In biology, we hear that it's generally not good to regularly use some types of anti-bacterial cleansers. After awhile they start wiping out the good or innocuos types, leading to proliferation of the undesirable types. My lawn guy says the same thing about some types of weeds; apparently they keep other, larger and hardier weeds from getting a stronghold. It's funny that in the future this may be how viruses are combated in electronic devices.
What seems 1996ish to ME is the OSX desktop. At least, that's about when I got addicted to and then got over my addiction to eye candy in Linux.:D
Exactly -- which was why my first comment that I was not particularly fond of KDE or Gnome. My primary desktop is actually Fluxbox which loads, no exaggeration, in about a second after pressing Enter from the login screen. I.e., a second after login, I can start doing work. Sure, I don't log out too often but when you do...
I think you hit it on the nose. I'm not particularly fond of KDE/Gnome, but they seem years ahead of the Explorer desktop. For various reasons I've had to use an XP desktop and laptop recently. Some of the more annoying things:
1) Right clicking the desktop brings up a menu with some useless entries such as "Arrange Icons By" and "Refresh". Sure, those can be useful, but not for me. Problem is that I can't modify it to be more useful. E.g., have it launch a command prompt, an editor, browser, etc.. This is particularly onerous on an extended desktop with large displays. You can't use the mouse effectively to get to the Start menu since you may need to cross (at worst) two whole desktops. Someone suggested moving the menu to the rightmost display to halve the distance, but this is a kludge. Sure, you can also use the Windows key... But wait, this keyboard doesn't have one...
2) One desktop... You can't easily segregate tasks with a single desktop. The Powertools can add this, but it's broken for lots of apps, including Microsoft's own Excel which has problems when you move from window to window when Excel is maximized or minimized.
3) File explorer doesn't have tabs. I've gotten so used to tabs in Konqueror and Firefox that this is painful on Windows. They caught on with IE7 and did a decent job of it, but when oh when will this be available elsewhere?
4) CMD.EXE is very limited in resize capability. You can put in arbitrary row/columns, but this requires menu entries rather than a drag resize.
5) Every once in a while (say once a month), the window gets shifted *above* the active desktop. You can't alt-drag the window though and have to resort to some control key madness to bring it back. If it happened more often I would remember the key sequence... but it doesn't.
6) What rhyme or reason is there in where new windows pop up? For example, double click on My Computer and it may or may not appear on your primart display. Sometimes it's on the second head, sometimes on the first. If I move the window to the primary and then launch another one it appears -- heh, sometimes on the second, sometimes on the first.
And I could go on... But the XP desktop seems to 1996'ish.
Yeah, well if you choose FPS games all the time, then of course the plotline will be pants.
I'm just waiting for that intrepid investor to finance a feature film on games like PacMan, Nethack, Tetris, or Minesweeper. Imagine the nuance of emotion and storylines that can be pulled from such a project...
As a kid I used to read a lot of science fiction - Bradbury, Heinlein, Zelazny, Niven, etc.. Like a Slashdot users, I grew up with Star Trek and Buck Rogers. Though the article is new, SF has been asking these questions for a long time. When nuclear power first came about I imagine that lots of folks, maybe listening to a PSA about "What to do in the event of a nuclear strike", wondered what would happen if people were wiped out. Whether it's through an atom bomb or the Sun going supernova or the heat death of the Universe, our species is not immortal. We will die. So maybe it's no different from the ancient stories of the Cyclops. They know their death and this makes them look inward, look outward, maybe develop some Eastern approach to life and morality and mortality. Maybe they are like the Tolkien's elves who know their time will end... Or maybe like that civilization in Star Trek that built a machine to hold the memories of their race. Or heck, we may create a God and an Afterlife.... In any case, it's good that we think about these things once in a while between the day to day drudgery of work.
I'm typing this from bed. I'm sick right now... nothing serious, but my back is aching, my throat is burning, and I have 12 Monkeys showing on the tv screen (I was going to say I have "12 Monkeys playing on my laptop" but that just sounded weird). So yeah, the slow decay of my once proud Adonis-like figure (yeah, right) leads to these introspections.
