Not to mention that SC is sprite-based and WC3 is polygon-based. Until polygons don't look like cheap dime-store mannequins, some of us actually prefer sprite-based games. They're easier on the eyes.
You can get window manager skins with "close" in the upper right, you know. Although it's really a usability feature to put "close" far away from other window operations; otherwise people tend to close windows that they wanted to minimize, etc.
(it was a nice change from his usual rants, which usually
run along the lines of "this strip has sucked any enjoyment out of my life, and I now live in a
constant hell of fatigue and despair. I'm so very, very tired..."
Think "sad girls in snow", Piro - quick!
Seriously, I don't understand why he puts up with even 10% of the crap he gets. If I were putting up a free comic for all and sundry, you can bet I wouldn't be taking any criticism from others about my art, let alone about how often I update the site, when the shirts will be available, etc. People need to understand that he's doing this out of the goodness of his heart and artistic integrity, and he needs to understand that he's entirely entitled to tell any complainers to STFU, or at least to completely ignore them.
And MT isn't the only comic - it seems that most widely-read web comics acquire a halo of people that just bitch to the artist and make them feel bad. I'm in the "silent majority" - I read web comics every day but I usually don't email the author either to complain or to applaud. And it really pisses me off to read that somebody's been giving one of my favorite artists grief for something that they do completely for free anyway. Some people are just not very nice, I guess - I was taught that if you can't say something nice, don't say anything.
Um, Internet application work != the entire realm of software development. All you Web guys just think you're the be-all and end-all of the industry because you do stuff that's flashy. Meanwhile, on the 90% of the industry iceberg that's below the water, life with C goes on.
Well, until you write a different "dialect" of your language, like using Eiffel# instead of Eiffel - which is not really an improvement and not the vast world-changing development improvement that Microsoft said it would be.
I wish I could find the previous/. or k5 story that had a link to this article, but basically someone did the math and discovered that the CLR only really supports certain kinds of language characteristics, and so eventually to use the full power of it you have to use a language that is essentially C# with different tokens. C# is the "common denominator", and other languages will need a C# compatibility layer of varying complexities, depending on their similarity to the concepts that make up C#.
I think the GPL is safer than that. Ordinary EULAs give you the right ("license") to install and use the software. GPL'd software is subject to no such installation and use limitations - it is essentially public domain for the purposes that most users of commercial licensed software are used to (I am not talking about redistribution of the software yet, of course.)
The only question is what happens when you get around to redistributing binaries of the GPL'd software for which you are not the author. In the commercial software case, you have no right to do this and are automatically in the wrong. The GPL grants you a license to do this provided that you supply your source code (including modifications) with it. I believe this would make it a legal contract - you have received something (distribution rights) in exchange for consideration (supplying your source code (or an offer to do so), including information which may have been proprietary to you). Neither of these are monetary in nature, but a contract doesn't have to involve money to be valid.
And if you don't accept the GPL, you don't get any extra distribution rights, but you keep the original rights to install and use the software. So you don't really accept the GPL by installing and using the software, but you are only able to obtain redistribution rights by agreeing to the GPL's terms and abiding by the required source code distribution terms. It's not a like a click-wrap license where you lose rights as soon as you click "OK"; it's a case where in order to attain additional rights you must follow the terms of the license. So I think the analogy to click-wrap licenses is a little off.
P.S. Copyrights aren't lost if you don't defend them, or else Eldred v. Ashcroft wouldn't be necessary.
Re:Patches? we don't need no stinkin Patches!
on
Missing Kernel Patches
·
· Score: -1, Troll
Woops, sorry about that.
But still, c'mon, you haven't learned to mouse over them first by now? Plus,/. even has a special feature (which you must have turned off?) that puts the real link location in brackets next to the link like this [goatse.cx].
Plus, I heard the site was down for good, sorry to hear that it's back up. I wouldn't have linked to it if I'd thought it would've really worked:(
Plus I thought my original post would already be at -1 by now:)
Re:Patches? we don't need no stinkin Patches!
on
Missing Kernel Patches
·
· Score: -1, Troll
That's good - we prefer having the patches to the alternative.
