I enjoy all sorts of slow things. I live in Alfred New York which is usually described as out in the middle of nowhere with the nearest Wal-mart being 30 minutes away, and I never hav enough time to do all the things that I want to do. I enjoy reading technical books, I can spend hours discussing movies that people tire after in five minutes. While I'm very far from perfect, I don't get bored that easily.
2001 was a boring movie.
Yes, it was realistic. Space isn't necessarily slow. Pens can float through space at the rate of 1'/minute, BUT THEY DON'T HAVE TO! They can go faster.
Imagine that, realistic physics without ultra slow motion. Take a look at the star-fury battle sequences in Babylon 5 for a decent version of space action with realistic physics.
You see, the problem that kubric fell into with 2001 is that he thought that space automatically made whatever he did interesting. News Flash: everyone has seen stuff float before, it's just been in water rather than air. Floating is not a strange phenomenon that we've never seen before. It's a little new because it's in air rather than water. That doesn't justify a full two minutes on it (or whatever it really was, it felt like 5).
For another instance, people walk slowly in real life. Just visit your nearest nursing home or hospital. The fact that they have velcro on their feet or that you're playing fancy camera tricks doesn't imbue it with 3 minutes worth of newness.
And we've all taken long trips in vehicles where the destination seems like it will never arrive. We didn't need five minutes of approaching the floating corpse with that harsh, annoying beeping going on.
The list just goes on and on. Kubric is generally terrible at making interesting movies. Eyes wide shut. The Killing. The killer's kiss. That stupid one with Kurk Douglass that's basically a ripoff of Sartre's the wall. The one about the irish kid who duels his step-father and wounds him in the leg after a half-hour duel sequence. Spartacus (though that one actually did move pretty quickly for a Kubric movie). There are at least a half-dozen others that I saw of his that bored me so much my mind is blocking them out to protect me. Even Dr. Strangelove, which was undoubtedly one of Kubric's best, was boring during most of it and only punctuated with humor (but the humor was good enough to redeam the movie and make it worth seeing).
2001 is not a testament to the stupidity or lack of intellectualism of the American public, but rather a testament to the savage mental cruelty of Stanly Kubric.
The funny thing about people is they tend to rise and fall to the expectations put upon them, within limits. (In cases where multiple expecations are placed on them and they get to choose, they do seem to generally pick the easier expectations.) This is not to say that peopel of moderate intelligence will become genuises if you expect it of them, but you would be surprised at the number of people who would understand the proof that the square root of two is irrational if you sit them down and force them to pay attention.
I think that the best approach to the intelligence of your audience is the one taken by Shakespeare or The Simpsons. Include all sorts of humor in a coherent fashion. Everyone can laugh at the "low" jokes, most can laugh at the "medium" jokes, and some will laugh at the "high" jokes. And everyone is happy.
what exactly is wrong with perl's function syntax?
Oh, btw, you're probably right that Perl is the first language of a lot of linux people and as a result a lot of the perl scripts around are pretty lousy. I'll give you three guesses what will happen if python becomes people's first languages.
The very nature of programming allows people to write bad programs.
What you are describing, btw, was experienced by Bjourne Strousap (sp?) with C++. At first the people on the mailing lists were courteous and intelligent, etc. He later learned that this wasn't a feature of C++ as he had hoped, but a feature of C++ not being as popular at the time. Once it moved away from the small group who initially used it, it started accumulating idiots in the standard proportions.
Python is in the same state - it's still used by a relatively small group of people (from what I understand of what are available as numbers, there are about an order of magnitude more perl programmers than python programmers). If python ever gets big, bad python code will proliferate. If whitespace delimeters are configurable (which I've been told they are), I guarantee you that you will eventually run accross a python program where the delimeter is a single space, and that's just the start.
Of course, the most unreadable part of a program is it's logic, not it's syntax (if you know the syntax). I heard about one guy who was theoretically programming in perl. He farmed every regular expression in his program out to sed. I defy you to come up with a language that makes something like that more understandable.
I know people who write programs that do the same thing three times in slightly different ways. Debugging that is quite difficult, and they're using a really easy syntax.
Perl programs are not particularly harder to read than any other type of programs, the key is that you have to know as much (or more) perl than the person who wrote the program.
Btw, I've written non-trivial programs in perl and marvelled at how easy they are. And while perl doesn't do classes very well, it's object orientation is rather nice to work with if you're an OO user rather than an OO bigot.
Oh, and the use of : and whitepsace rather than {} is really stupid and quite a bad language flaw. The overuse of objects is another design flaw, as is the overbearing attitude of python zealots.
And let's not get started on the fact that you need to use \ to continue lines in conditionals.
Anyhow, I will agree with you that C is quite nice. Whenever I'm not using perl, I'll generally use C, though a friend of mine is slowly convincing me to try C++. It does have a lot of nice features, if they are improperly used by people sometimes.
What libGL dependencies are you going to use? I am running XFree86 4.0.1 and don't want utah to be installed on me. Are there any debian options or am I just going to have to wait for the official 4.0.1 packages and for everything to depend on that?
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify,
sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights,
from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
IANAL, but this does make it plausible that the persons rights are revoked without the option of just "re-licensing it".
Besides, the KDE people obviously snubbed the FSF et al by using qt. They moved things out of the level of respecting each other as equals. The fact that RMS gave a blanket permission to relicense the code is a good thing not a bad one. A lot of people, myself included, might have taken a lot longer to do that.
What the KDE people did is to many not easily excusable. They're obviously not a part of the free software movement, and to sort of usher them in and pretend that they are because QT is now GPL'd is rather magnanimous. About the only favor that the KDE people did the free software movement was to provide the impetous for gnome. Now that that's done, the best thing would be for KDE to bsd their code and go off as part of BSD, or maybe sell out to a corporation and turn commercial.
Sure they're stuff is slick. So are plenty of things. They're not very relevant by their own choices. They're not friendly by their own choices. If it were up to me I'd just ignore them and enforce the forfeiture of rights clause.
There are those of us who would prefer to see justice done in this case rather than mercy. You're rather arrogant to complain about the terms of the mercy granted. If someone less kind than RMS were in charge it would be straight justice.
