This is the last post I'm going to be replying to, I am convinvced these kind of comments show that most of/. never got out of grade 4. Your suggestions are beyond ignorant. Spend a day in the average suburban area in a country like India, then you'll get it. If you are unemployed in most 3rd world countries you don't have much of a house and you proabably don't have electricity. How the fuck are you supposed to play the stockmarket without a house to put your computer in and the electricity to run it? You probably have no decent access to clean clothes, so you will get kicked out of any sort of public access. There won't be company that will hire you unless you are reasonably educated or have the money to provide for your education by yourself (the money supplying things like food, light shelter, and then books). THank you for letting us know with a bit of hard work and a dash of creativity a 60 year old man on the streets of India can go from rags to riches...I am serisouly considering writing/. article highling stupid posts like this one and letting people know that opensource ideals and internet access have very little to with the life of most people on this earth and they won't feed and clothe them.
Are you a god damn git? A C++ book would be great to be able to learn C++ if you
a) had food b) had clothes c) had water c) didn't have any severe untreated medical conditions d)were able to actually walk into a professional place of work without getting kicked out e) actually had some math skills to be able to do some useful work f) have been taught to read g) Have a house and for the computer and books that you own so that they don't get wet, not to mention the money to pay for maitinaing the computer
A person born in the ghetto will live grow old an die in the ghetto. I swear so many people who are brought up in the west have totally ignorant views of what it means to be poor in a poor country.
Inefficient governments and corruption and just plain evilness are not just a part of the third world, in fact America does a darn fine job of promoting all of them.
The 5 points you list have obvious direct analogues in America; they are not the reason why a country like India doesn't have ecnomic success.
Hmm I guess a few centuries of colonial rule, overopulation and western greed have nothing to do with it. I really think moderation should only be applied to take out plain old trolls, a comment like the above is clearly ignorant.
Well you can't really compare dimensions of a chain and a small ball. Besides, theese quantum effects of bucky balls can be seen under non-biological conditions, we ave found that we generally don't need to take quantum effects into account when clalculating the structure replication and changes in DNA.
Why is/. filled with people like this? You clearly have no idea what is involved in speech analysis (or any other field that requires more than picking up a "for dummies" book). The hard part is developing novel algorithms, testing them against a large populations, analyzing performance, optimizing, engineering the software for use in other apps, keeping pace and co-ordinating with what other researchers in the field are doing... Join a research team (if you have a degree) and let's see how much novel, quality work you produce; then you'll understand how hard this is. I can already tell that you haven't done any real work in computing; try it some time before posting dumb comments.
Sorry to rant, but in all seriousness, if you want to become smarter (you are obviously young, so you have time to learn, and I know you will), open your mind a little and learn about what kind of work is required to produce projects like this; I'll bet every researcher on that team works and thinks harder on their slowest days then you ever have (that is not an insult, I just want to get across that you make what they are doing sound trivial).
Like I said in earilier posts, this is a non-proposal. Just what parts of linux are you going to internationalize? All the shells, installation scripts, all possible system utils, compiler switches?
There are plenty of pentiums in india...why the hell would india want/need millions of 386's boxes running vi and lynx? IS this really providing technology to the masses? THere is also plenty of inet access and cd burners, schools do not want your garbage disks...send money if you really want to help.
How does/. rate "yay linux" crap like this so high?
Coin some new terms, add the words MP3, Linux and opensource (okay he didn't say it but I'm generalizing), connect them with some yarn and scotch tape and you've got a cool new Slashdot- approved infomative essay.
"Yet, India faces a peculiar problem in that almost all popular operating systems and applications packages are available only in English, a language which is spoken by a mere ten percent of the population."
(Let's not forget to mention that we are actually dealing with 42% of the population, 52% of india is literate, and it's a safe bet that all 10% who speak english are literate)
Virtually all high school educated people in india (=those who have enough money to buy a computer) have enough command of the english languge to use software, understand help bubbles etc. I am not saying that a high scool education should be a pre-req for using a computer; however a massive xlation project would cause too many splits; and not return on the money it would take to maintain and produce indian versions of all sorts of software (you realize how much there is? who deicdes what GPL software gets xlated?) and to maintain all the fun compatability issues that will happen.
"One development that can help India out of this deadlock is a national-level, collaborative effort to localise Linux to Indian languages."
Localise linux? Localizing the kernel and device drivers wouldn't do much good IMHO. Oh wait you mean all the software available for linux (most of it which it intended to run on many different unicies)?? Oh I get it...so you plan on xlating all GPL utilies (ssh, ls, mv, cron), their input and output file formats, display information, KDE, GNOME, all software documentation (what good is software if you don't know how to use it), error messages?...and keep up with anything that joe blow releases under GPL? The above proposal is just catagorically wrong.
