If Pi was "random," as apparently the poster of this story is far from anything you would consider a Mathematician or even a "Math intelligent" person, then each time you derived Pi the numbers would be different. e.g. 3.14159... 3.204845... 2.09284...1.38485... You have confused the word "Random" with something it truly is not. The question you are looking for is each time I derive a "new" digit of Pi, will it be predictable, will it be cyclic? That has nothing to do with Pi being random. Because each time you want to derive that certain Nth digit of Pi, it will be the same. That proves Pi is not random, just not cyclic, as of yet.
Wow, the post I am replying to makes absolutely no sense at all. I have always wondered something about Linux users, myself not included since I have been using Linux since early 1994 but seem to have missed the strange attitude bus, and that is...Why does something that is well made, well designed, and easy to use only something a "newbie" would use? Your argument(s) makes me sick. Buy a Macintosh If you're a newbie there still isn't a computer as easy to use as the Mac. It's more attractive than a PC, it doesn't break as often (i.e. DLL or hardware conflicts), and it requires overall less attention than Windows systems do. All the common applications are available in it, and it delivers better performance for a smaller configuration (i.e. a Mac running MS Office requires half the RAM as a PC for accomplishing the same task). Huh!?! So what the fuck is the problem with any of these points? And how does using a PC make any sense to you? Why does almost every person who use Linux think that they are some God who can only consider themselves "Experts" if they use Linux on some piece of shit x86 computer that is difficult to maintain, difficult to use, and requires 2x the resource requirements? Hasn't the point been, since the creation of X Windows, to make Linux easier to use? Why didn't you just buy your Mother some sort of Internet Appliance if you hate the idea of buying a computer that was designed to be easy to use. Mac's don't all cost $3000, they are not as slow as Slashdot likes to think they are, plus I don't think, by the sounds of it, she would know anyways, plus what's an extra $500 (it is your Mom, right?). Plus the resale value for a Macintosh is incredible right now. It would have been a much wiser and sounder investment for her and yourself. I am sure she could care less about your "3l33t-ness" on the computer. Plus, her Linux box is not going to be any easier to maintain than a Macintosh. What are your filters going to do when she needs to open an Office 2000/2001 file or do her taxes online with the IRS, or 1/2 a million other things that she will encounter in time? Everyone on Slashdot rips on Macintosh computers. Why? It is the same argument you could us for a car. Linux users here would say "I only buy and drive old, junk cars that suck gas, burn oil, are a pain in the ass to fix, and they especially don't work all of the time? When you could spend your money on a car that gets great gas mileage, runs perfect, and is easy to maintain and keep up? Because for some reason only the people who drive the piece of shit cars think they are "real men" because they have to struggle with their pieces of shit all the time and it makes them feel big and powerful and whatever else. This is the same argument and idea of Linux users here on Slashdot. In the end, honestly, aren't we just trying to turn the PC into a Macintosh? I2C, PCI, Plus-and-Play, KDE/Gnome,... Once we accomplish, in one form or another, what Apple accomplished 20 years ago, are we going to pat ourselves on the back? Yup. But what I beg to ask you is...Why not just use Apple hardware in the first place and save ourselves 20 more years of trying to reinvent what already exists? Just because something is easy to use doesn't make it any less "good" or any less "powerful." I am selling my Pentium III workstation right now and am talking to Apple about buying a new Powerbook. Why? Because it *IS* easy to use, the hardware works like it is supposed to *WITHOUT* fucking around with it, the G4 *IS* an amazing chip, and OS X *IS* Unix, whether anyone likes to admit it or not. I get the power and ease of use of a Macintosh with the power of Unix. Yeah, I have heard that OS X isn't exactly the fastest OS right now. But it is not the hardware. And wouldn't a true 3l33t programmer just itch to dig into the code and fix it themselves? Just to let everyone know, I am also buying my Mother and my brother an Apple computer. Why does this make you any less of a Unix admin or hacker than if I just keep my Linux x86 computer? I can put Linux on my new Powerbook if I have to self-inflate my 3l33t ego problem to impress my 3l33tness upon those *Stupid* users. Why is it so hard for everyone to see that, in the end, we are all trying to make the PC a Macintosh? PS-I have nothing at all against Linux, I personally love it (at times). I just don't understand where this bullshit "elitist" (get off your ass and look it up in a dictionary) attitude comes from with Linux users and their "newbie" bullshit attitude problem. Most people don't care about whether they are good enough to be a part of the elite Linux users of the world. 99.9999% of people just want to use their damn computers to get things done. PPS-I know since this is Slashdot, I am going to get moderated into oblivion...But once Linux and PC's become just another Macintosh clone in different clothes, just exactly what the fuck are people going to bitch about then? I am very happy to be moving to Apple. I am just personally sick of constantly fucking with my computer to make it work right all of the time. You can also use Unix/Linux on a Mac, they even come with Unix now, so what the hell is everybody's problem? Every computer will eventually be a Macintosh in one form or another.
I am a US citizen, so this is my opinion of my own country. Why won't there be a.US? I know exactly why. The United States, as obvious by watching the news everyday, cannot and WILL NOT admit that we are NOT the center of the universe. Whether that be global nuclear disarmament and missle defense or the Internet. "Hey, we invented the internet. We own the internet. We create all the laws on the entire globe. Without the US, the internet would not exist." It makes me want to puke. By having a.US extension, it would only admit that we ARE a global economy, a global human race, and a global information society...one that DOES NOT exist simply because the United States says so. Yes, we should have a.US, then maybe all of this internet law breaking and law making and pig headed, greed driven bullshit would come to an end. And maybe, as a global society, we could start to understand each other better.
