I admit that I love playing with my SE/30, but if I have to hear the word "backword compatible" (okay, two words) once more...
The real issue that we have to be concerned with is "forwards compatible". If we establish a written-in-stone set of rules for universal compatibility, advances by one or more distros that violate those rules may be squelched.
Permit me one more damn car metaphor. Imagine in 1970 that the government, in order to ensure that garages and mechanics were capable of working on all models of vehicles, set down exacting standards for all car manufacturers on the design and implementation of carbeurators. The results, in the short term, are good: parts are cheap and interchangeable, machanical knowledge is more widely applicable.
But then who would have dared introduce feul injection?
yeah, you're right.... dawned on me about 10 seconds after hitting submit... kinda hoped it would slide.
Isn't Hercules the Roman version of Hercules?
Well, there's Heracles and Hercules, but thery're both the same guy and both greek. Heracles is the original greek, Hercules is the Roman pronounciation of the greek. Name-mangling is pretty damn common with folks this old. viz. Jesus. Originally Joshua, but the greeks didn't have a "sh" sound, so the made it Josua and changed the "ua" on the end to "ese" since that's an almost mandatory greek name ending. Along come the romans who use "us" as a name ending and change "josese" to "jesus". A far cry from "joshua".
Most of the planets and moons visible to the naked eye were given names by the Romans and ancient greeks corresponding to their gods. The Romans, partiucularly, were into this, viz. Mercury (god of speed), Jupiter (roman version of Hercules), Neptune (god of the sea) Mars (god of war) and such. I was implying that there was a roman god called S/1999 J 1.
I didn't say it was actually funny but humour, I suppose is in the eye and mind of the individual. Explains how both Benny Hill and Fargo can both be called comedy, despite the fact they are about as different as possible....
No, really. We've spent the last ten years plowing out tech at such an incredible rate that first-or-close-second-to-market has become a priority over other considerations such as quality, reliability etc. We're starting to see a backlash against that mentality in the non-OSS secotor (OSS has more of a to-market-when-I-get-around-to-it mentality) at long last. First OS X shows a slipping release date, despite DP4 demonstrating that it clearly works and could probably be pushed to market soonish. Now Bluetooth, which also works "well enough" to meet the current standard of quality, is rolled back. More time = better product. So I'm happy with the delay.
1. Sometimes everyone gets a joke except you. Personally I hate it when that happens, but it sure beats being the only one to get the joke you told. 2. What I want to know is who the hell thought this was informative? From the mod breakdown Informative=1, Funny=2, Total=3.
Part of the problem is Netscape 4.x is optimized for 603 proccessor, and not the 604/G3 that Internet Explorer is.
just a nit to pick: the G3 is based on the 603e architecture, not the 604e, so you're statement should read "optimized for the 603/G3 processor, not the 604e/Anything else".
I'm glad to see that they are sticking with the tradition of the roman pantheon as nomenclature.... I did a paper in university on the pre-christian festivals of S/1999J1...
It's actually free as in water and air. Water is free... but I still pay a buck for it in a bottle... air is free, but I still pay a (couple of) buck(s) for it to come in a can. Selling free things is nothing new.
The CD "upgrade" was, in its own way, a big swindle.
Like I said, there were holdouts, myself among them. But when it comes to the economics of the situation, it's the "masses" who call the shots. The qwerty keyboard is a "swindle", so's VHS... but they got the mindshare and the marketshare...
Negativland wrote an excellent article covering CDs:
wow. I'd totally forgotten about Negativeland. I remember that the Soviet Union has 11 time zones, but I forgot the band...
The short version is: instead of letting the market decide, the record companies muscled distributors into going to CDs.
Yes, but the market definitely played along. Labels tried to muscle in DAT's and minidiscs and they fell completely flat. And the CD conversion was a slow process. Manufacturers throw out a format to the early-adopters and the audiophiles. If they replace their Beatles collection, the push is on.
However, will prosumers protest over the increasing technological obsolescence if they purchase music/software and find out a few years later their hardware is not supported and their music/software collections become worthless?
As the proud ownder of 3000 vinyl, 33.3 rpm, Long-Playing records I gotta say:
1. Yes, people will put up with it. There were a few holdouts against the CD revolution (yrs truly included... digital is for data, art is inherently analog). But the "upgrade" went smoothly. 2. Dramatic switches in media are rare because they are truly qualitative switches. Sure, the introduction of the caseette tape in the 60's looked threatening to the vinyl record, but ultimately they were both analog formats. A $5 cable from Radio shack allowed for conversion to the new medium. Currently, it's all digital so media switches are even less dramatic. We won't need a $5 cable... just a free piece of software. 3. Hardware for old media will always be an non issue. Try finding a turntable today. Now try finding one that plays 78's. Not easy, but far from impossible... as long as a reasonable amount of old media exists, the hardware to use it will be available. Period. Sure that hardware may be "obsolete" but if you're using "obsolete" media and are willing to put up with the limitations of said media, the hardware won't be an issue at all. Player piano rolls suck. So do player pianos. But they're no worse than they were a hundred years ago. If you want better sound, get a better system (media and hardware), but if you like player pianos, you're getting the same quality as you would have 100 years ago.
