I just think it's useful to look at it from the perspective of general users and worth considering.
OK, tell me: How is this useful? Will KDE developers one day lay down their C++ compilers and start programming with GTK? No. Not going to happen. And users obviously disagree on which desktop is better, so none of them will go extinct by natural selection. So your comment is just wishful thinking, and not useful at all.
Here's a different wish: I wish people would stop posting comments like yours to every fucking story about Linux desktops. I wish you would consider that perspective.
It uses a bunch of the same code, but the Darwin kernel is a different architecture (XNU/Mach), it uses Mach-O instead of ELF binaries, the init system is different, and the main system administration utilities are different (no niutil for every other task on FreeBSD). If you're used to FreeBSD, and boot pure Darwin with no GUI, you're not going to feel at home.
Except, of course, if you want to browse files. Is there any good replacement for Finder? A single-threaded file browser isn't really a bragging point for 'the world's most advanced OS'.
Besides, you can develop a model that predicts with perfect reproducibility when the sun will rise over Reykjavik. However, it's of limited value for those not living on Iceland. So you can develop similar models for every other point on the surface of the earth, or you can make a different model where the sun and the planets orbit the earth in weird patterns. Of course, this will force the stars to travel at a speed of 2*distance-to-earth*pi every 24 hours, so it's simpler to imagine that the earth rotates and travels around the sun. So simplicity and general predictibility seem just as important as reproducibility.
I find it more interesting that you still find it interesting after all the insightful discussion you generated with basically the same comment in the last SCO discussion.
Very true. Another problem is that education is the part of society that is most heavily influenced by the dominating ideology of the day. This has also influnced how those who have had aspirations to study learning and education scientifically, have thought education should be. For instance, the father of behaviorism, John B. Watson, meant that parents should always treat their children objectively and with scientific detachment. Naturally, he didn't have a very good relationship with his own offspring.
My point is, a strict adherence to a scientific method will often demand that various beliefs about "human nature" are left unquestioned, more as dogma than as axioms. In Watson's case, the results were nasty. B. F. Skinner, while nicer, also had to invent humanity to suit his rigorous methods, basically the demands of logical positivism. That means learning is stimulus-response, usually more effective for a gambling addiction than for mathematics or language.
In the end, you'll have to take even scientific claims with a truckload of salt. The history of science shows that much of our knowledge is little more than fashion.
I have. And I've complained again and again that they've destroyed Slashdot: All technical discussion has been replaced by people who set The Grandmother as the one true benchmark for usability, and usability as the one true benchmark for technical achievement. Back in the days when the Linux zealots ruled Slashdot, we liked the fact that we could look 'under the hood' of the OS. The Mac fans like the fact that they don't need to. They're interested in products, we old-fashioned nerds are interested in projects. It's consumerism vs DIY, and as they (almost) say: The consumer is always right.
All this is perfectly symbolized by the superficiality of the Mac interface, and the plethora of different and often overly complicated interfaces for GNU/Linux.
Re:SGI's Linux is for Itanium not MIPs
on
SGI Faces Bankruptcy
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I've never publicly bitched about anything concerning SGI, and I always read a couple of threads in a newsgroup before posting. So I just sat back and watched. But a friend of mine had done the stupid thing, and posted a question. Result: hate-mail.
But notice: These people weren't SGI employees, they were users, participating in a SGI hardware newsgroup, and more vehemently hostile towards alternative OSes than any other sort of OS zealot than I've ever seen. And I did notice the Amiga fans in their prime.
Of course, the reason why people even want to run Linux on an SGI isn't so much their preference for Linux as it is caused by how hard it is to get hold of a legal or pirated copy of Irix (in addition to curiosity, of course: it's always interesting to try out exotic hardware). But for some reason, the SGI zealots choose to take this personally.
SGI has put some of its best IRIX things into Linux,
Funny you should say that, because the most rabid anti-Linux people I've ever seen were the ones on comp.sys.sgi.*. If you want to troll, go over there and ask questions about how to install Linux on SGI MIPS hardware. But be sure to use a fake email address, or you may get lots of unpleasant mail.
Most of the fanatics seem to think installing Linux on an SGI will turn it into a PC, but I've never seen a technical explanation for how this should work.
Sadly, you and I are probably going to get nailed with "flamebait" or "troll",...
Yeah, right, and an instant +5. Sadly, since the Mac hordes took over Slashdot, discussions of the actual technical merits or usefulness of Linux have gone elsewhere, and the axiom of computer usability here is now that someone's grandma should be able to use the OS, and success is measured in market share.
