Living in Europe for as long as I did has shown me that not everyone on the planet does things like the Americans...
You had to live in Europe to learn that?:-)
Anyway, the thing with the 'clunkiness' was an observation shared by all of the Europeans I showed it (the Windows version) to also. I don't think this is necessarily one of those 'things'. The various Europeans may have different tastes about different things, but I think they like a smooth interface as much as anyone.
Well, I'm sure if this applies, but I know that for the TNT I had to make an entry in my XF86Config to load the 3d module (glx.so), I don't have the file handy so I can't check. Hope this helps.
Though, now I just realized a plot flaw. Why didn't the ARM agents have one implanted in themselves instead of only relying on the Psychic (forgot her name; Julie?) to find them?
We need to be strong enough to recognize that Linux and its associated applications and tools are not the end-all be-all they can be, and be willing to take this as constructive criticism that points out where we need to start working on improvements.
In other words, some people need to remember that the the strength of open source is not that programs don't need to be improved, but that they can be improved. Any time someone says: "Doing foo is easy, just do:
x
y
z"
I always think, then write a program to perform steps 1.,2.,3. since that's the kind of thing computers excel at; then we can leave the stuff like drawing, writing, communicating, playing, etc. to people, who excel at that sort of thing.
The fact that something is 'simple' to do does not make it easy for the average person. The thing that sets geeks apart from normal people is the ability to see things compartmentalized into their most basic components. I think most people think a great deal more holistically.
Well, several people have already mentioned that KDE is very keyboard-friendly, but I haven't seen anyone mention KHotKeys. With KHotKeys you can assign literally any action to any (non-used) key combination, that includes shell scripts, non-KDE programs, whatever. You can also switch to an already open window based on window name, class, etc. Together with kwmcom you can pretty much control your whole environment with the keyboard. All in all, a very useful program despite its 0.2 version number.
Note: I am a native speaker of English who has been studying in Germany for 4 years; my German is basically fluent, though my English seems to be degrading;-)
My notes are italicized.
Windows 2000 in danger of being banned
A component of Windows 2000 comes from a Scientology company. The defragmentation program "Diskeeper" will be released to the market in February as an integrated part of the NT successor. It is being developed by the company Executive Software belonging to (or led by?) the admitted Scientologist Craig Jensen, as reported in c't 25/99. The connection between the (Psyho: here I read psychological, in the sense that it's not just a regular company but based on the philosophy of Scientology) company and the software giant has been a thorn in the eye of sect specialists/observers from the large churches.
"This will be of interest not only to the Catholic Church, but also to all States (in the sense of 'California is a State'), the Verfassungsschutz (This is the division of the government concerned with protecting the German Constitution), as well as the German industry", commented Harald Baer, the Catholic specialist/agent (person assigned to a certain task; my English is really deteriorating) for sects and worldview (though Weltanschauung is used in English too), to the German Press Agency (dpa). In the view of Ursula Caberta, Chairperson for the Hamburg (the state!) Internal Affairs: Scientology Task-force, Executive Software is one of the leading companies in the Scientology organisation WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises). WISE is the "...key arm/branch of Scientology for infiltrating and spying on the Economy". In the States of Bavaria and Hamburg there are government-policies which forbid agencies -- particularly those in the area of information technologies (basically computers) -- from purchasing services from Scientology companies.
And why, why does satan have to do the dirty deed between 11pm and 12am on Dec 31, 1999?
And for that matter (and this applies to all the fanatics expecting Apocalypse) why would God and Satan set their watch (figuratively speaking) by a calendar system which: - was invented by Man - was adjusted at such a late date to correspond to the Sun (leapyears, leapseconds, etc.) that by some estimates Jesus was born 6 B.C. (making the Millenium ca. 1995; oops, a year 0 bug) - has two major variants as to what month he was born (Orthodox, anyone?) one of which is not even a wild guess, but a concession to the popularity of the pagan Winter Solstice festival. - and none of the major branches of Christianity even consider Dec 31st - Jan 1st to be significant on the church calendar.
And that's all not to mention the stupidity of assuming God even considers 2 * 10e3 number of rotations around the Sun significant. What if He uses binary? As far as I know, most of the number systems weren't even decimal when most of the Bible was written...
but I strongly doubt there would be gene that's ONLY function is disease... what sense would that make?
Why should it make sense? Assuming you don't suscribe to Creationism, there's no reason to assume a reason behind any particular genetic coding, any more than you should assume the function of gravity is to make your milk spill. Rather than 'function', which tends to sound like a design with a purpose, think 'effect' or 'result'. So, the effect of foo genes or gene-sequences is bar desease. A mutation has 4 possible results:
1. It helps a creature and/or its offspring thrive and reproduce. 2. It hinders a creature and/or its offspring from thriving or reproducing. 3. It has advantages/disadvantages which don't (yet) affect the reproduction chances. 4. It has no effect at all (or yet).
