Re:stuff I want to see in a modern UI
on
KDE 2.2 Tagged
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· Score: 2
It's been a long, long time since I used my Amiga (I doubt I could even find all the bits now), so I'll trust you on that one.
However, being able to open some files in one app and others in another wasn't what I was nay-saying. I interpreted the original point literally - ie that the poster wanted to be able to "say" to his computer "do this for me" as though speaking to a human. That's (probably) the Holy Grail of HCI - enabling people to literally say to their machine "reopen that letter I was working on last night, bring up Slashdot, oh and start an email to my brother...".
Rereading it, I probably did misread it, but s/he did say "I'd like to be able to say...":)
Cheers,
Tim
Re:stuff I want to see in a modern UI
on
KDE 2.2 Tagged
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· Score: 2
You're asking for things to be changed (directory structure, command names, etc) that are absolutely nothing to do with, and therefore beyond the control of, the KDE team.
If you dislike that many fundamental things about Linux that much, then it simply isn't the right OS for you.
Point 4) simply isn't possible right now, on any platform I've ever heard of. Sorry, but you're at least a decade ahead of us there.
5) is actually being worked on - for more information, go to http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam for more information. Note though that this project is in development, and requires you to patch and recompile your kernel - more unintuitive stuff, I'm afraid:) The only thing I'm aware of that uses it is Enlightenment 0.17 and it's file manager, but I've not yet managed to get that compiled and running (only tried briefly during a quiet period at work)
I'd think that chess is generally chosen because you can just calculate best moves based on a scoring system, and because trees of move sequences are relatively easy to calculate. (Note that I said "easy", not "quick".) There is also a logical and strategical element to it, which you can exploit in your code if you're feeling ambitious.
As for playing Quake, surely that's exactly what all Quake bots do? "All" you'd have to do would be to write a mod that allowed a bot to play the single player game, instead of the multiplayer game, and see how well it did.
According to their page, they're working on a Linux (and a Mac) version. Like it or not, Windows is by far the most widely-used OS, it makes sense to target it first. Give it a little time, perhaps even email them politely to ask when they expect it to be ready. If, after a reasonable amount of time, they still haven't made good on their promise, then you can get shirty with them. (Although asking nicely what the delay is first would be good...)
Forgive me if I'm under-reacting, but this is the first I've heard of CURL, so I've been "waiting" for a Linux version for about 30 minutes:)
I stand by my original comment though - nothing is guaranteed to turn people against your cause more than unjustified attacks.
The last I heard, Oracle charged licencing fees not only per processor, but also per megahertz, so ramping up the speed ramps up the licencing costs too...
At best, no-one will notice, and you will achieve nothing.
At worst, companies will notice the aggravation those "Linux zealots" are causing them, and will react the only way they can - by having nothing to do with Linux, to save themselves any hassle.
Statements like "Let the war begin. CURL must die." do Linux advocacy nothing but harm.
People have seen the short-comings of Java, with the client-side operating environment practically bringing your machine to its knees
I'm sorry, but that's complete bull. I'm typing this in galeon 0.11 on a P3 450 with 256MB of RAM, with JBuilder 4 Pro (a pure Java IDE) running on another desktop, KDE2.1, KMail running, etc, and the machine is running just fine, thank you very much.
Java has come a long way in the last couple of years. True, most popular browsers still use an outdated version (1.1?), but don't let that blind you to what a real JDK can do.
I work for a web agency, and we do all our server-side work in Java (on Linux). No, I wouldn't recommend using Java client-side for a web site, but that's just because of most browsers' crappy Java support.
Personally, I'll be watching CURL with interest. I don't think it'll take off anytime soon, if at all (12meg download for a plugin? Not over a modem...), and I can't see us using it, but at least someone is trying something new.
It doesn't necessarily matter even if you win - litigation is a costly business, and if the case drags on long enough, you may not have the money to cover the mounting costs.
Not only that, but your reputation may suffer, regardless of whether you win or not. For people whose ability to earn money rests on their reputation, this could be just as damaging as losing the case.
I don't think that the problem is that the computers being used aren't fast enough or don't have enough RAM.
I think the fundamental problem is that we don't know what intelligence is, and so are, understandably, finding simulating it quite difficult.
