Slashdot

I have people telling me they want Apple computers, and they have never seen the UI of OS X.

They want Apple computers because of marketing and hype. They are becoming trendy status symbols. (Put the flame-throwers away, I'm not commenting on quality here). Linux doesn't have a marketing department. That is why Linux won't take a sizable chunk out of the desktop market.

People draw comparisons to Firefox and its adoption, but Firefox grew when it adopted a marketing campaign. People seem to forget that.

This article is absolutely wrong.

The user has misconfigured their DNS and has installed a package called, SURPRISE, caching-nameserver along with the other bind packages.

caching-nameserver IS just that, a caching-nameserver. It SHOULD NEVER BE installed on a DNS server that is used for Primary or Secondary DNS control. The bind packages do not in any way modify named.conf, but if you want a caching nameserver and if you have installed the caching-nameserver package, then you would EXPECT that it would replace the named.conf file.

The real question is, how does crap like this get posted as a feature article on slashdot.

Corrupt writes "The 4.2-billion-year-old diamonds found trapped inside the Jack Hills zircon crystals are the oldest-known samples of Earths carbon. The Curtin led teams discovery of very high concentrations of carbon 12, or light carbon within these crystals is remarkable as it is a feature usually associated with organic life."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080707134402.htm

netbuzz writes "What? Bank of America doesn't already support Firefox? No, at least not officially. Mozilla calls the situation "pretty unusual" when talking about "most major Web sites, and certainly major banks." BoA says it will be adding Firefox to its list of officially approved browsers soon, although even that promise remains somewhat vague.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29586"

Last week, after 15 years of development, tempered by the need for arduous reverse engineering, the WINE project released version 1.0. What "1.0" means for WINE is neither that the project is finished, nor that it is perfect, but rather that the software runs a small subset of specific freely downloadable Windows applications. That's not to say it doesn't run scads of others, too -- the apps database is proof that thousands of programs run to at least some degree. Here's your chance to ask WINE developer Jeremy White and WINE project lead Alexandre Julliard (both of Codeweavers) about the future of WINE, or any other questions about the project that cross your mind. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply; please ask as many questions as you'd like, but limit yourself to one question per post. We'll pass on the best questions to Jeremy and Alexandre for their answers.

An anonymous reader writes "HardOCP is a place for hardware enthusiasts to gather and exchange computer wisdom, populated with over 100,000 users and six million posts. However, mere mention of Adblock in any context on HardOCP's extensive forums is rewarded with a permanent IP ban. The Editor-in-Chief Kyle Bennett has taken a hardline stance on a site that includes subforums specifically dedicated to software discussion and even has monetary subscription forums as well. Everyone knows many sites only exist because of funding from advertising, but is this really a rewarding stance for an administrator to take?"

*sigh*

I gave both Photoshop 6 running very stable under Wine and The GIMP (sans Gimpshop) to my wife, who is a semi-professional photographer but has never used any photo editing applications and is a complete computer n00b.

I said pick the one that looks the easiest to you.

She picked The GIMP.

She's still had some learning curve, but she's also tried learning Photoshop, and that one seems just as hard to her.

Photoshop only seems easier to use because you've used it for a long time. Photoshop is difficult to work with, especially for a n00b.

I find Linux more capable on the Desktop than Microsoft. There are often times when MS's (using XP) internal burning software is inadequate - like burning images. I don't know if it's fixed yet, but for a long time XP just would not burn an image with its built in software and you had to use something like Nero. Never had a problem burning an image running any linux distro. Same with mounting .iso right from the harddrive as a cd-rom. It usually required some pay-for software (Alcohol 120%) in Windows, while a 2 minute search yield a few command lines to do it in Ubuntu. I know I'd rather save the money.

A typical mainstream Linux distro is ready. It's often superior in many ways to MS, as MS seems to deliberately makes their OS do almost nothing useful beyond the basics it seems (or was it that Monopoly ruling that caused this?) It's now just 3rd party apps for most people. Web Browsing has reversed itself (there are enough people who wouldn't switch from Firefox due to plug-ins they can't get in IE).

On the Corporate Level, solution providers are slow to change if they're an MS only shop. I even know the university/college level has problems. Blackboard and other such garbage.

