Long ago, Rich Hall appeared on the Larry King show, and Larry suggested that people call in with suggestions for sniglets (which, you'll recall, are words that should be in the dictionary but aren't, that are supposed to have funny definitions, e.g. "elaccelleration, the belief that pushing the elevator button more times will speed it up").
The segment failed miserably. People's suggestions were not at all funny.
It was at that point I realized one advantage of being a programmer: everybody believes him/herself funny, but not everybody believe him/herself to be a programmer. Programmers don't get told at parties, "Hey, check out this great sort routine I wrote--you'll really like it."
I agree. We should not play by MS's rules... but they are able to make sure that there are no direct replacements for their technology, by keeping interfaces secret (vide their weaseling around the EU's requirements), and forcing those who would be compatible into a perpetual game of catch-up. They did it to OS/2 (which kept up the chase until MS gratuitously added a memory allocation routine to win32s.dll that had no useful purpose other than to break a major assumption underlying OS/2 DOS sessions (an address space running from 0 to 512M -1)); they tried it with Kerberos. WINE has been under development for how long?
So... intentional incompatibility doesn't work, and compatibility can always be subverted. What's the third way?
"legitimate tax revenues"? Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
Re:In the eye of the beholder
on
Gnome 2.14 Review
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I'm sure more features will be added [to gnome-screensaver] in later versions.
I take it you've not read the comments from the developer in bugzilla, where requests for the ability to set options and for full-screen preview are marked WONTFIX. Quotes:
"My view is that any screensaver theme that requires configuration is inherently broken."
"I don't think [full-screen preview] solves any real problems."
Yes, there are valid concerns about random people setting GLtext to display [insert obscenity here] or pointing the slideshow screensaver at their pr0n collection on a computer in a government office or business. That said, that problem has been "solved" in a manner inconsistent with the rest of GNOME. pessulus and sabayon (or however those are spelled) is supposed to be able to set limits of that sort, but the author of gnome-screensaver has unilaterally hard-wired it into police state mode, regardless of how the system administrator (who, for most of us, is us) wants it.
How much $$$ do you suppose one would have to put up to get a reasonable version of gnome-screensaver forked that allows, under pessulus control, the system administrator to either allow or deny option setting on an individual screensaver basis, allows full-screen previews, and allows the individual user to indicate for each screensaver whether it should be in the pool for random selection for that user? gnome-screensaver is, IMHO, sufficiently fundamentally WRONG that I'd contribute to a fund for a version that does it right.
Sorry to go on repeatedly and at length about what is perhaps a trivial issue, but for me it's the proverbial last straw.
I hope so. It seriously needs some complexity analysis, because if you end up visiting a directory with a few thousand entries, it takes a LONG time, and if it caches anything, it's not obvious from the time it takes.
GNOME now features an integrated screensaver. GNOME Screensaver is compatible with the "hacks" popular in Xscreensaver, but also has lots of new features unavailable in Xscreensaver, like being essentially unconfigurable by the user, who can't be trusted not to put rude messages in GLtext.
Figure 16. Configuring the few GNOME Screensaver properties we deign to let the user control
I cannot describe in words how assine [sic] this statement is..
Let's see... This web page lists the LD50 for Clostridium botulinum for mice as 30 picograms per kilogram of body weight, and C. botulinum neurotoxin at 200 picograms/kg. We're so nonchalant about botox that people have parties where they inject themselves with it to get rid of wrinkles. See also this portion of the Wikipedia entry on plutonium.
Re:Will I be able to configure the screensaver?
on
A Look at GNOME 2.14
·
· Score: 1
Thank you! Your post should be engraved on many monitors, and if I hadn't already posted, I'd have moderated you +1 Insightful. You hit the proverbial nail on its figurative head.
Re:Will I be able to configure the screensaver?
on
A Look at GNOME 2.14
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Give me a break. "According to developers".. bullshit. You didn't ask them.
There are no plans to implement this feature. I don't think this feature solves any real problems.
Res ipsa loquitur.