Eternal vigelance and all that
on
Men of Zeal
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Has it not occurred to you that (a) freedom is not simply the freedom of a person from harm at the hands of their government (b)technology is, while amoral, in the hands of moral or immoral people and (c)everyone isn't best suited to every fight?
(a)People have all sorts of rights besides not being killed. Some are obviously more important, but that doesn't mean that the less important ones are worthless.
(b)If technology is allowed to progress to whatever state it wants behind closed doors, who knows what government (or corporations or whatever) will sart using it to erode the freedoms that you hold more dear. Freedoms are intertwined, and the maintenance of some requires, in general, the maintenance of all.
(c)Not all people are suited to every task. RMS himself has said that there are more worthy causes than free software, but there are better people handling those and noone filling his role in fighting for free software.
Are you seriously suggesting that all people everywhere stop all struggles and try to go fix the problemsin Africa? No more equal rights stuff, no environmental conservationism, no medical treatment, etc. Nothing should go on because there is a more worthy cause somewhere?
Out of curiosity, do you hold the same view against everyoone who has a cause that isn't african children? If not, why is Free Software your whipping boy?
Oh, and are you an intentional troll, or was it just a natural talent shining through? Some of the troll boys around here would be proud of you.
Ok, so the time that it takes you me to hit ctrl-shift-x is really the same as to move over to the mouse, bring it to the left lower corner, hit the button, go up to the applications menu, then move over to the xemacs entry, and click. Right.
I'm not sure what you, or these test subjects were smoking, but the mouse is not as fast as the keyboard for doing quite a large number of tasks, application launching included.
Maybe it's faster for starting up stuff when you don't have keyboard shortcuts, but even that is questionable. I can do xemacs *.pl *.pm, then hit ctrl-x 0, then ctrl-x b addac.pl much faster than you can load it up and drag-and-drop all of those programs over, I guarantee it.
Besides, reaching for the mouse does slow you down. If your hand is already on the mouse, then maybe the times may get similar, maybe. But having to switch input devices and thus contexts is slower than not having to switch.
I think that you've gotten to the heart of the matter. It seems like some people in the slashdot crowd have let the tremendous increases in linux popularity go to their head. It's kind of like the spirit of fighting for linux (freedom, etc.) isn't as prevelent.
I think that Linux is getting viable, though. Stuff like 3D is rough but getting better by leaps and bounds, installations are now fairly easily, at least in redhat and the like (for some reason they haven't cleared up some of the terminology in the installer, though. I can recognize the option by a name in parenthases and a first-timer installer would probably do with a less historic name for some things). The desktop, especially with helix, is getting more polished.
I think that we are in a pretty good place as far as the linux snowball is going. As you said, breaking even, especially on a game like quake III, is a very good sign.
Well, quake is enigmatic. On the one hand you have the fact that it is very popular because the basic game is good. On the other hand, it's the same game (more or less) as the previous too versions, and while the graphics are much better, it doesn't change the fact that the game hasn't changed too much. I'd be very interested to know if the game in question being quake helped or hindered linux sales. I could see both ways.
Either way, breaking even is indeed very good. Since so many things stacked against the linux sales of Q3 (later release date, reliance on 3D acceleration which isn't easy to get working, etc.), it's got to make other game developers think that they could fix those problems and make money. Wait... that's what Loki did. Yeah, I think that we can safely hope for a bright future.:-)
You've got to be kidding if you're taking this troll seriously.
However, if it will motivate you to never do another windows title again, I'll never hire to you to work on a game for me because you admitted the existence of linux and didn't say "May bill gates live forever" at the end of your sentence. Linux sucks! windows rules! I hurl invectives at you!
So, are you going to never develope a windows game again?:-)
USB: So you've never heard of the linux joystick driver? It was new in 2.1 and has been around for a while. It's a nice unified interface that allows to to relatively easily deal with any joystick using the same interface. It even works with rewired playstation controllers, if I recall the docs properly.
3D: This is actively being worked on in XF 4, etc. While true, it's kind of pointless to say that people should be working on what they are already working on.
Retailers: true. I virtually never buy stuff from brick-and-mortar shops, but it would be nice for them to stock the linux versions, and for the linux versions to be available.
Standardized system: There is. OpenGL for graphics, linux joystrick driver to joystick, X for keyboard and mouse. Or use one of the ever-expanding number of cross-platform compatability libraries. Glut could make a decent choice.
Anyhow, few people seem to attribute poor quake III sales to quake. Quake has been the same game for the last three versions, and really the last6 if you cound doom and wolfenstein. I liked wolf, I enjoyed doom, and I even enjoyed quake occasionally, but come on. They're the same game with different graphics and a few tweeks in gameplay.
That and ever-increasing unrealism. I never even bothered with III when I saw a friend play a demo - people were moving around so damn fast they might as well not have bothered rendering them at all. He died after entering a room, running halfway accross it, and spinning at least 400 degrees in around a second.
seriously, since linux is still disproportionally made up of geeks (aka smart people), don't you think that they'd be disproportionally made up of people who get tired of the same damn thing over and over again, with the big distinction in newer versions being that they require even more hours of practice to get a modicum of skill?
I know that I have better things to do than to play occasionally, and if you're anything but a dedicated quake player, your ass is going to be smeared on the wall pretty constantly.
Linux sales of quake might be more of a metric of how many people have nothing constructive to do with any of their time, rather than a how-many-people play games on linux. A more interesting question would be for games which don't have such a high skill bar for entry, and thus are playable by those with jobs, relationships, responsibilities, etc.
You can't be serious that playing a game screwing over everything else is a feature. Microsoft really can't grasp the idea that someone might want to do more than one thing on their machine, can they?
Btw, how do you make the whole OS dlls that don't switch to ring 0 and stay secure? Ring 0 is there for a reason. I'm curious how you put nearly everything outside of ring 0 and keep the same functionality.
Yeah, but a 533 MHz 21164a is going to get about the same performance as a 550 Athlon at best, optimized fortran excluded. I'm talking about the 21264, which is the current Alpha CPU, and tremendously expensive. I know because I wanted one really badly but couldn't afford one.
I used to have a 633 MHz 21164a, but it didn't have an AGP port and I want to do 3D programming. Try looking up prices for an Alpha with an AGP slot.