I know that this is not going to be answered, but will be marked a +1 or -1 on/., but when I think of needing a Realtime or Hard Realtime system I have always used QNX. Why would someone want to use Linux, and patch everything in sight and work so hard to make Linux a pseudo-"real-time" system for use with your system? That was not meant to be a troll. You can make all of the "free" or "open source" software in the world on QNX, they will even provide the tools to do it. Plus the "hard real-time" design of the system is already in place and has been for over 20 years. Since this system is essentially *nix (100% Posix Compliant) it would be a great platform to program for if you are interested in *nix programming. Plus, you can fit QNX on a 1.44MB floppy with a full webrowser, webserver, OpenGL demo, and a bunch of hardware drivers. That technology would be perfect for an entire multimedia OS or embedded Multimedia/MIDI OS set up in hardware. What does anyone else think? I mean "intelligently" and "honestly." Please no "it's not Linux, so it sucks, posts" please. I am also interested in developing my own multimedia/MIDI software for personal use right now, and I used to use BeOS (don't even get me started on Be Inc.) and have completely fallen for QNX. Thanks:-)
Actually, that was the exact same point I was going to bring up. But, I have a far more interesting question to pose to Slashdot and Dreamsworks... Why didn't Dreamworks go with a renderfarm of G4 Macintoshes running OSX? This is seriously not meant to be a flame of any kind...The kind of rendering that they are doing is perfectly suited for the G4, with Altivec optimization even better and OSX being Unix, things should have been great for them. The PowerPC (both single and dual solutions), memory bandwidths, and overall hardware seems like a FAR better solution than any Intel solution. And since OSX comes with the Mac, the price of the OS is moot. I know they mentioned proprietary Unix solutions, but OSX is not exactly proprietary, just the GUI.
Please respond to this post since repeated attempts at contacting you at either bryan@grateful.net or through http://www.grateful.net (does not exist) have failed for me.
I am still very interested in purchasing this device from you. I can sent you my email on Slashdot if you want me to.
Dear dbarclay10,
Please don't post things as fact unless you are right. You are wrong...sorry. Taking a quote from a previously correct post and changing the number of MHZ for the G4, you will be precisely the reason why you are wrong.
What the author apparently fails to grasp is the only thing which matters is wall clock time. P4 may have a 20 cycle mispredict penalty, higher than G4e's penalty of 7, but it also at about triple the clock speed. 20 cycles @ 1.8 GHz is less than 7 cycles @ 600 MHz So, modifying the MHZ will give you the real and true facts, which completely destroy your facts and will help to clarify to someone who thinks you are telling the truth within your post...
...P4 has a 20 cycle mispredict penalty, higher than G4e's penalty of 7. 20 cycles @ 1 GHz is MORE than 7 cycles @ 1 GHZ...
It is pretty simple math, my friend. So, if you truly knew what you were talking about, then you wouldn't have made such a long, blatant, incorrect, and uniformed post.
May I ask a serious question? Would you be willing to sell me your used I-Opener? I am very interested in having one. If you would be, please respond to this post and I will gladly talk to you about it more. Thanks.
I spent a few years pursuing, among other degrees, a degree in Software Engineering. At the University of Wisconsin La Crosse the very first course I ever took (required) in 1996 was Eiffel on NeXtStep. For months people in the class were complaining about not being able to learn C/C++ and that "Eiffel was never used anywhere and learning it was a waste of their time and money." That was a valid argument. But, the most interesting reply was from my professor when he said "You are not here in college to learn a specific language. You are here to learn what OOP is, how it works, and the beauty of its power. You are here to learn a skillset...since languages change all of the time and your need to know different languages changes all of the time...Here you are being given the knowledge to learn OOP ideas and principles, and then you can go out and apply those to whatever language you want." That made perfect sense to me and to this day still does. I really, truly feel that this news article and most of the people posting comments to it are simply fighting the wrong battle and begging the wrong questions. This is not whether C/C++ is better than Java or SmallTalk or Python or whatever...Although 99% of the posts are about that. The question to a college professor and hopefully Software Engineering and/or CS majors should be "What language and tools will give me or my students the absolutely best ability to learn OOP and then apply it to all of the languages of the world." For almost everyone that answer has become JAVA. It is not a matter of whether you like it or not. It adheres EXACTLY to how an OOP language should be programmed and used and it doesn't let you do otherwise. The IDE's are cheap if not completely free, and unless you are planning on coding for some specific piece of hardware (which no one here truly does I am sure with the exception of a very few people) you would be using Assembly or already know what you are doing with another language, JAVA keeps people from learning and thinking that BASIC or Pascal (which everyone learns first...usual because their first computer came with DOS or something or they have to take it in high school) is the way that programs are really supposed to be written in which C lets you do that since it is not OOP at all. When you stick a student coming fresh out of a C course in college into an OOP class with JAVA, they are completely lost. My class went from almost 50 students to about 8 in the first 8 weeks. That is because they had no idea about the "concept" or OOP. The language is/was truly irrelevant. I have learned Eiffel, JAVA, C/C++, Assembly, ADA/OOADA, Pascal, Basic, and a variety of other languages and applications (Matlab, etc. ). C++ always felt like C taken to a place it was never meant to go. C++ should have been a completely new, independant language from C with OOP design and fundamentals from the start without an C at all. In this sense, OOP and JAVA are perfect together for a college curriculum and its objectives. But, there are NO good alternatives to C++...I agree with most posters here on that issue...but learning OOP the right way before you get into languages such as C/C++ is very important. JAVA is a great tool and teacher for that. It won't let you be a C or BASIC programmer. Every language has is place and purpose.
Why was this marked as FlameBait?? In reality, which sometimes seemed to be absent in Slashdot, consistency is the SOLE reason people use something in mass quantities. It makes people comfortable, the learning curve is easy to handle when the variables never change, it doesn't scare away people who see no reason to own a computer in the first place or see no reason to ever need to learn about how they work (productivity orientated people). Two very simple, real world, examples for people here on Slashdot:
1. My mother calls me on average of once every couple of weeks because she can't figure out how to do something on her PC computer. She is neither dumb nor ignorant, since she holds 2 Master's Degrees and runs her own business. Computers are a tool to her, just as they are to, I'm sure, well over 200-300 million Windows users around the world. Every time she gets comfortable with figuring things out, she worries less about how to use her computer and more about what she can do WITH her computer. Dozens of different desktops, ways to run programs, 2500 ways to set up your printer, etc. etc. does not mean that Linux is better. It means that people who don't have the time to sit around and masturbate about how complex they can make their lives, but instead just need their computer to assist them in making their lives easier and more productive, with the LEAST amount of hassle won't even BOTHER THE LOOK at Linux. Standards, people...Standards...1 Desktop, 1 Control Center, 1 way to print, 1 way to access your programs, 1...Human nature works best in groups with direction and consistency. Examples...Constitution of the United States, Federal Laws, Education system, Automobiles, Rules of driving a car on ANY road,...but, not to Linux, right?