"Linux is a free operating system that has gained phenomenal popularity in recent times because it allows users to modify it to suit their own needs."
While Linux's development grwoth has stemmed from kernel hackers modifying linux at the base; it "phenomenal popularity" has nothing to do with it. Linux is a stable, free UNIX; one can run all sorts of wonderful wide-spread UNIX stuff on it, and use it as a solid server; that's why it is popular. In general, users do not modify linux beyond any other OS, changing drivers, installing libraries and applications, and system settings; everybody does this with every OS.
"The growth of content in platform-independent file formats (HTML, MP3 etc) has also reduced the dependence on a specific operating system, making Linux a viable option."
I can't think of any widely used content before html (really platform independant?) that was OS dependant. ASCII, UNICODE, gif, wav, jpg, etc. Linux is no more or less viable due to the fact that we are using platform independant content...we have generally always been. Application independant is another story, which would definately point to a negative for linux (for tools that would be in most general use wp's, spreadsheets, database creation tools etc...)
"The existing user interface paradigm of files and folders evolved because computers were essentially designed for a western audience familiar with real-life files and folders. There is no reason to assume why the same paradigm should apply to a trader in Tamil Nadu or a farmer in Madhya Pradesh. "
Well assuming that the complaint is about the graphical representation of the underlying OS representation of files n' directories (which is the same as linux) under the Windows shell...under a graphical desktop environment (KDE/GNOME) of linux, they are represented the same way. And anyone could write a shell for either OS that pictured directories as books and pages or whatever...
"The openness of Linux (and other free operating systems like Free BSD) allows local linguistic groups to customise user interfaces in ways that are far more culturally sensitive than any centrally controlled approach. Linguistic groups that may be considered too small a market by vendors can also take their destiny in their own hands by customising the Linux interface to their own needs."
The abstraction level at which UI software as described is as easily implimented under,say, windows as linux. In terms of development, the UI really doesn't have much to do with the OS as any other application...linux isn't any more or less easily localizeable than any other OS.
I won't even get into cost issues, besides the fact that it is debatable...
To me, the article is just another "be cool, say linux" essay clone...but hell it might be a good a way of getting the government to get scared of not being cool and to pump some money in which can help some people. I suppose the only practical solution is to invest in language xlation research and come up with a good translator for the non-english readers.
Maybe I don't understand something about/. moderation, but the above poster is absolutely correct, the people talking about the result taking a chunk out of big bang theory are making a catagoreical error; certainly doesn't deserve a score of 0. Why the hell do some people just HAVE to comment on something regardless of the fact that they know they don't know what they are talking about?
There is no question that the science of chemical and molecular biology will be the major sinks of funding and interest in the next century. Many people talk about a scientific shift from physics to biology, which is misleading as a lot of what's happening is physics which we are using to understand biology past the pure chemical level; it's really more of a shift of application then anything else. Will we ever see a shift in the reverse? That is the DNA , protien and water which produce a life form, are by themselves inanimate molecules that play entirely by the rules of physics. But by some magic ingredient, when they are all arranged carefully one gets something quite different than simply a larger inanimate blob. So we know this complexity to exist at the chemical level, can it exist at the subatomic? Could there be entire collections of interacting free high energy subatomic particles that can give rise to something analogous to a life form that would follow rules of population dynamics, metabolisms, concioussness etc.? How could we even begin searching for such beasts?
It was nearing (maybe even reached) the end of it's cycle....but what caused the resurrection? One word: P O K E M O N Which ignited the Gameboy again, and companies can sell games years old like they were new (literally), or translate old NES titles and still make money off them...
I'd just like to comment on what I think is ignorance about geneomics. You have an idea for an invention, you spend tonnes of time an money developing it and you make something, and sell it to make a profit so that you can pay back all your staff so they can buy food and healthcare and all those wonderful things. It would really be unfair for anyone else to step in the middle, copy you work and claim it as theirs and make a profit when you did all the development, that's why a patent makes sense. You spend a tonne of mony researching a particular nucleic acid sequence, beg for funding from rich people and eventulay you have something that you can make some money off of because you've proven it to be safe and beneficial, and you patent your invention (yes it is an invention, even with natural sequences it requires a lot of work in order to determine what they do, you should really have patent rights if you discover the function/purpose of things so complex). Someone could copy your sequence with a pen and paper and claim it as theirs when you've given your sweat and blood finding it; it makes sense to patent such things becuase like all things, they cost time effort and money, those investments have to be so people can make a living just like any other product.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the last post I'm going to be replying to, I am convinvced these kind of comments show that most of /. never got out of grade 4. Your suggestions are beyond ignorant. Spend a day in the average suburban area in a country like India, then you'll get it. If you are unemployed in most 3rd world countries you don't have much of a house and you proabably don't have electricity. How the fuck are you supposed to play the stockmarket without a house to put your computer in and the electricity to run it? You probably have no decent access to clean clothes, so you will get kicked out of any sort of public access. There won't be company that will hire you unless you are reasonably educated or have the money to provide for your education by yourself (the money supplying things like food, light shelter, and then books). THank you for letting us know with a bit of hard work and a dash of creativity a 60 year old man on the streets of India can go from rags to riches...I am serisouly considering writing /. article highling stupid posts like this one and letting people know that opensource ideals and internet access have very little to with the life of most people on this earth and they won't feed and clothe them.