I suspect the oncoming economic shitstorm may finally get corporations to really tighten their belts and that company-wide OS licenses may just not fit in the budget anymore looking ahead 5 years in some places. I just hope the current/next generation of purchase managers learns from the past and looks to do away with vendor lock-in in so many areas as much as possible.

The first release candidate of Wine 1.0 was announced and released into the wild today. Wine is an implementation of the Windows API that runs on Linux (or other POSIX compatible OSes) under X.

snoukka writes "Finland votes yes for OOXML. Decision was made after long Finnish Standards Association meeting. Previously Finland was part of the NO camp. Voters represented 40 different companies and governmental organizations. Result changed to Yes because of governmental organizations changed their opinions. Big question mark is Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen's role in this after he met Bill Gates and they agreed on bringing "free" Microsoftin Live@Edu learning enviroment to finnish schools. IBM, Sun, Google, RedHat, EFFI (Electronic Frontier Finland), COSS, Department of Justice and Mireabilis Oy were against OOXML. Finland is ranked among least corrupted countries in the world..."

memshankar writes "Localization had never been fun like this. OLPC Nepal's developers celebrated Holi (festival of colors), stayed overnight, and translated OLPC XO into Nepali language by morning!

This developers' get-together was a part of Translation Nite-out — an 24 hour event organized to complete OLPC XO localization."
http://olpcnepal.blogspot.com/2008/03/yaay-translations-over.html

Seems like the folks at Wikileaks are on an anti-censorship-spree again: In a press release announced earlier, the site calls for global awareness and support in a boycotting campagin headed towards eNom., Inc., one of the top internet domain registrars, apparently involved in systematic domain censoring.
It appears eNom on Feb 28th shut down wikileaks.info, one of the many Wikileaks mirrors held by a volunteer as a side-effect of the court proceedings around wikileaks.org. That not being enough, the New York Times reported earlier this weekon numerous cases of domains held with eNom just disappearing, in connection to a Treasury Department driven blacklist that looks like a fairly random compilation of domains and information in a massive file.
Wikileaks calls for a global boycott of eNom and its parent Demand Media, its owners, executives and their affiliated companies, interests and holdings, to make clear such behaviour can and will not be tolerated within the boundaries of the internet and its global community.
https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/WIKILEAKS.INFO_censored_by_eNom_and_Demand_Media

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Microsoft's OOXML format has failed to gain majority approval at its Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM). In spite of a questionable call to allow non-P members to vote, which may not be legitimate under Directive 9.1.4, consensus was not reached and most abstained. This may not be surprising, considering that there was far too little time to discuss all the proposed changes. Now a 30 day voting period begins to decide whether it should be made into a standard anyhow. Per the FAQ, '[i]f NBs find the outcome of the BRM inadequate then their recourse is to disapprove the DIS.'"
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080229124919217

The Burton Group, an IT research company, published a study urging that enterprise organizations adapt OOXML rather than ODF. Their reasons include things like "ODF is controlled indirectly by Sun," "MS Office is cheaper than OpenOffice.org," and "OOXML improved many problems of DOC." The Burton Group also claims that although ODF is well-designed, OOXML is better suited for the specific needs of enterprise organizations. The study claims to be impartial in that Microsoft didn't pay for it. Ars Technica now has up a pretty thorough debunking of the Burton study. Ars wonders how the Burton authors can so blithely overlook Microsoft's vote-buying in Sweden, while wielding unfounded accusations of chicanery in Sun's direction.

In light of the upcoming elections in the US, William Poundstone was interviewed about voting systems by Mother Jones. In it he advocates the benefits of Range Voting as a solution to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Approval, Borda, Instant Runoff, and Condorcet Voting, which are often solutions advocated by the Greens and Libertarians (in the US), are discussed, as well, in light of Warren Smith's recent empirical research using Bayesian Regret. My local party (of which I'm the Parliamentarian) uses Single Transferable voting, but we're considering using Range Voting in the future. One thing is for certain: any system is better than the West's out-dated plurality voting system.
http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2008/01/verdict-is-in-our%20voting-system-is-a-loser.html