2. When was the last time you got into the car and found out that your brake was now in the backseat, your gas peddle was on the left side, and the clutch and steering wheel had switched place? When was the last time you used Linux? That is the point. When people always know that something will work a certain way, then everybody will use it.
This parent post has it completely right. 99% of people try Linux, mess with it for a while, get super, super, super tired of always having to fuck around with it to work right or reach the same level of usability as their Windows counterpart, and give up never to return. I only use Linux because I have been using it since 1993. That's it, really. It's usability hasn't really improved that much in over 8 years. It's sad.
Although people have been talking only so-so about Nautilus, I have been using it on Linux-Mandrake 8.0 (and beta 3) and have grown quite fond of it's beauty, interface, and utter simplicity to use. I have never really "barfed out" on me (although the viewing HTML as text by default was a little annoying). I would love this FM to become the default FM for Linux in general. But, what I would really like to know...and I am sorry that this is a little off topic...since EFM was mentioned, what is going on with Enlightenment? Is E trying to become an entirely self contained Window Manager complete with a FM, graphics library, Berkeley DB, and basically everything. Why doesn't anyone talk about this?? It seems to be a lot more interesting to me that a small group of dedicated people are able to easily implement something like OpenGL rendered Anti-Aliased Fonts and graphics in Enlightenment complete with a Berkeley DB and FM...when developers can't seem to make even the AA font work right in either KDE or Gnome. Does anyone have any idea what Enlightenment is doing and does it want to replace KDE and/or Gnome as the Desktop/Window manager of the future? Because if it does...then I will be the first to vote for it. I have always loved it. It just appears to me that whatever comes out for KDE or Gnome is being quickly replaced in Enlightenment with something faster, prettier, easier to use, more stable and more productive from the Enlightenment team.
So, exactly when was the last time you saw police officers knock on your door to ask some questions and you decided "Gee, Bob, I should answer the door with a loaded firearm...?" What would happen if you got pulled over for speeding or OMVI and had a loaded handgun sitting on your lap or in your passenger seat. Then, when the police officer asked you for your license you simply reach over and grab your loaded weapon, you for some reason think you are not going to get shot? Are you serious? I really hope not. But, for some reason everyone thinks that they are on Slashdot.
It really pisses you people off when someone uses their brain on Slashdot, doesn't it? Instead of spewing anti-government crap out of their "my life sucks because I can't break the law without any penalties and I am going to blame the government for my shitty life" mouths before engaging their brains.
Okay, if the "government" is completely evil, everyone has infinite rights (even though living in a society with laws means that you lose some of your so called God given freedoms by choosing to live there for the betterment of the whole, regardless of what you think, simple, look it up), and everything else Slashdot seems to be so kill, kill, kill The Man about...then what in the hell does Slashdot suggest, we as a nation, do to protect ourselves against people who break the laws that we, as a people, have made? If there is no way for Law Enforcement officials to protect and enforce the laws because no matter what the laws say, everyone on Slashdot appears to not care, how do you expect laws to be enforced at all? I had an argument with a friend the other day about high speed police chases. He sounds exactly like all of the backhills, my life sucks because of the government, conspiracy about everything other people make them believe types, like on Slashdot, who actually argued that it should be illegal to engage in high speed chases. What?!? I should be able to go down to the local gas station, shoot some innocent person, steal a ton of cash, and then if I drive fast enough the laws no longer apply to me? Yup, makes ALL kinds of sense. Damn Government, he says. Makes me want to puke. Criminals have no rights, and never should have. You break a crime, you pay the price. Oh, so according the Slashdot, if I hop on a trane or take a plane I should just be "let off of the hook???" If you want anarchy without laws and without the ability for law enforcement to do their jobs, then why do you stop whining, pick up your family and lives, and move to the jungle in South America and start your own country where Utopia awaits? YOU make the laws, YOU break the laws, YOU pay the price. Just because Marijuana is harmless does not make it legal. It is ILLEGAL and when you break the laws you should recieve the punishment that the people of the United States believe you should have. If Law Enforcement, be it the DEA or FBI, has no way of tracking criminals, then why have laws at all? They are not "invading my precious life" by being able to see who is on a train in order to stop a criminal from breaking a crime. The people of the United States, as far as I am concerned, care about stopping criminals from selling herion, crank, crack, methanphetimines, LCD, PCP, and every other drug to children and other people who are either too young or stupid to know any better than to not do drugs. We would need the DEA if this country had better parents and deeper morals and values. Those are the facts, plain and simple.
Why is everyone on Slashdot so concerned about having the right to have their very own militia group, or hate group, or whatever? For the rest of the US, you know, the people that hate militia groups, subversives, hate groups, gangs, etc. then why in the hell would you care what people know about you? I completely agree that if the US wants to wipe out or track people that do nothing more than HARM our society instead of HELP our society, then more power to them. I also have nothing to hide. And talking about credit card numbers being public is total bullshit. If you have a credit card, or have ever used your credit card, then someone has your number somewhere any ways. And NO, Slashdot, 99.9% of people don't support subversive or militia anything. Period. If my kids can make it to school safe in the morning and come home alive without worrying about some fucked up anti-government militia pyschopath needing to make a point by blowing something up, then I could give a shit less.
Reading a Slashdot article such as the one that I am replying to always makes me curious at the responses the Slashdot community comes up with.
I have been following Slashdot daily for almost 5 years now and one thing that is very, very, very clear to me (not trolling here) is that everyone here is a...
1. Genius computer programmer who knows everything about everything about everything and no matter how much you argue with them you will always be wrong because apparently they all have Ph.D's or 45 years job experience behind them to counter you
2. Whenever an argument is made here at Slashdot there is almost never any real, hard facts to back up a statement, which is always made to be taken as a fact. Always links to some obscure website or such, but when it comes to actually being able to say with full conscience and confidence that "I have sat down, at my own computer, actually compiled the code myself without downloading a binary, ran the appropriate tests, and have a full and professional analysis completed with cold, hard facts in hand...Everyone on Slashdot falls flat on their face.
I used to work on and with NextStep 3.0 and OpenStep 4.0 exclusively before changing careers a few years back. I am very interested in OSX and would be very interested in finding out what OSX has as far as problems and concerns. I am not talking about fluffy crap, like what Slashdot usually spews out when people talk about this sort of topic, but actual, honest to God comments about exact coding design flaws with Apple Mach and Apple BSD implementations and exact design flaws that Apple may have already fixed. Oh, you can't have OSX source code...that is also crap. Simply go to http://www.opensource.apple.com//, download the Darwin source, look through every line of code, compile it, and then give an informed opinion about Mach Microkernel vs (for example here) the Linux Monolithic Kernel design.
