of folks apparently respond to it. Politicians respond to the existence of this by becoming more and more charismatic, which in turn leads to average voters viewing them as friends; this introduces an obvious bias into something which needs to be looked at as objectively as possible.
I don't think this necessarily indicates a flaw with democracy, more with a lack of education on the things that matter when choosing your leaders.
So what if something is wrong, and is in direct conflict with the interests of the public? Why should that get in the way of good, honest people like these folks trying to make a living? I really see no problem with this at all.
(This post brought to you by the RIAA, the MPAA, Enron, and your friendly neighborhood cable TV monopoly.)
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I remember playing this game when I was about 7, on my grandma's brand-new 286. I thought the object of the game was to hit the donkeys...
XFree86 has handled "plug and play" (DDC capable) monitors for a while, certainly on PCs I've not had to worry about Horizontal and Vertical refresh rates for a long time.
.emacs file on every machine I've worked at), but that's an application problem, not an X problem.
Is that because of X itself, or because of your distro's installer? I'm running LFS and have had to edit my X config file by hand or through xconfig to have the proper refresh rate; when I ran Mandrake however, it was detected for me. It seems to me that yes, the ability is there, but X itself does not take advantage of it.
Why do you want to change the refresh rate anyway - because it was set wrong in the first place? Thats just a configuration issue.
A monitor at 60Hz vertical gives me a headache; I can't stand it for more than five minutes, but that's the default for lots of systems. Changing the refresh rate is invaluable to me, especially in a multi-user environment like a computer lab.
which allows you to change resolution on the fly (another pointless Windows concept).
I run at a high resolution when I'm programming or munging text, but when I'm fiddling with graphics I prefer a lower resolution. It helps for games too; if you have a crappy video card, drop the resolution so you get more than a handful of frames per second. Just because you don't use a feature doesn't mean it's completely worthless.*
>Why are there so many problems with different mice/smooth scrolling?
There are? Name a few.
There are problems with mouse consistency (Mozilla and emacs are the two worst offenders in my experience; I have never gotten emacs to recognize my scroll wheel, I've had to get some kind soul to set up a
*this I think is the major problem with X. It has a ton of stuff that's useful to a narrow range of people, which leads to everyone complaining about the features they don't use.
My, God the submitter needs, to learn how to use commas, properly when he writes, something that hundreds of thousands of people will potentially, read...
One thing I would really really like is if the tool palette hotkeys were mapped to the same tools in the GIMP as they are in Photoshop. I do pretty much the same tasks with the GIMP as with PS6, it all depends on what OS I'm running at the time, but I hate hitting a key which gives me the right tool in Photoshop, but something completely different in the GIMP (having to focus the pallete window first is another, minor, gripe). Does anyone know if the GIMP's keymap has changed for 1.3/2.0? Or, alternately, are there directions anywhere on how to change this mapping? When I googled, all I could find talked about changing menu shortcuts. Any help is appreciated, thanks!
This is nonsense. Of course the current Windows "curve of improvement" is shallower than that of Linux, because the Windows world already has the features that Linux (the kernel+environment) is trying to implement. Further, Windows already has most if not all of the things that people want already; there's less room to improve.
Linux was introduced in 1991, right? And this study took place over a five-year span, meaning it started in 1998. A little subtraction gives us the number 7, in that Linux had seven years to mature before the study began. Applying the same numbers to Windows (announced in 1983, or so Google tells me), the equivalent time period would be from 1991 to 1996. Going from Win 3.x to Win32 is as big a change as anything happening in the Linux world today. All either of us has "proven" is that after a seven-year period, it's still possible to make significant changes to your OS of choice. Big deal.
Do you believe that in another (1,3,5) years that Windows will either remain or have become "better" than Linux for your application?
No, but I believe Windows will be as good as Linux at whatever I need to do. Not that that's a bad thing for Linux users, but it's not the never-ending march of progress you make it out to be.