Are you a god damn git?
A C++ book would be great to be able to learn C++ if you
a) had food
b) had clothes
c) had water
c) didn't have any severe untreated medical conditions
d)were able to actually walk into a professional place of work without getting kicked out
e) actually had some math skills to be able to do some useful work
f) have been taught to read
g) Have a house and for the computer and books that you own so that they don't get wet, not to mention the money to pay for maitinaing the computer
A person born in the ghetto will live grow old an die in the ghetto. I swear so many people who are brought up in the west have totally ignorant views of what it means to be poor in a poor country.
Inefficient governments and corruption and just plain evilness are not just a part of the third world, in fact America does a darn fine job of promoting all of them.
The 5 points you list have obvious direct analogues in America; they are not the reason why a country like India doesn't have ecnomic success.
Hmm I guess a few centuries of colonial rule, overopulation and western greed have nothing to do with it. I really think moderation should only be applied to take out plain old trolls, a comment like the above is clearly ignorant.
Well you can't really compare dimensions of a chain and a small ball. Besides, theese quantum effects of bucky balls can be seen under non-biological conditions, we ave found that we generally don't need to take quantum effects into account when clalculating the structure replication and changes in DNA.
Why is /. filled with people like this?
You clearly have no idea what is involved in speech analysis (or any other field that requires more than picking up a "for dummies" book). The hard part is developing novel algorithms, testing them against a large populations, analyzing performance, optimizing, engineering the software for use in other apps, keeping pace and co-ordinating with what other researchers in the field are doing...
Join a research team (if you have a degree) and let's see how much novel, quality work you produce; then you'll understand how hard this is. I can already tell that you haven't done any real work in computing; try it some time before posting dumb comments.
Sorry to rant, but in all seriousness, if you want to become smarter (you are obviously young, so you have time to learn, and I know you will), open your mind a little and learn about what kind of work is required to produce projects like this; I'll bet every researcher on that team works and thinks harder on their slowest days then you ever have (that is not an insult, I just want to get across that you make what they are doing sound trivial).
Like I said in earilier posts, this is a non-proposal. Just what parts of linux are you going to internationalize? All the shells, installation scripts, all possible system utils, compiler switches?
/. rate "yay linux" crap like this so high?
There are plenty of pentiums in india...why the hell would india want/need millions of 386's boxes running vi and lynx? IS this really providing technology to the masses? THere is also plenty of inet access and cd burners, schools do not want your garbage disks...send money if you really want to help.
How does
Coin some new terms, add the words MP3, Linux and opensource (okay he didn't say it but I'm generalizing), connect them with some yarn and scotch tape and you've got a cool new Slashdot- approved infomative essay.
"Yet, India faces a peculiar problem in that almost all popular operating systems and applications packages are available only in English, a language which is spoken by a mere ten percent of the population."
(Let's not forget to mention that we are actually dealing with 42% of the population, 52% of india is literate, and it's a safe bet that all 10% who speak english are literate)
Virtually all high school educated people in india (=those who have enough money to buy a computer) have enough command of the english languge to use software, understand help bubbles etc. I am not saying that a high scool education should be a pre-req for using a computer; however a massive xlation project would cause too many splits; and not return on the money it would take to maintain and produce indian versions of all sorts of software (you realize how much there is? who deicdes what GPL software gets xlated?) and to maintain all the fun compatability issues that will happen.
"One development that can help India out of this deadlock is a national-level, collaborative effort to localise Linux to Indian languages."
Localise linux? Localizing the kernel and device drivers wouldn't do much good IMHO. Oh wait you mean all the software available for linux (most of it which it intended to run on many different unicies)?? Oh I get it...so you plan on xlating all GPL utilies (ssh, ls, mv, cron), their input and output file formats, display information, KDE, GNOME, all software documentation (what good is software if you don't know how to use it), error messages?...and keep up with anything that joe blow releases under GPL? The above proposal is just catagorically wrong.
