I did make one such test on (ahem) some dating site I'm on... If the word Aryan is in the nick and isn't a first name, the average score is a hair over 30% lower. If the word Nazi is there, nearly 38%. KKK, 27%. Gang members are around 20-25% down,
So, who is pressuring the Fraunhofner(sp?) Institute not to do this? Did Germany's Communist Party gain seats last election?
Er, what do you think happened to people who were part of the former power structure in east germany?
Based on what I've heard from someone who lived in east germany at the time, there was a mad scramble to gain advantage when east germany fell, and despite some sort of attempts to hold the "bad guys" to account, there were many cases of things not quite working they way they were supposed to -- e.g. people successfully hiding their past, and even worse, people cynically using the system to gain personal advantage (e.g., denounce your [innocent] neighbor, grab his property in the confusion).
As a result, there are almost certainly many people in positions of power in germany today who would rather like to keep details of the east german past hidden.
You can either violate the layering or you can get the layers refactored.
In Linux, we do not accept the first. Why? Because it generates bad software...period.
+1 insightful
If some particular problem is hard to solve well because of layering issues, the correct thing to do is learn from that, and fix the layering abstraction! Just saying "oh well" and throwing out any pretense of organization is a sure recipe for a huge mess.
Indeed, it's for this reason that the linux approach is in fact much more far-sighted than what Sun is apparently advocating.
[Incidentally, this is exactly what happened with Reiser4 -- namesys implemented all kinds of features in their filesystem, and the linux hackers basically told them: features X, Y, and Z are cool, but probably should be a generic part of the kernel, so that other filesystems can use them -- IOW, they wanted to learn from Reiser4 and refactor things to improve both the filesystem and the general linux kernel, including other filesystems. It's understandable that the namesys developers would feel kind of reluctant to do this (who wants to do radical surgery on your new baby, and aid your competition in the process?), but it leads to a far superior system in the long run.]
FWIW, I like Gnome, or at least, I like GTK; for whatever reason, GTK-based apps just feel better and nicer and cleaner on average than Qt-based apps. I think Gnome/GTK has some really great solid technology and design behind it.
OTOH, I don't really like many aspects of the Gnome project -- mainly their apparent discounting of any users except windows mouth-breather types when making UI decisions (I don't think it's asking too much, just the occasional nod to other audiences, the occasional configuration toggle box), and the (apparently) vast amounts of energy they waste reimplementing MS crap like.net.
There are many free software projects I feel like I'd like to contribute to if I had the time, but Gnome is not really one of them, simply because they feel so insular. That seems like a shame....
Is there a good reason why 4096 was chosen? Is that just an artifact of this being designed in 2000? At this point very few files on the average system would be smaller than this.
Do you actually have any data to back up that assertion? On my system there are tons of small (< 1 KB even) files around; of course lots of large files too, but it's certainly not obvious that your claim is true.
Morever, even if say the average file was, say, 16KB, using smaller blocks helps reduce wasted space in file tail blocks; in order for that to be neglible the average file size would need to much larger than 16KB.
There are also other reasons why 4096 is nice, such as matching the standard VM page size for the majority of processors in use today.
All in all, 4096 seems a well-considered choice -- it's large enough to provide a noticeable improvement over 512-byte blocks, but not so large as to start causing other problems.
Seriously! There are always tradeoffs involved. These printers are intended for casual users, who want the convenience of something sitting on their desk but can't justify a big outlay -- and they certainly seem quite reasonably priced given that convenience! Obviously if someone needs to print a 1000 page tome, they might want to take their lunch hour to drop by a copy shop, or invest in a laser printer if they do it often.
From my admittedly uninformed ("casual":-) viewpoint, these Kodaks seem to really hit a sweet spot though; 3-400 pages or so would probably last me oh, 4 months, and $2-3 a month for home printing, with a fairly modest initial outlay, seems awfully tempting... Granted I'd probably print twice as much if I had a printer at home, but hey....it's still less than a lunch per month! I think it's this "print more once you have it" effect that the ink-cartridge-extortion vendors rely on.
In japan they have a tendency to put local items on it, like benito flakes, wasabi, tofu, etc...
Besides topping differences (corn and mayo!), "traditional" japanese pizza (like you get in a restaurant; delivery pizza generally seems to be more american style) also tends to be very different in feel than an american pizza -- rather small, very thin and crispy (much more so than american pizzas labelled "thin and crispy"), and not much cheese.
One of the best pizzas I ever had in Japan was a salad pizza: no cheese, no tomato sauce, essentially just lots of salad greens and other raw stuff on a pizza crust, seasoned with a bit of dressing and a lot of fresh pepper. Man that was good!