Oh yeah.. Well when I was young we used to engage in a sport called "Bulldog Baiting". Mrs. Baker, the neighbor down the street, had a big black bulldog. It barked at anyone that walked near the chainlink fence. On the way to school we had to walk by it. That puny chain around her neck wouldn't stop her from jumping the fence... and the school was on the same side of the road so it would look sissy to cross the street then cross back. So we braved the bulldog. One time the dog wasn't chained and could move around in the yard. Boy, that near gave us a heart attack. Most days we just ran by. On some days, to prove our courage, we'd stand in front of it for 10 seconds or so that seemed an eternity. So you can talk about your namby pamby schoolyard game of "touch the boy", but I faced death, man.:D
Interesting.. Sling Player apparently allows you to watch television from any device.
Under Linux I use a program called VideoLAN Client to send television (or DVD, AVIs, camera) to other TCP enabled Linux machines. For example, I can use VLC to watch live television on my porch or in my garage over the wireless network. Quality is decent, though don't expect fullscreen DV over a 54Mbit wireless connection. Over the 100Mbit LAN and with a decent server it's pretty decent quality. MythTV also has this functionality.
You can also encode video for iPods if you want to shift your viewing to a a 2" display... I don't understand the appeal of it, but hell, the optometrists need the work.
One thing that's great (and not so great) about Linux distributions is that the filesystems are largely decoupled from the block device. Unlike AIX in which the FS and volume type are set just about joined at birth, with Linux you can put almost any filesystem on any device. This means that the tools are more generic (and maybe not as easy to use) but it gives great flexibility. For SuSe, the troubleshooting and command line tools may change slightly, but for the most part there will be no difference for the majority of users. In fact, in my SuSe build I chose ext3 because I'm more comfortable with it.
The best option is to get a mini 2-unit a/c and enclose the server with the cooling unit. You could probably build out some baffles to get the air flowing right. The 2-unit is more efficient than a window unit (which is not an option for many reasons - e.g., pop it out and abscond with the server) but less so than central a/c. However, if it's only cooling a small space it won't be too bad. It's also fairly quiet. Prices are around $1500US when I last checked.
Thing is, you pay now or pay later. Scrimp on cooling and parts tend to die fast. At the very least, put a decent standing fan to circulate the air around the PC.
You know, I've used it but I would never actually install it on one of my machines (the corporate menagerie is another matter). However, the other day I noticed that Gateway had conveniently installed MSOffice on their factory image. It needs a key to start using it, but I wonder if any vulnerabilities can get through even if the product is not registered. It was close to 250M so I deleted it, but what if I hadn't?
There's a small company called SCO that you may be interested in. They used to make a Linux workalike called SCO OpenServer. It's almost the same as working at Microsoft, except without the gyms and free coffee.
I deal with some aggregate 2 terabytes of storage on my home file servers. What works for me won't work for an enterprise corporate data center, but maybe some things are useful...
I think the article does a good job of explaining how to backup, but maybe just as important is "why?". There are some posts that say put everything on a RAID or use mirror or dd. What they fail to address is one important reason to backup: human error. You may wipe a file and then a week later need to recover it. If all you're doing is mirroring or RAID, no matter how reliable, your backups are worthless.
There's also different classes of data. I have gigabytes of videos. Some are transcoded DVDs, some are raw footage. If I lose all my transcoded DVDs it's not as critical as if I lost raw footage. Why? The DVDs can be re-ripped. It will take a long time but the data can be recreated. For the raw footage it's different, even if I keep the original Mini-DV tapes, because re-recording the video from tape won't guarantee that the file is identical. If the file is different then the edits will be different. Then there's also mail spools, CVS, personal files, etc..
What I've found is that I archive my DVD rips once every few months. Other stuff is backed up once a week to another file server.
I could care less about the OS. THe file server runs FedoraCore5. The only thing I keep is the Kickstart file so that I can rebuild it within a matter of minutes then restore the data from archives. This is just a matter of copying a samba configuration and restarting.
For the web server, all content is kept within CVS. If the web server fails, it's just a matter of rebuilding the image and pulling the latest copy from CVS. Fifteen minutes to re-image the OS. Five minutes to pull down the latest content.
For DNS, initial configuration for 8 domains is done by a perl script that auto-creates the named.conf and all zone files. Then I just append the host list to the primary domain. Ten minutes at most.
Home directories are centralized on a file server using OpenLDAP and automounts. One filesystem to backup makes it easy.. By being easy it means it gets done automatically.
Other "machines" are virtual and these are copied to DVD whenever something drastic changes (e.g., major upgrade).