Re:Automate it with Visual Sourcesafe
on
Missing Kernel Patches
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I'll agree with the versioning/branching comment, although I'd say that ClearCASE, cvs, pretty much anything would be more stable than VSS. Also, VSS doesn't make it nearly as easy to branch as ClearCASE - in VSS you seem to have to branch the whole project, in ClearCASE you can branch individual files and directories, so you never have to merge more than you need to.
Unfortunately, the Linux kernel configuration management paradigm seems to be more of developers maintaining separate trees, and then handing off patches between trees instead of patches that move between branches. I think this is because for a branching scheme like ClearCASE, you need a centralized authoritative repository to say who has branched from where, and when. Linux has no central branch directory like that, and the patch format commonly used doesn't encode this sort of information. So you can't do automatic conflict resolution (or at least you can't do as much as you'd like) without a branch directory under central control.
Branches make sense to me - I use them every day. But Linux, at the moment, isn't set up to use them very well. And in moving to bitkeeper they're going even farther down the path of handling trees rather than branches.
That would be a neat idea in your Linux distribution - why don't you go and do it?
For now, the "real" Linux is a benevolent dictatorship of Linus for Linus (and sometimes not all that benevolent either:). I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it just means that what you get is exactly what Linus wants, either because he likes the idea or because people he trusts talked him around to liking it.
I'm not sure he could maintain that oversight if people were voting in changes all the time. Although I could see a system where various patches get votes, and then the winner(s) are given a chunk of Linus precious time for him to consider them. The big stumbling block in the Linux kernel process at the moment is not lack of patches, it's lack of time for Linus to consider them and integrate them.
It's kind of funny how the relationship between technology and the law have changed. Four years ago, who would have expected to see an archive of legalisms as a/. front-page story? I mean, this is a tech news site, right?
Ah well, at least there are still white hat lawyers on our side, for the moment at least.
Not that I'm a big Microsoft defender, but I'll point out that this is exactly how Microsoft Office works - a bunch of automation-capable modules with some glue code in between. So it's possible to write your own programs that embed Word documents, etc., the same way that you would embed the IE web browser component. When you say "ordinary users should be able to to this", think of management types building apps in Visual Basic, and consider whether that's really what you want or not:)
If this is really the direction that Linux apps need to go in, then it may turn out that Mono or dotGNU will turn out to have been some of the better things to happen to Linux. Not because of the language interoperation (which I'm not convinced will really work right), but because of the standardization on common objects and interfaces that will be required.
Gah, I'm defending Microsoft Office and.NET (but not Microsoft itself, at least) in the same post. Somebody shoot me now, please.
As Ed[1] would say, "Fud fud fud FUD FUDDY FUD-fud-FUD!"
This hasn't been an issue since, what, 1998 or 99? Download file (to desktop if you want). Double click on RPM file. kpackage fires up and installs it for you. You can even use apt on any non-braindead distribution and let the software elves install stuff overnight for you, just like Windows Update (well, maybe without the instability).
Console windows, gzip, tar, make, etc. aren't factors in the real end-user experience of Linux these days, and haven't been for years as long as you use your distribution's app packages. It would be nice if someone wouldn't bring up the whole damn "packages are hard" thing every time this article gets written, because I get tired of typing up this reply every time. In this aspect, Linux is as hard as you make it. Just because you like to do it the hard way, and that's the only way you know to explain it to dear old Dad, doesn't mean that that's the only way.
Now, if you want to get code from different distributions running on yours (SuSe->RedHat, for instance), or you want an app that's only distributed as source, then you do have to do more work. Just like if you wanted to take an app for Win 3.1 and run it on Win2k, or if you wanted to compile a Windows app from source. But there's documentation (often voluminous), and 90% of the time you can get by if you can just read and follow instructions that any 10-year-old could. Heck, building from source is almost as easy as installing that Mac OS X distributed computing app:)
Is it really? I mean, the creation of such a robot might cause harm to a human, but then again it might not. Asimov-style robots would be paralyzed in fear otherwise, since almost any action could potentially injure a human, following the whole "butterfly flaps its wings" chain of events.