People have been saying since the fifties that, in 10 or 20 years, we'll have sufficient computing power for a machine to become intelligent. Well, I have more computing power than those people could have dreamt of sitting under my desk right now. It didn't turn out to solve the problem.
What AI research needs is plenty of "RI" to crank through the conceptual problems too, not just the biggest supercomputers money can buy.
Haven't read a software licence recently, have you?:)
In my experience, there's a sentence or paragraph along those lines in most licences these days. One thing I installed a while back (I forget what exactly) even laid claim to the manuals in the licence.
I don't think that sort of thing would stand up in court if it ever went that far, but it's a demonstration of how far some people are trying to push this sort of "you've only bought the right to use it, and you're lucky we gave you that much" thing.
getting Country X's population reduced to single digits
How, exactly, do you track a suitcase nuke back to its country of origin after it's been denotated?
It would seem to me that you would need either:
a) for someone to claim responsibility (real dumb); or
b) to know it was coming
Contrast this with ICBMs, which will be picked up on radar at some point, and can easily be tracked back to their point of origin just by looking at their trajectory. (True, they could have been sea-launched, but the risk of being found out is considerably higher)
I agree with Michael; small surprise attacks are, imho, much more likely that an ICBM. On the other hand, I am biased - I dislike the entire idea of this defense system. Seems to me that other countries which find themselves no longer on an equal footing with America are going to take steps to redress the balance.
Right, I can see that most people here don't believe, given that the only serious posts that are above +2 are anti-global warming.
We have four scenarios, as follows:
1) Global warming is false, and we do nothing
2) Global warming is false, and we take action
3) Global warming is true, and we do nothing
4) Global warming is true, and we take action
1), 2) and 4) are fine - either there's nothing to worry about, or in 4), we at least try to avert disaster.
In 3), we're fscked - the seas rise, climate changes, etc.
Assuming that all 4 are equally likely(*), that effectively gives us a 75% chance of being fine. Of course, that means that we have a 25% chance of dooming ourselves. Personally, I wouldn't play Russian Roulette with a 6 chamber gun, let alone a four chamber one.
What's the worst that can happen if the environmentalists are wrong about Global Warming? People have to make sacrifices unnecessarily? Boo hoo.
What's the worst that can happen if they're right, though? I can't imagine that anyone is going to die through recycling too much of their rubbish, or leaving the car at home and walking too often.
It seems to me that until we have conclusive proof that Global Warming is rubbish, we really ought to play it safe.
(* Yes, I know that's not the way it works, but I'm simplifying things. Given that we have no consensus on the matter, it's not such a terrible simplification to make.)
Now, call me stupid if you want, but I really don't think we can set too much store by your experiences with a release candidate version of an OS.
Wait until you've got the real thing, then start telling people about how much better it is than they feared.
It would be so easy to check the build number, and if it contains "RC", say "Thanks for choosing Microsoft!" and set the system death timer ticking (they are time limited, after all...), else show compulsory "life history" registration form...
this minor step has already been taken over in the EU
Very nearly, but not quite. As I understand it, the EU has passed a motion (directive?) that allows its member states to pass legislation like that that you describe. I don't think that the states have to pass it.
Unfortunately for me, the UK, in which I live, was one of the states pressing for this to be passed... Ah well, I have nothing to hide (from the current government, at least...)
I do agree that the largest privacy threats come from business, rather than government, but I take some exception to your assertion that we should Get ready to drop any spare change you still have left.
Highly targeted advertising or not, I'd like to think I still have enough free will and self control to decide for myself what I want to buy.
The benefit is research. They're not suggesting that people rush out and buy these things, they're learning stuff the old-fashioned way - by doing it.
If you want AI and autonomous robots and other (imho) cool tech like that to be developed, there's going to have to be a lot more "useless" stuff like this done first.
It is nonsense to suggest that the name is not equally applicable to other products simply because Adobe used it first.
Well, maybe it's not right, but that's all the court would care about, if it ever went that far, because Adobe trademarked "Illustrator"
Killustrator is a vector-based drawing program.
Illustrator is a vector-based drawing program.
Illustrator predates Killustrator by a number of years.
The name "Illustrator" is trademarked.
The way I see it, the court could rule in one of two ways:
1) They find for Adode
2) They rule Adobe's trademark invalid
That's the way trademarks work. Both products are aimed at people wishing to use a computer to produce vector-based illustrations. That they run under different operating systems is irrelevant.