Sure as a pure server they're viable and non-institutional prices, but how many people have pure servers who aren't in an institution? Even there they're only really going to shine if you have lots of users logging on simultaneously. They are nice for that, though. I remember that on my alpha I'd have to have 4 processes in an infinte loop before I'd notice. I liked the Alpha a lot. Damn no agp port...:-)
Well, the Alpha would have a much bigger market penetration if it wasn't so damn expensive. Do you really want to spend $3000 just for the CPU and motherboard? I know I don't have that money. I suspect that an awful lot of people are in that situation.
Otherwise, aside from that and the occasional lack of 64bit cleanness, the Alpha is a nice platform.
The compaq C compilers were advertised to get about a 20%-30% speed increase over gcc, and that was about a year ago. All sorts of nifty optimizations were scheduled to be merged into gcc since then.
I've moved to an Athlon because alphas are just too damn expensive, but gcc was not so far behind digital's C compiler.
If you want to talk about fortran, that is a different story. I think that on average the digital fortran compiler would produce code about double the speed of g77.
Anyhow, the tremendous speed increase in the digital compiler was mostly in inefficient code. There is a very interesting (but old now) paper linked to off of alphalinux.org about how to write optimized C code. While unoptimized code would usually run a slower on gcc, the difference prettymuch disappeared when you optimized your C (things like manually unrolling loops, transposing matrices before multiplications, etc.).
So it depends. The digital C compiler would result in unoptimized code running faster on an Alpha, and the data that I have for this was from a long time ago. What the state of compilers is now, I don't know. However, I would be extremely suprised if gcc hasn't gone a long way to catching up.
As usual, katz is oversimplifying the situation. There are geeks from all walks of life with all sorts of codes of ethics. There are atheists, christians, and all sorts of other religiously minded people.
Now there are people from both categories who are good people and there are people who give into selfishness. Now all situations can lend themselves to selfishness. A pampered life like the tech life can lead to a more comfortable sort of selfishness. Since everyone around you is doing more or less OK, it's easy to forget about them since they obviously don't need you.
Of course, some people do in fact have morals. Take Larry Wall for instance. I don't think that anyone will deny that he's been one of the most giving members of the hacker community, and he leads a tech life like many of the more selfish members of the community.
Of course, part of this is that a very visible section of the tech community is young and being young lends itself to being selfish. So there may be a bit to what katz said in that the tech community has a very visible young component.
Of course, there are few in the US who have the right to throw stones. I suspect that this is the real origin of a selfish streak in the geek community -- it's the culture that they grew up in.
So why is the culture selfish? Human nature coupled with the opportunity for giving into it provided by a prosperous economy would seem to be the easiest explanations, and KISS. It's not like there have been many selfless societies which didn't fall into the error of making the individual nearly worthless.
What's the solution? Virtue. Pretty easy. If the problem is that people aren't being good enough, they have to be better.
Of course this is a major problem when you can't agree on what goodness is. And if anyone is operating under the delusion that there is some sort of concensus in the US or the world, what are you smoking? I don't smoke, but I know some people who'd love to try what you're on.
So of course the first step we have to take in fixing society is to decide what a fixed society would be like.
So while moaning about problems in society is useful (watch out for that tiger!), it's just the beginning of starting. it is an important beginning. There are plenty of people who won't even admit that human beings are broken and need fixing.
Once we convince them of that, the next and biggest step is to figure out what we want. And this is, honestly, not going to happen in the US. It might happen in North America, but not the US. The US is a loose political experiment which is trying to see if you can keep people together with a simple list of forbidden actions. Of course things are changing and mandates are cropping up here and there (good samaritan laws, for instance), a country in which a positive ideal of good was set up for all would not be the US other than perhaps in name.
So we live in a country where we have a few iron rules ("Thou shalt not!" type stuff). If anyone can honestly be surprised that selfishness is a big trend, I'm impressed. Left to themselves, a large portion of people will give in to their impulses. Selfishness is a human impulse.
Pretty simple. There is no solution on a global scale that doesn't involve warfare. That's one of the first things that you learn if you're a philosophy major for any real length of time. Understanding the universe is a trivial problem compared to explaining it to someone else. And if your understandings differ significantly, the difference can be dangerous. Let's say that some group which believes in a not very forgiving god is right. The rest of us are in a lot of trouble. Now let's say that you're a member of this sect and genuinely believe it (the lack of ability to genuinely believe in anything in modern american society is another problem entire unto itself), and your son/daughter was being influenced by someone in such a way as to encourage the rath of said deity. What do you do? Is force really unjustified? Let's say that your son/daughter is being influenced by a gang and being drawn into that life of violence, treatury, crime, etc. Would violence be justified then?
It always amazes me when people can't understand religious wars. They're some of the most natural actions of people, when you get down to it. They are not the best option, I think, since I believe that a person's will is inviolable and that their choices are their own.
On the other hand, what do you do about people who don't have other options? If a person is never taught that there is anything but [wrong belief A], they can't choose against it, but they can be corrupted by it. So would that then justify violent invervention?
What would? When is violence justified? If you can say that violence is never jusitified, what response do you give to unjustified violence. What response do you give to violence of the mind? What do you do with a man who preaches violence? What do you do with a man who tells others to kill but doesn't kill himself? What do you do with a man who preaches a philosophy which makes killing insignificant. How close to the act do you have to get before violence is justified.
What do you do with a school for pirates? They don't go on the high seas and steal themselves, but they teach others how to with the intent that they use their knowledge. How is teaching that life isn't worth a gold ring any more reprehensible than teach that neither a life or a gold ring are worth anything?
And if you'll send the police in to forcibly close the school for pirates, why not send them in to forcibly stop [insert favorite pessimistic/relativistic philosopher here]?
And if you'll throw a man out of a room or throw him into prison to stop him to teach, why draw the line there and not just kill him. It's a lot more effective.
So to conclude, of course geek culture is selfish. Given the prevalence of Free Software, however, it's probably one of the more giving cultures. So unless you're prepared to provide a positive ideal of good and claim that those who are opposed to it must be stopped, please don't belabor the point that life isn't perfect.
I think that he meant that they ask in child-like wonder: "Why should the nasty big governmetn be threatening us for a complete disregard of community and acting like we're the only important part of the universe while we're busy actively harming nearly everyone around us?"
