Oi. There were a couple things I just have trouble ignoring...
I don't consider myself ignorant, and while most ignorant people don't consider themselves ignorant, I have had a fairly solid education with extra history and politics classes thrown in. I wasn't born rich and had to work up to and through college so I'm either the dumbest clod on the planet or I actually learned something about working hard to put food on the table. So that covers political, historical, and financial ignorance.
Almost by definition, you can't know you are not ignorant or naive. If there's something you don't know, well, you don't know, do you? Political awareness and a well-informed view of the candidates is not something they teach you in school. If a couple of politics classes are your basis for claiming non-ignorance, you may have just disproved your own point. The first step to reducing ignorance is to realize you have it, and will always have it. And to avoid the problems it causes, you've got to spend your life questioning, searching for unfamiliar ideas, and thinking the unthinkable.
I know I'm terribly ignorant. And though I try constantly to change that, my search has not led me to many answers. However, I've found something more valuable than answers -- good questions. The best I can ever hope for is to find progressively better questions.
On a sidenote: I'd like to thank everyone from moveon.org that went out of their way to skew the exit polls.
I'd like to thank the folks at Diebold for giving the world some idea just how broken and corrupt some of our voting systems are. The CEO of Diebold, a GOP fundraiser, promised to deliver Ohio to Bush. And then, curiously, the results were significantly different than the exit polls. For some background, the leaked Diebold internal memos reveal a great deal of error and corruption in their company and products. Hell, someone even taught a chimpanzee how to falsify voting records on Diebold machines. Doesn't that bring up some good questions?
Misinformation: Again, I don't believe that all Bush supporters were misinformed or ignorant.
That was not claimed. However, studies have shown that a large percentage of Bush's supporters were misinformed about important issues. That's where the "embarrassingly ignorant" comment came from. The numbers show that many people who voted for Bush simply haven't been paying attention.
As far the crappy economy,... have difficulty believing that it is Bush's fault.
I doubt it's entirely his fault, but he still has the second-worst record in the past hundred years, one rank below his father. That means the two Bush presidents presided over the two worst economies since the Great Depression. That indicates to me that maybe the Bush way of doing things is not in the country's best interests, and that almost anyone would do a better job.
BTW, it may be worth mentioning that, before Dubya got elected, he spent most of the previous 20 years running companies into the ground. So, killing the economy wasn't really a big surprise; it's what he's always done when given money and power.
The only thing I blame on him in that regard is making exagerated growth claims at the beginning of his last term and for not doing enough ass-kicking to get people into gear (either thinking of ways to increase employment, etc). I'm thinking if he put his inner circle on it and told them that the one that came up with the best solution wouldn't be fired, their'd be some solutions forthcoming.
So, if I understand... you blame him for misleading people (and/or simply lacking the skill of foresight, an important skill for world leaders), and for not trying hard enough to do his job? If that's the case, I think we're in agreement here. I think he should have done everything in his power to fix the economy, instead of making a new record for vacation time spent while in office.
So, what were your other reasons for supporting Bush? If you think they'll stand up to scrutiny, I'd like to hear them.
I really must recommend moosic. It's an easy and effective way to play mp3/ogg/etc, from the command line. It runs as a daemon, with a nice command-line client to control it. There is also a gtk client under development.
I've been running MUTE for the last couple hours, and I'm saddened that it's by the author of k2b.
I lost about any possible respect for that guy after reading his k2b/bittorrent comparison article, doing the math myself, and finding how amazingly far off his conclusions were. It was like reading a SCO press release.
Don't get me wrong... the guy's got some experience now and maybe he's a little more clueful.
I've already had it fail to compile against the libs it wants, freeze up on me thrice, fail 80% of the downloads I attempted, fail 100% of uploads, and ignore its own config files. But then again, that's not bad for V0.1.:) Maybe I'll use it someday, once it can run for more than 30 minutes without crashing.
I've been enjoying my Zaurus as a music player too. My setup is unusual (running mostly the familiar-unstable distro, with OpenZaurus's kernel, and a semi-wonky X11 setup), but it does what I want.
When I host parties, I hook up the Zaurus to some speakers, a power outlet, and my CF wifi card. It plays music off my server elsewhere in the house, and I can control it easily from my notebook without having to go anywhere near the "stereo".
Or, for just myself, I often stick it in my pocket with a 256MB CF card in it, and listen on headphones for up to 4 hours. If I turn the backlight off, it plays about that long before the battery gets dangerously low.