As for "one product is always going to come before the other. That does not mean that one is named after the other", are you seriously trying to tell us that the Killustrator developers chose the name at random, and had never heard of Illustrator? I'm sure the same is true of KOffice and KWord, too...
Now, please feel free to argue that Illustrator is too generic a term to be trademarked; then you'd be on safer ground. However, arguing that Adobe using it first doesn't grant them any exclusivity over its use isn't going to get you very far.
The argument in this case would be that by denying them free speech in this case, you are preventing them from denying you and many others the right to free speech.
Of course, spam is not a free speech issue; Freedom of Speech does not cover freedom of making others pay for that speech. Spammers are still free to stand on a street corner and tell passersby of their wares, or even pay for their advertising.
Well, spam is defined as being unsolicited commercial email, so unless they were offering to sell me something to help ease the plight of the Chinese, I'd consider it speech.
If they *were* trying to get me to buy something, then it'd be spam.
Cheers,
Tim
Re:Forgetting something?
on
Eco-Terrorism
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· Score: 2
Either that, or they're English:)
You wouldn't be assuming that everyone on Slashdot is American, would you?
I can't see commercial porn sites caring, to be honest. After all, they all require you to login, and so google isn't going to get anything at all from them (unless they start buying accounts, which would go down like a lead balloon...)
They might be a little miffed that this will make it easier for people to find the stuff they want for free, but so what? Them's the breaks; if you charge people for something they can get for free elsewhere, don't expect to make too much money.
Slashdot Mirror
It's been a long, long time since I used my Amiga (I doubt I could even find all the bits now), so I'll trust you on that one.
:)
However, being able to open some files in one app and others in another wasn't what I was nay-saying. I interpreted the original point literally - ie that the poster wanted to be able to "say" to his computer "do this for me" as though speaking to a human. That's (probably) the Holy Grail of HCI - enabling people to literally say to their machine "reopen that letter I was working on last night, bring up Slashdot, oh and start an email to my brother...".
Rereading it, I probably did misread it, but s/he did say "I'd like to be able to say..."
Cheers,
Tim
You're asking for things to be changed (directory structure, command names, etc) that are absolutely nothing to do with, and therefore beyond the control of, the KDE team.
:) The only thing I'm aware of that uses it is Enlightenment 0.17 and it's file manager, but I've not yet managed to get that compiled and running (only tried briefly during a quiet period at work)
If you dislike that many fundamental things about Linux that much, then it simply isn't the right OS for you.
Point 4) simply isn't possible right now, on any platform I've ever heard of. Sorry, but you're at least a decade ahead of us there.
5) is actually being worked on - for more information, go to http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam for more information. Note though that this project is in development, and requires you to patch and recompile your kernel - more unintuitive stuff, I'm afraid
Cheers,
Tim
I'd think that chess is generally chosen because you can just calculate best moves based on a scoring system, and because trees of move sequences are relatively easy to calculate. (Note that I said "easy", not "quick".) There is also a logical and strategical element to it, which you can exploit in your code if you're feeling ambitious.
As for playing Quake, surely that's exactly what all Quake bots do? "All" you'd have to do would be to write a mod that allowed a bot to play the single player game, instead of the multiplayer game, and see how well it did.
Cheers,
Tim
Fight what?
:)
According to their page, they're working on a Linux (and a Mac) version. Like it or not, Windows is by far the most widely-used OS, it makes sense to target it first. Give it a little time, perhaps even email them politely to ask when they expect it to be ready. If, after a reasonable amount of time, they still haven't made good on their promise, then you can get shirty with them. (Although asking nicely what the delay is first would be good...)
Forgive me if I'm under-reacting, but this is the first I've heard of CURL, so I've been "waiting" for a Linux version for about 30 minutes
I stand by my original comment though - nothing is guaranteed to turn people against your cause more than unjustified attacks.
Cheers,
Tim
The last I heard, Oracle charged licencing fees not only per processor, but also per megahertz, so ramping up the speed ramps up the licencing costs too...
Cheers,
Tim
At best, no-one will notice, and you will achieve nothing.
At worst, companies will notice the aggravation those "Linux zealots" are causing them, and will react the only way they can - by having nothing to do with Linux, to save themselves any hassle.