Micrsoft has been, and has been proven to be, destructive to those around it. That is patently obvious to anyone who doesn't want a MS-only solution to problems in the computer industry and finally has become accepted by the people (in the form of the government, to be a little idealistic about things). To compare this to a breach of laissez-faire is reidiculous. Dis-incorporate microsoft and then apply laissez-faire to them. Oh, and get rid of their copyrights and patents, too, then I'll buy the laissez-faire argument about government intervention.
Microsoft has used the tools of the government, it must abide by the rules of the government. Just as it is illegal to copy win98 without permission from microsoft, it is illegal to use the prevenalnce of win* to squeeze out linux, mac, sun, et al.
If they object to the laws which hinder them on the principle that they are laws, let them also object to the laws which help them on the same basis.
People can want to be left alone all they want. To want to be left alone while you are not leaving other people alone is ridiculous.
Do you have an email address? If so, please use mine so that we can continue this conversation that way. Since this is an old message I don't know how long it will be around for any more.
Alright. But how do I distinguish between a text editor and a word processor? How do I distinguish between typing text into the text widget of the gimp and typing text into my text editor and typing it into my word processor?
The only way that I can see, short of omniscient computers, is to do something which is the equivalent of launching a program. Calling it changing modes, shifting paradigms, praying to the archangel gabriel. I don't care, but someone, unless this computer is psychic, I have to tell it what I want.
At that point, you're right back to./dns2reverse.pl and frankly I don't really believe that you're going to come up with a much faster interface than the command line. It's got around 100 inputs all close to each other and fairly independent of each other. You're going to need one hell of a wiz-bang input device to match that data throughput without being just a modified keyboard.
So if we take a step back from input and just focus on file storage, doesn't everyone realize that a filesystem is nothing more than a relational object database?
It just happens to be a really big database which is optimized more for relational searching rather than flat searching.
And UNIX even has the object-stream method, more or less (more less than more, in practice). Make every data file you have executable, make its first line #!/bin/datadumper use things like ./file | grey-shade | bump-map | cat/usr/share/executable - > file2 && chmod +x file2 true, not as streamlined as it could be, but a few tweeks to the shell and that would be fixed.
So this isn't new. It's just not overly useful. People tend to operate in modes. I tend to have to get into my writing mode before I write fiction, I have to get into my coding mode before I code. Some people call these mindsets, others moods, others modes. Whatever, but it's very natural to prepare to do some action. And it's not at all unnatural to pull out a piece of paper to write with, or to put it somewhere when I'm done. So opening the gimp and then hitting save is not very strange. It's not identical, but it is conceptually equivalent.
I've got a friend who rants about the everything-is-an-object model once every month or two. The problem with it is that it isn't how life works. No one model will fit every situation perfectual. You can take that as an axiom of computer science, life, basketball, prettymuch anything you want. There are both square and round holes in life. So you pick the round peg because it will fit into both and then supply woodclue/putty/cement/etc. for those who encounter square pegs.
Or make a few and require people to carry two bags, one of round pegs and the other of square pegs. Or to take the analogy the other way, you bring square peg-holders with you since they can accomodate both.
But please don't ever make a system which requires you to describe the data that you want by the data that you want rather than some external artificial description. I'd much, much rather use logo7.jpg than "The logo in the burgendy shade of red which is bump-mapped a little more than logo6.jpg and I airbrushed..."
Data can get very complex which is why people create artificially simple descriptions for them. Most people call these names, such as file name or personal name or family name. Do you want to reference Ted Smith by his characteristics rather than his name? I sure don't. I'd much rather call him Ted Smith and then reference characteristics to refine the description *if*necessary*.
Oh, and computers do make a difference between code and data. Code is what gets executed and data is what goes in the registers. Code can be data but for every given opcode, there is something defined as code and something defined as data. That leads to the distinction between programs and data (aside from the fact that chopping and wood are distinct, as well, so that lends itself to the program-data dichotomy too).
I'm not saying that the current methods cannot be improved, but that this "paradigm shift" already exists +/-, in UNIX on the command line for the last 20+ years. If it was that revolutionary it would have revolutionized by now. As it stands, it's in a quite comfortable place - it complements the functional method of doing things.
It's not that Free software should be exempt from warranties. It's that free software should be. I.e. if I give some guy a piece of code and specifically tell him that I don't know if it is perfect, he has no legal or moral right to demand any sort of warranty from me.
If he wants a warranty, he can buy the program from me. If he has given me nothing, he has no right to expect anything from me. It basically just boils down to that.
Basically, please explain how people should have to warrant their gifts.
>> "But, as Bob Young says, would you buy a car >> with the hood welded shut?" >>
> Sure, I have no problem so doing.
> I never go under the bonnet of my car anyway - 's > what I pay my local garage to do. Besides, do you > complain when you are sold a sealed battery?
Don't you get that the point is that if the hood of your car is welded shut, you can't go to your local garage? You'd have to go to the approved garage in central headquarters or wherever. (especially if you signed a contract before buying the car which stated that you had to, and you didn't really have an option about this because it was the standard business practice everywhere and there are no dealerships selling brand name cars which sell them without said contracts.)
And do you really not add your own oil when its low or fill your own windshield wiper fluid? Do you really call a tow truck if you get the out-of-oil light in your car rather than pulling over to the side of the road, pulling out your spare quart of oil in the trunk, pouring it into the appropriate place in the engine, and going on your way?
Can you at least see that some people like to save their own time and money?
Hi, I've found the quality of vorbis (cvs from about 2-3 weeks ago) to be on par with mp3s, and the sizes seem to differ in only the last 3-4 digits of the byte count. As for time, I found that on an Athlon 600 that I could encode a song in just slightly more time than it takes to play it. I.e. I can start encoding and start xmms playing it and it's about a minute before it starts to skip, assuming that I'm not doing anything else.
I don't know why you are having the experiences that you are, but you paint the ogg vorbis format a lot darker than I've found it to be.
Provided that the bits that you are XORing it with are random enough (low order bits of radio static is, from what I've heard, especially when stuffing them through a randomizing algorithm) and they are known only by you and your recipient, XORing is the only algorithm proven secure. Of course it's common name is a 1 time pad, but who's going to quibble over names.