Will I be able to configure the screensaver?
on
A Look at GNOME 2.14
·
· Score: 1
With Ubuntu Dapper Drake I have finally been exposed to gnome-screensaver, which doesn't let you select which screensavers you wish the random selector to choose from, doesn't let you set options for the screensavers (because a screensaver with options, according to the developers, is broken), and won't give you a full-screen preview (because, according to the developers, being able to do so doesn't really solve any problem).
The outcry over "spatial mode" nautilus at least caused changes to make it easy to select the former behavior. If gnome-screensaver doesn't regain some of the configurability xscreensaver had, I certainly won't use gnome-screensaver, and am liable to look for alternatives to GNOME period.
If they're right, perhaps that original "things are going to heck in a handbasket" guy, Plato, will finally be happy, because if writing becomes worthless, memorization will make a comeback. (His gripe was that with this new-fangled writing stuff, people won't bother to memorize things any more, and then where will we be?)
Griping about the state of the language has always been with us. One reason we know about Vulgar Latin is that the Safires and Simons of that time wrote guides to proper language: "It's equus, dammit, not caballus!" Swift kvetched about the horrid then-neologism of "mob" instead of the full Latin mobile vulgus (fickle crowd). Somehow Dante managed to write well despite using an even more deviated version of Latin, and
Technical words have crept into the vocabulary for some time. A "satellite" was once a human, a hanger-on to some famous person. "Broadcast" was what farmers did to seed when it came time to sow. Technology became important to the general public a long time ago--your (great?) grandparents probably wanted to make a point of getting one of the new, improved superheterodyne radios instead of the old superregenerative kind, just as now the average Internet user has to worry about DDoS attacks.
TFA's author may wish to return to some mythical golden age, but alas, it never existed.
Coptic is the surviving language closest to ancient Egyptian, if memory serves. I think the poster meant "canopic" jars, the jars where the Egyptians would put the organs that they took out of the body being mummified.
Are TFAs saying that how you get the money is irrelevant, as long as you donate a chunk of it to charity? I'm sorry; I can't go along with that. Bill Gates is despicable because of how he acquired his billions, no matter how much of it he gives away.
I don't agree with any company having to give out its secrets. I mean, what if Europe demanded to know the secret ingredients to certain food products.
That's not a very good analogy. As a Coke drinker, I can still communicate with Pepsi drinkers, and there aren't beverage containers into which one can pour Coke but not Pepsi.
Computer Lib/Dream Machines is one of the classics, but is hard to get and doesn't discuss recent (= in the last couple of decades) developments.
But, Russy-poo has done the job for you. The Secret Guide to Computersis kept up to date, and while it covers many things and thus can't go into much detail about them, it does a good job and is fun to read. (I'm not associated with Russ Walter, save to the extent that I admire his work.)
Amen. If I'm ever sent to jail for a crime of passion, it will be for assaulting someone who refers to hard drive space as "memory."
Re:C++ is more like Perl...
on
Demise of C++?
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· Score: 1
The truth is, you can have bizzare [sic] WTF moments in *any* language.
That's no excuse for not trying to minimize them.
Avoiding the perverse features oneself doesn't help when faced with code written by others that does use them; also, compiler writers don't have the luxury of avoiding implementing, or trying to implement, said features. (Recall the C++ book whose author realized that the book, which describes a usable subset of the language, was necessary when Stroustrup himself said he hadn't realized how some C++ features interacted.)
Lanier cites life as an example of a system without "lock-in". Eh? Life on earth is the product of billions of years of backwards compatibility, and the human body is full of lousy "good enough" design compromises that natural selection is unlikely to change because most of the time, people manage to reproduce despite them.
Slashdot Mirror
...is best left to professionals.
Long ago, Rich Hall appeared on the Larry King show, and Larry suggested that people call in with suggestions for sniglets (which, you'll recall, are words that should be in the dictionary but aren't, that are supposed to have funny definitions, e.g. "elaccelleration, the belief that pushing the elevator button more times will speed it up").
The segment failed miserably. People's suggestions were not at all funny.