Statements like "Let the war begin. CURL must die." do Linux advocacy nothing but harm.
Cheers,
Tim
People have seen the short-comings of Java, with the client-side operating environment practically bringing your machine to its knees
I'm sorry, but that's complete bull. I'm typing this in galeon 0.11 on a P3 450 with 256MB of RAM, with JBuilder 4 Pro (a pure Java IDE) running on another desktop, KDE2.1, KMail running, etc, and the machine is running just fine, thank you very much.
Java has come a long way in the last couple of years. True, most popular browsers still use an outdated version (1.1?), but don't let that blind you to what a real JDK can do.
I work for a web agency, and we do all our server-side work in Java (on Linux). No, I wouldn't recommend using Java client-side for a web site, but that's just because of most browsers' crappy Java support.
Personally, I'll be watching CURL with interest. I don't think it'll take off anytime soon, if at all (12meg download for a plugin? Not over a modem...), and I can't see us using it, but at least someone is trying something new.
Cheers,
Tim
It doesn't necessarily matter even if you win - litigation is a costly business, and if the case drags on long enough, you may not have the money to cover the mounting costs.
Not only that, but your reputation may suffer, regardless of whether you win or not. For people whose ability to earn money rests on their reputation, this could be just as damaging as losing the case.
Cheers,
Tim
Particularly as version 1.4 is currently in beta, available for download from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/
:)
Release is scheduled for fourth quarter of 2001, ie RSN now
Cheers,
Tim
ROT-13 is just each character shifted by 13 places, so "a" becomes "n", "b" becomes "o", etc.
To "decrypt" the message, ROT-13 again, as "n" becomes "a", and so on.
Some people can read ROT-13ed ascii as is.
To describe ROT-13 as encryption is laughable.
Cheers,
Tim
I don't think that the problem is that the computers being used aren't fast enough or don't have enough RAM.
I think the fundamental problem is that we don't know what intelligence is, and so are, understandably, finding simulating it quite difficult.
People have been saying since the fifties that, in 10 or 20 years, we'll have sufficient computing power for a machine to become intelligent. Well, I have more computing power than those people could have dreamt of sitting under my desk right now. It didn't turn out to solve the problem.
What AI research needs is plenty of "RI" to crank through the conceptual problems too, not just the biggest supercomputers money can buy.
Cheers,
Tim
Knoqueror?
:)
Surely you mean Killustrator?
Cheers,
Tim
Haven't read a software licence recently, have you? :)
In my experience, there's a sentence or paragraph along those lines in most licences these days. One thing I installed a while back (I forget what exactly) even laid claim to the manuals in the licence.
I don't think that sort of thing would stand up in court if it ever went that far, but it's a demonstration of how far some people are trying to push this sort of "you've only bought the right to use it, and you're lucky we gave you that much" thing.
Cheers,
Tim
getting Country X's population reduced to single digits
How, exactly, do you track a suitcase nuke back to its country of origin after it's been denotated?
It would seem to me that you would need either:
a) for someone to claim responsibility (real dumb); or
b) to know it was coming
Contrast this with ICBMs, which will be picked up on radar at some point, and can easily be tracked back to their point of origin just by looking at their trajectory. (True, they could have been sea-launched, but the risk of being found out is considerably higher)
I agree with Michael; small surprise attacks are, imho, much more likely that an ICBM. On the other hand, I am biased - I dislike the entire idea of this defense system. Seems to me that other countries which find themselves no longer on an equal footing with America are going to take steps to redress the balance.
Cheers,
Tim
Right, I can see that most people here don't believe, given that the only serious posts that are above +2 are anti-global warming.
We have four scenarios, as follows:
1) Global warming is false, and we do nothing
2) Global warming is false, and we take action
3) Global warming is true, and we do nothing
4) Global warming is true, and we take action
1), 2) and 4) are fine - either there's nothing to worry about, or in 4), we at least try to avert disaster.
In 3), we're fscked - the seas rise, climate changes, etc.
Assuming that all 4 are equally likely(*), that effectively gives us a 75% chance of being fine. Of course, that means that we have a 25% chance of dooming ourselves. Personally, I wouldn't play Russian Roulette with a 6 chamber gun, let alone a four chamber one.
