First, I agree, current free software is absolutely capable of drop-dead gorgeous font rendering, certainly on par with, and in many cases better, than contemporary Windows/Mac rendering.
However I think it isn't the "desktop" which is the usual problem -- the main desktop environments/toolkits (Gnome/GTK and KDE/Qt) have good support for this stuff, and simple and obvious configuration of (their part of) it.
I think the main problem is that responsibility for configuration seems to be split up between so many different places -- not just the toolkits, but the libraries, someone mentioned an X configuration option which made a difference, the font installation, etc. Furthermore, there's the weird issue that the important feature of autohinting (which isn't necessary for well-hinted fonts like the bitstream vera stuff, but really helps some other fonts) is turned off by default because of some bizarro patent issue or something.
[FWIW, I use Debian and Gnome/GTK and after enabling autohinting in/etc/fonts, everything looks splendid. Installing the microsoft fonts also helps because they're very well hinted, and many apps explicitly expect them.]
The gamecube controller doesn't suck though. In fact it's very, very good (not perfect, but far better than most).
The article was clearly written by a drooling sony fanboy, given that it glosses over the huge honking flaws in the dualshock controller. Not just the painful split d-pad, but the absurdly unergonomic placement of the most important part, the main control sticks. "Cappuccino"? Maybe that wacky "cappuccino like product" you can buy in little packets at the super-market.
Basically, Sony is Not Particularly Good at controllers. They come up with a solid concept -- and then completely muck up the details. [See the PSP's dreadful analogue nub for confirmation of this trend...]
just 1 calorie of fossil fuel for 1 calorie of soybeans. By eating plant foods instead of animal foods, I help conserve our non-renewable sources of energy.
If there was ever an argument to get me to go veg*an, that'd probably be it.
No reason to be exclusively vegetarian either, if you're not doing it for ethical reasons -- simply shifting to a mostly vegetarian diet can yield a lot of benefit.
[My mom used to buy "soy extended" hamburger meat when I was a kid, for budgetary reasons, but I absolutely loved that stuff... it's crunchy and is generally just sort of interesting in way that pure beef is not.]
So don't confuse the role of the shinkansen. These are not generally long-distance trains for most people, at least not as we would think of a long-distance trains. They are not particularly comfortable, they are not very nice inside. They are just fast.
Bullshit. I've ridden many different models of shinkansen, and they've all been pretty comfortable and nice -- at the least, far better than a commuter train, often as good as airplane seating and more roomy. There's definitely a range of seat type though, and I've found that sometimes reserved seats are of a higher grade than the unreserved seats. [I never use green cars.]
Actually what bugs me is that on the two-level trains, the lower level windows basically can't see much scenery because a lot of shinkansen track has a short wall on either side; if the train is crowded often the lower seats are the only ones available.
In Japan they have JR rail, which is basically subways and train service.
The "two JRs" (JR east and JR west) are the largest railway companies in Japan, but they mostly only run trains, not subways (pthe proper subways seem to generally be split between private companies and city-owned corporations), and a large percentage of the trains (and track) are private; most of the latter seem to be the various commuter railways, using the "build new railway, profit from development around train stations" model (they own all the best real-estate...).
E.g., on the south-west side of Tokyo, there are quite a few train lines beloning to the Tokyu corporation, and at many of the stations, you can buy your groceries at "Tokyu Store", shop at Tokyu department stores, buy a house/condo built by Tokyu construction company... Move around the perimeter of Tokyo and you'll find many other famous companies doing the same thing.
If you take the shinkansen, then yeah, it's more or less the price of air-travel -- but the train is
Far more relaxing
Much more convenient (well integrated into the urban train-system, much less hassle boarding/disembarking -- stations are at the center of the city, and you can literally just run through the gate and board with no delays at all most of the time),
Goes many places not served by large airlines, including prime travel destinations in the countryside (for access to onsens and skiing etc); this latter point is a big advantage of trains -- the amount of ground infrastructure required for a station is more or less directly proportional to the number of passengers embarking, with no real minimum.