That's it. No point system other than: 1. You have children. 2. They inherit some of your genes and some of your partner's genes, and perhaps some of the genes mutate. 3. Repeat.
People tend to think that their's some grand design behind everything that is. I'll leave the resolution of this question to the Philosophers and Theologians, but I think we can agree that if there is one, it's not something we're capable of recognising...
I would tend to think it highly questionable to include a filesystem before it has even entered the experimental kernel series.
I prefer it to be there so I can decide whether to use it or not. Afterall you have to compile the kernel to have it in there, and let's face it, if you're compiling a kernel you should be in a position to decide whether you want to try it or not. Complete newbies will probably just use one of the pre-compiled kernels. Anyways, even if it were compiled in, the filesystem used by the setup is ext2, so I can hardly imagine someone will just stumble into using the experimental stuff.
I'm running the German S.u.S.E. 6.3 right now, and have menuconfig right in front of my face: Under Filesystems: Reiserfs support
Hmmmm. Looks like it's there to me. Haven't tried it out yet though. (Considering I don't even know how to make use of it yet, I probably won't until other people pound on it for a while)
It sounds like Apache 2.* will allow one to use threading if desired (just a compile time choice).
Actually, IIRC Apache 2 will be a hybrid threading/forking server. The whole argument against threads was stability, namely if one of the threads crashes/blocks all of them do. Apache 2 will still fork some child processes which will then each be multi-threaded; thus you have the speed of threads but if one of them bites it you can just fork a new child.
I don't really need huge advances in interface efficiency. The needs you specify are cool by me. I'd love to be able to dictate my email, navigate the web via voice, click 'Forward' without having to actually click...
This was somewhat along the lines of what I was thinking of.
and hey, tell me speech rec in FPS games wouldn't be cool as heck
You've got me there.
(maybe not JUST, but in addition to the other controllers
This is my point; not a replacement, rather, in addition to the traditional controls.
I could handle hitting Enter to CR to the next line, then saying the line of code
Like I said, try dictating code to someone else and you'll see what I mean. Programming languages aren't spoken languages, and aren't meant to be. Maybe if the technology allowed it, someone might develop a spoken programming language, but frankly (speaking as a Linguistics student) I doubt it. Even Mathematicians tend to show each other their formulas rather than say them, and I think we can assume their speech recognition works fine (despite how it seems when you're talking to one;-)
I want to be able to talk to my puter like they do in Star Trek someday.
That's what I meant by language recognition, or better comprehension. In Star Trek they use colloquial language with the computer. This requires a great deal more than just the one-to-one relationship represented by replacing typed commands with spoken ones. For this the computer needs to understand what you mean not just what you say. If the computer's that smart, you probably don't need to tell it what to do:-)
Maybe Rob should somehow make it more clear to the world how many Slashdot readers there are for any given story. Approximately, that is, because of ACs and being harder to count "correctly" and all that, but still...
Readers? or posters? Forget counting the AC's, how about all the people who read Slashdot without posting? I know that, for my own part, I read Slashdot for a couple of months before I even posted for the first time, let alone got an account.
Improved speech recognition is not going to bring any huge advances in interface efficiency, at least not for hackers; maybe language recognition will, but I'm not holding my breath.
What do I mean by this? Well, have you ever tried dictating code to someone else sitting at the keyboard? Was it faster than doing it yourself? I'm willing to bet the answer is "No." This is the case even if the person sitting there is a lightning fast typist, since it usually takes longer to explain what they should type (plus to correct misinterpretations) than for them to type it. And that's when a human is doing it; humans are pretty good at interpreting spoken language. Computers would need to be better, not as-good-as.
Speech recognition is for people who can't/won't type to dictate e-mails and stuff like that, and it might find a place as a complement to keyboard control, but there's not a chance in hell that it'll ever come close to replacing keyboards.
Slashdot Mirror
Living in Europe for as long as I did has shown me that not everyone on the planet does things like the Americans...
:-)
You had to live in Europe to learn that?
Anyway, the thing with the 'clunkiness' was an observation shared by all of the Europeans I showed it (the Windows version) to also. I don't think this is necessarily one of those 'things'. The various Europeans may have different tastes about different things, but I think they like a smooth interface as much as anyone.
Chris
Well, I'm sure if this applies, but I know that for the TNT I had to make an entry in my XF86Config to load the 3d module (glx.so), I don't have the file handy so I can't check. Hope this helps.
Chris
I stand corrected.
Chris
Well, only if new data are still input with 2 digit years which are supposed to be after 2030.