To be honest, who really cares in Linus doesn't like MicroKernel architecture? If/when Darwin gets ported to other architectures such as Intel and if/when Apple would port their GUI, Linux will vanish forever. Linux is not as easy to use as a Macintosh and I don't see it ever being as easy. People use it now, in it's current form because they have no better choice.
Please post intelligent, informed responses about Mach, Apple, and BSD and hopefully this article and the Slashotdot communities responses to it would make for a great, enlightening experience for everyone. Please download the source and prove Apple wrong about Linux. But, if you can't, then at least admit when you have your tail between your legs.
PS-Please don't post any links unless they are results of the above mentioned items I pointed out. The usual Slashdot reponse to an opinion like mine is to think I am trolling, call me a Microsoft lover, claim millions of links to other articles mostly getting their information from other articles (repeat indefinitely), or try and make the response seem like an uneducated post looking for a flame war. Does anyone here have an actual experience with Mach or what Apple has done with it and where they can go with it. Mach can't be that bad in it's current implementation, because I truly fail to believe Apple would have made a mistake that stupid.
The thing that infuriates me the most are people who make comment such as the one I am replying to. Every time I hear someone talk about the differences between "college" and "real-life" and what it means to "work hard in college" and "work hard in the Real World" it makes me want to get either violent or just plain vomit at their feet. The truth, people (since this somehow got moderated up to a 4), is that this person is another:
1) "I graduated with a 2 year degree and got my MSCE piece of paper and now I know every thing, screw those Commie Bastard College Graduates, I only did it in 2 years"
2) "I have a 4 year CS degree, but when I was actually in college I managed a C- average and basically scraped my way through college. When I finally graduated I was FORCED TO WORK HARD and now I have a resentment about how hard college life was compared to the Real World. Realizing that drinking until 4:00am on Friday morning is not going to let you keep your job, even though it was okay in college to still graduate, is a shocking realization. Now that I learned the hard way I will be bitter about it forever"
Were you a 4.0 student? I doubt it by your comment.
I'm sorry...I never claimed to be an expert on the subject of Stratosphere skydiving. Thank you for clearing up the facts of my obviously somewhat faulty memory. After more research, the Air Force website was very helpful in refreshing what I thought were factual memories. But, the question still needs to be begged...Why do this at all ?. Oh well, whatever floats your boat I guess:-)
I am a skydiver and 2 1/2 miles high is enough for me. I watched a video on the Discovery Channel or TLC or whatever a while back on some people who jumped from this height for NASA. Exactly what are these people thinking? I have very clear memories of these NASA people actually having their packs, suits, air supply, and gear either burn up completely from air friction to their bodies not being able to handle the pressure/temperature/stress and having serious health problems, even death. Just thinking about falling that far only gives me pictures of the ceramic tiles on the space shuttle. It sounds cool, I have to agree, but the risks or simply ridiculous compared to value of life.
This is really great. There is really a good way to stay "live" on one of the trials of the century, well you know what I mean, without the trial turning into an "O.J. Simpson" TV catastrophy. At least the trial isn't going to be broadcast in Windows Streaming Media only:-)
It is interesting how everyone on this list argues how great Linux is compared to Windows 2000. I have been using different variants of Linux since 1994 and I disagree very deeply with everyone that has posted here. Windows 2000 is not bad, as a matter of fact, I have completely erased my Linux partition all together...something I never thought I would do. Windows 2000 doesn't crash nearly as much as people on Slashdot claim it does. Linux was far less stable than Windows 2000 on any given day. Linux is not that incredibly fast either. I had Linux Mandrake 7.2 installed and loading from BIOS to KDE 2.0 desktop without disk thrashing actually took longer than Windows 2000 on the exact same machine (dual boot). Slashdot posters are exactly the same people I used to enjoy "bandwagoning" with when I fought for OS/2 to the death with everyone in the world. IE is not bad either, it can render many, many more pages than Konqueror or (insert here) can on any given day. Windows 2000 doesn't play nice? At my university we have a Netware/OpenVMS/VAX/NT/Solaris mixed environment in which Windows 2000 hasn't given me a single problem yet. Maybe the people who say it doesn't play nice really don't have the first clue how to intergrate Windows in their network. Just because you like free software such as Samba and NFS which may or may not play nice with anything at all except itself, maybe you should try and understand that maybe it isn't Windows 2000, it's you and/or Linux that is the problem. Why is everything in Linux "so great"? I can start Windows 2000, log in, click on the icon I have set up on my desktop for VC++ and have my programming needs met without any problem in between. Office 2000 Premium also has never, ever crashed or caused me a problem and I type many, many papers every single day. It is light years ahead of StarOffice 5.2 or (insert here) in Linux. When I want to play my favorite 3D game, I also do not have to spend 20+ hours fucking with X-Windows trying to make it not lock up or crash while accessing my 3D hardware...when in Windows I simply download the driver for my card, DirectX 8.0a, and every single game everywhere written for 3D works out of the box. Linux is something I didn't mind when I had 100+ hours a week I could dedicate to fucking around with it hoping to make (insert here) work like or even hopefully "better" than its identical Windows version. Who really cares about "closed source" software in the big picture of the world? So called "Open Source" software has a lot of great ideas that "look great" on paper...but if "millions of eyeballs" are constantly looking over the code and such, then why does 99% of all Linux software have serious problems, lack of anything new or original, serious fucking stability and usability problems throughout, lack of "any" features except millions of "stub" functions and menus...eh? Maybe people can't understand the fact that a few, good, dedicated programmers can accomplish a incredible amount more in a much shorter amount of time than the current "open source" model. Everyone here has a religious battle in their own minds and think everyone else truly cares. Linux needs to become "exactly" what every who uses a computer really wants....the ability to simple turn it on and use it, then turn it off and go on with the important things in your life. Those important things do not include spending 100+ hours fucking with Linux to make sure it is current and works like it's closed source version already does. I am sure that this post will piss off all of the Linux Zealots...but who really cares? Making something such as Linux "god-like" when it is not is only a lose/lose idea and ideology to follow. Everything has it's time and place. Linux as a truly usable desktop environment? This reminds of OS/2 and it is heading in exactly the same direction with the exact same "blind" following OS/2 did..."open source" or not. Has anyone else thought that maybe the Linux "movement" is powered by the "poor", "cheap", and/or "penny pinching"? Just a thought. I don't mind paying for (insert here) if it works and does what I need.