Remember that a huge amount of travel in Japan is "medium distance" (a few hundred miles); it's more or less perfect for trains. Air travel may be competitive for the longest trips, but I think many people are already used to the train system, and so take the train for those trips too -- and why not, if you have a bit of time? It's quite nice to kick back with a book while the countryside streams by your window...
Yup, spot-on. The #1 problem with automobiles is not the pollution or the fuel consumption, but the amount of space they take up (even when you're not travelling). This is not an issue in sparsely-populated countryside, but large-scale single-driver automobile usage is just never going to be a very good match for the city. [It boggles my mind that they've tried to push as far as they have!]
Ideally you'd have a mix of solutions -- better mixing of residential and business areas so that people can live closer to work (and hopefully use "very local" transport methods like walking or bicycling), a good (efficient, clean, safe; yes it's possible) mass transport system used for the average longer-distance trip, with cars being used only for those applications where they make sense.
There certainly are a lot of good reasons for the public, which paid for the project, to get more value out of it than an impossibly priced tool that just subsidizes already-rich government contractor corporations.
Of course -- but public good and technical merit rarely have anything to do with such projects.
There was a bit of a scandal on the debian mailing lists about this -- some people thought it would be cool for debian to participate, but apparently when they contacted google about it, google replied "ha ha, too late!!"
It seems that essentially the guy in charge picked those projects he liked, and the public notice was more for appearance's sake than anything else ("Please apply from 3 to 3:05 am on a sunday morning, in the locked disused lavatory in the basement of an undisclosed location. Beware of the tiger.").
"Ya see baby, it's not really that small... it's er, an optical illusion, yeah... caused by... my raw animal magnetism. Yeah. Animal magnetism as raw as mine can be hard to control, baby, hard to control."
Sony Computer Entertainment, even with the translation gaffes and communication errors, seems to be one of the cockiest and unapologetic companies in the gaming business
This largely seems to stem from the personality of its head, Kutaragi.
He's widely reviled within Sony itself (even the SCE employees I know seem to regard him with a sort of air of amused disbelief). However a cocky attitude does seem to have been a part of SCE's success, and people don't really want to mess with that...
[Sony the larger company is also a bit arrogant, but it's a very different sort of arrogance, more the cold superiority of an engineer than the screaming ad-man bluster of SCE.]
Government shouldn't pay for something that the private sector is already doing. Full stop.
"Full stop"? Oh brother.
As a tax-payer, I'm rather more concerned that my tax-dollars be spent well and for good-purpose.
Often private companies can indeed do a better job, and it's good if the government gets out of the way in such cases (easier said than done of course).
However, sometimes it just doesn't work out that way. Some tasks are accompanied by burdens of transparency, accountability, fairness, etc., and efficiency isn't the most important factor; in such cases the a government agency may just work better in practice, despite inefficiency.
Accelerating to the speed of light is demonstrably possible, you only need to open your eyes because photons, by definition, move at the speed of light
Yeah, but photons start out at that speed, so they can hardly be said to have accelerated to get there...
Er, if you read the lkml during the bitkeeper era, you'll have seen ample reasons to at least dislike Larry. He was constantly making petty threats and basically acted like a spoiled little kid much of the time (as far as I tell, he thought that BK was too important and too hard to replace; it must have been something of a shock when Linus simply rolled up his sleeves and replaced it).
Linus doesn't hate Larry, because they are (so far as I know) friends -- but Linus is hardly the ultimate arbiter.
...lots of metallic parts sticking out of you on a job that requires working near live electrical appliances of which some are equipped with high speed moving parts is a bad idea.
Sure. Personally I also find it quite hard to even look at someone that has tongue/lip piercings (something about their being right in the middle of the face makes them difficult to ignore and I keep thinking about painful/distracting they must feel). Making people around you uncomfortable is usually not a brilliant way to increase one's opportunities.
