However, I do have a problem with a small group of people that want to rule our lives and consistently have asked for the government to force me to change due to some half-baked theory that is mostly driven by political BS.
I understand where you are coming from, but unfortunately this is the name of the game. Just like the environmental lobbiests who want to raise the price of gas, there are oil company and car manufacturer lobbiests who want to remove all the gas taxes and emmission restrictions. Either way someone is trying to push the scale in their favor with exaggeration and political BS... and unfortunatly the loudest and pushiest usually win.
I'd also like to note that without any knowlege of the weather 500 years ago, it is obvious that our current treatment of the planet is destructive. Without resorting to any apocalyptic messages, we have demonstrably destroyed rivers and lakes that my children will no longer be able to swim in. That upsets me, and I am willing to take steps to prevent it, even terribly difficult things like riding a bike to work.
Hell, they can't even predict TOMORROW'S weather, how accurate can they be about stuff that happened 100 years ago?
Actually, it's quite a bit easier to predict long term trends than short-term fluctuations. Just like the stock market: up or down almost randomly on any given day, but a safe 10% growth over long stretches.
The thing I wonder about is why anyone would want to ignore this type of data. All we're being asked to do is to not take everything for granted. The effort required on the individual's part is minimal. Now, if the theories of appocalypse are correct, then we've saved ourselves. If not, than we've still saved small pockets of the natural world, which may not be important to human survival but sure are important to our sense of beauty and responsibility.
I'm pretty shocked by all the negativity here. Guess I shouldn't be, this is slashdot after all...
Nonetheless, I'm pretty impressed with this thing for a preview release of version 1 software. It looks like it may surpass the Mac and Windows file browsers fairly soon...
Oh wait, I forgot, the idea of anyone using a decent GUI filemanager on Linux is just plain painful to the CLI folks. I guess all GUI development should stop so that those people aren't annoyed by the very existence of other ways of using a computer.
BTW, I love CLI, but when I want a GUI, I just use it and don't fret over the lost masculinity.
However, I figure when this comes out that there will be some sort of memory partition between deep storage (which will replace your hard disk) and memory for running programs. Most likely stuff will still have to be copied across during startup, but it will at least take place at a much higher speed.
I think MRAM will get some major industry backing when Microsoft realizes that it will stop all those complaints about having to reboot Windows continuously:)
If I was moderating I'd mark myself as "Redundant" but after all the trash talking over yesterday's article I feel it needs to be reiterated:
Use whatever works best for you.
Postgres is a fine solution for many things; MySQL is a fine solution for many things. I hope they both get better and better. Now why in the world would anyone get upset at the particular database choice someone else has made for themselves?
I must admit that the infomercial style press release by the Postgres people made me cringe. I would of course still consider using their database, but I would no longer trust their claims; I'll do the research myself. The MySQL team has always been very forthcoming with the strengths and limitations of MySQL, so I'll give them a little more credibility for now. I guess once you've hired a marketing team, you've gotta start slinging FUD, even if you're open source. Oh well.
In any case, I'm very glad that both databases are making strides to build a better product. I will continue to use and appreciate both.
I bought their 1U rack a few months back, and it ran perfectly out of the box. Of course I left their distro (RedHat) in place and just configured from there. The machine was fairly well secured, too, considering it was out of the box, with most of/etc/inetd.conf commented out.
The machine has yet to crash and is currently at 91 days uptime. It has even been slashdotted during this time:)
It came with a good amount of documentation, but they actually never sent me the boxed copy of RedHat that I was supposed to get. I never followed up on that.
post it on freshmeat and consider yourself a baddass open source hacker
I admint ignorance in this area - is this truly a problem for the community? Why is it so bad for someone (potentially a loser) to consider themselves a badass open source hacker? At it's worst its ignorable, at its best, these people might actually be learning something and might one day contribute.
imitating code monkeys cranking out the same shit thats been done before
Some might call that "learning how to code". Or perhaps the world would be a better place if everyone just knew how to build innovative apps from the get go.
I love *nix and I think Miguel is absolutely right. I am amazed how many people have strongly negative reactions to the addition of features to *nix. Even after GNOME is complete and standard, the beauty of *nix is that you will _still_ be able to run wm2 or whatever you like.
Some claim that this it's a waste of time - now that is a borg mentality if I ever heard one. There is never any reason for a developer to ceace development on a project they like. If anything is a waste of time for *nix, it's whining about GNOME on Slashdot.
Because *nix is the ultimate learning system, there will always be people re-inventing the wheel to see how it works. Because *nix is free it will always be here because it can't be killed by commercial failure. However neither of these are reasons to not see further innovation.