Unfortunately, Linux's success doesn't depend upon market share among grandmothers, but has rather more to do with mindshare among developers [insert picture of big ape screaming: developers! developers! developers!]. For some reason, these people have very different needs, and some of the different OSes cater to these different needs.
For instance, if you want to write LaTeX documents, it's far easier to get started in Debian than in Windows or OS X. But your stereotypical grandma doesn't want to do that, does she?
I've got a pair called Eltek Exact (a Norwegian make). They use bass/mid drivers from the Seas Excel range, like the Ellis 1801, but probably not quite as good tweeters.
Just be patient while building them, and you can make them look good as well. Mine don't really look cheap, but they do look homemade.
My bass drivers are actually made of magnesium. Of course, one problem with very hard materials is that they usually ring at specific frequencies. So they have to be dampened, making them even heavier, thus demanding more powerful amps -- if not, they just sound terrible.
You can build OK speakers at low cost, but not really good ones. There's a reason why manufacturers like B&W use exotic materials like kevlar for their speaker membranes: It's light and very stiff. And good speaker membranes have to be just that, because they need to move easily without bending (which distorts the sound). There are some good paper drivers out there, but even those are rather expensive.
On the other hand, good speaker design is quite difficult. It's both acoustic and electrical engineering, and a bit of black magic (or luck). Or you can buy a speaker kit, and build from other people's designs. I did that, and my $1000 speakers sound like $2000 speakers, and look like $20 home-made shit.
Those are philosophy questions, not science questions.
I know. But that's because what we call science has no idea of how to go about answering the questions.
You have to start with, "We are conscious. Animals are not. What's the difference?"
No, that's just ridiculous. We can infer that humans are conscious because we can understand others, and we understand others can understand us (AI tries to mime this). We can't test animals the same way, so we don't know what sort of consciousness they could have. Biologically, we can imagine a cat will have to have a different consciousness, since it has a somewhat different and simpler motor-sensory I/O system.
Dark matter and the biological basis of consciousness are well below the big question: What is knowledge? What is consciousness, and what is truth? This should be answered before the question of what the biological basis of consciousness can be known. We don't even know what consciousness is, so why do we look for its biological basis first?
(The answer to the last question is: We didn't. But we haven't found any good answer yet, unless we believe in Plato et al. But science is, metaphorically speaking, a house of cards built in the air. And I'm saying that with no disrespect to science. (And yes, I'm a bit drunk, but I'm still serious.))
What I can say is that you can tell the people who will get nowhere by how they have something to prove, but no way to prove it. If you can't write, you can't prove anything in writing. People in the publishing business should know this.
As for 'should of' vs. 'should have': The first one is wrong in pretty much the same way that saying the sun and the stars revolve around the earth is wrong. It might make sense to the person writing it, just then, but not to the star that has to travel its own distance to the earth*2*pi every day. It demands exceptions to other well established rules, complicating matters too much to be good usage. Using the preposition 'of' as an auxiliary verb in a few special cases isn't as much wrong as it's stupid. Rhetorically, it just shows that you place a stronger emphasis on expressing an opinion than on thinking well, which certainly doesn't make an argument stronger.
Yes, that sort of thing happens. I've had errors in Word documents that I couldn't fix in three different releases of Word (one for Mac, two for Windows), while OpenOffice.org easily repaired them. There really isn't any reason for not having OpenOffice/NeoOffice if you exchange documents in Microsoft's proprietary formats, at least as a back-up.
Oh, come on. What you say about KDE and Gnome goes for use of various toolkits and libraries in Windows and OS X as well (the latter can even use two differet window border styles at the same time, for double consitency). Getting rid of the various toolkits will either kill backwards compatibility (how are you going to run Notepad or Wordpad if all you have is.NET without reimplementing them from scratch?) or future innovation (how are you going to develop good apps if all you have is $oldlibrary), and is about as good for usability as murdering the bourgeoisie is for maintaining equality and justice: It doesn't even seem sane, and it isn't.
Additionally, KDE runs very well at 1024x768, and if you use a good (ie Debian-based) distro, OpenOffice.org does show up in the menues, right in the 'Office' sub-menu.
And why would Slackware be a better choice for learning "how your system works" than any other distro?
Or to break down the question: What is "your system", and why does Slackware teach it better than anything else? I thing I can answer. "Your system" is is the GNU tools collection and the init scripts, the various servers and daemons, and the various user interfaces.
In that case, you'll notice why Slackware teaches "your system" better: It's like all the other distros, with a different init. Yes, it's a different system.