Easy -- They're all old guys trying to pick up young girls. My name is Chinese, but most American's think it's female. In fact, they think of this lithe ice skater. The reality is that I'm an overweight, balding, gap-toothed, Asian male nerd... but I get so many requests from 45+ year old guys pretending to be 18 and feigning interest in stuff I listed as my pastimes. E.g., Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hello Kitty merchandise (my daughter loves it), sushi (tons of requests to hang out for sushi and wine, lots of wine). I have emails from dozens of dudes telling me they like walking on the beach and conversations in coffee bars. I finally relate to those millions of women who get physically ill when some dude tries some pathetic line...
(Hmm.. Any females reading this please note how sensitive I am from the above post. If you want to get together to chat, let me know).
It would be no different in the 1st world-- except it would take about six times as much money to corrupt them at the same level.
Bull. People steal for pennies. It's not the value, but the idea. I've seen executives with $100K annual salaries lose their jobs for pilfering from the "Ferengi Cafe" and taking advantage of a broken vending machine. One manager at my former company stole a $500 laptop.
For $100 that I paid for XP Home I got an OS. I can get support on a per incident basis for something lik $25 a shot if it's a simple thing.
For $0 I can get a full version of Fedora Core 5 plus kdevelop, C/C++/Fortran/Perl/Ruby compilers, some very good math software (R, maxima, octave), some games, CD/DVD burning software, backup software, word processors, PHP, web design software, graphics tools, etc..
For $349 RHEL4 license I can get support, one-stop updates, all of the above, etc..
The other problem with the Gordon Rule is that reading is probably just as, if not more, critical in learning to write effectively. One must learn to write properly by reading well-written material.
I don't disagree that reading is important to good writing; however, I'd dispute that it is more important. It's similar to learning how to drive. In Florida you can get a learner's permit by taking a written test. To get the real driver's license you need to pass the practical exam. Why? Because reading about something is not the same as actually doing it. I read, and have read, hundreds of books (on average, one book a week for over twenty years), but I'm not a particularly good writer.
The WSJ and NYT are decently edited and are valuable to read. Alas, the local paper in my neighborhood (South Florida *sigh*) is often rife with spelling and grammatical errors, unwieldy phrases, and bizarre language constructions. Maybe they're trying to make the paper more accessible to younger readers... Who knows.
In Florida we have (or had, it's been a while) a law called the Gordon Rule. It requires that each student must write a minimum number of words in order to graduate from high school. Though I don't agree much with the quantity required, I think it's a good idea. For me it has always seemed odd that people will practice tennis, math, guitar in order to be proficient but will not do the same thing for writing. For many students the argument is, "I know how to speak English. All I need to do is write it down." Do bloggers write better than non-bloggers? I don't know... but at least it gives some practice in using words.
Agreed, products should always have names indicating their purpose. We need to lobby Congress to pass a law. For example, what the hell is a Buick Regal? Or iPod? Are there peas in an iPod? NO! Then why call it that. Look at DreamWeaver. What the hell does that have to do with the web? What's a DreamWeaver? Sounds like some euphemism for LSD or some shaman witchery. Evolution is an email client? WTF? What's this idiotic language called Ruby? What the hell does that have to do with programming? Or Perl? Or Python? Or C?
Here are my suggestions... Firefox should be "HTTP/FTP/Gopher/Archie/XML Renderer" DreamWeaver should be "Software for Designing HTTP/XML Format Documents for Internet Usage" C should be "Low to Medium Level Computing Language" Gentoo should be "Linux Distribution for People Who Prefer to Churn Their Own Butter" (I kid, I kid)
My Swedish is not very good, but here are some translations of some of the phrases to help you navigate: Hem - Home Logga In - Log in Mest Sedda - Most viewed Populära filmklipp - Popular film clips Zappa Fram Klipp - Film Clips from (Frank) Zappa - he's big in Sweden Pepsi Girl - Pepsi Girl Titta Pa Filmklipp - Filmclip of Papa's tits Ladda Up - Lather Up
Back in my time it was Dungeons and Dragons. You'd watch the news and see these "exposes" on the kids who are LEARNING TO LOVE SATAN because of the EVIL D&D game. Oh yeah, and Satanism was also a dire threat to our kids. Oh and Styx and Kiss too. Then 2 Live Crew. My neighbor tells me that in his day it was Bob Dylan that was symptomatic of evil.