"All it took was a little of my time to..." [four sentences of technical details that nobody without years of computer experience would understand]
you talk about software for the "common man," but who the hell is going to install cygwin and use third-party (I'm assuming) addons for an IM client they've never heard of, just to be able to talk to their own family? It's way easier just to run the factory-installed OS and software, get other software from big, well-known companies like AOL and Microsoft, and then read some web page instructions or download a registry file to fix things when everything goes square-shaped. You're lucky in that you've educated your family on secure computing practices, but one case does not make a trend. There's far more users out there with no clue, and no family members or friends to provide that clue. We're a long, long way from easy to use security components built into Windows.
I mean, it worked in "Jurassic Park," right?
Why is it unfair for companies to do what they want with their patents? I'll agree that it's a dirty trick, but they are under no obligation to announce the existence of their patent to anyone. Playing the devil's advocate for a second, it can be argued that Optima gave up six years of licensing revenue by not informing anyone of their patent. I don't agree with that argument but it's a legal method of business, if more than just a bit underhanded.
If Roxio didn't do enough research on the technology, that's their fault, and they should have to pay Optima (assuming Roxio is found to be in violation of the patent).
good job with the cut and paste.
I like how your post got modded redundant when sixty of the same damn "Microsoft Security!!1!" and "SCO infringing code" posts are at +4 or higher. And this in the one thread where a DNF post is actually on-topic...
your anecdote my anecdote, I suppose...
After I cleaned the exact same group of adware off my dad's laptop for the third time in three visits back home, I gave up and installed Firebird. After grabbing the Flash plugin and showing him tabbed browsing and the built-in google search bar, he was off and running. I don't think he's used IE since. Pretty much the same deal with my mom and her computer: sick of spyware, had me install Firebird after I told her about it, and now she doesn't bother with IE.
it's used where they work.
they have a technical problem which other platforms aren't suited for.
everything is available at no cost.
They can get stuff done easier.
Personally, I use it mostly due to the first and third reasons; I'll admit it. I'd bet that only a very small minority run Linux due to mainly ideological reasons. You seem to be one of them, and I'm glad you're in a position to be able to do that. But the rest of us care more about getting the most out of hardware we paid for. Nobody is forced to download and install closed-source drivers, but many people (including myself) do anyway. The situation might be different if binary-only drivers were shipped with a kernel, but to the best of my knowledge none are. Some folks make the choice to give up their ideological position; how "free" would we be if we didn't have the ability to give up that freedom?
(And next time, please leave out the better-than-you-since-I've-used-linux-longer pissing contest thing. It added nothing to your otherwise intelligent post.)
And who are you to decide Yahoo can't make any money from this? If they create a piece of software and want to charge for it, that's their right. If they want to isolate their email service so that you have to license their software to be able to send mail to them, that's also their right. Nobody's being forced to use Yahoo mail, and nobody's being forced to send mail to their servers. Yeah, it might not be the smartest business move ever, and it would be nice to get the whole deal for free instead of paying Yahoo for a set of APIs or whatever, but wishing won't make it so.
I know this is slashdot and we're supposed to scream about open standards at every possible opportunity, but most users won't care if it's proprietary or not. They'll just care that it helps stop spam.
What this thread needs is some javascript that detects when you scroll down to go to the next joke, waits a few seconds for you to read it, then plays a rimshot noise.
There's a joke here somewhere about dumbass business ideas and the fact that your initials are VC, but damned if I can find it...
I didn't see it mentioned in the second paper, but did the AT&T employees know their IM usage was being monitored? I think that would have a pretty big effect on the study if the subjects knew about it, like artificially lowering the number and length of personal conversations recorded.
But on the other hand, I'd certainly want to know if someone was spying on my personal communications (in a manner not related to any usual workplace monitoring).
I don't usually argue with ACs, but here goes...
Agree with them just because you're being one of "nanny boo-boos" who say stuff like "Copying CD's is just like Communism!!!"
I often marvel at people like yourself who sit around and just trying to agree with authority because somehow it makes you feel better about yourself?
If it makes you feel good to think that, go right ahead. Even though neither point was even alluded to, let's not let that stop you from putting up your straw man. And never mind the fact that my post implies I don't agree with the copyright and piracy laws on the books now. I mean, that obviously can't be the case, right, if I like to agree with authority?
I mean, what the @#$ do you care if I buy an AAC and rip it into an MP3 without wasting 5 minutes putting it on a CD-RW.