Perhaps the best part though, is being able to customize everything as much as I like. Half the software I use on it is stuff I wrote myself. And with a SD/MMC card, there's plenty of room for me to tinker.
To start with, it compares bittorrent's worst case with k2b's best case, as if this were fair. Both programs actually have the same best case (O(log(n)) distribution time), if everyone stays to share. But k2b's worst case (O(n) time) is far worse than bittorrent's worst case (O(sqrt(n)) time). If everyone on k2b downloads then immediately disconnects, you get zero extra benefit, because your users aren't helping each other at all.
There are a few assumptions made in the comparison which are probably not true:
Bittorrent clients disconnect immediately after their download finishes. From my experience (mostly anime fansub distribution), this is far from the truth. Many people do leech and leave, but a lot of people stay to share. Want some numbers? Look at http://www.animesuki.com/ 's stats for today's torrents. There are sometimes even more people sharing than leeching.
Everyone on k2b will stay connected all the time, instead of leaving when they get what they want. This is not going to happen except maybe in the case of streaming radio. But then, k2b doesn't upload until the download finishes, so it doesn't seem well-suited to streaming.
Both programs will have people who share, and people who leech. And it'll probably be about the same ratio of each no matter what network you're using.
However, given identical files and identical usage patterns, I would expect bittorrent to be more efficient. The reason is that k2b does not begin uploading until a download finishes. This changes the total upload capacity of the network. Here are some rough estimates of each network's upload capacity:
k2b: num_completed * avg_upstream. Each connected host with the complete file uploads to others until it disconnects.
Bittorrent: (num_completed + (num_leeching / 2)) * avg_upstream. You get the same upstream bandwidth as k2b, plus roughly half the upstream of everyone leeching the file. Assume some leechers have 1% of the file while others have 99%, and everything inbetween. On average, leechers have half of the file and actively upload it. The actual capacity is much more complicated than this, but this should be a good ballpark estimate.
If I put in some numbers, I can estimate the total transfer rate of each network. From the front page of animesuki, I see a pretty average-looking torrent with 284 completed hosts and 397 leeching. I'll estimate an average upstream of 20 KiB/s, and this is how the numbers turn out:
k2b: 284 * 20 KiB/s = 5.54 MiB/s
BT: (284 + (397/2)) * 20 KiB/s = 9.42 MiB/s
Bittorrent is 70% faster in this case, and the speed difference gets wider with more leechers or less people sharing. Another torrent is at 19 to 580 right now, which makes k2b's speed 380KiB/s while bittorrent races 16 times faster at 6.03MiB/s.
Anyway, I'm not saying that k2b is bad. Just that the comparison seems bad. I think k2b would kick ass for streaming radio and a variety of other push-oriented content. But it's not a bittorrent killer.
They're neat displays, but hardly news. They have been selling these for at least 4 or 5 years. Before they started selling LCDs, I think.
Most people are better off spending $10 for a HD44780 LCD plus cables than spending $140 on a VFD. They're both well-supported and easy to display on, especially in linux.
I've currently got a <a href="http://www.crystalfontz.com/">CrystalFontz</ a> LCD in my case, telling me all about what the computer is doing. It's brighter, bigger, easier to read, and has more features than similar MtxOrb LCDs, and costs significantly less. It even came with a drive bay mount so I didn't have to cut up my case.:)
Wow. Linux audio tools have come a long way since last time I looked.
After trying audacity, I got rid of my copies of cooledit and sound forge. I know audacity is still simple compared to the "professional" tools out there, but it already does everything I need for creating music samples and other misc editing...:)
Now, if I can find a good (and mature) composition/synth program, I'll be set!
Thanks for the great program!
I used it for years and it's the most powerful and flexible window manager I've seen. It's basically lacking three things: ease of configuration, aesthetic appeal, and "cool factor".
After writing something like 200k of configuration files for it, I got a bit sick of it. Granted, most of that was an attempt to make a decent theme engine for it. Much of the rest was an engine to make it individually customizable by the newbie users on the systems I was running.
The "cool factor" is unimportant. But the aesthetic appeal really matters to some people (like me), and an easy configuration method is important. Those seem like two potential areas of expansion.
I switched to E a couple years ago, and have never regretted it. There are only two things I miss about FVWM: SmarterPlacement, and EdgeFlip only when dragging a window. It's because I've been too lazy to add those to E.