Slashdot Mirror
If Pi was "random," as apparently the poster of this story is far from anything you would consider a Mathematician or even a "Math intelligent" person, then each time you derived Pi the numbers would be different. e.g. 3.14159... 3.204845... 2.09284...1.38485... You have confused the word "Random" with something it truly is not. The question you are looking for is each time I derive a "new" digit of Pi, will it be predictable, will it be cyclic? That has nothing to do with Pi being random. Because each time you want to derive that certain Nth digit of Pi, it will be the same. That proves Pi is not random, just not cyclic, as of yet.
Wow, the post I am replying to makes absolutely no sense at all. I have always wondered something about Linux users, myself not included since I have been using Linux since early 1994 but seem to have missed the strange attitude bus, and that is...Why does something that is well made, well designed, and easy to use only something a "newbie" would use?
Your argument(s) makes me sick. Buy a Macintosh
If you're a newbie there still isn't a computer as easy to use as the Mac. It's more attractive than a PC, it doesn't break as often (i.e. DLL or hardware conflicts), and it requires overall less attention than Windows systems do. All the common applications are available in it, and it delivers better performance for a smaller configuration (i.e. a Mac running MS Office requires half the RAM as a PC for accomplishing the same task).
Huh!?! So what the fuck is the problem with any of these points? And how does using a PC make any sense to you? Why does almost every person who use Linux think that they are some God who can only consider themselves "Experts" if they use Linux on some piece of shit x86 computer that is difficult to maintain, difficult to use, and requires 2x the resource requirements? Hasn't the point been, since the creation of X Windows, to make Linux easier to use? Why didn't you just buy your Mother some sort of Internet Appliance if you hate the idea of buying a computer that was designed to be easy to use. Mac's don't all cost $3000, they are not as slow as Slashdot likes to think they are, plus I don't think, by the sounds of it, she would know anyways, plus what's an extra $500 (it is your Mom, right?). Plus the resale value for a Macintosh is incredible right now. It would have been a much wiser and sounder investment for her and yourself. I am sure she could care less about your "3l33t-ness" on the computer. Plus, her Linux box is not going to be any easier to maintain than a Macintosh. What are your filters going to do when she needs to open an Office 2000/2001 file or do her taxes online with the IRS, or 1/2 a million other things that she will encounter in time?
Everyone on Slashdot rips on Macintosh computers. Why? It is the same argument you could us for a car. Linux users here would say "I only buy and drive old, junk cars that suck gas, burn oil, are a pain in the ass to fix, and they especially don't work all of the time? When you could spend your money on a car that gets great gas mileage, runs perfect, and is easy to maintain and keep up? Because for some reason only the people who drive the piece of shit cars think they are "real men" because they have to struggle with their pieces of shit all the time and it makes them feel big and powerful and whatever else. This is the same argument and idea of Linux users here on Slashdot.
In the end, honestly, aren't we just trying to turn the PC into a Macintosh? I2C, PCI, Plus-and-Play, KDE/Gnome,... Once we accomplish, in one form or another, what Apple accomplished 20 years ago, are we going to pat ourselves on the back? Yup. But what I beg to ask you is...Why not just use Apple hardware in the first place and save ourselves 20 more years of trying to reinvent what already exists?
Just because something is easy to use doesn't make it any less "good" or any less "powerful." I am selling my Pentium III workstation right now and am talking to Apple about buying a new Powerbook. Why? Because it *IS* easy to use, the hardware works like it is supposed to *WITHOUT* fucking around with it, the G4 *IS* an amazing chip, and OS X *IS* Unix, whether anyone likes to admit it or not. I get the power and ease of use of a Macintosh with the power of Unix. Yeah, I have heard that OS X isn't exactly the fastest OS right now. But it is not the hardware. And wouldn't a true 3l33t programmer just itch to dig into the code and fix it themselves? Just to let everyone know, I am also buying my Mother and my brother an Apple computer.
Why does this make you any less of a Unix admin or hacker than if I just keep my Linux x86 computer? I can put Linux on my new Powerbook if I have to self-inflate my 3l33t ego problem to impress my 3l33tness upon those *Stupid* users. Why is it so hard for everyone to see that, in the end, we are all trying to make the PC a Macintosh?
PS-I have nothing at all against Linux, I personally love it (at times). I just don't understand where this bullshit "elitist" (get off your ass and look it up in a dictionary) attitude comes from with Linux users and their "newbie" bullshit attitude problem. Most people don't care about whether they are good enough to be a part of the elite Linux users of the world. 99.9999% of people just want to use their damn computers to get things done.
PPS-I know since this is Slashdot, I am going to get moderated into oblivion...But once Linux and PC's become just another Macintosh clone in different clothes, just exactly what the fuck are people going to bitch about then? I am very happy to be moving to Apple. I am just personally sick of constantly fucking with my computer to make it work right all of the time. You can also use Unix/Linux on a Mac, they even come with Unix now, so what the hell is everybody's problem? Every computer will eventually be a Macintosh in one form or another.
Well, maybe your wife
Sucks to by you man
I am a US citizen, so this is my opinion of my own country.
Why won't there be a
"Hey, we invented the internet. We own the internet. We create all the laws on the entire globe. Without the US, the internet would not exist."
It makes me want to puke. By having a
I know that this is not going to be answered, but will be marked a +1 or -1 on
What does anyone else think? I mean "intelligently" and "honestly." Please no "it's not Linux, so it sucks, posts" please. I am also interested in developing my own multimedia/MIDI software for personal use right now, and I used to use BeOS (don't even get me started on Be Inc.) and have completely fallen for QNX. Thanks
Actually, that was the exact same point I was going to bring up. But, I have a far more interesting question to pose to Slashdot and Dreamsworks...
Why didn't Dreamworks go with a renderfarm of G4 Macintoshes running OSX?