The taste (or more accurately: smell, since it's your nose that picks it up not the tongue) is subtle, but definitely there. If your poppy seeds were a year old then perhaps the taste was gone, but I can most definitely notice the flavor.
Yeah, I find the taste pretty strong actually -- and they also have a really nice texture that you really don't get with anything else (common).
This guy obviously had serious mental issues that no amount of hand-holding and therapy sessions could fix.
That's what baffles me about the gun-control angle -- even if you believe the average slashdot übermensch should have free access to guns of all descriptions, WTF was this guy doing with them?!? He apparently bought them legally, and from the stories in the media, it sounds like it was pretty obvious to even a casual observer that he was a complete nutter...
It is a superb office suite that wins hands down. Even the biggest linux and FOSS fanboy has to admit it's absolute awesomeness.
You've got to be kidding. There are surely high points and low points to ms office, but it most certainly is not "awesome." A more accurate description might be "adequate for many tasks if you're not picky, but in constant danger of imploding under the weight of its own pointless bloat."
Actually, it isn't random. It is optimized to slow typing on mechanical typewriters to avoid collisions of the bars that strike the paper. Most random arrangements would actually be an improvement over Qwerty.
I suspect this is an urban legend. Qwerty instead seems optimized to avoid clustering of letters, by making common letter sequences use alternating hands. This alternation would probably help reduce jams in typical mechanical typewriter mechanisms -- but it also makes typing faster! [This is fairly obvious if you're a touch-typest: the easiest words to type really quickly are usually those with a pronounced L-R-L-R rhythm.]
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? Not Linux
on
The End is Nigh for XP
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· Score: 1
Any Operating System will force you to reboot when the system itself has been patched. You'll never get away from that with current technology.
Debian doesn't.
(and of course that includes debian derivatives such as Ubuntu)
The reason this is getting play is because the author of the code went public, sending the email to a lot of people, without contacting the infringing author privately first. That's just bad form (not that stealing code is good form).
No, the reason it's "getting play" is because Theo was childishly and absurdly rude in response to a rather reasonable request.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a polite notice on a public mailing list saying that openbsd is technically infringing, with an offer to work out some amiable solution. Theo's response was complately uncalled for; even if the original request had been less polite (though in fact it was quite polite and respectful), Theo's response would have been uncalled for.
I've no doubt that Theo would have preferred that the original request be private -- but that does not the public request "bad form".
Because making such a request does cause some measure of embarrassment, it requires a judgement call to decide whether a private request would be effective or not. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it wouldn't be surprising if the deciding factor was knowledge of Theo's often rather unstable behavior and reputation for using PR and spin: when you're nervous, it feels safer to have everything a matter of public record.
The analog control thing is in an uncomfortable position for many people
What's silly is that they could have made it much better by simply putting the "analogu nub" above the digital pad instead of beneath it -- that would have been 10 times more natural. Of course even better than that would have been to put the nub more towards the center and moved/reduced the (awful) digital pad to make room. With the PSP (unlike playstation controllers) they clearly weren't overly concerned with backward compatbility, so they had a free hand to improve the layout.
But they didn't do much of anything, and as a result the PSP is uncomfortable to use (it's also too heavy and bulky, but the awkward controls are the number one turn off for me).
As far as I can see (judging from the original Playstation up through the PSP/PS3), Sony views the controls as a last-minute bullet-list item (though a necessary one), and basically does little or no usability testing of them. They seem to care more about whether the controls look good (e.g. are symmetrical) than whether they feel good and are pleasant to use for long periods of time.
you can keep your smelly, loud, packed, expensive, long and dangerous train ride, thanks!
Ah, never been on a real train I see.
Something like the shinkansen is far more pleasant and convenient to ride than a typical plane (especially these days). Due to the speed difference, the plane is probably a better bet for LA-NYC, but for any kind of medium distance travel (e.g. up/down the coast, NYC-Philly-Chicago), I'd kill for a US system like the shinkansen/TGV.
Sadly, Apple has done a great job rewriting history to cast their middling success with the Apple II in the part actually played by the C= 8-bit machine
The Apple II predated the C64 by five years (an eternity in this context); really the C64 is an entirely different generation of computers. While the C64 was a great machine, and really did a lot for popularizing computers, it wasn't pioneering in quite the same sense that the Apple II was.
As soon as Metacity, KWin, and whatever the XFCE WM is implement their own compositing effects, Compiz/Beryl will be an obsolete experiment.
On the other hand, as far as I can see, compiz is more or less functionally identical to metacity, just with more wobbling -- it even uses the same window themes. Why would I want to run metacity instead?