Normally, no, I don't care what you do in your own home with your own property on your own time. The problem is when lots of people take this tool and use it to help foster copyright infringement, resulting in not only harsher laws (which affect you as well as me) but the scaling back or shutting down of services like iTunes. So, go smoke crack or watch animal porn in your own house, I don't give a rat's ass, but you have no right to do something that will end up affecting me.
yeah, yeah, I know, IHBT; HAND. but whatever.
I don't think that computers remove the profit from producing music, just from distributing it. As long as there's a demand for music, artists can sell it for some price and make a living from it. But with iTMS, Amazon's recommended lists, fan bulletin boards, and so on, there's no need any more for a massive information and distribution network like the RIAA. People can find what they like and hear about other music from people with related tastes, and they can do this on their own. I think that's probably the biggest threat to the RIAA: informed consumers.
But I guess as long as they have money and are able to buy politicians, they'll stick around.
You've hit the nail right on the head; you should get modded up all the way. If I can pay a buck a song and be able to play the file on my computer, burn it to a CD, and listen to it on an iPod, I'd say that's a pretty good deal. But this guy (who really, really should have known better after everything he's been through) releases a tool to strip DRM info from a song, and putting the code and ideas into the the hands and heads of anyone who wants it, and for what reason? For free distribution, I assume, or lossless conversion to MP3 (as opposed to burning and re-ripping it). Neither of these grant you too much more freedom of action (without breaking any laws, at least) beyond what is allowed already.
So yeah, you're right, we cried and cried for a cheap and legal way to buy music over the internet, and now this idiot goes and cracks the DRM of the most liberal licensing scheme he could find. The RIAA is gonna scream bloody murder and foist more legislation on us, and I'm probably going to agree with them.
your post needs to come with a rimshot noise, and a basket of fruit for us to throw at you...
yep... did this once in my dorm, dropped the basketball+superball onto a hard tile floor. The superball rocketed sideways and hit my roommate right in the middle of the forehead; he damn near choked on the hot dog he was eating. Funniest thing I've ever seen...
Of course MS denied any plans to open a music store back then. The few people outside Apple who had heard of it probably expected it to tank; who was gonna bet that an Apple-only product, competing against p2p/free download services like Kazaa and using a relatively obscure file format, was going to be the success it turned out to be? But now that Apple has shown that people are willing to use services like iTMS, Microsoft will no doubt come swooping in and try to make a billion or two.
MS has nothing to do with anything until someone else has already made a ton of money in a given market segment (think Xbox after Playstation, game peripherals after Thrustmaster, IE after Netscape, and even the graphical OS after the debut of the Mac). So it's not surprising that they want a piece of the music store pie at this point in time, after others have already spent lots of money figuring out what works for the consumer and what doesn't. It's like free R&D and user testing.
My only question is how MS is going to make money from this by charging less per song, if even Apple is only breaking even on iTMS. A monthly subscription fee maybe? Who knows, we'll have to wait and see.
For $50,000 a year, sounds like a decent wage for anyone who's currently unemployed. Why not just hire a good whitehat instead of caving into blackhat demands?
Maybe because it's not a hacking attack, but a DDoS attack?
The only way businesses can protect themselves against this is to distribute their content, via Akamai or some other mechanism. Although I wonder why home ISPs don't take more notice of this problem, since every packet sent from their routing domain (by way of the zombie computers these gangs control) costs them money.
You're correct, of course, but when a candidate refuses to answer questions such as the ones you mentioned the general public will regard them as a cold, heartless bastard who can't relate at all to Joe Sixpack and his problems. Articles with questions like these go by various names: the human interest angle; the puff piece; the filler. And while some people may not care for it, a lot of folks apparently respond to it. Politicians respond to the existence of this by becoming more and more charismatic, which in turn leads to average voters viewing them as friends; this introduces an obvious bias into something which needs to be looked at as objectively as possible.
I don't think this necessarily indicates a flaw with democracy, more with a lack of education on the things that matter when choosing your leaders.
So what if something is wrong, and is in direct conflict with the interests of the public? Why should that get in the way of good, honest people like these folks trying to make a living? I really see no problem with this at all.
(This post brought to you by the RIAA, the MPAA, Enron, and your friendly neighborhood cable TV monopoly.)