I think the real window-manager work needed right now is building a decent interface for PDAs. We've got the desktop pretty much covered for now.
I used Fvwm2 for a few years, starting when it was at V2.0.34 (it stayed there for a long time), and ending somewhere around its 2.4.0 release. I even wrote a theme engine for it. It's probably the most functionally powerful window manager around. It lets you do things that nothing else can. I especially miss it's well-done SmartPlacement feature. Nothing else has been as "smart".
But, that said, I use E today. It's far, far prettier and implements 95% of Fvwm2's features. And it's far easier to configure. It supports all the features you mentioned. It even has a few things fvwm doesn't. It makes window borders completely optional; you can do everything without them. I leave them off for several programs. But I take a very minimalistic approach to my desktop now; the only widget I keep around is the pager. There's a syslog and a clock too, but they're drawn on the wallpaper so they don't count.:)
At first, I used Fvwm2 with lots of extras turned on. When GNOME came about, I replaced most of my extra widgets with the gnome panel. I set it to autohide to 1 pixel deep, and discovered I didn't really want it any more. Eventually I switched to E and turned off even more "desktop environment" features. Now I've got an almost completely clean, empty workspace. And that's how I like it. There are plenty of controls, but they're all hidden. I hardly even use the mouse any more.
Your mileage may vary. But when I switched to E, I never regretted it. It's flexible, powerful, and pretty.
Well-phrased. What the hell ever happened to upholding the spirit of the law? If lawyers and judges kept the intent of the law in mind, we wouldn't have all these boneheaded legislations popping up all the time.
What about the "I just want to search and replace all text files created on a Tuesday" crowd? The people who know exactly what they want to do but cannot because the interface is insufficient to direct the computer's actions? Users will want to do things you could not possibly think of and account for, so the computer must be flexible enough to let them specify completely new actions.
Or, even worse, what about the "I don't know what the hell I want to do" crowd? Those are the people MS is *really* targeting. The massive, bloated stuff MS writes is mostly just good at telling the user what to do when they're not smart enough to decide for themselves. But these people are easy to please. Just bundle a few dozen sample templates (or trivial combinations of provided tools) and put them in a menu somewhere.
GIMP is a good example of a program which can please a variety of users. It's powerful and flexible enough for the power users, but provides plenty of factory-direct script-fu for people who lack the creativity to do anything original.
There are lots of things which matter in a UI. Different people care about different parts, which explains why some people use Enlightenment and others still use twm.
But a few big, important things:
Ease of learning - steep learning curves bother people!
Power - it must accommodate both novice and advanced users (scripting is good here)
Consistency - users should be able to use new programs without having to relearn a new interface each time
Response speed - it must respond quickly when the user tells it do do something
Efficiency - it must allow the user to complete tasks quickly, rather than getting in the way. This is one spot where Windows has really failed.
Aesthetics - yes, most people care about how pretty their desktop is (me included)
Appropriateness - the UI should reflect the task it was designed to facilitate. For a computer, this means it must be flexible enough to allow many different kinds of applications to work
Flexibility - both for different types of tasks (word-processing really is quite different than video editing), and different kinds of input devices (why can't I use the joystick to navigate programs?)
Predictability - things should do what they look like they'll do; nothing more, and nothing less
Context - the UI should give obvious context to the user, so they'll know what they need to do. Conversely, it should also provide simple and easy ways for the user to specify a new context (multitasking, etc)
That's only a few things which matter, but hopefully it illustrates the difficulty of doing it well...
Okay, kids. I can understand why they'd want to differentiate between terms, but can't they pick something that sounds better?
Geeks already have enough stuttering problems. We don't need any more hard-to-say terms mucking with our ability to avoid sounding like a 2-year-old. "I'd like 512 Mebb-mebibibib-eeebibytes of RAM, and a 21 Giga, er, googa, I mean, giBIBBIbyte hard drive. I'm building a Lihnooks, um, Lig NUX, uh, LeeNix baux." Yeah. :)
On the other hand, I once heard someone stutter in the coolest possible way, while saying "check it", or rather "ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-check it" (with lightning speed!). But I'm way off-topic now.
I've got a daVinci. It's very nice, though not as nice as a PalmIII. It does not yet talk to linux, because Royal keeps refusing to release serial protocol specs. But the development tools work in linux, and there is a nice community feel between its users.