Hell yeah my CD purchases went down.. I started buying from iTunes because the first thing I do when I buy a CD is to toss it inside my laptop, fire up grip and rip the album to mp3, then import it to iTunes. I have bought hundreds of CDs before. I'm married now, have a kid, have lots of clutter. If I can get the music and skip those dinky plastic cases that are always breaking then of course I'm going to do so.
And yeah, iTunes is probably on the evil side of the good/evil line, but it's very convenient for this sandal wearing, green tea drinking, Linux using, dork that used to buy CDs.
It's very true that the fixed menu doesn't scale... This is probably the biggest reason that I use Fluxbox. It allows me to right click anywhere on the desktop and pull up an application menu. Contrast this with my XP machine which I'm using now: It has two widescreen displays but the Start Menu only shows up on the left screen. If I'm on the non-Menu screen, I need to scroll across two desktops to click the Start button and then select. There are workarounds but some keyboards don't have the Windows key, etc.. The Application menu is also problematic for the same reasons. If someone knows a way to add entries to the XP Desktop menu, please let me know...
Funny thing... I have a couple documents on TLDP (Linux doc site). One has been translated to a few other languages including Spanish, Russian, and a couple other languages. Last year I was browsing online and found a document someone had submitted to an online site. Entire passages of my words were now attributed to someone else. When I finally moved my document to a new location on my site, one of the first emails I received was that I should cite the other..umm.. site for the article. Sheesh.
Im going to do something similar. When I'm no longer able to maintain it, I'm going to designate a few people to take over the maintenance of my vain and pretentious myspace page and my vanity site. I think Chuck Norris is a worth successor. I designate Linus Torvalds to take over my, "My adventure in installing RedHat on my Dell". I designate Andrea Arcangeli to maintain the link to the comments I posted on Slashdot about adding memory to my laptop. I designate Aishwarya Rai to maintain my fan club site. Maria Sharapova can make sure the picture with me holding a tennis racket is always available on the web. Thanks for the great idea, ESR!
Wow... Back in my day people at least tried harder at cheating. I paid a good portion of my college tuition by writing papers, including stacks of 3x5 cards, for other students. I also sat with them to explain what I'd written in case the professor asked them questions. Class sizes precludes most professors from doing that sort of checking, even with TAs, but it would be nice if some random sample were checked:D.
Slashdot Mirror
In biology, we hear that it's generally not good to regularly use some types of anti-bacterial cleansers. After awhile they start wiping out the good or innocuos types, leading to proliferation of the undesirable types. My lawn guy says the same thing about some types of weeds; apparently they keep other, larger and hardier weeds from getting a stronghold. It's funny that in the future this may be how viruses are combated in electronic devices.
What seems 1996ish to ME is the OSX desktop. At least, that's about when I got addicted to and then got over my addiction to eye candy in Linux. :D
Exactly -- which was why my first comment that I was not particularly fond of KDE or Gnome. My primary desktop is actually Fluxbox which loads, no exaggeration, in about a second after pressing Enter from the login screen. I.e., a second after login, I can start doing work. Sure, I don't log out too often but when you do...
I think you hit it on the nose. I'm not particularly fond of KDE/Gnome, but they seem years ahead of the Explorer desktop. For various reasons I've had to use an XP desktop and laptop recently. Some of the more annoying things:
1) Right clicking the desktop brings up a menu with some useless entries such as "Arrange Icons By" and "Refresh". Sure, those can be useful, but not for me. Problem is that I can't modify it to be more useful. E.g., have it launch a command prompt, an editor, browser, etc.. This is particularly onerous on an extended desktop with large displays. You can't use the mouse effectively to get to the Start menu since you may need to cross (at worst) two whole desktops. Someone suggested moving the menu to the rightmost display to halve the distance, but this is a kludge. Sure, you can also use the Windows key... But wait, this keyboard doesn't have one...
2) One desktop... You can't easily segregate tasks with a single desktop. The Powertools can add this, but it's broken for lots of apps, including Microsoft's own Excel which has problems when you move from window to window when Excel is maximized or minimized.
3) File explorer doesn't have tabs. I've gotten so used to tabs in Konqueror and Firefox that this is painful on Windows. They caught on with IE7 and did a decent job of it, but when oh when will this be available elsewhere?
4) CMD.EXE is very limited in resize capability. You can put in arbitrary row/columns, but this requires menu entries rather than a drag resize.
5) Every once in a while (say once a month), the window gets shifted *above* the active desktop. You can't alt-drag the window though and have to resort to some control key madness to bring it back. If it happened more often I would remember the key sequence... but it doesn't.