The windowing solution doesn't allow you to keep using 2 digit years forever. It allows a program to interpret old 2 digit years correctly.
Chris
...but McDonalds is a famous name, and it was created (I assume) by a guy named McDonald.
Nope, Ray Kroc (sp?)
Chris
Solstice happened long before Paganism
;-) But, that's okay, I know you probably meant the human celebration of Solstice.
Ummm... Solstice happened long before human existence
Chris
From Websters:
:-)
fiery:
1: consisting of fire
2: hot like a fire
3: of the color of fire
4: full of or exuding emotion or spirit
I think your Physics is better than your English
Yes! Great stories.
Though, now I just realized a plot flaw. Why didn't the ARM agents have one implanted in themselves instead of only relying on the Psychic (forgot her name; Julie?) to find them?
Chris
In other words, some people need to remember that the the strength of open source is not that programs don't need to be improved, but that they can be improved. Any time someone says: "Doing foo is easy, just do:
I always think, then write a program to perform steps 1.,2.,3. since that's the kind of thing computers excel at; then we can leave the stuff like drawing, writing, communicating, playing, etc. to people, who excel at that sort of thing.
The fact that something is 'simple' to do does not make it easy for the average person. The thing that sets geeks apart from normal people is the ability to see things compartmentalized into their most basic components. I think most people think a great deal more holistically.
Chris
Well, several people have already mentioned that KDE is very keyboard-friendly, but I haven't seen anyone mention KHotKeys. With KHotKeys you can assign literally any action to any (non-used) key combination, that includes shell scripts, non-KDE programs, whatever. You can also switch to an already open window based on window name, class, etc. Together with kwmcom you can pretty much control your whole environment with the keyboard. All in all, a very useful program despite its 0.2 version number.
Chris
Your translation is very good indeed.
Thank you
I study German too
You probably read that sentence a bit too quickly, I study in Germany, Munich to be exact. I don't study German, though I am majoring in Linguistics.
Chris
Note: I am a native speaker of English who has been studying in Germany for 4 years; my German is basically fluent, though my English seems to be degrading ;-)
My notes are italicized.
Windows 2000 in danger of being banned
A component of Windows 2000 comes from a Scientology company. The defragmentation program "Diskeeper" will be released to the market in February as an integrated part of the NT successor. It is being developed by the company Executive Software belonging to (or led by?) the admitted Scientologist Craig Jensen, as reported in c't 25/99. The connection between the (Psyho: here I read psychological, in the sense that it's not just a regular company but based on the philosophy of Scientology) company and the software giant has been a thorn in the eye of sect specialists/observers from the large churches.
"This will be of interest not only to the Catholic Church, but also to all States (in the sense of 'California is a State'), the Verfassungsschutz (This is the division of the government concerned with protecting the German Constitution), as well as the German industry", commented Harald Baer, the Catholic specialist/agent (person assigned to a certain task; my English is really deteriorating) for sects and worldview (though Weltanschauung is used in English too), to the German Press Agency (dpa). In the view of Ursula Caberta, Chairperson for the Hamburg (the state!) Internal Affairs: Scientology Task-force, Executive Software is one of the leading companies in the Scientology organisation WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises). WISE is the "...key arm/branch of Scientology for infiltrating and spying on the Economy". In the States of Bavaria and Hamburg there are government-policies which forbid agencies -- particularly those in the area of information technologies (basically computers) -- from purchasing services from Scientology companies.
Chris
And why, why does satan have to do the dirty deed between 11pm and 12am on Dec 31, 1999?
And for that matter (and this applies to all the fanatics expecting Apocalypse) why would God and Satan set their watch (figuratively speaking) by a calendar system which:
- was invented by Man
- was adjusted at such a late date to correspond to the Sun (leapyears, leapseconds, etc.) that by some estimates Jesus was born 6 B.C. (making the Millenium ca. 1995; oops, a year 0 bug)
- has two major variants as to what month he was born (Orthodox, anyone?) one of which is not even a wild guess, but a concession to the popularity of the pagan Winter Solstice festival.
- and none of the major branches of Christianity even consider Dec 31st - Jan 1st to be significant on the church calendar.
And that's all not to mention the stupidity of assuming God even considers 2 * 10e3 number of rotations around the Sun significant. What if He uses binary? As far as I know, most of the number systems weren't even decimal when most of the Bible was written...
etc, ad nauseum
I'll stop ranting now.
Chris
but I strongly doubt there would be gene that's ONLY function is disease... what sense would that make?