The Palm has more/better software, and infrared; but otherwise the two PDA's are extremely similar.
(I eventually got a PalmIIIx because I outgrew the current limits of the daVinci; but it's still a great PDA!)
There are lots of designs online for pneumatic guns, usually spudguns. These things are great fun! I've built a couple myself, and I can shoot pretty much anything that fits in the barrel (including thick shotgun-like bursts of water).
Of course, these are a hell of a lot more dangerous than Super Soakers, and even more dangerous than paintball guns. But they're great fun if you don't hurt living creatures with them!:)
If the FSF decides to sell "GNU Inside" stickers, I'd love to buy some. I could get a pack of 100, then put them on every machine I can get my hands on.:)
Now, if they only had a better-looking logo...
Personal info has intrinsic value?
on
The eBayla Virus
·
· Score: 1
I seem to remember a court rule recently that declared personal information has intrinsic value... If someone uses an "EBayla" script, would that person (or EBay) be sue-able?
I just checked the projects I've started in my free time in the last year, and found roughly 25,000 lines of code there. It's closer to 30,000 if I count school projects.
Those numbers (8k-16k lines / year) sound awfully small. I don't see how I could program more in just a few spare hours here and there than a full-time programmer does.
... and I've been *very* lazy lately! I usually stay out in the "real world" 4-6 nights per week, instead of working on projects. So, what gives?
I've been using dvorak and qwerty for years, and can type at 80-100wpm on both. It takes me only a couple keystrokes to "mind switch" between the two layouts, since I have to use qwerty occasionally.
As far as I can tell, Dvorak has one big advantage. It seems much easier on my hands. I can type for hours on dvorak before noticing any strain at all, yet 10 minutes of qwerty can make my hands hurt for the rest of the day.
Cons? Some of the punctuation I use while programming is more difficult to reach in dvorak. Also, it took me a while to learn the layout and learn to switch layouts quickly. It's also more difficult to think up passwords which are "easy" to type on both layouts.. (it's fun to log in at 300wpm!:)
Slashdot Mirror
Oi. There were a couple things I just have trouble ignoring...
I don't consider myself ignorant, and while most ignorant people don't consider themselves ignorant, I have had a fairly solid education with extra history and politics classes thrown in. I wasn't born rich and had to work up to and through college so I'm either the dumbest clod on the planet or I actually learned something about working hard to put food on the table. So that covers political, historical, and financial ignorance.
Almost by definition, you can't know you are not ignorant or naive. If there's something you don't know, well, you don't know, do you? Political awareness and a well-informed view of the candidates is not something they teach you in school. If a couple of politics classes are your basis for claiming non-ignorance, you may have just disproved your own point. The first step to reducing ignorance is to realize you have it, and will always have it. And to avoid the problems it causes, you've got to spend your life questioning, searching for unfamiliar ideas, and thinking the unthinkable.
I know I'm terribly ignorant. And though I try constantly to change that, my search has not led me to many answers. However, I've found something more valuable than answers -- good questions. The best I can ever hope for is to find progressively better questions.
On a sidenote: I'd like to thank everyone from moveon.org that went out of their way to skew the exit polls.
I'd like to thank the folks at Diebold for giving the world some idea just how broken and corrupt some of our voting systems are. The CEO of Diebold, a GOP fundraiser, promised to deliver Ohio to Bush. And then, curiously, the results were significantly different than the exit polls. For some background, the leaked Diebold internal memos reveal a great deal of error and corruption in their company and products. Hell, someone even taught a chimpanzee how to falsify voting records on Diebold machines. Doesn't that bring up some good questions?
Misinformation: Again, I don't believe that all Bush supporters were misinformed or ignorant.
... have difficulty believing that it is Bush's fault.
That was not claimed. However, studies have shown that a large percentage of Bush's supporters were misinformed about important issues. That's where the "embarrassingly ignorant" comment came from. The numbers show that many people who voted for Bush simply haven't been paying attention.
As far the crappy economy,
I doubt it's entirely his fault, but he still has the second-worst record in the past hundred years, one rank below his father. That means the two Bush presidents presided over the two worst economies since the Great Depression. That indicates to me that maybe the Bush way of doing things is not in the country's best interests, and that almost anyone would do a better job.
BTW, it may be worth mentioning that, before Dubya got elected, he spent most of the previous 20 years running companies into the ground. So, killing the economy wasn't really a big surprise; it's what he's always done when given money and power.