The only guns that get turned in are old junk that's rusting away in a closet, or some little old widow who's late husband had a gun and she doesn't know what to do with it.
That seems a worthwhile goal though. If a previously (more) lawless society, where every boy and girl had a gun as a matter of necessity, is changing into a (more) lawful and densely populated society, the random guns lying around the house can be a big problem.
Maybe, just maybe, 3000 dying a day is acceptable because of the massive public good of swift personal transportation.
Well the thing is that "swift personal transportation" as embodied by current automobiles really isn't much of a "public good" in many cases. Automobiles are well suited to sparsely populated rural environments, and very poorly suited to densely populated urban ones. The fact that they nonetheless are the standard transportation method in many large US cities is largely due to lack of forethought, blind herd instinct, and the power of fashion. I'm not sure those things are worth many deaths...
Although the xbox may be more powerful I would defiantly say that ps2 was the best console of its generation. Good controllers, good developer support, complete backwards compatibility, number 2 in graphics (over game cube)
Personally, I absolutely hate the dualshock, and the psp controller for that matter (sony had to chance to make a great controller without backward-compatibility worries when they made the psp -- and they completely dropped the ball). The general painfulness of sony controllers is the number one reason why I'm reluctant to pick up a psp or ps3. I'll probably eventually buy either a ps3 or xbox360 (hopefully after prices drop), and I don't particularly want to support microsoft, but they've clearly put a lot more thought and effort into many details than sony has.
As for graphics, are you on crack? The gamecube stomped all over the ps2 in terms of graphics; despite sony's well-publicized hype about how powerful the ps2 was, in actual games its weak points are all too obvious, and even very recent ps2 games tend to look a bit nasty compared to its competitors.
You don't need to be fluent in x86 assembly, but if you're completely ignorant of the inner workings of computer architecture, you're at a disadvantage to those who have been exposed to it and written, say, a bit of old MIPS assembly code.
Indeed. There's a Knuth quote I like:People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird. -- Donald Knuth
Slashdot Mirror
I did make one such test on (ahem) some dating site I'm on ... If the word Aryan is in the nick and isn't a first name, the average score is a hair over 30% lower. If the word Nazi is there, nearly 38%. KKK, 27%. Gang members are around 20-25% down,
My god, what kind of dating site is this?!?
So, who is pressuring the Fraunhofner(sp?) Institute not to do this? Did Germany's Communist Party gain seats last election?
Er, what do you think happened to people who were part of the former power structure in east germany?
Based on what I've heard from someone who lived in east germany at the time, there was a mad scramble to gain advantage when east germany fell, and despite some sort of attempts to hold the "bad guys" to account, there were many cases of things not quite working they way they were supposed to -- e.g. people successfully hiding their past, and even worse, people cynically using the system to gain personal advantage (e.g., denounce your [innocent] neighbor, grab his property in the confusion).
As a result, there are almost certainly many people in positions of power in germany today who would rather like to keep details of the east german past hidden.
You can either violate the layering or you can get the layers refactored.
In Linux, we do not accept the first. Why? Because it generates bad software...period.
+1 insightful
If some particular problem is hard to solve well because of layering issues, the correct thing to do is learn from that, and fix the layering abstraction! Just saying "oh well" and throwing out any pretense of organization is a sure recipe for a huge mess.
Indeed, it's for this reason that the linux approach is in fact much more far-sighted than what Sun is apparently advocating.
[Incidentally, this is exactly what happened with Reiser4 -- namesys implemented all kinds of features in their filesystem, and the linux hackers basically told them: features X, Y, and Z are cool, but probably should be a generic part of the kernel, so that other filesystems can use them -- IOW, they wanted to learn from Reiser4 and refactor things to improve both the filesystem and the general linux kernel, including other filesystems. It's understandable that the namesys developers would feel kind of reluctant to do this (who wants to do radical surgery on your new baby, and aid your competition in the process?), but it leads to a far superior system in the long run.]
I cannot understand why the majority of those commenting on this thread are arguing so vehemently against Miguel.
I suppose you're not aware of exactly how disingenuous microsoft has been in the past.
Playing with microsoft is a fool's game.
FWIW, I like Gnome, or at least, I like GTK; for whatever reason, GTK-based apps just feel better and nicer and cleaner on average than Qt-based apps. I think Gnome/GTK has some really great solid technology and design behind it.
.net.
OTOH, I don't really like many aspects of the Gnome project -- mainly their apparent discounting of any users except windows mouth-breather types when making UI decisions (I don't think it's asking too much, just the occasional nod to other audiences, the occasional configuration toggle box), and the (apparently) vast amounts of energy they waste reimplementing MS crap like
There are many free software projects I feel like I'd like to contribute to if I had the time, but Gnome is not really one of them, simply because they feel so insular. That seems like a shame....