This is seriously not meant to be a flame of any kind...The kind of rendering that they are doing is perfectly suited for the G4, with Altivec optimization even better and OSX being Unix, things should have been great for them. The PowerPC (both single and dual solutions), memory bandwidths, and overall hardware seems like a FAR better solution than any Intel solution. And since OSX comes with the Mac, the price of the OS is moot. I know they mentioned proprietary Unix solutions, but OSX is not exactly proprietary, just the GUI.
Dear Bryan at Grateful.net,
Please respond to this post since repeated attempts at contacting you at either bryan@grateful.net or through http://www.grateful.net (does not exist) have failed for me.
I am still very interested in purchasing this device from you. I can sent you my email on Slashdot if you want me to.
Thanks,
Ryan
What exactly would be wrong with someone advertising a little beaver on the air? I haven't seen or had the chance to pet a beaver in sooooooo long.
Dear dbarclay10,
Please don't post things as fact unless you are right. You are wrong...sorry. Taking a quote from a previously correct post and changing the number of MHZ for the G4, you will be precisely the reason why you are wrong.
What the author apparently fails to grasp is the only thing which matters is wall clock time. P4 may have a 20 cycle mispredict penalty, higher than G4e's penalty of 7, but it also at about triple the clock speed. 20 cycles @ 1.8 GHz is less than 7 cycles @ 600 MHz
So, modifying the MHZ will give you the real and true facts, which completely destroy your facts and will help to clarify to someone who thinks you are telling the truth within your post...
...P4 has a 20 cycle mispredict penalty, higher than G4e's penalty of 7. 20 cycles @ 1 GHz is MORE than 7 cycles @ 1 GHZ...
It is pretty simple math, my friend. So, if you truly knew what you were talking about, then you wouldn't have made such a long, blatant, incorrect, and uniformed post.
May I ask a serious question? Would you be willing to sell me your used I-Opener? I am very interested in having one. If you would be, please respond to this post and I will gladly talk to you about it more. Thanks.
I spent a few years pursuing, among other degrees, a degree in Software Engineering. At the University of Wisconsin La Crosse the very first course I ever took (required) in 1996 was Eiffel on NeXtStep. For months people in the class were complaining about not being able to learn C/C++ and that "Eiffel was never used anywhere and learning it was a waste of their time and money." That was a valid argument. But, the most interesting reply was from my professor when he said "You are not here in college to learn a specific language. You are here to learn what OOP is, how it works, and the beauty of its power. You are here to learn a skillset...since languages change all of the time and your need to know different languages changes all of the time...Here you are being given the knowledge to learn OOP ideas and principles, and then you can go out and apply those to whatever language you want." That made perfect sense to me and to this day still does. I really, truly feel that this news article and most of the people posting comments to it are simply fighting the wrong battle and begging the wrong questions. This is not whether C/C++ is better than Java or SmallTalk or Python or whatever...Although 99% of the posts are about that. The question to a college professor and hopefully Software Engineering and/or CS majors should be "What language and tools will give me or my students the absolutely best ability to learn OOP and then apply it to all of the languages of the world." For almost everyone that answer has become JAVA. It is not a matter of whether you like it or not. It adheres EXACTLY to how an OOP language should be programmed and used and it doesn't let you do otherwise. The IDE's are cheap if not completely free, and unless you are planning on coding for some specific piece of hardware (which no one here truly does I am sure with the exception of a very few people) you would be using Assembly or already know what you are doing with another language, JAVA keeps people from learning and thinking that BASIC or Pascal (which everyone learns first...usual because their first computer came with DOS or something or they have to take it in high school) is the way that programs are really supposed to be written in which C lets you do that since it is not OOP at all. When you stick a student coming fresh out of a C course in college into an OOP class with JAVA, they are completely lost. My class went from almost 50 students to about 8 in the first 8 weeks. That is because they had no idea about the "concept" or OOP. The language is/was truly irrelevant. I have learned Eiffel, JAVA, C/C++, Assembly, ADA/OOADA, Pascal, Basic, and a variety of other languages and applications (Matlab, etc. ). C++ always felt like C taken to a place it was never meant to go. C++ should have been a completely new, independant language from C with OOP design and fundamentals from the start without an C at all. In this sense, OOP and JAVA are perfect together for a college curriculum and its objectives. But, there are NO good alternatives to C++...I agree with most posters here on that issue...but learning OOP the right way before you get into languages such as C/C++ is very important. JAVA is a great tool and teacher for that. It won't let you be a C or BASIC programmer. Every language has is place and purpose.
Hemp is not Marijuana and does NOT contain THC. Look it up.
For a claim as large as the one stated in this story, the one most important question that needs to be asked is...
Where is the proof?
Why was this marked as FlameBait?? In reality, which sometimes seemed to be absent in Slashdot, consistency is the SOLE reason people use something in mass quantities. It makes people comfortable, the learning curve is easy to handle when the variables never change, it doesn't scare away people who see no reason to own a computer in the first place or see no reason to ever need to learn about how they work (productivity orientated people). Two very simple, real world, examples for people here on Slashdot:
1. My mother calls me on average of once every couple of weeks because she can't figure out how to do something on her PC computer. She is neither dumb nor ignorant, since she holds 2 Master's Degrees and runs her own business. Computers are a tool to her, just as they are to, I'm sure, well over 200-300 million Windows users around the world. Every time she gets comfortable with figuring things out, she worries less about how to use her computer and more about what she can do WITH her computer. Dozens of different desktops, ways to run programs, 2500 ways to set up your printer, etc. etc. does not mean that Linux is better. It means that people who don't have the time to sit around and masturbate about how complex they can make their lives, but instead just need their computer to assist them in making their lives easier and more productive, with the LEAST amount of hassle won't even BOTHER THE LOOK at Linux. Standards, people...Standards...1 Desktop, 1 Control Center, 1 way to print, 1 way to access your programs, 1...Human nature works best in groups with direction and consistency. Examples...Constitution of the United States, Federal Laws, Education system, Automobiles, Rules of driving a car on ANY road,...but, not to Linux, right?
2. When was the last time you got into the car and found out that your brake was now in the backseat, your gas peddle was on the left side, and the clutch and steering wheel had switched place? When was the last time you used Linux? That is the point. When people always know that something will work a certain way, then everybody will use it.
This parent post has it completely right. 99% of people try Linux, mess with it for a while, get super, super, super tired of always having to fuck around with it to work right or reach the same level of usability as their Windows counterpart, and give up never to return. I only use Linux because I have been using it since 1993. That's it, really. It's usability hasn't really improved that much in over 8 years. It's sad.