6) What rhyme or reason is there in where new windows pop up? For example, double click on My Computer and it may or may not appear on your primart display. Sometimes it's on the second head, sometimes on the first. If I move the window to the primary and then launch another one it appears -- heh, sometimes on the second, sometimes on the first.
And I could go on... But the XP desktop seems to 1996'ish.
Yeah, well if you choose FPS games all the time, then of course the plotline will be pants.
I'm just waiting for that intrepid investor to finance a feature film on games like PacMan, Nethack, Tetris, or Minesweeper. Imagine the nuance of emotion and storylines that can be pulled from such a project...
As a kid I used to read a lot of science fiction - Bradbury, Heinlein, Zelazny, Niven, etc.. Like a Slashdot users, I grew up with Star Trek and Buck Rogers. Though the article is new, SF has been asking these questions for a long time. When nuclear power first came about I imagine that lots of folks, maybe listening to a PSA about "What to do in the event of a nuclear strike", wondered what would happen if people were wiped out. Whether it's through an atom bomb or the Sun going supernova or the heat death of the Universe, our species is not immortal. We will die. So maybe it's no different from the ancient stories of the Cyclops. They know their death and this makes them look inward, look outward, maybe develop some Eastern approach to life and morality and mortality. Maybe they are like the Tolkien's elves who know their time will end... Or maybe like that civilization in Star Trek that built a machine to hold the memories of their race. Or heck, we may create a God and an Afterlife.... In any case, it's good that we think about these things once in a while between the day to day drudgery of work.
I'm typing this from bed. I'm sick right now... nothing serious, but my back is aching, my throat is burning, and I have 12 Monkeys showing on the tv screen (I was going to say I have "12 Monkeys playing on my laptop" but that just sounded weird). So yeah, the slow decay of my once proud Adonis-like figure (yeah, right) leads to these introspections.
Or maybe it's the cough medicine.
Oh yeah.. Well when I was young we used to engage in a sport called "Bulldog Baiting". Mrs. Baker, the neighbor down the street, had a big black bulldog. It barked at anyone that walked near the chainlink fence. On the way to school we had to walk by it. That puny chain around her neck wouldn't stop her from jumping the fence... and the school was on the same side of the road so it would look sissy to cross the street then cross back. So we braved the bulldog. One time the dog wasn't chained and could move around in the yard. Boy, that near gave us a heart attack. Most days we just ran by. On some days, to prove our courage, we'd stand in front of it for 10 seconds or so that seemed an eternity. So you can talk about your namby pamby schoolyard game of "touch the boy", but I faced death, man. :D
Interesting.. Sling Player apparently allows you to watch television from any device.
Under Linux I use a program called VideoLAN Client to send television (or DVD, AVIs, camera) to other TCP enabled Linux machines. For example, I can use VLC to watch live television on my porch or in my garage over the wireless network. Quality is decent, though don't expect fullscreen DV over a 54Mbit wireless connection. Over the 100Mbit LAN and with a decent server it's pretty decent quality. MythTV also has this functionality.
You can also encode video for iPods if you want to shift your viewing to a a 2" display... I don't understand the appeal of it, but hell, the optometrists need the work.
One thing that's great (and not so great) about Linux distributions is that the filesystems are largely decoupled from the block device. Unlike AIX in which the FS and volume type are set just about joined at birth, with Linux you can put almost any filesystem on any device. This means that the tools are more generic (and maybe not as easy to use) but it gives great flexibility. For SuSe, the troubleshooting and command line tools may change slightly, but for the most part there will be no difference for the majority of users. In fact, in my SuSe build I chose ext3 because I'm more comfortable with it.
The best option is to get a mini 2-unit a/c and enclose the server with the cooling unit. You could probably build out some baffles to get the air flowing right. The 2-unit is more efficient than a window unit (which is not an option for many reasons - e.g., pop it out and abscond with the server) but less so than central a/c. However, if it's only cooling a small space it won't be too bad. It's also fairly quiet. Prices are around $1500US when I last checked.
Thing is, you pay now or pay later. Scrimp on cooling and parts tend to die fast. At the very least, put a decent standing fan to circulate the air around the PC.
You know, I've used it but I would never actually install it on one of my machines (the corporate menagerie is another matter). However, the other day I noticed that Gateway had conveniently installed MSOffice on their factory image. It needs a key to start using it, but I wonder if any vulnerabilities can get through even if the product is not registered. It was close to 250M so I deleted it, but what if I hadn't?