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I enjoy all sorts of slow things. I live in Alfred New York which is usually described as out in the middle of nowhere with the nearest Wal-mart being 30 minutes away, and I never hav enough time to do all the things that I want to do. I enjoy reading technical books, I can spend hours discussing movies that people tire after in five minutes. While I'm very far from perfect, I don't get bored that easily.
2001 was a boring movie.
Yes, it was realistic. Space isn't necessarily slow. Pens can float through space at the rate of 1'/minute, BUT THEY DON'T HAVE TO! They can go faster.
Imagine that, realistic physics without ultra slow motion. Take a look at the star-fury battle sequences in Babylon 5 for a decent version of space action with realistic physics.
You see, the problem that kubric fell into with 2001 is that he thought that space automatically made whatever he did interesting. News Flash: everyone has seen stuff float before, it's just been in water rather than air. Floating is not a strange phenomenon that we've never seen before. It's a little new because it's in air rather than water. That doesn't justify a full two minutes on it (or whatever it really was, it felt like 5).
For another instance, people walk slowly in real life. Just visit your nearest nursing home or hospital. The fact that they have velcro on their feet or that you're playing fancy camera tricks doesn't imbue it with 3 minutes worth of newness.
And we've all taken long trips in vehicles where the destination seems like it will never arrive. We didn't need five minutes of approaching the floating corpse with that harsh, annoying beeping going on.
The list just goes on and on. Kubric is generally terrible at making interesting movies. Eyes wide shut. The Killing. The killer's kiss. That stupid one with Kurk Douglass that's basically a ripoff of Sartre's the wall. The one about the irish kid who duels his step-father and wounds him in the leg after a half-hour duel sequence. Spartacus (though that one actually did move pretty quickly for a Kubric movie). There are at least a half-dozen others that I saw of his that bored me so much my mind is blocking them out to protect me. Even Dr. Strangelove, which was undoubtedly one of Kubric's best, was boring during most of it and only punctuated with humor (but the humor was good enough to redeam the movie and make it worth seeing).
2001 is not a testament to the stupidity or lack of intellectualism of the American public, but rather a testament to the savage mental cruelty of Stanly Kubric.
The funny thing about people is they tend to rise and fall to the expectations put upon them, within limits. (In cases where multiple expecations are placed on them and they get to choose, they do seem to generally pick the easier expectations.) This is not to say that peopel of moderate intelligence will become genuises if you expect it of them, but you would be surprised at the number of people who would understand the proof that the square root of two is irrational if you sit them down and force them to pay attention.
I think that the best approach to the intelligence of your audience is the one taken by Shakespeare or The Simpsons. Include all sorts of humor in a coherent fashion. Everyone can laugh at the "low" jokes, most can laugh at the "medium" jokes, and some will laugh at the "high" jokes. And everyone is happy.
Of course, that takes skill.
what exactly is wrong with perl's function syntax?
Oh, btw, you're probably right that Perl is the first language of a lot of linux people and as a result a lot of the perl scripts around are pretty lousy. I'll give you three guesses what will happen if python becomes people's first languages.
The very nature of programming allows people to write bad programs.
What you are describing, btw, was experienced by Bjourne Strousap (sp?) with C++. At first the people on the mailing lists were courteous and intelligent, etc. He later learned that this wasn't a feature of C++ as he had hoped, but a feature of C++ not being as popular at the time. Once it moved away from the small group who initially used it, it started accumulating idiots in the standard proportions.
Python is in the same state - it's still used by a relatively small group of people (from what I understand of what are available as numbers, there are about an order of magnitude more perl programmers than python programmers). If python ever gets big, bad python code will proliferate. If whitespace delimeters are configurable (which I've been told they are), I guarantee you that you will eventually run accross a python program where the delimeter is a single space, and that's just the start.
Of course, the most unreadable part of a program is it's logic, not it's syntax (if you know the syntax). I heard about one guy who was theoretically programming in perl. He farmed every regular expression in his program out to sed. I defy you to come up with a language that makes something like that more understandable.
I know people who write programs that do the same thing three times in slightly different ways. Debugging that is quite difficult, and they're using a really easy syntax.
Perl programs are not particularly harder to read than any other type of programs, the key is that you have to know as much (or more) perl than the person who wrote the program.
Btw, I've written non-trivial programs in perl and marvelled at how easy they are. And while perl doesn't do classes very well, it's object orientation is rather nice to work with if you're an OO user rather than an OO bigot.
Oh, and the use of : and whitepsace rather than {} is really stupid and quite a bad language flaw. The overuse of objects is another design flaw, as is the overbearing attitude of python zealots.
And let's not get started on the fact that you need to use \ to continue lines in conditionals.
Anyhow, I will agree with you that C is quite nice. Whenever I'm not using perl, I'll generally use C, though a friend of mine is slowly convincing me to try C++. It does have a lot of nice features, if they are improperly used by people sometimes.
What libGL dependencies are you going to use? I am running XFree86 4.0.1 and don't want utah to be installed on me. Are there any debian options or am I just going to have to wait for the official 4.0.1 packages and for everything to depend on that?
Do you have any proof of this assertion? I'd be curious for the legal basis of your claim.
read term 4 of the terms and conditions of the gpl (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). That's what's being referred to, I think.
From the GPL:
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify,
sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights,
from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
IANAL, but this does make it plausible that the persons rights are revoked without the option of just "re-licensing it".
Besides, the KDE people obviously snubbed the FSF et al by using qt. They moved things out of the level of respecting each other as equals. The fact that RMS gave a blanket permission to relicense the code is a good thing not a bad one. A lot of people, myself included, might have taken a lot longer to do that.
What the KDE people did is to many not easily excusable. They're obviously not a part of the free software movement, and to sort of usher them in and pretend that they are because QT is now GPL'd is rather magnanimous. About the only favor that the KDE people did the free software movement was to provide the impetous for gnome. Now that that's done, the best thing would be for KDE to bsd their code and go off as part of BSD, or maybe sell out to a corporation and turn commercial.
Sure they're stuff is slick. So are plenty of things. They're not very relevant by their own choices. They're not friendly by their own choices. If it were up to me I'd just ignore them and enforce the forfeiture of rights clause.
There are those of us who would prefer to see justice done in this case rather than mercy. You're rather arrogant to complain about the terms of the mercy granted. If someone less kind than RMS were in charge it would be straight justice.