Although people have been talking only so-so about Nautilus, I have been using it on Linux-Mandrake 8.0 (and beta 3) and have grown quite fond of it's beauty, interface, and utter simplicity to use. I have never really "barfed out" on me (although the viewing HTML as text by default was a little annoying). I would love this FM to become the default FM for Linux in general. But, what I would really like to know...and I am sorry that this is a little off topic...since EFM was mentioned, what is going on with Enlightenment? Is E trying to become an entirely self contained Window Manager complete with a FM, graphics library, Berkeley DB, and basically everything. Why doesn't anyone talk about this?? It seems to be a lot more interesting to me that a small group of dedicated people are able to easily implement something like OpenGL rendered Anti-Aliased Fonts and graphics in Enlightenment complete with a Berkeley DB and FM...when developers can't seem to make even the AA font work right in either KDE or Gnome. Does anyone have any idea what Enlightenment is doing and does it want to replace KDE and/or Gnome as the Desktop/Window manager of the future? Because if it does...then I will be the first to vote for it. I have always loved it. It just appears to me that whatever comes out for KDE or Gnome is being quickly replaced in Enlightenment with something faster, prettier, easier to use, more stable and more productive from the Enlightenment team.
So, exactly when was the last time you saw police officers knock on your door to ask some questions and you decided "Gee, Bob, I should answer the door with a loaded firearm...?" What would happen if you got pulled over for speeding or OMVI and had a loaded handgun sitting on your lap or in your passenger seat. Then, when the police officer asked you for your license you simply reach over and grab your loaded weapon, you for some reason think you are not going to get shot? Are you serious? I really hope not. But, for some reason everyone thinks that they are on Slashdot.
It really pisses you people off when someone uses their brain on Slashdot, doesn't it? Instead of spewing anti-government crap out of their "my life sucks because I can't break the law without any penalties and I am going to blame the government for my shitty life" mouths before engaging their brains.
Okay, if the "government" is completely evil, everyone has infinite rights (even though living in a society with laws means that you lose some of your so called God given freedoms by choosing to live there for the betterment of the whole, regardless of what you think, simple, look it up), and everything else Slashdot seems to be so kill, kill, kill The Man about...then what in the hell does Slashdot suggest, we as a nation, do to protect ourselves against people who break the laws that we, as a people, have made? If there is no way for Law Enforcement officials to protect and enforce the laws because no matter what the laws say, everyone on Slashdot appears to not care, how do you expect laws to be enforced at all? I had an argument with a friend the other day about high speed police chases. He sounds exactly like all of the backhills, my life sucks because of the government, conspiracy about everything other people make them believe types, like on Slashdot, who actually argued that it should be illegal to engage in high speed chases. What?!? I should be able to go down to the local gas station, shoot some innocent person, steal a ton of cash, and then if I drive fast enough the laws no longer apply to me? Yup, makes ALL kinds of sense. Damn Government, he says. Makes me want to puke. Criminals have no rights, and never should have. You break a crime, you pay the price. Oh, so according the Slashdot, if I hop on a trane or take a plane I should just be "let off of the hook???" If you want anarchy without laws and without the ability for law enforcement to do their jobs, then why do you stop whining, pick up your family and lives, and move to the jungle in South America and start your own country where Utopia awaits? YOU make the laws, YOU break the laws, YOU pay the price. Just because Marijuana is harmless does not make it legal. It is ILLEGAL and when you break the laws you should recieve the punishment that the people of the United States believe you should have. If Law Enforcement, be it the DEA or FBI, has no way of tracking criminals, then why have laws at all? They are not "invading my precious life" by being able to see who is on a train in order to stop a criminal from breaking a crime. The people of the United States, as far as I am concerned, care about stopping criminals from selling herion, crank, crack, methanphetimines, LCD, PCP, and every other drug to children and other people who are either too young or stupid to know any better than to not do drugs. We would need the DEA if this country had better parents and deeper morals and values. Those are the facts, plain and simple.
Why is everyone on Slashdot so concerned about having the right to have their very own militia group, or hate group, or whatever? For the rest of the US, you know, the people that hate militia groups, subversives, hate groups, gangs, etc. then why in the hell would you care what people know about you? I completely agree that if the US wants to wipe out or track people that do nothing more than HARM our society instead of HELP our society, then more power to them. I also have nothing to hide. And talking about credit card numbers being public is total bullshit. If you have a credit card, or have ever used your credit card, then someone has your number somewhere any ways. And NO, Slashdot, 99.9% of people don't support subversive or militia anything. Period. If my kids can make it to school safe in the morning and come home alive without worrying about some fucked up anti-government militia pyschopath needing to make a point by blowing something up, then I could give a shit less.
Reading a Slashdot article such as the one that I am replying to always makes me curious at the responses the Slashdot community comes up with.
I have been following Slashdot daily for almost 5 years now and one thing that is very, very, very clear to me (not trolling here) is that everyone here is a...
1. Genius computer programmer who knows everything about everything about everything and no matter how much you argue with them you will always be wrong because apparently they all have Ph.D's or 45 years job experience behind them to counter you
2. Whenever an argument is made here at Slashdot there is almost never any real, hard facts to back up a statement, which is always made to be taken as a fact. Always links to some obscure website or such, but when it comes to actually being able to say with full conscience and confidence that "I have sat down, at my own computer, actually compiled the code myself without downloading a binary, ran the appropriate tests, and have a full and professional analysis completed with cold, hard facts in hand...Everyone on Slashdot falls flat on their face.
I used to work on and with NextStep 3.0 and OpenStep 4.0 exclusively before changing careers a few years back. I am very interested in OSX and would be very interested in finding out what OSX has as far as problems and concerns. I am not talking about fluffy crap, like what Slashdot usually spews out when people talk about this sort of topic, but actual, honest to God comments about exact coding design flaws with Apple Mach and Apple BSD implementations and exact design flaws that Apple may have already fixed. Oh, you can't have OSX source code...that is also crap. Simply go to http://www.opensource.apple.com//, download the Darwin source, look through every line of code, compile it, and then give an informed opinion about Mach Microkernel vs (for example here) the Linux Monolithic Kernel design.