There's a small company called SCO that you may be interested in. They used to make a Linux workalike called SCO OpenServer. It's almost the same as working at Microsoft, except without the gyms and free coffee.
I deal with some aggregate 2 terabytes of storage on my home file servers. What works for me won't work for an enterprise corporate data center, but maybe some things are useful...
I think the article does a good job of explaining how to backup, but maybe just as important is "why?". There are some posts that say put everything on a RAID or use mirror or dd. What they fail to address is one important reason to backup: human error. You may wipe a file and then a week later need to recover it. If all you're doing is mirroring or RAID, no matter how reliable, your backups are worthless.
There's also different classes of data. I have gigabytes of videos. Some are transcoded DVDs, some are raw footage. If I lose all my transcoded DVDs it's not as critical as if I lost raw footage. Why? The DVDs can be re-ripped. It will take a long time but the data can be recreated. For the raw footage it's different, even if I keep the original Mini-DV tapes, because re-recording the video from tape won't guarantee that the file is identical. If the file is different then the edits will be different. Then there's also mail spools, CVS, personal files, etc..
What I've found is that I archive my DVD rips once every few months. Other stuff is backed up once a week to another file server.
I could care less about the OS. THe file server runs FedoraCore5. The only thing I keep is the Kickstart file so that I can rebuild it within a matter of minutes then restore the data from archives. This is just a matter of copying a samba configuration and restarting.
For the web server, all content is kept within CVS. If the web server fails, it's just a matter of rebuilding the image and pulling the latest copy from CVS. Fifteen minutes to re-image the OS. Five minutes to pull down the latest content.
For DNS, initial configuration for 8 domains is done by a perl script that auto-creates the named.conf and all zone files. Then I just append the host list to the primary domain. Ten minutes at most.
Home directories are centralized on a file server using OpenLDAP and automounts. One filesystem to backup makes it easy.. By being easy it means it gets done automatically.
Other "machines" are virtual and these are copied to DVD whenever something drastic changes (e.g., major upgrade).
Easy -- They're all old guys trying to pick up young girls. My name is Chinese, but most American's think it's female. In fact, they think of this lithe ice skater. The reality is that I'm an overweight, balding, gap-toothed, Asian male nerd... but I get so many requests from 45+ year old guys pretending to be 18 and feigning interest in stuff I listed as my pastimes. E.g., Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hello Kitty merchandise (my daughter loves it), sushi (tons of requests to hang out for sushi and wine, lots of wine). I have emails from dozens of dudes telling me they like walking on the beach and conversations in coffee bars. I finally relate to those millions of women who get physically ill when some dude tries some pathetic line...
(Hmm.. Any females reading this please note how sensitive I am from the above post. If you want to get together to chat, let me know).
It would be no different in the 1st world-- except it would take about six times as much money to corrupt them at the same level.
Bull. People steal for pennies. It's not the value, but the idea. I've seen executives with $100K annual salaries lose their jobs for pilfering from the "Ferengi Cafe" and taking advantage of a broken vending machine. One manager at my former company stole a $500 laptop.
For $100 that I paid for XP Home I got an OS. I can get support on a per incident basis for something lik $25 a shot if it's a simple thing.
For $0 I can get a full version of Fedora Core 5 plus kdevelop, C/C++/Fortran/Perl/Ruby compilers, some very good math software (R, maxima, octave), some games, CD/DVD burning software, backup software, word processors, PHP, web design software, graphics tools, etc..
For $349 RHEL4 license I can get support, one-stop updates, all of the above, etc..
Now what do you get for your $149?
The other problem with the Gordon Rule is that reading is probably just as, if not more, critical in learning to write effectively. One must learn to write properly by reading well-written material.
I don't disagree that reading is important to good writing; however, I'd dispute that it is more important. It's similar to learning how to drive. In Florida you can get a learner's permit by taking a written test. To get the real driver's license you need to pass the practical exam. Why? Because reading about something is not the same as actually doing it. I read, and have read, hundreds of books (on average, one book a week for over twenty years), but I'm not a particularly good writer.
The WSJ and NYT are decently edited and are valuable to read. Alas, the local paper in my neighborhood (South Florida *sigh*) is often rife with spelling and grammatical errors, unwieldy phrases, and bizarre language constructions. Maybe they're trying to make the paper more accessible to younger readers... Who knows.