I suppose you could argue from the 0th law of robotics that the creation of non-law-abiding robots would almost definitely injure humanity. But on the other hand, the 0th law was created by the robots themselves in order to essentially hack around their first-law inhibition. I don't find it impossible that they could similarly circumvent the laws if they really needed to.
Or you could see a cataclysm like Jack Chalker's Rings of the Master series, where in the couple minutes after Master System comes on line, it decides that the best way to protect humanity is establish a machine police state, spread humanity to the stars, and enforce a non-technological society for most of the human race. We'd better be careful how we program our ethical robots or they may make things a little safer than we'd like:)
Granted it's nothing extra. But there is still a cost to the site overall which may or may not be worthwhile. If everybody piles onto the bandwagon because "we already have a site license", then you've got problems if the site license terms change and you can't stop using Microsoft. Site licensing is a smart move for Microsoft - it makes it look "free" to use their product, in exchange for vendor lock-in.
Re:GNOME2 looks like Windows?
on
GNOME 2.0 Beta
·
· Score: 1
The scrollbars, the gnome menu, and also the file browser look very similar to Win2k in some of the shots. Although I'm hoping that these just happen to be themes.
Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...
on
GNOME 2.0 Beta
·
· Score: 1
...and that's the real reason the IOC doesn't like it when you 'boarders get all doped up, don't ya know:)
I wonder - if robots were given Asimov's three (four) laws somehow, and could understand those laws, could they alter themselves or make other robots which did not follow those laws? It seems like, in order to ensure that robots stay ethically constrained, you'd have to write them a Meta-DMCA of the mind: "Thou shalt not attempt to circumvent or evade these ethical rules". And then you'd have to have other rules to back that up, etc., etc.
It seems that it would be impossible to prevent a machine intelligence from hacking itself or its fellows to remove any constraints that we would put upon it. Which maybe would be a sign in and of itself that the machine was intelligence. But it wouldn't be a very good sign for humanity, especially once the machines see how we treat other humans...
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention that SC is sprite-based and WC3 is polygon-based. Until polygons don't look like cheap dime-store mannequins, some of us actually prefer sprite-based games. They're easier on the eyes.
You're a Linux donut?
You can get window manager skins with "close" in the upper right, you know. Although it's really a usability feature to put "close" far away from other window operations; otherwise people tend to close windows that they wanted to minimize, etc.
Think "sad girls in snow", Piro - quick!
Seriously, I don't understand why he puts up with even 10% of the crap he gets. If I were putting up a free comic for all and sundry, you can bet I wouldn't be taking any criticism from others about my art, let alone about how often I update the site, when the shirts will be available, etc. People need to understand that he's doing this out of the goodness of his heart and artistic integrity, and he needs to understand that he's entirely entitled to tell any complainers to STFU, or at least to completely ignore them.
And MT isn't the only comic - it seems that most widely-read web comics acquire a halo of people that just bitch to the artist and make them feel bad. I'm in the "silent majority" - I read web comics every day but I usually don't email the author either to complain or to applaud. And it really pisses me off to read that somebody's been giving one of my favorite artists grief for something that they do completely for free anyway. Some people are just not very nice, I guess - I was taught that if you can't say something nice, don't say anything.
I think I'm done ranting now :)
Yeah...Radio Song. Hey hey hey. (off of the first CD I ever bought :)
Um, Internet application work != the entire realm of software development. All you Web guys just think you're the be-all and end-all of the industry because you do stuff that's flashy. Meanwhile, on the 90% of the industry iceberg that's below the water, life with C goes on.
Well, until you write a different "dialect" of your language, like using Eiffel# instead of Eiffel - which is not really an improvement and not the vast world-changing development improvement that Microsoft said it would be.
I wish I could find the previous /. or k5 story that had a link to this article, but basically someone did the math and discovered that the CLR only really supports certain kinds of language characteristics, and so eventually to use the full power of it you have to use a language that is essentially C# with different tokens. C# is the "common denominator", and other languages will need a C# compatibility layer of varying complexities, depending on their similarity to the concepts that make up C#.
