meriadoc

It's been a while since I replied to myself so thought I would give everyone another update on my search for a web authoring tool. Turned out Kompozer has a few bugs that are quite annoying and the support group is not a very active bunch when it comes to exterminating them. So now I'm back to using the compozer in Seamonkey. That at least seems to run smoothly and have an active following. I would have loved to start coding and fix the bugs in Kompozer, but alas it seems like there would be a huge learning curve to get up to speed. There is a great deal of source code to wade through. Most of it looks to be an older version of mozilla/netscape. I just don't have the energy to take on a task like that right now.

Usually a comment like that starts some kind of distribution bashing or a my Linux is better than your Linux rant. Suffice it to say I don't care one way or the other, but in defense of the Ubuntu users out there feel compelled to provide the true meaning of Ubuntu. What does "Ubuntu" mean? Ubuntu is an African word, which has been described as "too beautiful to translate into English". The essence of Ubuntu is that "a person is a person through other people". It describes humanity as "being-with-others" and prescribes what "being-with-others" should be all about. Ubuntu emphasises sharing, consensus, and togetherness. It's a perfect concept for Free Software and open source. Here's a great article that describes Ubuntu, which may help define it. Wikipedia also has a good definition. It was actually kind of interesting to learn how Debian was named. Check out the Debian entry on wikipedia if you enjoy Linux trivia.

Dependency hell was when all you had to work with was rpm. I haven't had dependency problems in ages. Yum fixed that quite some time ago. Before yum was up2date and it was pretty good too. I believe up2date was first brought in with RHL 6.1, but I only used that for a short stint and don't remember for certain. RHL 7.3 definitely had up2date and I felt it worked great for package management. Last dependency problem I ran into was on an update of firefox in FC6, but it was a more of a bug in the packaging than something wrong with the package management tools. It was fixed fairly quickly after being reported. Only time I've seen people get into trouble is if they add too many repositories or don't use the tools correctly.

Take a look at this posting, especially the last part. It should answer your questions. In other words, there was a problem, now it's fixed.

"I don't take coupons from giant chickens, not after last time." - Peter from Family Guy

Well done! I certainly can tell that things are working much better. The forum is definitely more responsive. I'd give you a pat on the back, but you'll have to settle for a big smile.

I know there must be at least one other person in the Helionet community besides myself that uses Fedora. I've used various releases of Fedora since Fedora Core 2 and before that I was on Red Hat Linux starting back with RHL 4.2 in 1997 and going up to RHL 9. It is amazing how fast new releases come out and the quantity as well as quality of the new packages. I have run a number of Linux distributions on my computers, but feel most comfortable with Fedora. Guess it is all a matter of preference and what system you learn on. My install of F9 went pretty well. This release features a number of new packages. One called NetworkManager looks like a nice tool for users that need to switch between different networks on demand. Since I was installing on my home server I decided to turn it off and go with the network service I am use to. To me it didn't make much sense for my server to need NetworkManager and I wanted the peace of mind of something tried and true. One of the other things that was revamped were the pirut and pup packages. These were the graphical tools to add/remove software and get updates. My verdict on the new PackageKit is still out. Since I installed on release day things seemed to move quite slowly. I also dislike not knowing what is going on. PackageKit tends to hide the stats like what is being downloaded or progress. You can find this information by using the icon in the panel, but it just seems to be less information than I'm use too. On the other hand yum is much more efficient than it has been in the past. There were some improvement made and this is a real bonus. I really liked the High Flying theme with the hot air baloon in F7. F8 was dumbed down a little with curved lines, but wasn't too bad either. I'm not as impressed with the theme in F9. Seems like the stars and galaxy could be a little crisper and less blurry. This is all eye candy of course, what is really important is how things work. I brought up F9 and adjusted everything to where I want it in less than 24 hrs. This may seem like a lot of time, but between work and fun I probably spent 3-4 hrs on it. This box is used as my server so the time included configuring several server applications. Either I'm getting better at installing new releases or this one was really easy. Everything seems to be working fine and I've been running without incident since the install. All in all a pretty stable release that I'll be putting through the paces in the coming months. Hope everyone else installing F9 is doing just as well.