However what I find bizarre are the opinions stated elsewhere in this story, that anything "non standard" is verboten. I mean, what exactly is wrong with, for instance, a small tasteful earring on a guy? There's lots of very nice looking jewelry out there that neither looks disrespectful nor screams for attention. A man may wear a finger ring with little repercussion, so what's wrong with an earring? What exactly is wrong with an abstract tattoo on the back of the hand, if you're dressed neatly and have a professional attitude and bearing?
If they choose to look like a slob in a professional workplace, they are choosing to passed up by management for promotion into more significant (and higher paying) job roles.
One can certainly dress or style one's hair in a non-traditional manner without being a slob. Of course the sad fact is that many business people are very conservative and look on any expression of individuality with fear and loathing.
I live in Japan, and one odd thing I've noticed is guys with very er, non-traditional hair styles (e.g., died, down to their butt), in front-line traditional corporate sales positions for large conservative companies -- however in every case I've seen, they've been wearing a sharp suit as well. I can only guess that wearing the suit is taken as evidence of respect for the position, and that's good enough.
I think that's a pretty good compromise between the conservative American "individuality bad!" crowd and those that want to call on customers wearing only a g-string and a liberal coating of strawberry jam...
Both Linux and MacOSX will run fine on supported hardware but Linux supports a lot more hardware. How exactly does that make MacOSX better?
It's the pretty "gumdrop" buttons.
I wouldn't take anything JWZ says seriously btw. He's actually a pretty nice guy, but he personifies why blogging sucks -- things that are for most people a minor annoyance ("hey my wheaties seem slightly stale") are for him a fine reason to post a bitter 10 page rant.
Btw, how does the US taxation office get to know about your income when living in another country anyway? It's not like your local employer will be forced by local law to send in your income details to them...
In practice, they won't, and aren't going to bother trying to find out unless you're a movie star flaunting your wealth or something. I've lived overseas for many many years, and only filed a U.S return once during that time; the IRS (U.S. taxation office) seems not to have noticed.
The U.S. only claims taxes on foreign income over $70,000 (I last looked at this over a decade ago; it may be different now), and the whole mess seems intended mostly for people that go overseas for short stints at very high pay; the examples in the instructions are all things like petroleum engineers working for 6 months in Saudi Arabia!
Same reason to why we often have Minimize, Maximize, and Close in the same place, and so on...
This doesn't follow: I (and I think most people) rarely happen to have my mouse hovering near the window buttons. They are not near any other frequently used control, so the only reason I would is from multiple uses of these buttons, and since each button is used relatively rarely -- and morever dramatically changes the window geometry! -- it basically never happens.
As placing these 3 buttons close together tends to cause annoying user accidents (hitting the close button inadvertantly when aiming for maximize), it seems really a fairly stupid arrangement. [It's completely bizarre that Apple decided to copy this layout from from MS for OSX, replacing their earlier more sane layout.]
I got the same reduction by requiring valid reverse DNS for SMTP clients in postfix.
I've seen that cause a lot of problems though. Some large legitimate email sources (e.g. Yahoo's web mail) seem to either not name all their email sending machines, or DNS doesn't always stay in perfect sync with their server farm, so some proportion of email from them gets treated as spam if you use this approach.
I wonder if greylisting could also run afoul of such large providers -- if they use many servers sharing a common queue, the actual host trying to sending a particular piece of mail might change for each attempt!
I looked at the symphony os page, and while the guy has a few good ideas, I was disappointed to see he's yet another UI fascist, proclaiming that consistency of experience trumps user choice.
It's one of gnome's most grating and annoying properties, that the developers have decided that user configurability is undesirable; since of course they are targetting the novice/clueless user, this means that gnome's interface sucks more and more for the experienced/clueful user, and at the same time they are reducing the user's ability to mitigate this through customization.
It looks like symphony os is trying to follow the same limiting and moronic path.
A user interface environment should be a toolkit with (1) really good defaults, and (2) tools that allow the user to easily mold it to fit his own usage patterns.