I prefer more of the unbreakble BSD core to the "crunchy bsd core."
I used crunchy core as a metaphor... remember when you were 8 and grandma got that box o' assorted chocolates and you winged them, one by one, against the wall? Which ones gished and made a big mess? The caramel centres! Which ones maintained their structural integrity and suffered no data loss? The ones with the crunchy centres! Sheesh. It's amazing how fast we forget the lessons of our childhood.
In any event, I bought my first computer (a Vic20) from the Calgary Computer Store (current home of OpenBSD) so I'm beholden to buy each new release... even if i don't install it on anything.:)
I believe the original yiddish would be "Good Guy, Schmood Guy."
I can't bear using MS products
I don't blame you, however the reality is that a biiig chunk o' "society" regards MS Office (that's pronounced Mizz Office, I believe) as being the defacto standard of crunchy office goodness. If they're willing to believe that, then maybe they're willing to accept the "treadless Panzer" that is StarOffice as a reasonable alternative. Remember frymaster's 27th law "what you, as a geek, regard as good software, they, as end users, don't."
I am writing a book with vi/POD and filters
I wrote my first and only book (unpublished, no good) in a stack of staple-bound scribblers with a pen (black, biro-style). Of course, now I can tell my friends that waaay back in '88 I wrote a novel on "a wireless notebook".
Hate StarOffice if you will (heck, be my guest), but this is a good thing for a variety of reasons.
1. It stops the not-for-consumer-apps cynics out there who have been spouting off that the gpl is "fine for behind-the-scenes stuff" but will never cut it in the consumer app field where actually selling seats is the prime revenue source. 2. It shows that Sun is actually willing to put some effort into being the "good guy" in the open source crowd. Let's face it, poll your average free software geek about Sun and you get some pretty damning responses: Sun's "open" license is a sham, java's slow and bloated, the hardware is too expensive, Solaris belongs in the Smithsonian... etc. Sun wants to be friends with those people really badly because they're the future CIO's of this world and they want those CIO's to want Sparcs. Simple. The last two years have seen Sun try some half-baked measures to get some respect and, by and large, they haven't worked. Now they're trying a full-baked one. And that's good news for everyone. 3. If you have a lot of spare time on your hands, and want to give StarOffice a bit of zip then maybe we'll all have a serious contender to that "other" office package.
One thing that bugs me about the country codes themselves is that it seems like people don't want to use them.
Well, it's to be expected... ICANN has a situation where the division of sites by their tld uses two criteria. Geographic location and content-type. Obviously, location is going to lose because:
a) the net is supposed to be "without borders" (at least in public perception) b) in the venture-capita-fueld ubercapitalist internet of today, web sites that don't appear to be us-based are regarded as either substandard or downright untrustworthy.
Gross generalizations? You bet. But like all gross generalizations, there's a damn big wad o' truth in there.
Lastly, this two-criteria division is just plain dumb. It's like shopping for a used car in the classifieds, only the classified people have said you can only describe your car by either colour or year. 1995 Ford or Blue Ford.
Mod me down for redundant (no, really), but now that the ICANN thang is "hot again" I would like to repeat my post from the last discussion on this: ----------------------------------------------- Okay, perhaps this is not the perfect solution... however at present it presents the only vaguely-workable solution to the domain name disaster we are experiencing. A lot of people on this site have voiced some very strong opinions and some very viable ideas on solutions. ICANN is sure as hell not lurking/. to come up with policy... so take your ideas and opinions to the source. The worst that can happen is that they are ignored. If you don't sign up, you're gauranteed that your ideas/opinions will be ignored. Most notably, I expect that the people who had good ideas about tlds to sign up. In case you have forgotten who you are, here's the list: SlushDot Colin Smith Montressor m.o alarmo Snarfangel dsplat Mr Z CoughDropAddict Greyfox kerrbear mtphoto
Additionally, there are several folks who have voiced very strong and (sometimes) very well reasoned opinions about domain name administration. I would like to remind said folks again that, while we enjoy your input here, it has zero chance of making an impact on reality if stays on slashdot. If said people need to be reminded of their identities, they are: JohnJake Duane Dibbley DHartung titus-g cd_Csc chrome koran robman haplo21112 hidden Garry Anderson
Lastly, remember that since ICANN is not inviting you specifically to join, a vote of abstention (by not joining) will go unheard.... and if anyone has a better, workable solution, speak it.
------------------------------------------------ end copy/paste
Well, the domain name thing is new... I unfortunately, had to suffer through the 88 winter olympics as a resident Calgarian... Naturally, a lot of small businesses got warnings about their naming choices including one Greek restaurant owner who grew up 10 mi. from mount Olympus (no, not the one on mars). My fave of all time, though, was the Salvation Army's silhouette billboard campaign that featured one particular piece of artwork that the IOC claimed "looked" too much like a bobsled logo. The artwork in question featured a person in a wheelchair. If you can mistake a wheelchair for a bobsled, then you're suitably out of touch with winter sports that your mindshare shouldn't really matter to the IOC.