The only thing I blame on him in that regard is making exagerated growth claims at the beginning of his last term and for not doing enough ass-kicking to get people into gear (either thinking of ways to increase employment, etc). I'm thinking if he put his inner circle on it and told them that the one that came up with the best solution wouldn't be fired, their'd be some solutions forthcoming.
So, if I understand... you blame him for misleading people (and/or simply lacking the skill of foresight, an important skill for world leaders), and for not trying hard enough to do his job? If that's the case, I think we're in agreement here. I think he should have done everything in his power to fix the economy, instead of making a new record for vacation time spent while in office.
So, what were your other reasons for supporting Bush? If you think they'll stand up to scrutiny, I'd like to hear them.
I really must recommend moosic. It's an easy and effective way to play mp3/ogg/etc, from the command line. It runs as a daemon, with a nice command-line client to control it. There is also a gtk client under development.
I've been running MUTE for the last couple hours, and I'm saddened that it's by the author of k2b.
:) Maybe I'll use it someday, once it can run for more than 30 minutes without crashing.
I lost about any possible respect for that guy after reading his k2b/bittorrent comparison article, doing the math myself, and finding how amazingly far off his conclusions were. It was like reading a SCO press release.
Don't get me wrong... the guy's got some experience now and maybe he's a little more clueful.
I've already had it fail to compile against the libs it wants, freeze up on me thrice, fail 80% of the downloads I attempted, fail 100% of uploads, and ignore its own config files. But then again, that's not bad for V0.1.
I've been enjoying my Zaurus as a music player too. My setup is unusual (running mostly the familiar-unstable distro, with OpenZaurus's kernel, and a semi-wonky X11 setup), but it does what I want.
When I host parties, I hook up the Zaurus to some speakers, a power outlet, and my CF wifi card. It plays music off my server elsewhere in the house, and I can control it easily from my notebook without having to go anywhere near the "stereo".
Or, for just myself, I often stick it in my pocket with a 256MB CF card in it, and listen on headphones for up to 4 hours. If I turn the backlight off, it plays about that long before the battery gets dangerously low.
Perhaps the best part though, is being able to customize everything as much as I like. Half the software I use on it is stuff I wrote myself. And with a SD/MMC card, there's plenty of room for me to tinker.
To start with, it compares bittorrent's worst case with k2b's best case, as if this were fair. Both programs actually have the same best case (O(log(n)) distribution time), if everyone stays to share. But k2b's worst case (O(n) time) is far worse than bittorrent's worst case (O(sqrt(n)) time). If everyone on k2b downloads then immediately disconnects, you get zero extra benefit, because your users aren't helping each other at all.
There are a few assumptions made in the comparison which are probably not true:
- Bittorrent clients disconnect immediately after their download finishes. From my experience (mostly anime fansub distribution), this is far from the truth. Many people do leech and leave, but a lot of people stay to share. Want some numbers? Look at http://www.animesuki.com/ 's stats for today's torrents. There are sometimes even more people sharing than leeching.
- Everyone on k2b will stay connected all the time, instead of leaving when they get what they want. This is not going to happen except maybe in the case of streaming radio. But then, k2b doesn't upload until the download finishes, so it doesn't seem well-suited to streaming.
Both programs will have people who share, and people who leech. And it'll probably be about the same ratio of each no matter what network you're using.However, given identical files and identical usage patterns, I would expect bittorrent to be more efficient. The reason is that k2b does not begin uploading until a download finishes. This changes the total upload capacity of the network. Here are some rough estimates of each network's upload capacity:
- k2b: num_completed * avg_upstream. Each connected host with the complete file uploads to others until it disconnects.
- Bittorrent: (num_completed + (num_leeching / 2)) * avg_upstream. You get the same upstream bandwidth as k2b, plus roughly half the upstream of everyone leeching the file. Assume some leechers have 1% of the file while others have 99%, and everything inbetween. On average, leechers have half of the file and actively upload it. The actual capacity is much more complicated than this, but this should be a good ballpark estimate.