Slashdot Mirror
First, I agree, current free software is absolutely capable of drop-dead gorgeous font rendering, certainly on par with, and in many cases better, than contemporary Windows/Mac rendering.
/etc/fonts, everything looks splendid. Installing the microsoft fonts also helps because they're very well hinted, and many apps explicitly expect them.]
However I think it isn't the "desktop" which is the usual problem -- the main desktop environments/toolkits (Gnome/GTK and KDE/Qt) have good support for this stuff, and simple and obvious configuration of (their part of) it.
I think the main problem is that responsibility for configuration seems to be split up between so many different places -- not just the toolkits, but the libraries, someone mentioned an X configuration option which made a difference, the font installation, etc. Furthermore, there's the weird issue that the important feature of autohinting (which isn't necessary for well-hinted fonts like the bitstream vera stuff, but really helps some other fonts) is turned off by default because of some bizarro patent issue or something.
[FWIW, I use Debian and Gnome/GTK and after enabling autohinting in
The gamecube controller doesn't suck though. In fact it's very, very good (not perfect, but far better than most).
The article was clearly written by a drooling sony fanboy, given that it glosses over the huge honking flaws in the dualshock controller. Not just the painful split d-pad, but the absurdly unergonomic placement of the most important part, the main control sticks. "Cappuccino"? Maybe that wacky "cappuccino like product" you can buy in little packets at the super-market.
Basically, Sony is Not Particularly Good at controllers. They come up with a solid concept -- and then completely muck up the details. [See the PSP's dreadful analogue nub for confirmation of this trend...]
just 1 calorie of fossil fuel for 1 calorie of soybeans. By eating plant foods instead of animal foods, I help conserve our non-renewable sources of energy.
... it's crunchy and is generally just sort of interesting in way that pure beef is not.]
If there was ever an argument to get me to go veg*an, that'd probably be it.
No reason to be exclusively vegetarian either, if you're not doing it for ethical reasons -- simply shifting to a mostly vegetarian diet can yield a lot of benefit.
[My mom used to buy "soy extended" hamburger meat when I was a kid, for budgetary reasons, but I absolutely loved that stuff
So don't confuse the role of the shinkansen. These are not generally long-distance trains for most people, at least not as we would think of a long-distance trains. They are not particularly comfortable, they are not very nice inside. They are just fast.
Bullshit. I've ridden many different models of shinkansen, and they've all been pretty comfortable and nice -- at the least, far better than a commuter train, often as good as airplane seating and more roomy. There's definitely a range of seat type though, and I've found that sometimes reserved seats are of a higher grade than the unreserved seats. [I never use green cars.]
Actually what bugs me is that on the two-level trains, the lower level windows basically can't see much scenery because a lot of shinkansen track has a short wall on either side; if the train is crowded often the lower seats are the only ones available.
In Japan they have JR rail, which is basically subways and train service.
The "two JRs" (JR east and JR west) are the largest railway companies in Japan, but they mostly only run trains, not subways (pthe proper subways seem to generally be split between private companies and city-owned corporations), and a large percentage of the trains (and track) are private; most of the latter seem to be the various commuter railways, using the "build new railway, profit from development around train stations" model (they own all the best real-estate...).
E.g., on the south-west side of Tokyo, there are quite a few train lines beloning to the Tokyu corporation, and at many of the stations, you can buy your groceries at "Tokyu Store", shop at Tokyu department stores, buy a house/condo built by Tokyu construction company... Move around the perimeter of Tokyo and you'll find many other famous companies doing the same thing.
Remember that a huge amount of travel in Japan is "medium distance" (a few hundred miles); it's more or less perfect for trains. Air travel may be competitive for the longest trips, but I think many people are already used to the train system, and so take the train for those trips too -- and why not, if you have a bit of time? It's quite nice to kick back with a book while the countryside streams by your window...
Er, I think the IRS eventually gets what it wants much of the time, but the emphasis is on "eventually."