After I've learned command line C programming, I don't want to have to switch to MS to learn component programming. Good luck Miguel, I hope to help the cause some day:)
You aren't going to do very well in life, finacially or reproductivly, if you are constantly attacking other people or constantly running away from people on a bus.
I suppose I can agree with that:) My point is that most animal species _do_ behave that way, because there is a limitation in most of their cognitive abilities to realize that sometimes you have to go around the fence to get the bone.
Yes, you can argue that everything still boils down to selfishness, but there is all the difference in the world between being selfish & considerate and selfish & inconsiderate. A society that weighs heavier on the former is more productive than a society that weighs heavier on the latter. Check out "The Prisoner's Dillema" for a nice succinct take on this logic.
To bring this back on topic: People want media. The quickest way to get media is to take it, however this is not cooperative and therefore not sustainable. Like it or not, respecting a media producer's desires is actually the best way to get media. It's just like having to go around the fence to get the bone.
Um, well, see, fundamentally our society ISN'T any different from those of the 'animal kingdom', which, you may have noticed, we belong to.
Ah yes. arguing about semantics is a great way to encourage mutual learning.
As demonstrated by our discussion, there are more than one type of person. I wholly admit this, and realize there are many people who go through life successfully, just like you, without realizing that there are others who don't base their actions on the same fight or flight system used by the amoeba.
Neither is right or wrong. However, most of the things that you enjoy and take for granted in society are conventions set up by those who stepped out of the deterministic path.
I thought that civilisation was an emergent property of each individual's attempts to maximize their scarce resource allocation and genetic proliferation
If that were true, then our society wouldn't be any different from those of the animal kingdom. If you don't think it is, I ask you to explain how perfect strangers sit together on the bus without attacking each other or running away.
What makes human civilzation different is that people are willing to cooperate; to respect others for the intangible and unguaranteed benefit that they will do the same for you. That is responsible for nearly all of the benefits you enjoy in modern society.
Hate to tell you this, but force is, and always has been, and probably always will, be part of this system.
There will always be force. But please look around at the current state of the world and note whether it's the more forceful or more cooperative societies that do better.
File sharing is not the most evil thing in the world. But consider this: the entire basis of civilization rests on respecting the desires of others _without_ coercion.
Every single person who reads this post has probably been in a situation where someone else took advantage of them. It doesn't matter if it hurts directly or not (witness the Slashdot/Hellmouth debacle), people don't like it when their things are used in a way they don't like. Upsetting other people because you can get away with it is the enemy of civilization.
So, from a societal standpoint, it is important that it be made as difficult and stigmatized as possible. Of course it can't be stopped; what can? Nonetheless, this is just social darwinism. Get used to it.
Of course it would be CPU intensive. So is a GUI with regards to a 386, but two years from now it won't matter, just like GUI's don't matter today. Things usually move forward by leapfrogging each other rather than staying in step.
Actually none of those specific ideas were mentioned in the article that I can recall. They talk about a pseudo-natural-language interface and how consistency isn't always beneficial. This comment certainly went further with the ideas.
It seems to me that a lot of people are critisizing Titan AE from two incompatible angles. On one hand I hear that Titan AE didn't break any new ground, while on the other that it failed to fall into a nice pre-defined category.
Sounds to me like the real problem is that it did exactly the opposite: it assumed that kids could deal with some mature themes and adults could deal with some whimsical humor and fantasy. I don't see many other films in the US doing this. Did Titan succeed at it? I don't know, but I think Titan AE's failure is more about the average American being unable to mix genres and use their imagination than about Titan's own flaws. It's why foriegn films rarely succeed here.
Was Titan perfect? No. Was it a masterpiece? Probably not. (Did I enjoy it? Immensely.) Was it the same old thing everyone else is doing? No.
Is it sad that Fox is pulling the plug on this type of thing? Very much so. I would have liked to see where it would lead.
If it only applies to the label and not the icon, how is that doing "all the things mentioned"? Three out of the four suggestions were related to the icon and taking advantage of it's high res graphics.
I guess you can do this stuff manually, but I think it would need to be automatic for it to actually help. If you have to manually modify the appearance of the file I think it loses it's benefit, as you probably won't do it most of the time.
I like the idea of doing it through scripting - which shows how simple this is and how strange that no one does this yet. I mean, aside from esthetics, there is hardly anything in current UI that justifies 1024x768 resolution or 24 bit color.
I hope the Gnome or KDE people pick up on this idea:) Go Nautilus! Go KFM!
There is an excellent tidbit in the article about how people can always identify books even though all books don't look excactly alike. In fact, people are more able to find a particular book because different books look different. It seems that current systems don't take advantage of this to the level they could. Here are some quick ideas that could easily be added to current file browsers:
A file browser could show different icons for different sized text documents; a single sheet of paper for a very small file, a stack of paper for a medium sized file, and a book for large sized files.