Has it not occurred to you that (a) freedom is not simply the freedom of a person from harm at the hands of their government (b)technology is, while amoral, in the hands of moral or immoral people and (c)everyone isn't best suited to every fight?
(a)People have all sorts of rights besides not being killed. Some are obviously more important, but that doesn't mean that the less important ones are worthless.
(b)If technology is allowed to progress to whatever state it wants behind closed doors, who knows what government (or corporations or whatever) will sart using it to erode the freedoms that you hold more dear. Freedoms are intertwined, and the maintenance of some requires, in general, the maintenance of all.
(c)Not all people are suited to every task. RMS himself has said that there are more worthy causes than free software, but there are better people handling those and noone filling his role in fighting for free software.
Are you seriously suggesting that all people everywhere stop all struggles and try to go fix the problemsin Africa? No more equal rights stuff, no environmental conservationism, no medical treatment, etc. Nothing should go on because there is a more worthy cause somewhere?
Out of curiosity, do you hold the same view against everyoone who has a cause that isn't african children? If not, why is Free Software your whipping boy?
Oh, and are you an intentional troll, or was it just a natural talent shining through? Some of the troll boys around here would be proud of you.
As a simple question from on interested: what does your program offer that apt doesn't on a debian system?
Ok, so the time that it takes you me to hit ctrl-shift-x is really the same as to move over to the mouse, bring it to the left lower corner, hit the button, go up to the applications menu, then move over to the xemacs entry, and click. Right.
I'm not sure what you, or these test subjects were smoking, but the mouse is not as fast as the keyboard for doing quite a large number of tasks, application launching included.
Maybe it's faster for starting up stuff when you don't have keyboard shortcuts, but even that is questionable. I can do xemacs *.pl *.pm, then hit ctrl-x 0, then ctrl-x b addac.pl much faster than you can load it up and drag-and-drop all of those programs over, I guarantee it.
Besides, reaching for the mouse does slow you down. If your hand is already on the mouse, then maybe the times may get similar, maybe. But having to switch input devices and thus contexts is slower than not having to switch.
Do you have any URLs to back this up? I know it would help me feel a lot better about my G400. Thanks.
I think that you've gotten to the heart of the matter. It seems like some people in the slashdot crowd have let the tremendous increases in linux popularity go to their head. It's kind of like the spirit of fighting for linux (freedom, etc.) isn't as prevelent.
:-)
I think that Linux is getting viable, though. Stuff like 3D is rough but getting better by leaps and bounds, installations are now fairly easily, at least in redhat and the like (for some reason they haven't cleared up some of the terminology in the installer, though. I can recognize the option by a name in parenthases and a first-timer installer would probably do with a less historic name for some things). The desktop, especially with helix, is getting more polished.
I think that we are in a pretty good place as far as the linux snowball is going. As you said, breaking even, especially on a game like quake III, is a very good sign.
Well, quake is enigmatic. On the one hand you have the fact that it is very popular because the basic game is good. On the other hand, it's the same game (more or less) as the previous too versions, and while the graphics are much better, it doesn't change the fact that the game hasn't changed too much. I'd be very interested to know if the game in question being quake helped or hindered linux sales. I could see both ways.
Either way, breaking even is indeed very good. Since so many things stacked against the linux sales of Q3 (later release date, reliance on 3D acceleration which isn't easy to get working, etc.), it's got to make other game developers think that they could fix those problems and make money. Wait... that's what Loki did. Yeah, I think that we can safely hope for a bright future.
You've got to be kidding if you're taking this troll seriously.
:-)
However, if it will motivate you to never do another windows title again, I'll never hire to you to work on a game for me because you admitted the existence of linux and didn't say "May bill gates live forever" at the end of your sentence. Linux sucks! windows rules! I hurl invectives at you!
So, are you going to never develope a windows game again?
USB: So you've never heard of the linux joystick driver? It was new in 2.1 and has been around for a while. It's a nice unified interface that allows to to relatively easily deal with any joystick using the same interface. It even works with rewired playstation controllers, if I recall the docs properly.
3D: This is actively being worked on in XF 4, etc. While true, it's kind of pointless to say that people should be working on what they are already working on.
Retailers: true. I virtually never buy stuff from brick-and-mortar shops, but it would be nice for them to stock the linux versions, and for the linux versions to be available.
Standardized system: There is. OpenGL for graphics, linux joystrick driver to joystick, X for keyboard and mouse. Or use one of the ever-expanding number of cross-platform compatability libraries. Glut could make a decent choice.
Anyhow, few people seem to attribute poor quake III sales to quake. Quake has been the same game for the last three versions, and really the last6 if you cound doom and wolfenstein. I liked wolf, I enjoyed doom, and I even enjoyed quake occasionally, but come on. They're the same game with different graphics and a few tweeks in gameplay.
That and ever-increasing unrealism. I never even bothered with III when I saw a friend play a demo - people were moving around so damn fast they might as well not have bothered rendering them at all. He died after entering a room, running halfway accross it, and spinning at least 400 degrees in around a second.
seriously, since linux is still disproportionally made up of geeks (aka smart people), don't you think that they'd be disproportionally made up of people who get tired of the same damn thing over and over again, with the big distinction in newer versions being that they require even more hours of practice to get a modicum of skill?
I know that I have better things to do than to play occasionally, and if you're anything but a dedicated quake player, your ass is going to be smeared on the wall pretty constantly.
Linux sales of quake might be more of a metric of how many people have nothing constructive to do with any of their time, rather than a how-many-people play games on linux. A more interesting question would be for games which don't have such a high skill bar for entry, and thus are playable by those with jobs, relationships, responsibilities, etc.
You can't be serious that playing a game screwing over everything else is a feature. Microsoft really can't grasp the idea that someone might want to do more than one thing on their machine, can they?
Btw, how do you make the whole OS dlls that don't switch to ring 0 and stay secure? Ring 0 is there for a reason. I'm curious how you put nearly everything outside of ring 0 and keep the same functionality.
Yeah, but a 533 MHz 21164a is going to get about the same performance as a 550 Athlon at best, optimized fortran excluded. I'm talking about the 21264, which is the current Alpha CPU, and tremendously expensive. I know because I wanted one really badly but couldn't afford one.
:-)
I used to have a 633 MHz 21164a, but it didn't have an AGP port and I want to do 3D programming. Try looking up prices for an Alpha with an AGP slot.
