If only that were true. The majority of highly-rated posts dwell on off-topic political commentaries, ridicule of the board's blacklist, and various distracting but irrelevant side-shows. (Thankfully, meta-discussions of Groklaw have subsided.) There is a lot of good information, but I would use Yahoeuvre and start with posts having at least 20 recs.
I heard about this guy's business while watching the men's mogul competition, so I looked it up on NBC's olympics site:
At 13, the entrepreneur founded an online marketing company that he says has grown to the third-largest in the world. Begg-Smith originally started the Vancouver and New York-based company, which designs search engines and pop-up window blockers for about 5,000 websites, to fund his ski career.
Which seemed a little fishy--why would an online marketing company want to block pop-ups? I guess somebody did a clumsy job of white-washing his bio.
While I agree that this is bad form by the article author, it would help if FireFox (in my case) used a decent scaling algorithm. Do any browsers handle resizing more gracefully?
While I'm sure that many introverts are turning over deep coding problems, coming up with the idea that will change the world, and making keen observations, others are neurotic, anxious, or wasting cycles on trivialities. Not all brain activity is condusive to health, happiness, and success.
It's very nice working for an outfit that lets you do full-time research, doing pretty much what you want to do. Microsoft generally has fairly bad press, but I think that this is something that Microsoft should really brag about, because they pay lots of people to do essentially very freely directed research. They don't correct our papers, they let us go to whatever conferences we want to. I'm publishing at a higher rate than I did at the university.
This is Microsoft Research. They have the same independence as university researchers--that is how Microsoft lures them away from academia. These guys are making honest comparisons to Linux and FreeBSD, because that is what they do as good researchers. Microsoft is enlightened enough not to interfere.
This decision is interesting to me, because after the initial bnetd decision, I posted a comment on LWN suggesting that the judge had made a cursory, unimaginative ruling, leaving the tough issues to a higher court. So I am saddened that the circuit court has unreservedly affirmed the initial decision, with equally lackluster analysis. As a layman, the quality of this judge's reasoning simply fails to impress me--unlike the ruling in the recent Grokster case, which was full of incisive analysis.
For example, on page 14, I fail to comprehend how this case differs from Vault. The judge says
Unlike in Vault, the state law at issue here neither conflicts with the
interoperability exception...
but does not make clear to me how bnetd could have exercized the interoperability exception without violating the contract. (Perhaps someone else got it and can explain to me?)
For another, on page 17, it says that the "secret handshake" controls access to the "copyrighted game". This is an extremely strained interpretation: the handshake controls access to the Battle.Net servers, and only incidentally to the Battle.Net portions of the client.
So I would be very disappointed if this weak analysis were the last word in this case.
People will magically assume that they should go to yourdomain.someobscurenonversigingTLDlikedotbizorp erhapsdotus in stead of yourdomain.net when you drop it (and when it's subsequently re-registered by a domain spammer or your competitor).
That's a good point that not many people bring up. Frankly, we should all be grateful to Verisign for employing their mind-control powers in such a magnanimous way. Imagine what they could do if they really were evil, as so many/.ers claim.
Programming OTOH is tightly restrained by what our programming languages actually allow us to do.
Hmm, I wonder what programming languages he uses? Oh: "coauthor of C for Linux Programming in 21 Days". I prefer to use languages that don't tightly restrain me, and can be more creative that way.
I don't want to overstate the point--artistry is found in all forms of programming--but I think it's telling that the advocates of higher-level languages in the interview are more inclined to see programming as art.
One piece that seems to be missing is the ability to download movies from the various (legal) on-line movie rental sites (eg movielink.com). Most of them won't even let you into the site without IE. I haven't tried faking it out, because I'm afraid there will be further obstacles (for example, movielink.com requires me to install a Windows application before downloading). Are there any sites that can be made to work on a free system? And then there's the problem of playing the downloaded movies. I thought that this would be possible, but even with mplayer and the w32codecs, I had trouble with the WMV9 file from movielink.com.:-(
Downloading movies (yes, I mean mainstream movies with restricted licenses, not the few that are free) would be one of the killer apps for a Linux HTPC, but it seems there is no way to do it, even if I am willing to pay.
web sites should be caged or leashed at all times, and large, aggressive breeds of web site should require a license. Also, teach your children never to tease web sites.
I was going to write a post like yours, but didn't have the energy. Thank goodness someone gets it! Yes, bad math skills, bad software skills, and human error are partly responsible for the mistakes, but most of the posters seem blind to the major lossage of spreadsheets. Basically, making spreadsheets is a simple form of programming--in an awful programming language. To your list, I would add that there's no way to get an overview of the program, because it's composed of many little programs, each in its own box; and there's no way to debug. I also think the solution is along the lines you describe, which I've often thought of writing....