I don't mean to be picky, but this statement lends one to believe that some of your choices are incorrect and there are some key languages missing. When you say, "accepted by browsers", that to me means client side scripting. In my opinion PHP, JSP, and ASP are server side languages. In fact, ASP is defined more as a scripting engine than a language. The programming language behind ASP is usually VBScript, but can also be JScript or another language supported by the web server. As you said, CSS like HTML isn't a programming language. Style Sheets were created to provide an easy way to format your HTML. I'm sure I may be missing some client side scripting languages, but the biggies would have to be VBScript, JScript, and JavaScript. Of those I would have to say JavaScript is the most widely accepted by browsers.

Nice joke! To those still going to school, just remember that someday you may be parents too. The majority of parents take an active interest in their children's lives and want them to be successful in life. They are also looking forward to the day when you can support them!

Since my last post I have discovered a few things about Nvu. At first glance the Nvu website appears to be well maintained and the project active. One of the questions in the FAQ is, "Is the Nvu project still active?" The answer is yes, but the last release, Nvu 1.0, was done June 28th, 2005. That doesn't seem very active to me. Another sign that there has been no activity is the Nvu support forum. The last posting was done in June of 2007. A few of the postings tell you to go to the WYSIFAuthoring forum to ask questions. Turns out that an unofficial bug fix version of Nvu called Kompozer was created. So it appears that Kompozer is the new Nvu, but one would think that the Nvu site should have been retired by now. Linspire supported the initial development of Nvu. A few of the postings on the WYSIFAuthoring forum hint that it was time to break away from Linspire to provide continued support in a community based atmosphere. The bottom line is that the Kompozer project looks to be a little more active. They have a website and a project on SourceForge. There are recent postings on the WYSIFAuthoring forum as well as recent entries on the SourceForge mailing lists. I've pretty much given up on compiling Nvu on Fedora 8. My efforts there ran into a number of problems. I found a patch for the first error I encountered, but the second error looked a lot more serious than I was willing to spend time on. Since then I have switched over to KompoZer. On their website they have a number of downloads available with binary packages for Win32, Mac OS X, and Linux. I went with an rpm that has been tested on RHEL5, Fedora 4 to 7, and Madriva 2007. So far everything I have used is working on Fedora 8. However, there is still plenty of functionality to test. My aim here was to find an Open Source alternative to FrontPage. Editing html directly is still alive and well, but when you want to bang out something quick a tool like this comes in pretty handy. I'd like to hear what other people are using.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein

Yep, heard its going to be a Monday. So what do we do with this information? Guess we should all just pack up and leave planet Earth.

Thanks for the reply. I was beginning to think I would not receive an answer. Fedora uses yum for package management rather than apt-get. I did find an rpm on the Nvu site that was close enough to install. It was built for RHEL4, FC3, and FC4 so it isn't exactly right, but so far it seems to work. During the install I had to ignore one of the dependencies, because the dependent package doesn't exist any more. One of these days I'm going to try compiling from source again and may even take the time to build an updated rpm for Fedora 8 or 9 which is due out in a few days. I also edit html directly, just not for everything I work on. I haven't used Nvu enough yet to come to the conclusion that it is better than FrontPage.

A compromise is an agreement whereby both parties get what neither of them wanted. -Author Unknown

Looks like I'm talking to myself. There must be someone that leads a life with new and exciting adventures besides myself. The repairs to my truck were not as bad as I thought. I ended up having to get a new drive shaft of all things. This set me back a little over $500 U.S. Dollars. The old drive shaft had been weakened by the elements and would give the vehicle a back and forth motion when cruising at a steady speed. Think of it like a rubber band twisting one direction and then the other. My truck is a bit on the old side, a 1995 GMC Sierra to be exact. It looks great from the outside, but mechanically things are not all well and good. This past weekend I went camping again and had a great time. The weather cycled between rain, wind and sunshine. At one point we had quite a down pour, but we were prepared for it. We also went hiking, fishing and enjoyed some time around the campfire. Our troop had not been to this camp before and it was neat to explore the surroundings. I hope to go back again for another outing. Today I'm going to clean and dry the tent I used. So What is Everyone Else Doing for Fun?

Wizard and JcX, you guys are brutal, can't you just give a simple answer. A Windows Service is when you hire someone to clean your windows. Seriously though, I haven't needed to program a service, but it sounded like something I might be interested in. The article Creating a Windows Service in VB.NET explains it well. System tray and Notification area are the same thing. The notification part comes in when a particular event happens or when you hover over one of the icons. For example, if there are windows updates that need to be installed a small shield will appear and if you hover over it, it tells you something like there are new updates to install. Have fun and keep those windows clean!