In Florida we have (or had, it's been a while) a law called the Gordon Rule. It requires that each student must write a minimum number of words in order to graduate from high school. Though I don't agree much with the quantity required, I think it's a good idea. For me it has always seemed odd that people will practice tennis, math, guitar in order to be proficient but will not do the same thing for writing. For many students the argument is, "I know how to speak English. All I need to do is write it down." Do bloggers write better than non-bloggers? I don't know... but at least it gives some practice in using words.
Agreed, products should always have names indicating their purpose. We need to lobby Congress to pass a law. For example, what the hell is a Buick Regal? Or iPod? Are there peas in an iPod? NO! Then why call it that. Look at DreamWeaver. What the hell does that have to do with the web? What's a DreamWeaver? Sounds like some euphemism for LSD or some shaman witchery. Evolution is an email client? WTF? What's this idiotic language called Ruby? What the hell does that have to do with programming? Or Perl? Or Python? Or C?
Here are my suggestions...
Firefox should be "HTTP/FTP/Gopher/Archie/XML Renderer"
DreamWeaver should be "Software for Designing HTTP/XML Format Documents for Internet Usage"
C should be "Low to Medium Level Computing Language"
Gentoo should be "Linux Distribution for People Who Prefer to Churn Their Own Butter" (I kid, I kid)
My Swedish is not very good, but here are some translations of some of the phrases to help you navigate:
Hem - Home
Logga In - Log in
Mest Sedda - Most viewed
Populära filmklipp - Popular film clips
Zappa Fram Klipp - Film Clips from (Frank) Zappa - he's big in Sweden
Pepsi Girl - Pepsi Girl
Titta Pa Filmklipp - Filmclip of Papa's tits
Ladda Up - Lather Up
Back in my time it was Dungeons and Dragons. You'd watch the news and see these "exposes" on the kids who are LEARNING TO LOVE SATAN because of the EVIL D&D game. Oh yeah, and Satanism was also a dire threat to our kids. Oh and Styx and Kiss too. Then 2 Live Crew. My neighbor tells me that in his day it was Bob Dylan that was symptomatic of evil.
Hell yeah my CD purchases went down.. I started buying from iTunes because the first thing I do when I buy a CD is to toss it inside my laptop, fire up grip and rip the album to mp3, then import it to iTunes. I have bought hundreds of CDs before. I'm married now, have a kid, have lots of clutter. If I can get the music and skip those dinky plastic cases that are always breaking then of course I'm going to do so.
And yeah, iTunes is probably on the evil side of the good/evil line, but it's very convenient for this sandal wearing, green tea drinking, Linux using, dork that used to buy CDs.
It's very true that the fixed menu doesn't scale... This is probably the biggest reason that I use Fluxbox. It allows me to right click anywhere on the desktop and pull up an application menu. Contrast this with my XP machine which I'm using now: It has two widescreen displays but the Start Menu only shows up on the left screen. If I'm on the non-Menu screen, I need to scroll across two desktops to click the Start button and then select. There are workarounds but some keyboards don't have the Windows key, etc.. The Application menu is also problematic for the same reasons. If someone knows a way to add entries to the XP Desktop menu, please let me know...
Funny thing... I have a couple documents on TLDP (Linux doc site). One has been translated to a few other languages including Spanish, Russian, and a couple other languages. Last year I was browsing online and found a document someone had submitted to an online site. Entire passages of my words were now attributed to someone else. When I finally moved my document to a new location on my site, one of the first emails I received was that I should cite the other ..umm.. site for the article. Sheesh.
Im going to do something similar. When I'm no longer able to maintain it, I'm going to designate a few people to take over the maintenance of my vain and pretentious myspace page and my vanity site. I think Chuck Norris is a worth successor. I designate Linus Torvalds to take over my, "My adventure in installing RedHat on my Dell". I designate Andrea Arcangeli to maintain the link to the comments I posted on Slashdot about adding memory to my laptop. I designate Aishwarya Rai to maintain my fan club site. Maria Sharapova can make sure the picture with me holding a tennis racket is always available on the web. Thanks for the great idea, ESR!
Wow... Back in my day people at least tried harder at cheating. I paid a good portion of my college tuition by writing papers, including stacks of 3x5 cards, for other students. I also sat with them to explain what I'd written in case the professor asked them questions. Class sizes precludes most professors from doing that sort of checking, even with TAs, but it would be nice if some random sample were checked :D.