Is there a good reason why 4096 was chosen? Is that just an artifact of this being designed in 2000? At this point very few files on the average system would be smaller than this.
Do you actually have any data to back up that assertion? On my system there are tons of small (< 1 KB even) files around; of course lots of large files too, but it's certainly not obvious that your claim is true.
Morever, even if say the average file was, say, 16KB, using smaller blocks helps reduce wasted space in file tail blocks; in order for that to be neglible the average file size would need to much larger than 16KB.
There are also other reasons why 4096 is nice, such as matching the standard VM page size for the majority of processors in use today.
All in all, 4096 seems a well-considered choice -- it's large enough to provide a noticeable improvement over 512-byte blocks, but not so large as to start causing other problems.
Seriously! There are always tradeoffs involved. These printers are intended for casual users, who want the convenience of something sitting on their desk but can't justify a big outlay -- and they certainly seem quite reasonably priced given that convenience! Obviously if someone needs to print a 1000 page tome, they might want to take their lunch hour to drop by a copy shop, or invest in a laser printer if they do it often.
:-) viewpoint, these Kodaks seem to really hit a sweet spot though; 3-400 pages or so would probably last me oh, 4 months, and $2-3 a month for home printing, with a fairly modest initial outlay, seems awfully tempting... Granted I'd probably print twice as much if I had a printer at home, but hey....it's still less than a lunch per month! I think it's this "print more once you have it" effect that the ink-cartridge-extortion vendors rely on.
From my admittedly uninformed ("casual"
Hmmm.... I wonder if the print quality is OK?
In japan they have a tendency to put local items on it, like benito flakes, wasabi, tofu, etc...
Besides topping differences (corn and mayo!), "traditional" japanese pizza (like you get in a restaurant; delivery pizza generally seems to be more american style) also tends to be very different in feel than an american pizza -- rather small, very thin and crispy (much more so than american pizzas labelled "thin and crispy"), and not much cheese.
One of the best pizzas I ever had in Japan was a salad pizza: no cheese, no tomato sauce, essentially just lots of salad greens and other raw stuff on a pizza crust, seasoned with a bit of dressing and a lot of fresh pepper. Man that was good!
The taste (or more accurately: smell, since it's your nose that picks it up not the tongue) is subtle, but definitely there. If your poppy seeds were a year old then perhaps the taste was gone, but I can most definitely notice the flavor.
Yeah, I find the taste pretty strong actually -- and they also have a really nice texture that you really don't get with anything else (common).
This guy obviously had serious mental issues that no amount of hand-holding and therapy sessions could fix.
That's what baffles me about the gun-control angle -- even if you believe the average slashdot übermensch should have free access to guns of all descriptions, WTF was this guy doing with them?!? He apparently bought them legally, and from the stories in the media, it sounds like it was pretty obvious to even a casual observer that he was a complete nutter...
It is a superb office suite that wins hands down. Even the biggest linux and FOSS fanboy has to admit it's absolute awesomeness.
You've got to be kidding. There are surely high points and low points to ms office, but it most certainly is not "awesome." A more accurate description might be "adequate for many tasks if you're not picky, but in constant danger of imploding under the weight of its own pointless bloat."
And more importantly why does the entire industry feel the need to play dirty?
Because they're all greedy as fuck and "... everybody else was doing it!"
Actually, it isn't random. It is optimized to slow typing on mechanical typewriters to avoid collisions of the bars that strike the paper. Most random arrangements would actually be an improvement over Qwerty.
I suspect this is an urban legend. Qwerty instead seems optimized to avoid clustering of letters, by making common letter sequences use alternating hands. This alternation would probably help reduce jams in typical mechanical typewriter mechanisms -- but it also makes typing faster! [This is fairly obvious if you're a touch-typest: the easiest words to type really quickly are usually those with a pronounced L-R-L-R rhythm.]
Any Operating System will force you to reboot when the system itself has been patched. You'll never get away from that with current technology.
Debian doesn't.
(and of course that includes debian derivatives such as Ubuntu)
look, the apple store does not count alright
Oh come on! Apple Store clerks wear really thick-framed glasses and use a really edgy brand of hair mousse! How could they "not count"?!?
The reason this is getting play is because the author of the code went public, sending the email to a lot of people, without contacting the infringing author privately first. That's just bad form (not that stealing code is good form).