"Linux is a free operating system that has gained phenomenal popularity in recent times because it allows users to modify it to suit their own needs."
While Linux's development grwoth has stemmed from kernel hackers modifying linux at the base; it "phenomenal popularity" has nothing to do with it. Linux is a stable, free UNIX; one can run all sorts of wonderful wide-spread UNIX stuff on it, and use it as a solid server; that's why it is popular. In general, users do not modify linux beyond any other OS, changing drivers, installing libraries and applications, and system settings; everybody does this with every OS.
"The growth of content in platform-independent file formats (HTML, MP3 etc) has also reduced the dependence on a specific operating system, making Linux a viable option."
I can't think of any widely used content before html (really platform independant?) that was OS dependant. ASCII, UNICODE, gif, wav, jpg, etc. Linux is no more or less viable due to the fact that we are using platform independant content...we have generally always been. Application independant is another story, which would definately point to a negative for linux (for tools that would be in most general use wp's, spreadsheets, database creation tools etc...)
"The existing user interface paradigm of files and folders evolved because computers were essentially designed for a western audience familiar with real-life files and folders. There is no reason to assume why the same paradigm should apply to a trader in Tamil Nadu or a farmer in Madhya Pradesh. "
Well assuming that the complaint is about the graphical representation of the underlying OS representation of files n' directories (which is the same as linux) under the Windows shell...under a graphical desktop environment (KDE/GNOME) of linux, they are represented the same way. And anyone could write a shell for either OS that pictured directories as books and pages or whatever...
"The openness of Linux (and other free operating systems like Free BSD) allows local linguistic groups to customise user interfaces in ways that are far more culturally sensitive than any centrally controlled approach. Linguistic groups that may be considered too small a market by vendors can also take their destiny in their own hands by customising the Linux interface to their own needs."
The abstraction level at which UI software as described is as easily implimented under ,say, windows as linux. In terms of development, the UI really doesn't have much to do with the OS as any other application...linux isn't any more or less easily localizeable than any other OS.
I won't even get into cost issues, besides the fact that it is debatable...
To me, the article is just another "be cool, say linux" essay clone...but hell it might be a good a way of getting the government to get scared of not being cool and to pump some money in which can help some people. I suppose the only practical solution is to invest in language xlation research and come up with a good translator for the non-english readers.
No he did not, you are thinking of he Wolf prize.
No he did not, you are thinking of the Wolf prize...check your facts.
Penrose never won a Nobel...
Maybe I don't understand something about /. moderation, but the above poster is absolutely correct, the people talking about the result taking a chunk out of big bang theory are making a catagoreical error; certainly doesn't deserve a score of 0. Why the hell do some people just HAVE to comment on something regardless of the fact that they know they don't know what they are talking about?
There is no question that the science of chemical and molecular biology will be the major sinks of funding and interest in the next century. Many people talk about a scientific shift from physics to biology, which is misleading as a lot of what's happening is physics which we are using to understand biology past the pure chemical level; it's really more of a shift of application then anything else. Will we ever see a shift in the reverse? That is the DNA , protien and water which produce a life form, are by themselves inanimate molecules that play entirely by the rules of physics. But by some magic ingredient, when they are all arranged carefully one gets something quite different than simply a larger inanimate blob. So we know this complexity to exist at the chemical level, can it exist at the subatomic? Could there be entire collections of interacting free high energy subatomic particles that can give rise to something analogous to a life form that would follow rules of population dynamics, metabolisms, concioussness etc.? How could we even begin searching for such beasts?
It was nearing (maybe even reached) the end of it's cycle....but what caused the resurrection? One word: P O K E M O N Which ignited the Gameboy again, and companies can sell games years old like they were new (literally), or translate old NES titles and still make money off them...
I'd just like to comment on what I think is ignorance about geneomics. You have an idea for an invention, you spend tonnes of time an money developing it and you make something, and sell it to make a profit so that you can pay back all your staff so they can buy food and healthcare and all those wonderful things. It would really be unfair for anyone else to step in the middle, copy you work and claim it as theirs and make a profit when you did all the development, that's why a patent makes sense. You spend a tonne of mony researching a particular nucleic acid sequence, beg for funding from rich people and eventulay you have something that you can make some money off of because you've proven it to be safe and beneficial, and you patent your invention (yes it is an invention, even with natural sequences it requires a lot of work in order to determine what they do, you should really have patent rights if you discover the function/purpose of things so complex). Someone could copy your sequence with a pen and paper and claim it as theirs when you've given your sweat and blood finding it; it makes sense to patent such things becuase like all things, they cost time effort and money, those investments have to be so people can make a living just like any other product.