If I put in some numbers, I can estimate the total transfer rate of each network. From the front page of animesuki, I see a pretty average-looking torrent with 284 completed hosts and 397 leeching. I'll estimate an average upstream of 20 KiB/s, and this is how the numbers turn out:- k2b: 284 * 20 KiB/s = 5.54 MiB/s
- BT: (284 + (397/2)) * 20 KiB/s = 9.42 MiB/s
Bittorrent is 70% faster in this case, and the speed difference gets wider with more leechers or less people sharing. Another torrent is at 19 to 580 right now, which makes k2b's speed 380KiB/s while bittorrent races 16 times faster at 6.03MiB/s.Anyway, I'm not saying that k2b is bad. Just that the comparison seems bad. I think k2b would kick ass for streaming radio and a variety of other push-oriented content. But it's not a bittorrent killer.
Topic says it all.
:)
wget -r -l 0 -H http://slashdot.org/
Go ahead. Download the entire web. FTP was never this easy.
They're neat displays, but hardly news. They have been selling these for at least 4 or 5 years. Before they started selling LCDs, I think.
/ a> LCD in my case, telling me all about what the computer is doing. It's brighter, bigger, easier to read, and has more features than similar MtxOrb LCDs, and costs significantly less. It even came with a drive bay mount so I didn't have to cut up my case. :)
Most people are better off spending $10 for a HD44780 LCD plus cables than spending $140 on a VFD. They're both well-supported and easy to display on, especially in linux.
I've currently got a <a href="http://www.crystalfontz.com/">CrystalFontz<
Wow. Linux audio tools have come a long way since last time I looked.
:)
After trying audacity, I got rid of my copies of cooledit and sound forge. I know audacity is still simple compared to the "professional" tools out there, but it already does everything I need for creating music samples and other misc editing...
Now, if I can find a good (and mature) composition/synth program, I'll be set!
Thanks for the great program!
... almost nothing.
I used it for years and it's the most powerful and flexible window manager I've seen. It's basically lacking three things: ease of configuration, aesthetic appeal, and "cool factor".
After writing something like 200k of configuration files for it, I got a bit sick of it. Granted, most of that was an attempt to make a decent theme engine for it. Much of the rest was an engine to make it individually customizable by the newbie users on the systems I was running.
The "cool factor" is unimportant. But the aesthetic appeal really matters to some people (like me), and an easy configuration method is important. Those seem like two potential areas of expansion.
I switched to E a couple years ago, and have never regretted it. There are only two things I miss about FVWM: SmarterPlacement, and EdgeFlip only when dragging a window. It's because I've been too lazy to add those to E.
I think the real window-manager work needed right now is building a decent interface for PDAs. We've got the desktop pretty much covered for now.
I used Fvwm2 for a few years, starting when it was at V2.0.34 (it stayed there for a long time), and ending somewhere around its 2.4.0 release. I even wrote a theme engine for it. It's probably the most functionally powerful window manager around. It lets you do things that nothing else can. I especially miss it's well-done SmartPlacement feature. Nothing else has been as "smart".
:)
But, that said, I use E today. It's far, far prettier and implements 95% of Fvwm2's features. And it's far easier to configure. It supports all the features you mentioned. It even has a few things fvwm doesn't. It makes window borders completely optional; you can do everything without them. I leave them off for several programs. But I take a very minimalistic approach to my desktop now; the only widget I keep around is the pager. There's a syslog and a clock too, but they're drawn on the wallpaper so they don't count.
At first, I used Fvwm2 with lots of extras turned on. When GNOME came about, I replaced most of my extra widgets with the gnome panel. I set it to autohide to 1 pixel deep, and discovered I didn't really want it any more. Eventually I switched to E and turned off even more "desktop environment" features. Now I've got an almost completely clean, empty workspace. And that's how I like it. There are plenty of controls, but they're all hidden. I hardly even use the mouse any more.
Your mileage may vary. But when I switched to E, I never regretted it. It's flexible, powerful, and pretty.
... legal under the spirit of zoning statutes ...
Well-phrased. What the hell ever happened to upholding the spirit of the law? If lawyers and judges kept the intent of the law in mind, we wouldn't have all these boneheaded legislations popping up all the time.
... the bubonic plague happened hundreds of years ago, when everyone grew boobs on their necks.
Hence the name "bubonic".
What about the "I just want to search and replace all text files created on a Tuesday" crowd? The people who know exactly what they want to do but cannot because the interface is insufficient to direct the computer's actions? Users will want to do things you could not possibly think of and account for, so the computer must be flexible enough to let them specify completely new actions.