I think the GPL is safer than that. Ordinary EULAs give you the right ("license") to install and use the software. GPL'd software is subject to no such installation and use limitations - it is essentially public domain for the purposes that most users of commercial licensed software are used to (I am not talking about redistribution of the software yet, of course.)
The only question is what happens when you get around to redistributing binaries of the GPL'd software for which you are not the author. In the commercial software case, you have no right to do this and are automatically in the wrong. The GPL grants you a license to do this provided that you supply your source code (including modifications) with it. I believe this would make it a legal contract - you have received something (distribution rights) in exchange for consideration (supplying your source code (or an offer to do so), including information which may have been proprietary to you). Neither of these are monetary in nature, but a contract doesn't have to involve money to be valid.
And if you don't accept the GPL, you don't get any extra distribution rights, but you keep the original rights to install and use the software. So you don't really accept the GPL by installing and using the software, but you are only able to obtain redistribution rights by agreeing to the GPL's terms and abiding by the required source code distribution terms. It's not a like a click-wrap license where you lose rights as soon as you click "OK"; it's a case where in order to attain additional rights you must follow the terms of the license. So I think the analogy to click-wrap licenses is a little off.
P.S. Copyrights aren't lost if you don't defend them, or else Eldred v. Ashcroft wouldn't be necessary.
Woops, sorry about that.
But still, c'mon, you haven't learned to mouse over them first by now? Plus, /. even has a special feature (which you must have turned off?) that puts the real link location in brackets next to the link like this [goatse.cx].
Plus, I heard the site was down for good, sorry to hear that it's back up. I wouldn't have linked to it if I'd thought it would've really worked :(
Plus I thought my original post would already be at -1 by now :)
That's good - we prefer having the patches to the alternative.
I'll agree with the versioning/branching comment, although I'd say that ClearCASE, cvs, pretty much anything would be more stable than VSS. Also, VSS doesn't make it nearly as easy to branch as ClearCASE - in VSS you seem to have to branch the whole project, in ClearCASE you can branch individual files and directories, so you never have to merge more than you need to.
Unfortunately, the Linux kernel configuration management paradigm seems to be more of developers maintaining separate trees, and then handing off patches between trees instead of patches that move between branches. I think this is because for a branching scheme like ClearCASE, you need a centralized authoritative repository to say who has branched from where, and when. Linux has no central branch directory like that, and the patch format commonly used doesn't encode this sort of information. So you can't do automatic conflict resolution (or at least you can't do as much as you'd like) without a branch directory under central control.
Branches make sense to me - I use them every day. But Linux, at the moment, isn't set up to use them very well. And in moving to bitkeeper they're going even farther down the path of handling trees rather than branches.
That would be a neat idea in your Linux distribution - why don't you go and do it?
For now, the "real" Linux is a benevolent dictatorship of Linus for Linus (and sometimes not all that benevolent either :). I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it just means that what you get is exactly what Linus wants, either because he likes the idea or because people he trusts talked him around to liking it.
I'm not sure he could maintain that oversight if people were voting in changes all the time. Although I could see a system where various patches get votes, and then the winner(s) are given a chunk of Linus precious time for him to consider them. The big stumbling block in the Linux kernel process at the moment is not lack of patches, it's lack of time for Linus to consider them and integrate them.
[insert standard flame about definition of irony here]
It's kind of funny how the relationship between technology and the law have changed. Four years ago, who would have expected to see an archive of legalisms as a /. front-page story? I mean, this is a tech news site, right?
Ah well, at least there are still white hat lawyers on our side, for the moment at least.
So what button do you paste with, then? Or do you have to reach all the way over to the keyboard to do it :)
Not that I'm a big Microsoft defender, but I'll point out that this is exactly how Microsoft Office works - a bunch of automation-capable modules with some glue code in between. So it's possible to write your own programs that embed Word documents, etc., the same way that you would embed the IE web browser component. When you say "ordinary users should be able to to this", think of management types building apps in Visual Basic, and consider whether that's really what you want or not :)
If this is really the direction that Linux apps need to go in, then it may turn out that Mono or dotGNU will turn out to have been some of the better things to happen to Linux. Not because of the language interoperation (which I'm not convinced will really work right), but because of the standardization on common objects and interfaces that will be required.