So what you're saying is that Slackware is better, because it's a better way to learn Slackware. But you're not going to learn Red Hat, Gentoo or Debian better that way, no matter how poor your UIs are.
If you use LaTeX, it's definitely the best option, but I'm not sure I'd call it good. At least not if you write in some weirdo language like Norwegian, where the standard styles are a bit different from the American, British, French and German styles you find in bibtex. I eventually hacked my own.sty from natbib to get the correct style for my thesis (I'm not quite sure I needed to, though).
Bibtex in itself is OK, but writing the bibliography file is a bitch. Perhaps what the OP was asking for was a good frontend?
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a different wish: I wish people would stop posting comments like yours to every fucking story about Linux desktops. I wish you would consider that perspective.
No, no, no! We'll call it ThePatrioticFuck's Law.
It sounds so much better.
It uses a bunch of the same code, but the Darwin kernel is a different architecture (XNU/Mach), it uses Mach-O instead of ELF binaries, the init system is different, and the main system administration utilities are different (no niutil for every other task on FreeBSD). If you're used to FreeBSD, and boot pure Darwin with no GUI, you're not going to feel at home.
Yuo must be new here. On this site, "well written" means well intended. If you can guess what it means, and it means well, it's good enough for us.
Except, of course, if you want to browse files. Is there any good replacement for Finder? A single-threaded file browser isn't really a bragging point for 'the world's most advanced OS'.
Of course. For Debian, success is defined as "relatively few deaths and maimings -- under a free license". HTH.
Besides, you can develop a model that predicts with perfect reproducibility when the sun will rise over Reykjavik. However, it's of limited value for those not living on Iceland. So you can develop similar models for every other point on the surface of the earth, or you can make a different model where the sun and the planets orbit the earth in weird patterns. Of course, this will force the stars to travel at a speed of 2*distance-to-earth*pi every 24 hours, so it's simpler to imagine that the earth rotates and travels around the sun. So simplicity and general predictibility seem just as important as reproducibility.
The more hardcore a gamer is, the smaller the chance of him ever having sex. Go tell your grandpa that.
I find it more interesting that you still find it interesting after all the insightful discussion you generated with basically the same comment in the last SCO discussion.
Very true. Another problem is that education is the part of society that is most heavily influenced by the dominating ideology of the day. This has also influnced how those who have had aspirations to study learning and education scientifically, have thought education should be. For instance, the father of behaviorism, John B. Watson, meant that parents should always treat their children objectively and with scientific detachment. Naturally, he didn't have a very good relationship with his own offspring.
My point is, a strict adherence to a scientific method will often demand that various beliefs about "human nature" are left unquestioned, more as dogma than as axioms. In Watson's case, the results were nasty. B. F. Skinner, while nicer, also had to invent humanity to suit his rigorous methods, basically the demands of logical positivism. That means learning is stimulus-response, usually more effective for a gambling addiction than for mathematics or language.
In the end, you'll have to take even scientific claims with a truckload of salt. The history of science shows that much of our knowledge is little more than fashion.
I have. And I've complained again and again that they've destroyed Slashdot: All technical discussion has been replaced by people who set The Grandmother as the one true benchmark for usability, and usability as the one true benchmark for technical achievement. Back in the days when the Linux zealots ruled Slashdot, we liked the fact that we could look 'under the hood' of the OS. The Mac fans like the fact that they don't need to. They're interested in products, we old-fashioned nerds are interested in projects. It's consumerism vs DIY, and as they (almost) say: The consumer is always right.
All this is perfectly symbolized by the superficiality of the Mac interface, and the plethora of different and often overly complicated interfaces for GNU/Linux.
I've never publicly bitched about anything concerning SGI, and I always read a couple of threads in a newsgroup before posting. So I just sat back and watched. But a friend of mine had done the stupid thing, and posted a question. Result: hate-mail.
But notice: These people weren't SGI employees, they were users, participating in a SGI hardware newsgroup, and more vehemently hostile towards alternative OSes than any other sort of OS zealot than I've ever seen. And I did notice the Amiga fans in their prime.
Of course, the reason why people even want to run Linux on an SGI isn't so much their preference for Linux as it is caused by how hard it is to get hold of a legal or pirated copy of Irix (in addition to curiosity, of course: it's always interesting to try out exotic hardware). But for some reason, the SGI zealots choose to take this personally.
Most of the fanatics seem to think installing Linux on an SGI will turn it into a PC, but I've never seen a technical explanation for how this should work.
Well, most likely, they're just a bunch of snobs.