I remember when I learned the truths in Paul Graham's essay, while working for a software start-up. Before, I figured that a reporter would decide to run a story about a company, research its customers, call one of them up, and someone there would spontaneously say, "With FrobCo's E-Business Catalyst, Yoyodyne was able to streamline its supply chain while improving customer satisfaction." This is exactly backwards. Instead, the company says to its PR firm, "I want an article suggesting that E-Business Catalyst streamlines supply chain and improves customer satisfaction." The PR firm calls up a few customers and says, "May I quote you as saying 'With FrobCo's E-Business Catalyst, Yoyodyne was able to streamline its supply chain while improving customer satisfaction.'" Customer agrees, because part of the contract was that they would be a "referencable account" after successful deployment. The press release goes out, and amazingly, some gullible or lazy reporter prints it with a few edits.
Many years ago, compress was the standard unix compression utility, and it was based on the LZW algorithm. It was patented, and the patent holder started making threatening noises. While some would have been content to pay royalties, and others would ignore the patent, the GNU project saw the need to have an unencumbered compression utility. They wrote gzip, which is now the unix standard. Freedom wins.
Agrobacterium is compress. It's basically the only game in town for gene transfer into plants, which (regardless of your views on GM crops) is critical to agroscience. But it's patented. These guys found an alternative, and are bringing a fundamental technique to the free world. It opens up whole new possibilities, and I bet a lot of scientists are going to choose to be part of the free world in coming years. Let's hope the effect turns out to be as revolutionary as GNU.
This is foolish. They should have released it under a free license for anyone except those who deny the same right to use their bio-patents.
In free software, we have a long tradition of actors who are half-in, half-out of our community. We benefit from their involvement in some projects, where they are equal participants, even as we may disapprove of their other activities. It gives them the possibility to contribute without making an all-or-nothing committment. In practice, it works out well. IBM, like Monsanto, has been traditionally evil, but they're improving thanks in large part to our community's willingness to work with them. Who knows, maybe we can bring Monsanto around as well.:-)
Does anyone else find the drag to pan (hold down the left button and move the mouse) behavior to be backwards? I far prefer that when I move the mouse down, the page scrolls down (same as hitting the down arrow). Beyond the "down means down" simplicity, this is familiar from applications that don't support panning per se (eg, word processors and browsers), but in which clicking and dragging down will extend the selection downward, thus scrolling down (I'm sure I'm not the only one who's used this method); and from the panning mode of some mouse drivers (eg, the EmulateWheel option in XFree86), in which holding down the middle button and dragging down is equivalent to scrolling down with the wheel.
However, the UI standard (as found in google maps) seems to be the "pointer sticks to the page" metaphor, which is frankly idiotic. When I'm reading a page in reality, I do not stick my finger on it and push up in order to see a lower portion of the map. Rather, I move my gaze downward. If you want a metaphor, imagine the pointer is stuck to the viewport, not the page. Worse, the google maps method has a built-in limitation: when you reach the edge of the screen, you have to let go of the button and move to the other edge to keep scrolling. The other way, you can scroll forever, because the mouse pointer doesn't actually move.
I always get it backwards when using the "sticks to page" metaphor--very frustrating. So is this just me? How about starting a "down means down" movement to correct this interface blunder?
(I admit I don't know if this can be implemented in javascript for google maps. Can you get mouse movement events but prevent the pointer from moving? Can you get scroll wheel events?)
The Infoworld story (and therefore the article submitter, the slashdot editor, and all the comments) totally mischaracterizes these challenges. They are challenges for computer science researchers, not for practical technology. They are supposed to be like Hilbert's challenges to mathematicians, which let to whole new fields of study. Think big and long term!
Slashdot Mirror
It used to be a microwave link to MIT. When whether was bad (and remember this is Boston), we had massive packet loss.
"So your parents thought it was funny too...?"
If only that were true. The majority of highly-rated posts dwell on off-topic political commentaries, ridicule of the board's blacklist, and various distracting but irrelevant side-shows. (Thankfully, meta-discussions of Groklaw have subsided.) There is a lot of good information, but I would use Yahoeuvre and start with posts having at least 20 recs.
How can a post asking an obvious question be insightful!?!?
While I agree that this is bad form by the article author, it would help if FireFox (in my case) used a decent scaling algorithm. Do any browsers handle resizing more gracefully?
While I'm sure that many introverts are turning over deep coding problems, coming up with the idea that will change the world, and making keen observations, others are neurotic, anxious, or wasting cycles on trivialities. Not all brain activity is condusive to health, happiness, and success.
