"It cannot be allowed to stand that another nation can impose its values on the U.S. and make it a trade issue."
Like, say, forcing Europeans to import GM food they do not feel comfortable with? That is also perceived, by many in Europe, as a violation of someone else's values and convictions. Not that you care, of course.
Well, one of the purposes of the web is that of preserving memories (and history), regardless of the source. Since we are on Slashdot, however, and Sci-Fi is one of the hot topics, I will just mention Star Maidens and Raumpatrouille Orion. Surely bad TV, but I am glad I can prove to myself those weird and indistinct memories are real after all!...:)
I think the simple idea behind the desktop file is actually pretty powerful, and mostly overlooked by contemporary implementations. The idea is that you have metadata (icons, etc.) contained in the file itself, which allows the metadata to be moved together with the file, but at the same time having efficiency while scanning because the same data is copied transparently in a central database (which can be rebuilt at will).
On systems in which a similar approach is not used, either the metadata is not part of the file, or the individual files may have to be scanned for icons and other info quite often (*ahem-windows*), which may take a substantial time.
A file systems in which metadata is handled as part of the file *but* transparently stored in a special way should ease the problem. I guess that's what the people at M$ are trying to do with Longhorn, among zillion other things.
The Sun-funded Sunsites have long been a vital repository for *nix-related material, and were a precious resource back when the Internet was not for everyone.
The first Linux distributions were most often found on Sunsites.
What is wrong with a PDA? That is probably the point: TabletPCs are bulky and the kind of applications they would be useful for (taking notes, first and foremost) does not justify the full WinXP support.
PDAs, on the other hand, do have a considerable market, but the single biggest complain is the screen size. It is quite difficult to take notes on such a small surface.
A larger PDA, with similar OS, very light but with a much larger screen (12") could just be what is needed.
It could also be done on older systems. On the C64, I wrote a small program that polled the "write protect" sensor. Because of the physical shape of 5 1/4 floppies, the line would change with a predictable pattern whenever a disk was inserted, enough to trigger an arbitrary action in response.
Haaa! You could do better, actually. A friend of mine came up with a wonderful trick, that was actually useful on the cache-less 68000. You can convert Mandelbrot iterations in simple subtractions and sums if you only ever use squares. For instance: 2xy=(x+y)^2-x^2-y^2. So, since integer arithmetic was to be used.... he used a huge table of squares!:))) Now, *THAT* was a quick Mandelbrot algorithm, for the time!
I agree with your comment. The great characteristic of HG2G is that you can picture the situation in your mind as you wish, since it's all so absurd. When everything is fixed in a movie, you no longer have that ability.
The same, I am sure, happened to everyone who watched the Mary Poppins movie before reading the books. I am always surprised by all those who do not realize that Mary Poppins, before being an edulcorated Disney movie, is a series of (five?) books whose poetry and magic are wonderful, great to stimulate the imagination of a child.
It saddens me to think that one day people could say "Oh, the Guide? The Disney movie?"
The first range of body care products created with natural and neutral ingredients with food-based scents. Gluttonous aromas inducing to little, voluptuous transgressions for a pleasant personal hygiene.
Bubble bath 250ml Body cream 250ml Eau de Toilette 50 ml Soap 100g
> Now, look at Esperanto: Nicely designed, but does it cover > the whole problem space of human to human communications? > Now, look at English: need a word or phrase for a construct? > Make it up via concatination, acronym, or onomonopia.
I'm afraid you are missing the point: Esperanto is not a static language designed by some mindless expert. Only its *grammatical structure* has been designed to be regular and easily understandable. The language evolves every day pretty much in the same way as any other language: new words are created, others are forgotten and so on. Otherwise, how would you explain that a 100-year old language (as Esperanto is) has an internet-word for "@" ("heliko"), for instance?:-)
On the contrary, while many languages have "holes" in their grammatical structure, Esperanto encourages speakers to be creative in inventing their own words, and makes trivial learning the meaning of unheard ones. An example:
- in English there are cases in which you cannot obtain a noun or a verb from an adverb. You cannot just because the word just "isn't there". Unfortunately I don't have an example ready, but I'm sure you can find many yourself.
- In Esperanto I once heard someone using the word "purigistino". Although I had never heard the word before, I immediately understood the meaning: The woman whose job is that of making things clean.:-) That happens because Esperanto is an agglutinative language: -ino is a woman, puri- is clean, -igi is to make something -- and so on.
The current dominance of English (likely to continue) is due neither to its intrinsic elegance nor to the fact that it's easy to learn for beginners (although later they'll discover a nightmare of exceptions), but merely to the economic power of the English speaking world (read: USA).
I can speak English, and I frankly like the language. However, as a non-native speaker, I can well notice the weird aspects of the language. Believe me: there aren't few.
Learning Esperanto is a joy for the mind. Easy and compact, completely orthogonal, creative and endless. Pretty much like programming!:-) Try.