What's the worst that can happen if the environmentalists are wrong about Global Warming? People have to make sacrifices unnecessarily? Boo hoo.
What's the worst that can happen if they're right, though? I can't imagine that anyone is going to die through recycling too much of their rubbish, or leaving the car at home and walking too often.
It seems to me that until we have conclusive proof that Global Warming is rubbish, we really ought to play it safe.
(* Yes, I know that's not the way it works, but I'm simplifying things. Given that we have no consensus on the matter, it's not such a terrible simplification to make.)
Cheers,
Tim
Now, call me stupid if you want, but I really don't think we can set too much store by your experiences with a release candidate version of an OS.
Wait until you've got the real thing, then start telling people about how much better it is than they feared.
It would be so easy to check the build number, and if it contains "RC", say "Thanks for choosing Microsoft!" and set the system death timer ticking (they are time limited, after all...), else show compulsory "life history" registration form...
Cheers,
Tim
this minor step has already been taken over in the EU
Very nearly, but not quite. As I understand it, the EU has passed a motion (directive?) that allows its member states to pass legislation like that that you describe. I don't think that the states have to pass it.
Unfortunately for me, the UK, in which I live, was one of the states pressing for this to be passed... Ah well, I have nothing to hide (from the current government, at least...)
I do agree that the largest privacy threats come from business, rather than government, but I take some exception to your assertion that we should Get ready to drop any spare change you still have left.
Highly targeted advertising or not, I'd like to think I still have enough free will and self control to decide for myself what I want to buy.
Cheers,
Tim
The benefit is research. They're not suggesting that people rush out and buy these things, they're learning stuff the old-fashioned way - by doing it.
If you want AI and autonomous robots and other (imho) cool tech like that to be developed, there's going to have to be a lot more "useless" stuff like this done first.
Cheers,
Tim
It is nonsense to suggest that the name is not equally applicable to other products simply because Adobe used it first.
Well, maybe it's not right, but that's all the court would care about, if it ever went that far, because Adobe trademarked "Illustrator"
Killustrator is a vector-based drawing program.
Illustrator is a vector-based drawing program.
Illustrator predates Killustrator by a number of years.
The name "Illustrator" is trademarked.
The way I see it, the court could rule in one of two ways:
1) They find for Adode
2) They rule Adobe's trademark invalid
That's the way trademarks work. Both products are aimed at people wishing to use a computer to produce vector-based illustrations. That they run under different operating systems is irrelevant.
As for "one product is always going to come before the other. That does not mean that one is named after the other", are you seriously trying to tell us that the Killustrator developers chose the name at random, and had never heard of Illustrator? I'm sure the same is true of KOffice and KWord, too...
Now, please feel free to argue that Illustrator is too generic a term to be trademarked; then you'd be on safer ground. However, arguing that Adobe using it first doesn't grant them any exclusivity over its use isn't going to get you very far.
Cheers,
Tim
The argument in this case would be that by denying them free speech in this case, you are preventing them from denying you and many others the right to free speech.
Of course, spam is not a free speech issue; Freedom of Speech does not cover freedom of making others pay for that speech. Spammers are still free to stand on a street corner and tell passersby of their wares, or even pay for their advertising.
Cheers,
Tim
Well, spam is defined as being unsolicited commercial email, so unless they were offering to sell me something to help ease the plight of the Chinese, I'd consider it speech.
If they *were* trying to get me to buy something, then it'd be spam.
Cheers,
Tim
Either that, or they're English :)
You wouldn't be assuming that everyone on Slashdot is American, would you?
Cheers,
Tim
Hey, it is still in beta; I'm sure they'll add support for other languages in due course.
Cheers,
Tim
Damn, and I just used the last of my mod points, too. That is so begging for a "-1, Offtopic whining about not getting an article posted"...
Didn't get posted? Boo-hoo. Try kuro5hin.org instead.
Cheers,
Tim
I can't see commercial porn sites caring, to be honest. After all, they all require you to login, and so google isn't going to get anything at all from them (unless they start buying accounts, which would go down like a lead balloon...)
They might be a little miffed that this will make it easier for people to find the stuff they want for free, but so what? Them's the breaks; if you charge people for something they can get for free elsewhere, don't expect to make too much money.
Cheers,
Tim