suse 8.2 networking

[Matthew Carpenter]

On Tue, 13 May 2003 09:33:14 -0400
dep <dep at linuxandmain.com> wrote:

> begin  Matthew Carpenter's  quote:
> | Wow, dep.  You found more problems than I did.  My biggest problem
> | with Printing has had to do with setting the Paper size to Letter
> | from A4 (which I think was resolved by setting it both in the
> | "Driver" settings as well as the "Printer" settings...  Wierd.
> 
> yup. the european influence is inescapable, and they sure to 
> proselytize for their paper size of choice! 

:)  There are a lot of oppressed children of the Winders that would say the same about us Linuxites...  See, I'm going to do it right now: 
http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/0,1338,16288,00.html
(I first received this report with a highly distinguished email forward chain including the CIO, Upper and Middle IT management, through a supervisor of a multi-billion dollar corporation which will remain anonymous)
 
> careful there -- i spent a year as an opera major. no kidding. (yes, i 
> pretty much hate opera, too, but there were many side benefits, in 
> that women who choose that major outnumber men who do by about 10:1, 
> and of the men, few are heterosexual. it was a candy store. but 
> that's another story.)

Really?  I actually think I might like Opera, having spent a year and a half as a Vocal Performance major, with the various life-hooks into music that I have.

> i've grown accustomed to the opera browser, and in that i live a 
> tragically large part of my life copying and pasting and dealing with 
> the ever-moving target that is the desktop clipboard,

Funny, that is exactly what I love about Konqueror.  It is so well integrated with KDE3.  Klipper is one of KDE's killer apps, if you ask me, with Konqueror in the ranks as well.  It's the only reason I put up with KDE2's Konqueror and still deal with an occasional incompatibility.

> opera is very 
> utilitarian, when it runs, which it used to do no problem. (it does 
> have a very annoying "feature": when you view a page with open tags, 
> it closes 'em at the end of the paragraph. as a result, when i look 
> at something i've put up and i use opera, that missing </a> is not 
> apparent to me.

That's a bummer.  When I do HTML, I get a similar problem, trying to make IE-compatible code, when I can't stand the f*@#ing browser!

> i expect in the coming weeks to do some significant desktop 
> reorganization, even moving from kde as my primary desktop. which 
> could change *a lot* around here as to browsers and so on. my thought 
> is that the switch will be painless, but that is always how it seems 
> before hand, isn't it.

Eww.  I'm VERY sorry.  Are you downsizing or looking to try Gnome again?

<printer snip> 
I'm glad you got it working!

> | acpi=off lets my laptop handle APM stuff the way I know it should. 
> | Otherwise I get a message about some incomplete ACPI implementation
> | in the BIOS.  Stupid Compaq :)
> 
> acpi is Yet Another Standard Implemented Before It's Ready. the number 
> of motherboards that handle it as expected seems to be outnumbered 
> considerably by the number that don't, and it can make for a very bad 
> day, because the failure modes often give no hint that acpi 
> implementation is the culprit. sort of like that delightful five-year 
> period when inserting a pcmcia card locked machines hard, no matter 
> the operating system.

I wish I could say you were wrong.  SuSE seems to think that ACPI has reached "critical mass"...  I think they may be wrong, however their target market are probably higher up than I purchase.

> | Write your congressman in support of the DMCRA.  Digital Millenium
> | Consumers' Rights Act.  It has specific language (beyond the
> | overall return of Reasonable Use detailed throughout it) which
> | would allow the use of such technologies to make CSS decoding
> | available on Linux in a free form.
> 
> here we have a little bit of a problem, because both sides have 
> arguments that are sound. we would of course like to be able for some 
> reason to watch movies on our computers (not sure why; but i've also 
> resisted the temptation to run a cable and use my television as a 
> computer screen). and if the windows folks are allowed to do this, we 
> should be able to also. otoh, the linux community has gained, fairly 
> or unfairly, the reputation of believing that everything in the world 
> should belong to them for free and, more, that there is no such thing 
> as intellectual property. people who go to some trouble and expense 
> to produce things thought of as intellectual property would be 
> disinclined to do so if it were decided that they were not entitled 
> to the fruits of their labors. the answer, in my estimation, is not 
> more legislation, but less. the dmca is not something we should have, 
> and other laws aimed at modifying it will simply increase the 
> confusion. now, if someone were to propose a legislative session the 
> sole purpose of which was repeal, i'd be behind it in a minute. and 
> not just dmca, but lots of laws.

I agree that there are difficult issues at odds here.  Yes, the ability to play and manipulate DVD's on my Linux computer is important to me, even if part of it is the "Me Too" mentality.  The reputation of "free or bust" should not play here, although it is often brought up as part of the issue.  Intellectual Property laws are a rather interesting anomoly.  Where do they end?  Where should they exist?  The problem is that I own my DVD's and would like the ability to make reasonable use of them.  If there is free software which allows me to use them the way they have been intended, I as the consumer should be able to use it.  
If you start restricting people's rights to make fair use in order to attempt to restrict illegal activity, you have gone too far.  But I suppose that comes too close to gun-control to continue very much farther.  But if you remove people's rights in order to attempt to keep them from doing something illegal, you're no better off.  The people who do the illegal things will continue to do them and you harm the rest of the general public in the process.  Sure, the DVD's were intended to be encrypted... and for what reason?  Surely not to prevent copying, perhaps more along the lines of lining the appropriate people's pockets on playback as well.  If I convert my car to operate on water, should the car or oil companies be able to sue me over how I used my car?  No.  Why?  Because I'm making reasonable use of what I purchased.
Track down and punish the guilty.  Let that be its own deterrent.  I do digress.

> textmaker. released yesterday; we reviewed a release candidate over 
> the weekend. it's closed-source, it costs fifty bucks, but it is just 
> wonderful; i have a couple of very minor gripes with it, but it 
> really is great. loads really fast, has *excellent* word filters, 
> integrates with the desktop perfectly, defaults to units of measure 
> (and paper sizes) based on your i18n, has just about every feature 
> you're likely to want, doesn't try to reinvent the wheel -- finding 
> features is easy -- is well-documented, and is really easy to use. i 
> think it's not just the best linux word processor ever but *by far* 
> the best linux word processor ever. i don't have the release version 
> yet, but i'm using the beta for everything. but i'm an exception -- 
> i'd rather write than learn how to make an obtuse word protessor 
> work. i'm happy for the emacs and latex guys; i understand the pride 
> of those who write 1,000-page books in vi; but i have no desire at 
> all to join their ranks. writing is difficult enough when everything 
> is already on your side.

Sweet.  I've heard of it.  Perhaps I'll have to check it out someday.

-- 
Matthew Carpenter
matt at eisgr.com                          http://www.eisgr.com/

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