Or, even worse, what about the "I don't know what the hell I want to do" crowd? Those are the people MS is *really* targeting. The massive, bloated stuff MS writes is mostly just good at telling the user what to do when they're not smart enough to decide for themselves. But these people are easy to please. Just bundle a few dozen sample templates (or trivial combinations of provided tools) and put them in a menu somewhere.
GIMP is a good example of a program which can please a variety of users. It's powerful and flexible enough for the power users, but provides plenty of factory-direct script-fu for people who lack the creativity to do anything original.
But a few big, important things:
- Ease of learning - steep learning curves bother people!
- Power - it must accommodate both novice and advanced users (scripting is good here)
- Consistency - users should be able to use new programs without having to relearn a new interface each time
- Response speed - it must respond quickly when the user tells it do do something
- Efficiency - it must allow the user to complete tasks quickly, rather than getting in the way. This is one spot where Windows has really failed.
- Aesthetics - yes, most people care about how pretty their desktop is (me included)
- Appropriateness - the UI should reflect the task it was designed to facilitate. For a computer, this means it must be flexible enough to allow many different kinds of applications to work
- Flexibility - both for different types of tasks (word-processing really is quite different than video editing), and different kinds of input devices (why can't I use the joystick to navigate programs?)
- Predictability - things should do what they look like they'll do; nothing more, and nothing less
- Context - the UI should give obvious context to the user, so they'll know what they need to do. Conversely, it should also provide simple and easy ways for the user to specify a new context (multitasking, etc)
That's only a few things which matter, but hopefully it illustrates the difficulty of doing it well...Help spread the love! :)
http://www.vis.colostate.edu/~scriven/css/
Geeks already have enough stuttering problems. We don't need any more hard-to-say terms mucking with our ability to avoid sounding like a 2-year-old. "I'd like 512 Mebb-mebibibib-eeebibytes of RAM, and a 21 Giga, er, googa, I mean, giBIBBIbyte hard drive. I'm building a Lihnooks, um, Lig NUX, uh, LeeNix baux." Yeah.
:)
On the other hand, I once heard someone stutter in the coolest possible way, while saying "check it", or rather "ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-check it" (with lightning speed!). But I'm way off-topic now.
I've got a daVinci. It's very nice, though not as nice as a PalmIII. It does not yet talk to linux, because Royal keeps refusing to release serial protocol specs. But the development tools work in linux, and there is a nice community feel between its users.
The Palm has more/better software, and infrared; but otherwise the two PDA's are extremely similar.
(I eventually got a PalmIIIx because I outgrew the current limits of the daVinci; but it's still a great PDA!)
Of course, these are a hell of a lot more dangerous than Super Soakers, and even more dangerous than paintball guns. But they're great fun if you don't hurt living creatures with them! :)
Shameless plug: My mini-spudgun page
I've got a really small version that would work wonders in a food fight, too... It goes "poot" when it fires. :)
WAV version: http://members.aol.com/manitsas2/cantina.wav (8-bit mono, 1.93MB)
Sounds like a great idea!
:)
If the FSF decides to sell "GNU Inside" stickers, I'd love to buy some. I could get a pack of 100, then put them on every machine I can get my hands on.
Now, if they only had a better-looking logo...
I seem to remember a court rule recently that declared personal information has intrinsic value... If someone uses an "EBayla" script, would that person (or EBay) be sue-able?
Ick.
Those numbers (8k-16k lines / year) sound awfully small. I don't see how I could program more in just a few spare hours here and there than a full-time programmer does.
Why, oh why don't they make stuff this fun any more? Collecting stuff like this is how I got my name... :)
Other fun ones...
Proof that Consumer Reports is responsible for the Ozone hole.
A primitive wind tunnel.
The disposable dress that is so ugly that it should be disposed before use.
Houdini's magic death trap (a.k.a. portable sauna)
Cat-litter flavored ice cream.
Yummm... Tasty.
I've been using dvorak and qwerty for years, and can type at 80-100wpm on both. It takes me only a couple keystrokes to "mind switch" between the two layouts, since I have to use qwerty occasionally.
:)
As far as I can tell, Dvorak has one big advantage. It seems much easier on my hands. I can type for hours on dvorak before noticing any strain at all, yet 10 minutes of qwerty can make my hands hurt for the rest of the day.
Cons? Some of the punctuation I use while programming is more difficult to reach in dvorak. Also, it took me a while to learn the layout and learn to switch layouts quickly. It's also more difficult to think up passwords which are "easy" to type on both layouts.. (it's fun to log in at 300wpm!