To be honest, who really cares in Linus doesn't like MicroKernel architecture? If/when Darwin gets ported to other architectures such as Intel and if/when Apple would port their GUI, Linux will vanish forever. Linux is not as easy to use as a Macintosh and I don't see it ever being as easy. People use it now, in it's current form because they have no better choice.
Please post intelligent, informed responses about Mach, Apple, and BSD and hopefully this article and the Slashotdot communities responses to it would make for a great, enlightening experience for everyone. Please download the source and prove Apple wrong about Linux. But, if you can't, then at least admit when you have your tail between your legs.
PS-Please don't post any links unless they are results of the above mentioned items I pointed out. The usual Slashdot reponse to an opinion like mine is to think I am trolling, call me a Microsoft lover, claim millions of links to other articles mostly getting their information from other articles (repeat indefinitely), or try and make the response seem like an uneducated post looking for a flame war. Does anyone here have an actual experience with Mach or what Apple has done with it and where they can go with it. Mach can't be that bad in it's current implementation, because I truly fail to believe Apple would have made a mistake that stupid.
The thing that infuriates me the most are people who make comment such as the one I am replying to. Every time I hear someone talk about the differences between "college" and "real-life" and what it means to "work hard in college" and "work hard in the Real World" it makes me want to get either violent or just plain vomit at their feet. The truth, people (since this somehow got moderated up to a 4), is that this person is another:
1) "I graduated with a 2 year degree and got my MSCE piece of paper and now I know every thing, screw those Commie Bastard College Graduates, I only did it in 2 years"
2) "I have a 4 year CS degree, but when I was actually in college I managed a C- average and basically scraped my way through college. When I finally graduated I was FORCED TO WORK HARD and now I have a resentment about how hard college life was compared to the Real World. Realizing that drinking until 4:00am on Friday morning is not going to let you keep your job, even though it was okay in college to still graduate, is a shocking realization. Now that I learned the hard way I will be bitter about it forever"
Were you a 4.0 student? I doubt it by your comment.
I'm sorry...I never claimed to be an expert on the subject of Stratosphere skydiving. Thank you for clearing up the facts of my obviously somewhat faulty memory. After more research, the Air Force website was very helpful in refreshing what I thought were factual memories. But, the question still needs to be begged...Why do this at all ?. Oh well, whatever floats your boat I guess :-)
I am a skydiver and 2 1/2 miles high is enough for me. I watched a video on the Discovery Channel or TLC or whatever a while back on some people who jumped from this height for NASA. Exactly what are these people thinking? I have very clear memories of these NASA people actually having their packs, suits, air supply, and gear either burn up completely from air friction to their bodies not being able to handle the pressure/temperature/stress and having serious health problems, even death. Just thinking about falling that far only gives me pictures of the ceramic tiles on the space shuttle. It sounds cool, I have to agree, but the risks or simply ridiculous compared to value of life.
This is really great. There is really a good way to stay "live" on one of the trials of the century, well you know what I mean, without the trial turning into an "O.J. Simpson" TV catastrophy. At least the trial isn't going to be broadcast in Windows Streaming Media only :-)
It is interesting how everyone on this list argues how great Linux is compared to Windows 2000. I have been using different variants of Linux since 1994 and I disagree very deeply with everyone that has posted here. Windows 2000 is not bad, as a matter of fact, I have completely erased my Linux partition all together...something I never thought I would do. Windows 2000 doesn't crash nearly as much as people on Slashdot claim it does. Linux was far less stable than Windows 2000 on any given day. Linux is not that incredibly fast either. I had Linux Mandrake 7.2 installed and loading from BIOS to KDE 2.0 desktop without disk thrashing actually took longer than Windows 2000 on the exact same machine (dual boot). Slashdot posters are exactly the same people I used to enjoy "bandwagoning" with when I fought for OS/2 to the death with everyone in the world. IE is not bad either, it can render many, many more pages than Konqueror or (insert here) can on any given day. Windows 2000 doesn't play nice? At my university we have a Netware/OpenVMS/VAX/NT/Solaris mixed environment in which Windows 2000 hasn't given me a single problem yet. Maybe the people who say it doesn't play nice really don't have the first clue how to intergrate Windows in their network. Just because you like free software such as Samba and NFS which may or may not play nice with anything at all except itself, maybe you should try and understand that maybe it isn't Windows 2000, it's you and/or Linux that is the problem. Why is everything in Linux "so great"? I can start Windows 2000, log in, click on the icon I have set up on my desktop for VC++ and have my programming needs met without any problem in between. Office 2000 Premium also has never, ever crashed or caused me a problem and I type many, many papers every single day. It is light years ahead of StarOffice 5.2 or (insert here) in Linux. When I want to play my favorite 3D game, I also do not have to spend 20+ hours fucking with X-Windows trying to make it not lock up or crash while accessing my 3D hardware...when in Windows I simply download the driver for my card, DirectX 8.0a, and every single game everywhere written for 3D works out of the box. Linux is something I didn't mind when I had 100+ hours a week I could dedicate to fucking around with it hoping to make (insert here) work like or even hopefully "better" than its identical Windows version. Who really cares about "closed source" software in the big picture of the world? So called "Open Source" software has a lot of great ideas that "look great" on paper...but if "millions of eyeballs" are constantly looking over the code and such, then why does 99% of all Linux software have serious problems, lack of anything new or original, serious fucking stability and usability problems throughout, lack of "any" features except millions of "stub" functions and menus...eh? Maybe people can't understand the fact that a few, good, dedicated programmers can accomplish a incredible amount more in a much shorter amount of time than the current "open source" model. Everyone here has a religious battle in their own minds and think everyone else truly cares. Linux needs to become "exactly" what every who uses a computer really wants....the ability to simple turn it on and use it, then turn it off and go on with the important things in your life. Those important things do not include spending 100+ hours fucking with Linux to make sure it is current and works like it's closed source version already does. I am sure that this post will piss off all of the Linux Zealots...but who really cares? Making something such as Linux "god-like" when it is not is only a lose/lose idea and ideology to follow. Everything has it's time and place. Linux as a truly usable desktop environment? This reminds of OS/2 and it is heading in exactly the same direction with the exact same "blind" following OS/2 did..."open source" or not. Has anyone else thought that maybe the Linux "movement" is powered by the "poor", "cheap", and/or "penny pinching"? Just a thought. I don't mind paying for (insert here) if it works and does what I need.