Gah, I'm defending Microsoft Office and .NET (but not Microsoft itself, at least) in the same post. Somebody shoot me now, please.
As Ed[1] would say, "Fud fud fud FUD FUDDY FUD-fud-FUD!"
This hasn't been an issue since, what, 1998 or 99? Download file (to desktop if you want). Double click on RPM file. kpackage fires up and installs it for you. You can even use apt on any non-braindead distribution and let the software elves install stuff overnight for you, just like Windows Update (well, maybe without the instability).
Console windows, gzip, tar, make, etc. aren't factors in the real end-user experience of Linux these days, and haven't been for years as long as you use your distribution's app packages. It would be nice if someone wouldn't bring up the whole damn "packages are hard" thing every time this article gets written, because I get tired of typing up this reply every time. In this aspect, Linux is as hard as you make it. Just because you like to do it the hard way, and that's the only way you know to explain it to dear old Dad, doesn't mean that that's the only way.
Now, if you want to get code from different distributions running on yours (SuSe->RedHat, for instance), or you want an app that's only distributed as source, then you do have to do more work. Just like if you wanted to take an app for Win 3.1 and run it on Win2k, or if you wanted to compile a Windows app from source. But there's documentation (often voluminous), and 90% of the time you can get by if you can just read and follow instructions that any 10-year-old could. Heck, building from source is almost as easy as installing that Mac OS X distributed computing app :)
[1] See you someday, somewhere space cowgirl!
Is it really? I mean, the creation of such a robot might cause harm to a human, but then again it might not. Asimov-style robots would be paralyzed in fear otherwise, since almost any action could potentially injure a human, following the whole "butterfly flaps its wings" chain of events.
I suppose you could argue from the 0th law of robotics that the creation of non-law-abiding robots would almost definitely injure humanity. But on the other hand, the 0th law was created by the robots themselves in order to essentially hack around their first-law inhibition. I don't find it impossible that they could similarly circumvent the laws if they really needed to.
Or you could see a cataclysm like Jack Chalker's Rings of the Master series, where in the couple minutes after Master System comes on line, it decides that the best way to protect humanity is establish a machine police state, spread humanity to the stars, and enforce a non-technological society for most of the human race. We'd better be careful how we program our ethical robots or they may make things a little safer than we'd like :)
I know it's "assholes", I just wanted them to quit saying "moron".
Number one comment from the linked editorial that you should read, digest, and read again:
Think about it.
Granted it's nothing extra. But there is still a cost to the site overall which may or may not be worthwhile. If everybody piles onto the bandwagon because "we already have a site license", then you've got problems if the site license terms change and you can't stop using Microsoft. Site licensing is a smart move for Microsoft - it makes it look "free" to use their product, in exchange for vendor lock-in.
The scrollbars, the gnome menu, and also the file browser look very similar to Win2k in some of the shots. Although I'm hoping that these just happen to be themes.
...and that's the real reason the IOC doesn't like it when you 'boarders get all doped up, don't ya know :)
I wonder - if robots were given Asimov's three (four) laws somehow, and could understand those laws, could they alter themselves or make other robots which did not follow those laws? It seems like, in order to ensure that robots stay ethically constrained, you'd have to write them a Meta-DMCA of the mind: "Thou shalt not attempt to circumvent or evade these ethical rules". And then you'd have to have other rules to back that up, etc., etc.
It seems that it would be impossible to prevent a machine intelligence from hacking itself or its fellows to remove any constraints that we would put upon it. Which maybe would be a sign in and of itself that the machine was intelligence. But it wouldn't be a very good sign for humanity, especially once the machines see how we treat other humans...
So Civil Engineers used to be those kids who dug great honkin' holes in the front yard? :)