Unfortunately, Linux's success doesn't depend upon market share among grandmothers, but has rather more to do with mindshare among developers [insert picture of big ape screaming: developers! developers! developers!]. For some reason, these people have very different needs, and some of the different OSes cater to these different needs.
For instance, if you want to write LaTeX documents, it's far easier to get started in Debian than in Windows or OS X. But your stereotypical grandma doesn't want to do that, does she?
I've got a pair called Eltek Exact (a Norwegian make). They use bass/mid drivers from the Seas Excel range, like the Ellis 1801, but probably not quite as good tweeters.
Just be patient while building them, and you can make them look good as well. Mine don't really look cheap, but they do look homemade.
My bass drivers are actually made of magnesium. Of course, one problem with very hard materials is that they usually ring at specific frequencies. So they have to be dampened, making them even heavier, thus demanding more powerful amps -- if not, they just sound terrible.
You can build OK speakers at low cost, but not really good ones. There's a reason why manufacturers like B&W use exotic materials like kevlar for their speaker membranes: It's light and very stiff. And good speaker membranes have to be just that, because they need to move easily without bending (which distorts the sound). There are some good paper drivers out there, but even those are rather expensive.
On the other hand, good speaker design is quite difficult. It's both acoustic and electrical engineering, and a bit of black magic (or luck). Or you can buy a speaker kit, and build from other people's designs. I did that, and my $1000 speakers sound like $2000 speakers, and look like $20 home-made shit.
Dark matter and the biological basis of consciousness are well below the big question: What is knowledge? What is consciousness, and what is truth? This should be answered before the question of what the biological basis of consciousness can be known. We don't even know what consciousness is, so why do we look for its biological basis first?
(The answer to the last question is: We didn't. But we haven't found any good answer yet, unless we believe in Plato et al. But science is, metaphorically speaking, a house of cards built in the air. And I'm saying that with no disrespect to science. (And yes, I'm a bit drunk, but I'm still serious.))
What I can say is that you can tell the people who will get nowhere by how they have something to prove, but no way to prove it. If you can't write, you can't prove anything in writing. People in the publishing business should know this.
As for 'should of' vs. 'should have': The first one is wrong in pretty much the same way that saying the sun and the stars revolve around the earth is wrong. It might make sense to the person writing it, just then, but not to the star that has to travel its own distance to the earth*2*pi every day. It demands exceptions to other well established rules, complicating matters too much to be good usage. Using the preposition 'of' as an auxiliary verb in a few special cases isn't as much wrong as it's stupid. Rhetorically, it just shows that you place a stronger emphasis on expressing an opinion than on thinking well, which certainly doesn't make an argument stronger.
You're wrong.
Yes, that sort of thing happens. I've had errors in Word documents that I couldn't fix in three different releases of Word (one for Mac, two for Windows), while OpenOffice.org easily repaired them. There really isn't any reason for not having OpenOffice/NeoOffice if you exchange documents in Microsoft's proprietary formats, at least as a back-up.
Oh, come on. What you say about KDE and Gnome goes for use of various toolkits and libraries in Windows and OS X as well (the latter can even use two differet window border styles at the same time, for double consitency). Getting rid of the various toolkits will either kill backwards compatibility (how are you going to run Notepad or Wordpad if all you have is .NET without reimplementing them from scratch?) or future innovation (how are you going to develop good apps if all you have is $oldlibrary), and is about as good for usability as murdering the bourgeoisie is for maintaining equality and justice: It doesn't even seem sane, and it isn't.
Additionally, KDE runs very well at 1024x768, and if you use a good (ie Debian-based) distro, OpenOffice.org does show up in the menues, right in the 'Office' sub-menu.
And why would Slackware be a better choice for learning "how your system works" than any other distro?
Or to break down the question: What is "your system", and why does Slackware teach it better than anything else? I thing I can answer. "Your system" is is the GNU tools collection and the init scripts, the various servers and daemons, and the various user interfaces.
In that case, you'll notice why Slackware teaches "your system" better: It's like all the other distros, with a different init. Yes, it's a different system.
So what you're saying is that Slackware is better, because it's a better way to learn Slackware. But you're not going to learn Red Hat, Gentoo or Debian better that way, no matter how poor your UIs are.
If you use LaTeX, it's definitely the best option, but I'm not sure I'd call it good. At least not if you write in some weirdo language like Norwegian, where the standard styles are a bit different from the American, British, French and German styles you find in bibtex. I eventually hacked my own .sty from natbib to get the correct style for my thesis (I'm not quite sure I needed to, though).
Bibtex in itself is OK, but writing the bibliography file is a bitch. Perhaps what the OP was asking for was a good frontend?