Why should it make sense? Assuming you don't suscribe to Creationism, there's no reason to assume a reason behind any particular genetic coding, any more than you should assume the function of gravity is to make your milk spill. Rather than 'function', which tends to sound like a design with a purpose, think 'effect' or 'result'. So, the effect of foo genes or gene-sequences is bar desease. A mutation has 4 possible results:
1. It helps a creature and/or its offspring thrive and reproduce.
2. It hinders a creature and/or its offspring from thriving or reproducing.
3. It has advantages/disadvantages which don't (yet) affect the reproduction chances.
4. It has no effect at all (or yet).
That's it. No point system other than:
1. You have children.
2. They inherit some of your genes and some of your partner's genes, and perhaps some of the genes mutate.
3. Repeat.
People tend to think that their's some grand design behind everything that is. I'll leave the resolution of this question to the Philosophers and Theologians, but I think we can agree that if there is one, it's not something we're capable of recognising...
Chris
Is all the 1500 apps which come with suse 6.3 in rpm format...
Yes
I would tend to think it highly questionable to include a filesystem before it has even entered the experimental kernel series.
I prefer it to be there so I can decide whether to use it or not. Afterall you have to compile the kernel to have it in there, and let's face it, if you're compiling a kernel you should be in a position to decide whether you want to try it or not. Complete newbies will probably just use one of the pre-compiled kernels. Anyways, even if it were compiled in, the filesystem used by the setup is ext2, so I can hardly imagine someone will just stumble into using the experimental stuff.
Chris
My bag. I just read below that it's the non-journaling Reiserfs which is included with 6.3
Chris
I'm running the German S.u.S.E. 6.3 right now, and have menuconfig right in front of my face:
Under Filesystems:
Reiserfs support
Hmmmm. Looks like it's there to me. Haven't tried it out yet though. (Considering I don't even know how to make use of it yet, I probably won't until other people pound on it for a while)
Chris
It sounds like Apache 2.* will allow one to use threading if desired (just a compile time choice).
Actually, IIRC Apache 2 will be a hybrid threading/forking server. The whole argument against threads was stability, namely if one of the threads crashes/blocks all of them do. Apache 2 will still fork some child processes which will then each be multi-threaded; thus you have the speed of threads but if one of them bites it you can just fork a new child.
Chris
What... Microsoft, misleading? Are we talking about the same Microsoft?
Chris
I don't really need huge advances in interface efficiency. The needs you specify are cool by me. I'd love to be able to dictate my email, navigate the web via voice, click 'Forward' without having to actually click...
;-)
:-)
This was somewhat along the lines of what I was thinking of.
and hey, tell me speech rec in FPS games wouldn't be cool as heck
You've got me there.
(maybe not JUST, but in addition to the other controllers
This is my point; not a replacement, rather, in addition to the traditional controls.
I could handle hitting Enter to CR to the next line, then saying the line of code
Like I said, try dictating code to someone else and you'll see what I mean. Programming languages aren't spoken languages, and aren't meant to be. Maybe if the technology allowed it, someone might develop a spoken programming language, but frankly (speaking as a Linguistics student) I doubt it. Even Mathematicians tend to show each other their formulas rather than say them, and I think we can assume their speech recognition works fine (despite how it seems when you're talking to one
I want to be able to talk to my puter like they do in Star Trek someday.
That's what I meant by language recognition, or better comprehension. In Star Trek they use colloquial language with the computer. This requires a great deal more than just the one-to-one relationship represented by replacing typed commands with spoken ones. For this the computer needs to understand what you mean not just what you say. If the computer's that smart, you probably don't need to tell it what to do
Chris
Maybe Rob should somehow make it more clear to the world how many Slashdot readers there are for any given story. Approximately, that is, because of ACs and being harder to count "correctly" and all that, but still...
Readers? or posters? Forget counting the AC's, how about all the people who read Slashdot without posting? I know that, for my own part, I read Slashdot for a couple of months before I even posted for the first time, let alone got an account.
Chris
I'm just waiting for solid speech rec...
Improved speech recognition is not going to bring any huge advances in interface efficiency, at least not for hackers; maybe language recognition will, but I'm not holding my breath.
What do I mean by this? Well, have you ever tried dictating code to someone else sitting at the keyboard? Was it faster than doing it yourself? I'm willing to bet the answer is "No." This is the case even if the person sitting there is a lightning fast typist, since it usually takes longer to explain what they should type (plus to correct misinterpretations) than for them to type it. And that's when a human is doing it; humans are pretty good at interpreting spoken language. Computers would need to be better, not as-good-as.
Speech recognition is for people who can't/won't type to dictate e-mails and stuff like that, and it might find a place as a complement to keyboard control, but there's not a chance in hell that it'll ever come close to replacing keyboards.
Chris
This is really funny. Although, it might offend some people also ;-)
Chris
From a stock board: "KDE isn't a ticker symbol. What company makes it? Is it public yet?"
Is this for real? If so where did you hear/read that?
Chris