:-]
[my Mom is a former revenooer... those armed raids are preceded by a lot of paperwork!
Yup, spot-on. The #1 problem with automobiles is not the pollution or the fuel consumption, but the amount of space they take up (even when you're not travelling). This is not an issue in sparsely-populated countryside, but large-scale single-driver automobile usage is just never going to be a very good match for the city. [It boggles my mind that they've tried to push as far as they have!]
Ideally you'd have a mix of solutions -- better mixing of residential and business areas so that people can live closer to work (and hopefully use "very local" transport methods like walking or bicycling), a good (efficient, clean, safe; yes it's possible) mass transport system used for the average longer-distance trip, with cars being used only for those applications where they make sense.
There certainly are a lot of good reasons for the public, which paid for the project, to get more value out of it than an impossibly priced tool that just subsidizes already-rich government contractor corporations.
Of course -- but public good and technical merit rarely have anything to do with such projects.
There was a bit of a scandal on the debian mailing lists about this -- some people thought it would be cool for debian to participate, but apparently when they contacted google about it, google replied "ha ha, too late!!"
It seems that essentially the guy in charge picked those projects he liked, and the public notice was more for appearance's sake than anything else ("Please apply from 3 to 3:05 am on a sunday morning, in the locked disused lavatory in the basement of an undisclosed location. Beware of the tiger.").
"... Windows today, and that's just a sad reality."
Maybe the Xbox 360 or PS3 could create a realtime 3D model on the fly?
Well who knows, but it's a sure bet that they'll claim they can...
"Ya see baby, it's not really that small... it's er, an optical illusion, yeah... caused by ... my raw animal magnetism. Yeah. Animal magnetism as raw as mine can be hard to control, baby, hard to control."
You forget the inevitable:
In a press release, OpenBSD head Theo de Raadt states: "Pay Attention to Meeeeee!!!"
Sony Computer Entertainment, even with the translation gaffes and communication errors, seems to be one of the cockiest and unapologetic companies in the gaming business
This largely seems to stem from the personality of its head, Kutaragi.
He's widely reviled within Sony itself (even the SCE employees I know seem to regard him with a sort of air of amused disbelief). However a cocky attitude does seem to have been a part of SCE's success, and people don't really want to mess with that...
[Sony the larger company is also a bit arrogant, but it's a very different sort of arrogance, more the cold superiority of an engineer than the screaming ad-man bluster of SCE.]
Government shouldn't pay for something that the private sector is already doing. Full stop.
"Full stop"? Oh brother.
As a tax-payer, I'm rather more concerned that my tax-dollars be spent well and for good-purpose.
Often private companies can indeed do a better job, and it's good if the government gets out of the way in such cases (easier said than done of course).
However, sometimes it just doesn't work out that way. Some tasks are accompanied by burdens of transparency, accountability, fairness, etc., and efficiency isn't the most important factor; in such cases the a government agency may just work better in practice, despite inefficiency.
Accelerating to the speed of light is demonstrably possible, you only need to open your eyes because photons, by definition, move at the speed of light
Yeah, but photons start out at that speed, so they can hardly be said to have accelerated to get there...
Er, if you read the lkml during the bitkeeper era, you'll have seen ample reasons to at least dislike Larry. He was constantly making petty threats and basically acted like a spoiled little kid much of the time (as far as I tell, he thought that BK was too important and too hard to replace; it must have been something of a shock when Linus simply rolled up his sleeves and replaced it).
Linus doesn't hate Larry, because they are (so far as I know) friends -- but Linus is hardly the ultimate arbiter.
...lots of metallic parts sticking out of you on a job that requires working near live electrical appliances of which some are equipped with high speed moving parts is a bad idea.
Sure. Personally I also find it quite hard to even look at someone that has tongue/lip piercings (something about their being right in the middle of the face makes them difficult to ignore and I keep thinking about painful/distracting they must feel). Making people around you uncomfortable is usually not a brilliant way to increase one's opportunities.