This is Microsoft Research. They have the same independence as university researchers--that is how Microsoft lures them away from academia. These guys are making honest comparisons to Linux and FreeBSD, because that is what they do as good researchers. Microsoft is enlightened enough not to interfere.
How would this work in places where you can't walk around, such as at a restaurant, lecture, or theater?
For example, on page 14, I fail to comprehend how this case differs from Vault. The judge says
but does not make clear to me how bnetd could have exercized the interoperability exception without violating the contract. (Perhaps someone else got it and can explain to me?)For another, on page 17, it says that the "secret handshake" controls access to the "copyrighted game". This is an extremely strained interpretation: the handshake controls access to the Battle.Net servers, and only incidentally to the Battle.Net portions of the client.
So I would be very disappointed if this weak analysis were the last word in this case.
I think the chef must have put some things in the salad without telling you. Like fish, chips, and vinegar.
That's a good point that not many people bring up. Frankly, we should all be grateful to Verisign for employing their mind-control powers in such a magnanimous way. Imagine what they could do if they really were evil, as so many /.ers claim.
I don't want to overstate the point--artistry is found in all forms of programming--but I think it's telling that the advocates of higher-level languages in the interview are more inclined to see programming as art.
Downloading movies (yes, I mean mainstream movies with restricted licenses, not the few that are free) would be one of the killer apps for a Linux HTPC, but it seems there is no way to do it, even if I am willing to pay.
web sites should be caged or leashed at all times, and large, aggressive breeds of web site should require a license. Also, teach your children never to tease web sites.
I was going to write a post like yours, but didn't have the energy. Thank goodness someone gets it! Yes, bad math skills, bad software skills, and human error are partly responsible for the mistakes, but most of the posters seem blind to the major lossage of spreadsheets. Basically, making spreadsheets is a simple form of programming--in an awful programming language. To your list, I would add that there's no way to get an overview of the program, because it's composed of many little programs, each in its own box; and there's no way to debug. I also think the solution is along the lines you describe, which I've often thought of writing....
I remember when I learned the truths in Paul Graham's essay, while working for a software start-up. Before, I figured that a reporter would decide to run a story about a company, research its customers, call one of them up, and someone there would spontaneously say, "With FrobCo's E-Business Catalyst, Yoyodyne was able to streamline its supply chain while improving customer satisfaction." This is exactly backwards. Instead, the company says to its PR firm, "I want an article suggesting that E-Business Catalyst streamlines supply chain and improves customer satisfaction." The PR firm calls up a few customers and says, "May I quote you as saying 'With FrobCo's E-Business Catalyst, Yoyodyne was able to streamline its supply chain while improving customer satisfaction.'" Customer agrees, because part of the contract was that they would be a "referencable account" after successful deployment. The press release goes out, and amazingly, some gullible or lazy reporter prints it with a few edits.
yeah, idiot me posting too fast
of about 1 day.
Agrobacterium is compress. It's basically the only game in town for gene transfer into plants, which (regardless of your views on GM crops) is critical to agroscience. But it's patented. These guys found an alternative, and are bringing a fundamental technique to the free world. It opens up whole new possibilities, and I bet a lot of scientists are going to choose to be part of the free world in coming years. Let's hope the effect turns out to be as revolutionary as GNU.
In free software, we have a long tradition of actors who are half-in, half-out of our community. We benefit from their involvement in some projects, where they are equal participants, even as we may disapprove of their other activities. It gives them the possibility to contribute without making an all-or-nothing committment. In practice, it works out well. IBM, like Monsanto, has been traditionally evil, but they're improving thanks in large part to our community's willingness to work with them. Who knows, maybe we can bring Monsanto around as well. :-)
However, the UI standard (as found in google maps) seems to be the "pointer sticks to the page" metaphor, which is frankly idiotic. When I'm reading a page in reality, I do not stick my finger on it and push up in order to see a lower portion of the map. Rather, I move my gaze downward. If you want a metaphor, imagine the pointer is stuck to the viewport, not the page. Worse, the google maps method has a built-in limitation: when you reach the edge of the screen, you have to let go of the button and move to the other edge to keep scrolling. The other way, you can scroll forever, because the mouse pointer doesn't actually move.
I always get it backwards when using the "sticks to page" metaphor--very frustrating. So is this just me? How about starting a "down means down" movement to correct this interface blunder?
(I admit I don't know if this can be implemented in javascript for google maps. Can you get mouse movement events but prevent the pointer from moving? Can you get scroll wheel events?)
The Infoworld story (and therefore the article submitter, the slashdot editor, and all the comments) totally mischaracterizes these challenges. They are challenges for computer science researchers, not for practical technology. They are supposed to be like Hilbert's challenges to mathematicians, which let to whole new fields of study. Think big and long term!