Depending on a file's creation time, the color of the object could be different, say a color of the rainbow for each day of the week. Of course there would be overlaps like in real life, but the way the mind works, you might remember it was the red one, which would make finding things easier.
Files that were modified recently could be represented differently; for small and medium text files, leave a pen on top of the paper for a few days. For large files leave the book open.
As the last access time for a file gets further in the past, the icon could become smaller or more transparent - up to say 50% or so. The most recently accessed files would stand out, but the others would still be there.
Obviously not all of these would work out wonderfully, but they would be interesting to see.
Miguel is so right. And the wonderful thing about Unix is that he can follow his vision, and no one has to worry that they have to follow. Thank god for those who have the balls to make commitments like this and move things forward.
If you don't like his vision, first, you can try to help through input. If that doesn't work you can use or make something else. If that doesn't work you can do nothing while you whine and troll. What a wonderful world.
Did you read my whole comment? My "generalizing of Europeans" was sarcasm - to show how ridiculous it is to group people by location. Maybe you were joking too:)
Slashdot Mirror
I understand where you are coming from, but unfortunately this is the name of the game. Just like the environmental lobbiests who want to raise the price of gas, there are oil company and car manufacturer lobbiests who want to remove all the gas taxes and emmission restrictions. Either way someone is trying to push the scale in their favor with exaggeration and political BS... and unfortunatly the loudest and pushiest usually win.
I'd also like to note that without any knowlege of the weather 500 years ago, it is obvious that our current treatment of the planet is destructive. Without resorting to any apocalyptic messages, we have demonstrably destroyed rivers and lakes that my children will no longer be able to swim in. That upsets me, and I am willing to take steps to prevent it, even terribly difficult things like riding a bike to work.
You're a pretty funny guy :)
Actually, it's quite a bit easier to predict long term trends than short-term fluctuations. Just like the stock market: up or down almost randomly on any given day, but a safe 10% growth over long stretches.
The thing I wonder about is why anyone would want to ignore this type of data. All we're being asked to do is to not take everything for granted. The effort required on the individual's part is minimal. Now, if the theories of appocalypse are correct, then we've saved ourselves. If not, than we've still saved small pockets of the natural world, which may not be important to human survival but sure are important to our sense of beauty and responsibility.
Nonetheless, I'm pretty impressed with this thing for a preview release of version 1 software. It looks like it may surpass the Mac and Windows file browsers fairly soon...
Oh wait, I forgot, the idea of anyone using a decent GUI filemanager on Linux is just plain painful to the CLI folks. I guess all GUI development should stop so that those people aren't annoyed by the very existence of other ways of using a computer.
BTW, I love CLI, but when I want a GUI, I just use it and don't fret over the lost masculinity.
Hey eazel folks... keep up the good work!
However, I figure when this comes out that there will be some sort of memory partition between deep storage (which will replace your hard disk) and memory for running programs. Most likely stuff will still have to be copied across during startup, but it will at least take place at a much higher speed.
Oh no! Then what will the Linux advantage be? ;)
Use whatever works best for you.
Postgres is a fine solution for many things; MySQL is a fine solution for many things. I hope they both get better and better. Now why in the world would anyone get upset at the particular database choice someone else has made for themselves?
I must admit that the infomercial style press release by the Postgres people made me cringe. I would of course still consider using their database, but I would no longer trust their claims; I'll do the research myself. The MySQL team has always been very forthcoming with the strengths and limitations of MySQL, so I'll give them a little more credibility for now. I guess once you've hired a marketing team, you've gotta start slinging FUD, even if you're open source. Oh well.
In any case, I'm very glad that both databases are making strides to build a better product. I will continue to use and appreciate both.
Wish I could help you out, pal. I heard that Natalie Portman might be heading over your place tonight...
The machine has yet to crash and is currently at 91 days uptime. It has even been slashdotted during this time :)
It came with a good amount of documentation, but they actually never sent me the boxed copy of RedHat that I was supposed to get. I never followed up on that.
I admint ignorance in this area - is this truly a problem for the community? Why is it so bad for someone (potentially a loser) to consider themselves a badass open source hacker? At it's worst its ignorable, at its best, these people might actually be learning something and might one day contribute.
Some might call that "learning how to code". Or perhaps the world would be a better place if everyone just knew how to build innovative apps from the get go.
Some claim that this it's a waste of time - now that is a borg mentality if I ever heard one. There is never any reason for a developer to ceace development on a project they like. If anything is a waste of time for *nix, it's whining about GNOME on Slashdot.
Because *nix is the ultimate learning system, there will always be people re-inventing the wheel to see how it works. Because *nix is free it will always be here because it can't be killed by commercial failure. However neither of these are reasons to not see further innovation.