Slashdot Mirror
Like, say, forcing Europeans to import GM food they do not feel comfortable with? That is also perceived, by many in Europe, as a violation of someone else's values and convictions.
Not that you care, of course.
Well, one of the purposes of the web is that of preserving memories (and history), regardless of the source. :)
Since we are on Slashdot, however, and Sci-Fi is one of the hot topics, I will just mention Star Maidens and Raumpatrouille Orion. Surely bad TV, but I am glad I can prove to myself those weird and indistinct memories are real after all!...
I think the simple idea behind the desktop file is actually pretty powerful, and mostly overlooked by contemporary implementations. The idea is that you have metadata (icons, etc.) contained in the file itself, which allows the metadata to be moved together with the file, but at the same time having efficiency while scanning because the same data is copied transparently in a central database (which can be rebuilt at will).
On systems in which a similar approach is not used, either the metadata is not part of the file, or the individual files may have to be scanned for icons and other info quite often (*ahem-windows*), which may take a substantial time.
A file systems in which metadata is handled as part of the file *but* transparently stored in a special way should ease the problem. I guess that's what the people at M$ are trying to do with Longhorn, among zillion other things.
> Since when is Sun a friend of open source?
The Sun-funded Sunsites have long been a vital repository for *nix-related material, and were a precious resource back when the Internet was not for everyone.
The first Linux distributions were most often found on Sunsites.
http://www.sun.com/sunsite/
What is wrong with a PDA? That is probably the point: TabletPCs are bulky and the kind of applications they would be useful for (taking notes, first and foremost) does not justify the full WinXP support.
PDAs, on the other hand, do have a considerable market, but the single biggest complain is the screen size. It is quite difficult to take notes on such a small surface.
A larger PDA, with similar OS, very light but with a much larger screen (12") could just be what is needed.
It could also be done on older systems. On the C64, I wrote a small program that polled the "write protect" sensor. Because of the physical shape of 5 1/4 floppies, the line would change with a predictable pattern whenever a disk was inserted, enough to trigger an arbitrary action in response.
Haaa! You could do better, actually. A friend of mine came up with a wonderful trick, that was actually useful on the cache-less 68000. You can convert Mandelbrot iterations in simple subtractions and sums if you only ever use squares. :)))
For instance: 2xy=(x+y)^2-x^2-y^2.
So, since integer arithmetic was to be used.... he used a huge table of squares!
Now, *THAT* was a quick Mandelbrot algorithm, for the time!
I agree with your comment. The great characteristic of HG2G is that you can picture the situation in your mind as you wish, since it's all so absurd. When everything is fixed in a movie, you no longer have that ability.
The same, I am sure, happened to everyone who watched the Mary Poppins movie before reading the books. I am always surprised by all those who do not realize that Mary Poppins, before being an edulcorated Disney movie, is a series of (five?) books whose poetry and magic are wonderful, great to stimulate the imagination of a child.
It saddens me to think that one day people could say "Oh, the Guide? The Disney movie?"
Italy has MUCH more:
"Pizza scented bubble bath"
The first range of body care products created with natural and neutral
ingredients with food-based scents.
Gluttonous aromas inducing to little, voluptuous transgressions for a
pleasant personal hygiene.
Bubble bath 250ml
Body cream 250ml
Eau de Toilette 50 ml
Soap 100g
Pizza, chocolate, coffee...
> Now, look at Esperanto: Nicely designed, but does it cover
:-)
:-) That happens because Esperanto is an agglutinative language: -ino is a woman, puri- is clean, -igi is to make something -- and so on.
:-) Try.
> the whole problem space of human to human communications?
> Now, look at English: need a word or phrase for a construct?
> Make it up via concatination, acronym, or onomonopia.
I'm afraid you are missing the point: Esperanto is not a static language designed by some mindless expert. Only its *grammatical structure* has been designed to be regular and easily understandable.
The language evolves every day pretty much in the same way as any other language: new words are created, others are forgotten and so on. Otherwise, how would you explain that a 100-year old language (as Esperanto is) has an internet-word for "@" ("heliko"), for instance?
On the contrary, while many languages have "holes" in their grammatical structure, Esperanto encourages speakers to be creative in inventing their own words, and makes trivial learning the meaning of unheard ones. An example:
- in English there are cases in which you cannot obtain a noun or a verb from an adverb. You cannot just because the word just "isn't there". Unfortunately I don't have an example ready, but I'm sure you can find many yourself.
- In Esperanto I once heard someone using the word "purigistino". Although I had never heard the word before, I immediately understood the meaning: The woman whose job is that of making things clean.
The current dominance of English (likely to continue) is due neither to its intrinsic elegance nor to the fact that it's easy to learn for beginners (although later they'll discover a nightmare of exceptions), but merely to the economic power of the English speaking world (read: USA).
I can speak English, and I frankly like the language. However, as a non-native speaker, I can well notice the weird aspects of the language. Believe me: there aren't few.
Learning Esperanto is a joy for the mind. Easy and compact, completely orthogonal, creative and endless. Pretty much like programming!