No, the reason it's "getting play" is because Theo was childishly and absurdly rude in response to a rather reasonable request.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a polite notice on a public mailing list saying that openbsd is technically infringing, with an offer to work out some amiable solution. Theo's response was complately uncalled for; even if the original request had been less polite (though in fact it was quite polite and respectful), Theo's response would have been uncalled for.
I've no doubt that Theo would have preferred that the original request be private -- but that does not the public request "bad form".
Because making such a request does cause some measure of embarrassment, it requires a judgement call to decide whether a private request would be effective or not. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it wouldn't be surprising if the deciding factor was knowledge of Theo's often rather unstable behavior and reputation for using PR and spin: when you're nervous, it feels safer to have everything a matter of public record.
The analog control thing is in an uncomfortable position for many people
What's silly is that they could have made it much better by simply putting the "analogu nub" above the digital pad instead of beneath it -- that would have been 10 times more natural. Of course even better than that would have been to put the nub more towards the center and moved/reduced the (awful) digital pad to make room. With the PSP (unlike playstation controllers) they clearly weren't overly concerned with backward compatbility, so they had a free hand to improve the layout.
But they didn't do much of anything, and as a result the PSP is uncomfortable to use (it's also too heavy and bulky, but the awkward controls are the number one turn off for me).
As far as I can see (judging from the original Playstation up through the PSP/PS3), Sony views the controls as a last-minute bullet-list item (though a necessary one), and basically does little or no usability testing of them. They seem to care more about whether the controls look good (e.g. are symmetrical) than whether they feel good and are pleasant to use for long periods of time.
since this is mentioning Bush, you really should have used his preferred spelling:
War on tubes?
you can keep your smelly, loud, packed, expensive, long and dangerous train ride, thanks!
Ah, never been on a real train I see.
Something like the shinkansen is far more pleasant and convenient to ride than a typical plane (especially these days). Due to the speed difference, the plane is probably a better bet for LA-NYC, but for any kind of medium distance travel (e.g. up/down the coast, NYC-Philly-Chicago), I'd kill for a US system like the shinkansen/TGV.
Sadly, Apple has done a great job rewriting history to cast their middling success with the Apple II in the part actually played by the C= 8-bit machine
The Apple II predated the C64 by five years (an eternity in this context); really the C64 is an entirely different generation of computers. While the C64 was a great machine, and really did a lot for popularizing computers, it wasn't pioneering in quite the same sense that the Apple II was.
As soon as Metacity, KWin, and whatever the XFCE WM is implement their own compositing effects, Compiz/Beryl will be an obsolete experiment.
On the other hand, as far as I can see, compiz is more or less functionally identical to metacity, just with more wobbling -- it even uses the same window themes. Why would I want to run metacity instead?
The only guns that get turned in are old junk that's rusting away in a closet, or some little old widow who's late husband had a gun and she doesn't know what to do with it.
That seems a worthwhile goal though. If a previously (more) lawless society, where every boy and girl had a gun as a matter of necessity, is changing into a (more) lawful and densely populated society, the random guns lying around the house can be a big problem.
Maybe, just maybe, 3000 dying a day is acceptable because of the massive public good of swift personal transportation.
Well the thing is that "swift personal transportation" as embodied by current automobiles really isn't much of a "public good" in many cases. Automobiles are well suited to sparsely populated rural environments, and very poorly suited to densely populated urban ones. The fact that they nonetheless are the standard transportation method in many large US cities is largely due to lack of forethought, blind herd instinct, and the power of fashion. I'm not sure those things are worth many deaths...
Although the xbox may be more powerful I would defiantly say that ps2 was the best console of its generation. Good controllers, good developer support, complete backwards compatibility, number 2 in graphics (over game cube)
Personally, I absolutely hate the dualshock, and the psp controller for that matter (sony had to chance to make a great controller without backward-compatibility worries when they made the psp -- and they completely dropped the ball). The general painfulness of sony controllers is the number one reason why I'm reluctant to pick up a psp or ps3. I'll probably eventually buy either a ps3 or xbox360 (hopefully after prices drop), and I don't particularly want to support microsoft, but they've clearly put a lot more thought and effort into many details than sony has.
As for graphics, are you on crack? The gamecube stomped all over the ps2 in terms of graphics; despite sony's well-publicized hype about how powerful the ps2 was, in actual games its weak points are all too obvious, and even very recent ps2 games tend to look a bit nasty compared to its competitors.
You don't need to be fluent in x86 assembly, but if you're completely ignorant of the inner workings of computer architecture, you're at a disadvantage to those who have been exposed to it and written, say, a bit of old MIPS assembly code.
Indeed. There's a Knuth quote I like: People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird. -- Donald Knuth