After I've learned command line C programming, I don't want to have to switch to MS to learn component programming. Good luck Miguel, I hope to help the cause some day :)
I suppose I can agree with that :) My point is that most animal species _do_ behave that way, because there is a limitation in most of their cognitive abilities to realize that sometimes you have to go around the fence to get the bone.
Yes, you can argue that everything still boils down to selfishness, but there is all the difference in the world between being selfish & considerate and selfish & inconsiderate. A society that weighs heavier on the former is more productive than a society that weighs heavier on the latter. Check out "The Prisoner's Dillema" for a nice succinct take on this logic.
To bring this back on topic: People want media. The quickest way to get media is to take it, however this is not cooperative and therefore not sustainable. Like it or not, respecting a media producer's desires is actually the best way to get media. It's just like having to go around the fence to get the bone.
Ah yes. arguing about semantics is a great way to encourage mutual learning.
As demonstrated by our discussion, there are more than one type of person. I wholly admit this, and realize there are many people who go through life successfully, just like you, without realizing that there are others who don't base their actions on the same fight or flight system used by the amoeba.
Neither is right or wrong. However, most of the things that you enjoy and take for granted in society are conventions set up by those who stepped out of the deterministic path.
If that were true, then our society wouldn't be any different from those of the animal kingdom. If you don't think it is, I ask you to explain how perfect strangers sit together on the bus without attacking each other or running away.
What makes human civilzation different is that people are willing to cooperate; to respect others for the intangible and unguaranteed benefit that they will do the same for you. That is responsible for nearly all of the benefits you enjoy in modern society.
Hate to tell you this, but force is, and always has been, and probably always will, be part of this system.
There will always be force. But please look around at the current state of the world and note whether it's the more forceful or more cooperative societies that do better.
Every single person who reads this post has probably been in a situation where someone else took advantage of them. It doesn't matter if it hurts directly or not (witness the Slashdot/Hellmouth debacle), people don't like it when their things are used in a way they don't like. Upsetting other people because you can get away with it is the enemy of civilization.
So, from a societal standpoint, it is important that it be made as difficult and stigmatized as possible. Of course it can't be stopped; what can? Nonetheless, this is just social darwinism. Get used to it.
Of course it would be CPU intensive. So is a GUI with regards to a 386, but two years from now it won't matter, just like GUI's don't matter today. Things usually move forward by leapfrogging each other rather than staying in step.
Actually none of those specific ideas were mentioned in the article that I can recall. They talk about a pseudo-natural-language interface and how consistency isn't always beneficial. This comment certainly went further with the ideas.
Sounds to me like the real problem is that it did exactly the opposite: it assumed that kids could deal with some mature themes and adults could deal with some whimsical humor and fantasy. I don't see many other films in the US doing this. Did Titan succeed at it? I don't know, but I think Titan AE's failure is more about the average American being unable to mix genres and use their imagination than about Titan's own flaws. It's why foriegn films rarely succeed here.
Was Titan perfect? No. Was it a masterpiece? Probably not. (Did I enjoy it? Immensely.) Was it the same old thing everyone else is doing? No.
Is it sad that Fox is pulling the plug on this type of thing? Very much so. I would have liked to see where it would lead.
If it only applies to the label and not the icon, how is that doing "all the things mentioned"? Three out of the four suggestions were related to the icon and taking advantage of it's high res graphics.
I like the idea of doing it through scripting - which shows how simple this is and how strange that no one does this yet. I mean, aside from esthetics, there is hardly anything in current UI that justifies 1024x768 resolution or 24 bit color.
I hope the Gnome or KDE people pick up on this idea :) Go Nautilus! Go KFM!
- A file browser could show different icons for different sized text documents; a single sheet of paper for a very small file, a stack of paper for a medium sized file, and a book for large sized files.
- Depending on a file's creation time, the color of the object could be different, say a color of the rainbow for each day of the week. Of course there would be overlaps like in real life, but the way the mind works, you might remember it was the red one, which would make finding things easier.
- Files that were modified recently could be represented differently; for small and medium text files, leave a pen on top of the paper for a few days. For large files leave the book open.
- As the last access time for a file gets further in the past, the icon could become smaller or more transparent - up to say 50% or so. The most recently accessed files would stand out, but the others would still be there.
Obviously not all of these would work out wonderfully, but they would be interesting to see.If you don't like his vision, first, you can try to help through input. If that doesn't work you can use or make something else. If that doesn't work you can do nothing while you whine and troll. What a wonderful world.
Did you read my whole comment? My "generalizing of Europeans" was sarcasm - to show how ridiculous it is to group people by location. Maybe you were joking too :)
Um. Right. I can see how preventing people from getting pristine copies would really hurt the artist. What a fool I have been.