It was at that point I realized one advantage of being a programmer: everybody believes him/herself funny, but not everybody believe him/herself to be a programmer. Programmers don't get told at parties, "Hey, check out this great sort routine I wrote--you'll really like it."
Microsoft's double-click patent only applies to buttons on handhelds (or, as they word it : "limited resource computing device"...
:)
Of course, every computing device has limited resources.
I agree. We should not play by MS's rules... but they are able to make sure that there are no direct replacements for their technology, by keeping interfaces secret (vide their weaseling around the EU's requirements), and forcing those who would be compatible into a perpetual game of catch-up. They did it to OS/2 (which kept up the chase until MS gratuitously added a memory allocation routine to win32s.dll that had no useful purpose other than to break a major assumption underlying OS/2 DOS sessions (an address space running from 0 to 512M -1)); they tried it with Kerberos. WINE has been under development for how long?
So... intentional incompatibility doesn't work, and compatibility can always be subverted. What's the third way?
"legitimate tax revenues"? Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
I'm sure more features will be added [to gnome-screensaver] in later versions.
I take it you've not read the comments from the developer in bugzilla, where requests for the ability to set options and for full-screen preview are marked WONTFIX. Quotes:
"My view is that any screensaver theme that requires configuration is inherently broken."
"I don't think [full-screen preview] solves any real problems."
Yes, there are valid concerns about random people setting GLtext to display [insert obscenity here] or pointing the slideshow screensaver at their pr0n collection on a computer in a government office or business. That said, that problem has been "solved" in a manner inconsistent with the rest of GNOME. pessulus and sabayon (or however those are spelled) is supposed to be able to set limits of that sort, but the author of gnome-screensaver has unilaterally hard-wired it into police state mode, regardless of how the system administrator (who, for most of us, is us) wants it.
How much $$$ do you suppose one would have to put up to get a reasonable version of gnome-screensaver forked that allows, under pessulus control, the system administrator to either allow or deny option setting on an individual screensaver basis, allows full-screen previews, and allows the individual user to indicate for each screensaver whether it should be in the pool for random selection for that user? gnome-screensaver is, IMHO, sufficiently fundamentally WRONG that I'd contribute to a fund for a version that does it right.
Sorry to go on repeatedly and at length about what is perhaps a trivial issue, but for me it's the proverbial last straw.
So you never want Linux to be for more than geeks?
No, but OTOH there's a reason that people consider the Henry Ford line "You can have any color you want, as long as it's black" quaint and humorous.
I hope so. It seriously needs some complexity analysis, because if you end up visiting a directory with a few thousand entries, it takes a LONG time, and if it caches anything, it's not obvious from the time it takes.
GNOME now features an integrated screensaver. GNOME Screensaver is compatible with the "hacks" popular in Xscreensaver, but also has lots of new features unavailable in Xscreensaver, like being essentially unconfigurable by the user, who can't be trusted not to put rude messages in GLtext.
Figure 16. Configuring the few GNOME Screensaver properties we deign to let the user control
Why bother when there's already PCLinuxOS? texstar does very good work...
I cannot describe in words how assine [sic] this statement is..
Let's see... This web page lists the LD50 for Clostridium botulinum for mice as 30 picograms per kilogram of body weight, and C. botulinum neurotoxin at 200 picograms/kg. We're so nonchalant about botox that people have parties where they inject themselves with it to get rid of wrinkles. See also this portion of the Wikipedia entry on plutonium.
Great I can't wait till I can buy me a Bottle of Selsun Poo...
Well, at least it won't be sham poo... it'll be real poo!
All you have to do is look at the AM stereo fiasco.
Thank you! Your post should be engraved on many monitors, and if I hadn't already posted, I'd have moderated you +1 Insightful. You hit the proverbial nail on its figurative head.
Give me a break. "According to developers".. bullshit. You didn't ask them.
From the gnome-screensaver FAQ:
Why doesn't the screensaver preferences tool allow me to change the settings for the theme?
We are trying to take a different approach. We would prefer for the themes to simply work.