Sure as a pure server they're viable and non-institutional prices, but how many people have pure servers who aren't in an institution? Even there they're only really going to shine if you have lots of users logging on simultaneously. They are nice for that, though. I remember that on my alpha I'd have to have 4 processes in an infinte loop before I'd notice. I liked the Alpha a lot. Damn no agp port...
Well, the Alpha would have a much bigger market penetration if it wasn't so damn expensive. Do you really want to spend $3000 just for the CPU and motherboard? I know I don't have that money. I suspect that an awful lot of people are in that situation.
Otherwise, aside from that and the occasional lack of 64bit cleanness, the Alpha is a nice platform.
The compaq C compilers were advertised to get about a 20%-30% speed increase over gcc, and that was about a year ago. All sorts of nifty optimizations were scheduled to be merged into gcc since then.
I've moved to an Athlon because alphas are just too damn expensive, but gcc was not so far behind digital's C compiler.
If you want to talk about fortran, that is a different story. I think that on average the digital fortran compiler would produce code about double the speed of g77.
Anyhow, the tremendous speed increase in the digital compiler was mostly in inefficient code. There is a very interesting (but old now) paper linked to off of alphalinux.org about how to write optimized C code. While unoptimized code would usually run a slower on gcc, the difference prettymuch disappeared when you optimized your C (things like manually unrolling loops, transposing matrices before multiplications, etc.).
So it depends. The digital C compiler would result in unoptimized code running faster on an Alpha, and the data that I have for this was from a long time ago. What the state of compilers is now, I don't know. However, I would be extremely suprised if gcc hasn't gone a long way to catching up.
As usual, katz is oversimplifying the situation. There are geeks from all walks of life with all sorts of codes of ethics. There are atheists, christians, and all sorts of other religiously minded people.
Now there are people from both categories who are good people and there are people who give into selfishness. Now all situations can lend themselves to selfishness. A pampered life like the tech life can lead to a more comfortable sort of selfishness. Since everyone around you is doing more or less OK, it's easy to forget about them since they obviously don't need you.
Of course, some people do in fact have morals. Take Larry Wall for instance. I don't think that anyone will deny that he's been one of the most giving members of the hacker community, and he leads a tech life like many of the more selfish members of the community.
Of course, part of this is that a very visible section of the tech community is young and being young lends itself to being selfish. So there may be a bit to what katz said in that the tech community has a very visible young component.
Of course, there are few in the US who have the right to throw stones. I suspect that this is the real origin of a selfish streak in the geek community -- it's the culture that they grew up in.
So why is the culture selfish? Human nature coupled with the opportunity for giving into it provided by a prosperous economy would seem to be the easiest explanations, and KISS. It's not like there have been many selfless societies which didn't fall into the error of making the individual nearly worthless.
What's the solution? Virtue. Pretty easy. If the problem is that people aren't being good enough, they have to be better.
Of course this is a major problem when you can't agree on what goodness is. And if anyone is operating under the delusion that there is some sort of concensus in the US or the world, what are you smoking? I don't smoke, but I know some people who'd love to try what you're on.
So of course the first step we have to take in fixing society is to decide what a fixed society would be like.
So while moaning about problems in society is useful (watch out for that tiger!), it's just the beginning of starting. it is an important beginning. There are plenty of people who won't even admit that human beings are broken and need fixing.
Once we convince them of that, the next and biggest step is to figure out what we want. And this is, honestly, not going to happen in the US. It might happen in North America, but not the US. The US is a loose political experiment which is trying to see if you can keep people together with a simple list of forbidden actions. Of course things are changing and mandates are cropping up here and there (good samaritan laws, for instance), a country in which a positive ideal of good was set up for all would not be the US other than perhaps in name.
So we live in a country where we have a few iron rules ("Thou shalt not!" type stuff). If anyone can honestly be surprised that selfishness is a big trend, I'm impressed. Left to themselves, a large portion of people will give in to their impulses. Selfishness is a human impulse.
Pretty simple. There is no solution on a global scale that doesn't involve warfare. That's one of the first things that you learn if you're a philosophy major for any real length of time. Understanding the universe is a trivial problem compared to explaining it to someone else. And if your understandings differ significantly, the difference can be dangerous. Let's say that some group which believes in a not very forgiving god is right. The rest of us are in a lot of trouble. Now let's say that you're a member of this sect and genuinely believe it (the lack of ability to genuinely believe in anything in modern american society is another problem entire unto itself), and your son/daughter was being influenced by someone in such a way as to encourage the rath of said deity. What do you do? Is force really unjustified? Let's say that your son/daughter is being influenced by a gang and being drawn into that life of violence, treatury, crime, etc. Would violence be justified then?
It always amazes me when people can't understand religious wars. They're some of the most natural actions of people, when you get down to it. They are not the best option, I think, since I believe that a person's will is inviolable and that their choices are their own.
On the other hand, what do you do about people who don't have other options? If a person is never taught that there is anything but [wrong belief A], they can't choose against it, but they can be corrupted by it. So would that then justify violent invervention?
What would? When is violence justified? If you can say that violence is never jusitified, what response do you give to unjustified violence. What response do you give to violence of the mind? What do you do with a man who preaches violence? What do you do with a man who tells others to kill but doesn't kill himself? What do you do with a man who preaches a philosophy which makes killing insignificant. How close to the act do you have to get before violence is justified.
What do you do with a school for pirates? They don't go on the high seas and steal themselves, but they teach others how to with the intent that they use their knowledge. How is teaching that life isn't worth a gold ring any more reprehensible than teach that neither a life or a gold ring are worth anything?
And if you'll send the police in to forcibly close the school for pirates, why not send them in to forcibly stop [insert favorite pessimistic/relativistic philosopher here]?
And if you'll throw a man out of a room or throw him into prison to stop him to teach, why draw the line there and not just kill him. It's a lot more effective.
So to conclude, of course geek culture is selfish. Given the prevalence of Free Software, however, it's probably one of the more giving cultures. So unless you're prepared to provide a positive ideal of good and claim that those who are opposed to it must be stopped, please don't belabor the point that life isn't perfect.
I think that he meant that they ask in child-like wonder: "Why should the nasty big governmetn be threatening us for a complete disregard of community and acting like we're the only important part of the universe while we're busy actively harming nearly everyone around us?"