However what I find bizarre are the opinions stated elsewhere in this story, that anything "non standard" is verboten. I mean, what exactly is wrong with, for instance, a small tasteful earring on a guy? There's lots of very nice looking jewelry out there that neither looks disrespectful nor screams for attention. A man may wear a finger ring with little repercussion, so what's wrong with an earring? What exactly is wrong with an abstract tattoo on the back of the hand, if you're dressed neatly and have a professional attitude and bearing?
If they choose to look like a slob in a professional workplace, they are choosing to passed up by management for promotion into more significant (and higher paying) job roles.
One can certainly dress or style one's hair in a non-traditional manner without being a slob. Of course the sad fact is that many business people are very conservative and look on any expression of individuality with fear and loathing.
I live in Japan, and one odd thing I've noticed is guys with very er, non-traditional hair styles (e.g., died, down to their butt), in front-line traditional corporate sales positions for large conservative companies -- however in every case I've seen, they've been wearing a sharp suit as well. I can only guess that wearing the suit is taken as evidence of respect for the position, and that's good enough.
I think that's a pretty good compromise between the conservative American "individuality bad!" crowd and those that want to call on customers wearing only a g-string and a liberal coating of strawberry jam...
Both Linux and MacOSX will run fine on supported hardware but Linux supports a lot more hardware. How exactly does that make MacOSX better?
It's the pretty "gumdrop" buttons.
I wouldn't take anything JWZ says seriously btw. He's actually a pretty nice guy, but he personifies why blogging sucks -- things that are for most people a minor annoyance ("hey my wheaties seem slightly stale") are for him a fine reason to post a bitter 10 page rant.
Btw, how does the US taxation office get to know about your income when living in another country anyway? It's not like your local employer will be forced by local law to send in your income details to them...
In practice, they won't, and aren't going to bother trying to find out unless you're a movie star flaunting your wealth or something. I've lived overseas for many many years, and only filed a U.S return once during that time; the IRS (U.S. taxation office) seems not to have noticed.
The U.S. only claims taxes on foreign income over $70,000 (I last looked at this over a decade ago; it may be different now), and the whole mess seems intended mostly for people that go overseas for short stints at very high pay; the examples in the instructions are all things like petroleum engineers working for 6 months in Saudi Arabia!
Same reason to why we often have Minimize, Maximize, and Close in the same place, and so on...
This doesn't follow: I (and I think most people) rarely happen to have my mouse hovering near the window buttons. They are not near any other frequently used control, so the only reason I would is from multiple uses of these buttons, and since each button is used relatively rarely -- and morever dramatically changes the window geometry! -- it basically never happens.
As placing these 3 buttons close together tends to cause annoying user accidents (hitting the close button inadvertantly when aiming for maximize), it seems really a fairly stupid arrangement. [It's completely bizarre that Apple decided to copy this layout from from MS for OSX, replacing their earlier more sane layout.]
I got the same reduction by requiring valid reverse DNS for SMTP clients in postfix.
I've seen that cause a lot of problems though. Some large legitimate email sources (e.g. Yahoo's web mail) seem to either not name all their email sending machines, or DNS doesn't always stay in perfect sync with their server farm, so some proportion of email from them gets treated as spam if you use this approach.
I wonder if greylisting could also run afoul of such large providers -- if they use many servers sharing a common queue, the actual host trying to sending a particular piece of mail might change for each attempt!
I looked at the symphony os page, and while the guy has a few good ideas, I was disappointed to see he's yet another UI fascist, proclaiming that consistency of experience trumps user choice.
It's one of gnome's most grating and annoying properties, that the developers have decided that user configurability is undesirable; since of course they are targetting the novice/clueless user, this means that gnome's interface sucks more and more for the experienced/clueful user, and at the same time they are reducing the user's ability to mitigate this through customization.
It looks like symphony os is trying to follow the same limiting and moronic path.
A user interface environment should be a toolkit with (1) really good defaults, and (2) tools that allow the user to easily mold it to fit his own usage patterns.