From Bug 316654 - no ability to configure the different screensavers, which is resolved and marked WONTFIX:
I don't have any plans to support this. My view is that any screensaver theme that requires configuration is inherently broken.
From Bug 316655 - no ability to full screen preview individual screensavers, which is also resolved and marked WONTFIX:
There are no plans to implement this feature. I don't think this feature solves any real problems.
Res ipsa loquitur.
With Ubuntu Dapper Drake I have finally been exposed to gnome-screensaver, which doesn't let you select which screensavers you wish the random selector to choose from, doesn't let you set options for the screensavers (because a screensaver with options, according to the developers, is broken), and won't give you a full-screen preview (because, according to the developers, being able to do so doesn't really solve any problem).
The outcry over "spatial mode" nautilus at least caused changes to make it easy to select the former behavior. If gnome-screensaver doesn't regain some of the configurability xscreensaver had, I certainly won't use gnome-screensaver, and am liable to look for alternatives to GNOME period.
If they're right, perhaps that original "things are going to heck in a handbasket" guy, Plato, will finally be happy, because if writing becomes worthless, memorization will make a comeback. (His gripe was that with this new-fangled writing stuff, people won't bother to memorize things any more, and then where will we be?)
Griping about the state of the language has always been with us. One reason we know about Vulgar Latin is that the Safires and Simons of that time wrote guides to proper language: "It's equus, dammit, not caballus!" Swift kvetched about the horrid then-neologism of "mob" instead of the full Latin mobile vulgus (fickle crowd). Somehow Dante managed to write well despite using an even more deviated version of Latin, and
Technical words have crept into the vocabulary for some time. A "satellite" was once a human, a hanger-on to some famous person. "Broadcast" was what farmers did to seed when it came time to sow. Technology became important to the general public a long time ago--your (great?) grandparents probably wanted to make a point of getting one of the new, improved superheterodyne radios instead of the old superregenerative kind, just as now the average Internet user has to worry about DDoS attacks.
TFA's author may wish to return to some mythical golden age, but alas, it never existed.
...and she should've waited for an answer in the morning.
Coptic is the surviving language closest to ancient Egyptian, if memory serves. I think the poster meant "canopic" jars, the jars where the Egyptians would put the organs that they took out of the body being mummified.
Are TFAs saying that how you get the money is irrelevant, as long as you donate a chunk of it to charity? I'm sorry; I can't go along with that. Bill Gates is despicable because of how he acquired his billions, no matter how much of it he gives away.
I don't agree with any company having to give out its secrets. I mean, what if Europe demanded to know the secret ingredients to certain food products.
That's not a very good analogy. As a Coke drinker, I can still communicate with Pepsi drinkers, and there aren't beverage containers into which one can pour Coke but not Pepsi.
We have an answer to the question posed by the Bee Gees years ago.
(Seriously... this is great news. I hope it works.)
Computer Lib/Dream Machines is one of the classics, but is hard to get and doesn't discuss recent (= in the last couple of decades) developments.
But, Russy-poo has done the job for you. The Secret Guide to Computers is kept up to date, and while it covers many things and thus can't go into much detail about them, it does a good job and is fun to read. (I'm not associated with Russ Walter, save to the extent that I admire his work.)
Amen. If I'm ever sent to jail for a crime of passion, it will be for assaulting someone who refers to hard drive space as "memory."
The truth is, you can have bizzare [sic] WTF moments in *any* language.
That's no excuse for not trying to minimize them.
Avoiding the perverse features oneself doesn't help when faced with code written by others that does use them; also, compiler writers don't have the luxury of avoiding implementing, or trying to implement, said features. (Recall the C++ book whose author realized that the book, which describes a usable subset of the language, was necessary when Stroustrup himself said he hadn't realized how some C++ features interacted.)
Lanier cites life as an example of a system without "lock-in". Eh? Life on earth is the product of billions of years of backwards compatibility, and the human body is full of lousy "good enough" design compromises that natural selection is unlikely to change because most of the time, people manage to reproduce despite them.