Micrsoft has been, and has been proven to be, destructive to those around it. That is patently obvious to anyone who doesn't want a MS-only solution to problems in the computer industry and finally has become accepted by the people (in the form of the government, to be a little idealistic about things). To compare this to a breach of laissez-faire is reidiculous. Dis-incorporate microsoft and then apply laissez-faire to them. Oh, and get rid of their copyrights and patents, too, then I'll buy the laissez-faire argument about government intervention.
Microsoft has used the tools of the government, it must abide by the rules of the government. Just as it is illegal to copy win98 without permission from microsoft, it is illegal to use the prevenalnce of win* to squeeze out linux, mac, sun, et al.
If they object to the laws which hinder them on the principle that they are laws, let them also object to the laws which help them on the same basis.
People can want to be left alone all they want. To want to be left alone while you are not leaving other people alone is ridiculous.
Do you have an email address? If so, please use mine so that we can continue this conversation that way. Since this is an old message I don't know how long it will be around for any more.
Alright. But how do I distinguish between a text editor and a word processor? How do I distinguish between typing text into the text widget of the gimp and typing text into my text editor and typing it into my word processor?
./dns2reverse.pl and frankly I don't really believe that you're going to come up with a much faster interface than the command line. It's got around 100 inputs all close to each other and fairly independent of each other. You're going to need one hell of a wiz-bang input device to match that data throughput without being just a modified keyboard.
/bin/datadumper /usr/share/executable - > file2 && chmod +x file2
..."
The only way that I can see, short of omniscient computers, is to do something which is the equivalent of launching a program. Calling it changing modes, shifting paradigms, praying to the archangel gabriel. I don't care, but someone, unless this computer is psychic, I have to tell it what I want.
At that point, you're right back to
So if we take a step back from input and just focus on file storage, doesn't everyone realize that a filesystem is nothing more than a relational object database?
It just happens to be a really big database which is optimized more for relational searching rather than flat searching.
And UNIX even has the object-stream method, more or less (more less than more, in practice). Make every data file you have executable, make its first line
#!
use things like
./file | grey-shade | bump-map | cat
true, not as streamlined as it could be, but a few tweeks to the shell and that would be fixed.
So this isn't new. It's just not overly useful. People tend to operate in modes. I tend to have to get into my writing mode before I write fiction, I have to get into my coding mode before I code. Some people call these mindsets, others moods, others modes. Whatever, but it's very natural to prepare to do some action. And it's not at all unnatural to pull out a piece of paper to write with, or to put it somewhere when I'm done. So opening the gimp and then hitting save is not very strange. It's not identical, but it is conceptually equivalent.
I've got a friend who rants about the everything-is-an-object model once every month or two. The problem with it is that it isn't how life works. No one model will fit every situation perfectual. You can take that as an axiom of computer science, life, basketball, prettymuch anything you want. There are both square and round holes in life. So you pick the round peg because it will fit into both and then supply woodclue/putty/cement/etc. for those who encounter square pegs.
Or make a few and require people to carry two bags, one of round pegs and the other of square pegs. Or to take the analogy the other way, you bring square peg-holders with you since they can accomodate both.
But please don't ever make a system which requires you to describe the data that you want by the data that you want rather than some external artificial description. I'd much, much rather use logo7.jpg than "The logo in the burgendy shade of red which is bump-mapped a little more than logo6.jpg and I airbrushed
Data can get very complex which is why people create artificially simple descriptions for them. Most people call these names, such as file name or personal name or family name. Do you want to reference Ted Smith by his characteristics rather than his name? I sure don't. I'd much rather call him Ted Smith and then reference characteristics to refine the description *if*necessary*.
Oh, and computers do make a difference between code and data. Code is what gets executed and data is what goes in the registers. Code can be data but for every given opcode, there is something defined as code and something defined as data. That leads to the distinction between programs and data (aside from the fact that chopping and wood are distinct, as well, so that lends itself to the program-data dichotomy too).
I'm not saying that the current methods cannot be improved, but that this "paradigm shift" already exists +/-, in UNIX on the command line for the last 20+ years. If it was that revolutionary it would have revolutionized by now. As it stands, it's in a quite comfortable place - it complements the functional method of doing things.
It's not that Free software should be exempt from warranties. It's that free software should be. I.e. if I give some guy a piece of code and specifically tell him that I don't know if it is perfect, he has no legal or moral right to demand any sort of warranty from me.
If he wants a warranty, he can buy the program from me. If he has given me nothing, he has no right to expect anything from me. It basically just boils down to that.
Basically, please explain how people should have to warrant their gifts.
>> with the hood welded shut?"
>>
> Sure, I have no problem so doing.
> I never go under the bonnet of my car anyway - 's
> what I pay my local garage to do. Besides, do you
> complain when you are sold a sealed battery?
Don't you get that the point is that if the hood of your car is welded shut, you can't go to your local garage? You'd have to go to the approved garage in central headquarters or wherever. (especially if you signed a contract before buying the car which stated that you had to, and you didn't really have an option about this because it was the standard business practice everywhere and there are no dealerships selling brand name cars which sell them without said contracts.)
And do you really not add your own oil when its low or fill your own windshield wiper fluid? Do you really call a tow truck if you get the out-of-oil light in your car rather than pulling over to the side of the road, pulling out your spare quart of oil in the trunk, pouring it into the appropriate place in the engine, and going on your way?
Can you at least see that some people like to save their own time and money?
Hi, I've found the quality of vorbis (cvs from about 2-3 weeks ago) to be on par with mp3s, and the sizes seem to differ in only the last 3-4 digits of the byte count. As for time, I found that on an Athlon 600 that I could encode a song in just slightly more time than it takes to play it. I.e. I can start encoding and start xmms playing it and it's about a minute before it starts to skip, assuming that I'm not doing anything else.
I don't know why you are having the experiences that you are, but you paint the ogg vorbis format a lot darker than I've found it to be.
Provided that the bits that you are XORing it with are random enough (low order bits of radio static is, from what I've heard, especially when stuffing them through a randomizing algorithm) and they are known only by you and your recipient, XORing is the only algorithm proven secure. Of course it's common name is a 1 time pad, but who's going to quibble over names.