Personally I would not change the system date or time to anything other than current date and time on any of my computers. There are other processes running behind the scenes that log entries or use the date and time to function properly. If you like the program that much, spend a few bucks and get a full fledged version. With that said, there is a way to do it with Visual Basic using the Shell function, cmd.exe, and the date command. Here are a few lines of code to get you started. From this you should be able to figure out the specifics on how you want to implement it. Dim strCommand strCommand = "c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /C date 05-04-08" Shell(strCommand, AppWinStyle.MaximizedFocus, True) While VB could be used, I think it would be done more efficiently with Windows Script Host. Windows Script Host provides a way to bind multiple applications together with the OS. I would write a wrapper with VBScript that used the FileSystemObject and WshShell object. In my opinion this would give you less overhead and greater control over the steps involved. Save Current Date Get Date Created from Trial Application File using FileSystemObject Change Date Launch Trial Application Reset Date to Current Date

Groan... JcX, I think we need to work on both delivery and the content for that joke. I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know. - Mark Twain

It seems to me that for anarchy to work everyone would have to play nice, but we know that just isn't going to happen. A few people have already stated the obvious that most people are out to serve their own self interest. Most will do what it takes to survive or get ahead. The only thing limiting how far they go would be their own sense of decency or morals. Part of the world's history has had short periods of anarchy. It doesn't seem to take very long for these voids to be filled with some sort of government. The aftermath of Katrina is a good example. The government did not have control of the situation and was not present to prevent the chaos that ensued. While the U.S., State, and Local governments still existed, they did not have a presence to keep the situation in check. It wasn't long though that the government stepped forward with the resources necessary to regain control. Another example is the period after the Iraqi army was defeated. Iraq took a quick nose dive into a lawless state and there was no government to speak of. Eventually people stepped forward to establish a temporary government, followed by a more permanent government. Although Iraq still has problems to work through it once again has a government in place.

Follow the link in my post to get an overview of Popfly. It allows you to build mashups and share content with other people. I setup a quick page from one of their examples. Much of it seems to be designed for people that do not like to build things from scratch or get into the detail of the content or code. Not sure if I will use it or not. I'm sure there is a lot about Popfly that I don't know. So far I've found Windows Live to be more useful as a personal space. From what I understand you can actually use them in conjunction with each other. That's not to say that many of the other sites out there, such as myspace aren't just as good or better. Popfly seems to be more gadget oriented than the standard offerings.

There are a couple reasons why it would be better to put executable scripts in the cgi-bin directory. Efficiency and security are the two main reasons. If you keep your scripts in one directory you will always know where they are located. Apache also designates the cgi-bin directory as executable meaning that it is setup to execute all files in that directory. Not having to determine if a file should be executed or not each time a file is served makes it easier on the server. The World Wide Web Security FAQ discusses a few of the security reasons. With that said, you may be able to create a .htaccess file to allow execution of scripts in your public_html directory. Check out the section on .htaccess files in Apache Tutorial: Dynamic Content with CGI. I haven't tried this and depending on how Apache is configured on the server it may or may not allow the override.

I'm not into cars and racing that much, but it was worth watching. As far as car movies go, I did like Gone In Sixty Seconds. The plot was more intricate and flowed better. I like it when there is some thought put behind a movie, not just a bunch of action scenes strung together. I'd also agree with some of the other posters that the lack of realism was a factor when it comes to rating TFandTF.

I like Heroes, that is a great series. Hiro is one of the cooler characters. Some of the stuff he did when he first entered the show cracked me up. There are a lot of neat characters and they all have a story. I think that is what is so interesting about the show. It's not just someone with super powers, but they have a life too and they are trying to cope with their powers and keep their life together at the same time.

Here is an article from MSDN on Converting ASP to ASP.NET, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973813.aspx. You might also want to take a look at the Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2008 Editions, http://www.microsoft.com/express/ In particular Visual Web Devloper, http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/. I'm not certain if it has conversion capability for ASP to ASP.NET, but it will get you into the ASP.NET world rather quickly. I've found the help to be much improved compared to other microsoft products.

Easy with the wand there Wizard. We were all new at one time or another. While I agree that byron should have given more information, the tone of your reply is a bit on the harsh side. I've always felt we should treat others as we would like to be treated. Please don't take this the wrong way. You're a good poster, I just think this one got away from you.