The fact is that _cars burn fuel_ to move whatever the fuel is.
Correct, but misleading. Let's look at some facts:
Fact: All power other than nuclear that we use is solar power.
The sun grows plants which were kind enough to get crushed into oil for us. The sun evaporates water, allowing it to move up hill and provide us with hydro. sun = heat = atmospheric convection = windmill. biomass, see oil minus 1 billion years.
Fact: Transitions of state and transport invariably lead to losses in efficiency.
Godd ol' Isaac and his nifty laws. Keep 'em in yer wallet I say! Sun - > plant loses a lot of efficiency. Plant - > oil even more. So, we're not talking about "efficiency" when we talk about oil burning. We're talking about "convenience".
"Obvious" conclusion: We all burn the sun in our cars (unless you have a nuclear car. There's a thought "Car crash, millions die of cancer") We choose how we do that based on convenience not efficiency. Oil, ultimately, is the least efficient way, because even if we start burying leaves right now we'll never be able to generate more in time...
In high school I was one year too early for pascal... got PL/1 instead.
Knowing this was going to come down soon, I decided to head down to my local computer book store to pick up some guidance. My discovery? No pascal books. However I did find the following:
1. "C++ for C programmers" 2. "Java for C++ programmers" 3. "Visual Basic for the Java Savvy" 4. "From BASIC to VisualBASIC in 43 Days!" 5. "Oh No, Pascal! A guide to Pascal for BASIC programmers" (discount bin)
$250 later, I'm all set! Who says you can't leverage your skills in C in the modern programming paradigm?
Slashdot Mirror
The real issue that we have to be concerned with is "forwards compatible". If we establish a written-in-stone set of rules for universal compatibility, advances by one or more distros that violate those rules may be squelched.
Permit me one more damn car metaphor. Imagine in 1970 that the government, in order to ensure that garages and mechanics were capable of working on all models of vehicles, set down exacting standards for all car manufacturers on the design and implementation of carbeurators. The results, in the short term, are good: parts are cheap and interchangeable, machanical knowledge is more widely applicable.
But then who would have dared introduce feul injection?
1.The MacJunkie guy eating his hockey puck mouse for claiming the G4 Cube photos were fake
The pictures were fake. Just because the cube is real, doesn't mean the pictures are real. Ancient Zen proverb.
2.Upgrading that Visor on your head so that getting out in the sun after an all-night programming session won't zap your memory
The real issue here isn't just upgrading the visor, but overclocking the visor. Heck, overclocking a beowulf cluster of visors.
3.Reading "Slashdot sucks" posts attached to redundant flames of redundant comments to the recurrent topic of free Linux ISPs
I preferr reading smarmy "+2 funny" lists attached to "Slashdot sucks" posts attached to... yatta yatta yatta.
4.Posting an article about a fraud mimicking of a credit card site and not mentioning the outright rip-off of Debian's website
information wants to be $36.95 (California residents add 7% sales tax). Ancient Zen proverb.
5.Craving the latest multi-processor board from SETI so that you can crack pr0n site passwords
No, craving the latest multi-processor board so you can run a spell-check on "pr0n".
6.Coffee
The other two poll options were originally
b) tea
c) me
7.Britney Spears
Wait... didn't she already get voted off the island? Or am I thinking of someone else?
yeah, you're right.... dawned on me about 10 seconds after hitting submit... kinda hoped it would slide.
Isn't Hercules the Roman version of Hercules?
Well, there's Heracles and Hercules, but thery're both the same guy and both greek. Heracles is the original greek, Hercules is the Roman pronounciation of the greek. Name-mangling is pretty damn common with folks this old. viz. Jesus. Originally Joshua, but the greeks didn't have a "sh" sound, so the made it Josua and changed the "ua" on the end to "ese" since that's an almost mandatory greek name ending. Along come the romans who use "us" as a name ending and change "josese" to "jesus". A far cry from "joshua".
attention moderators: this is off topic.
well, there is airport....
not my intention...
Most of the planets and moons visible to the naked eye were given names by the Romans and ancient greeks corresponding to their gods. The Romans, partiucularly, were into this, viz. Mercury (god of speed), Jupiter (roman version of Hercules), Neptune (god of the sea) Mars (god of war) and such. I was implying that there was a roman god called S/1999 J 1.
I didn't say it was actually funny but humour, I suppose is in the eye and mind of the individual. Explains how both Benny Hill and Fargo can both be called comedy, despite the fact they are about as different as possible....
No, really. We've spent the last ten years plowing out tech at such an incredible rate that first-or-close-second-to-market has become a priority over other considerations such as quality, reliability etc. We're starting to see a backlash against that mentality in the non-OSS secotor (OSS has more of a to-market-when-I-get-around-to-it mentality) at long last. First OS X shows a slipping release date, despite DP4 demonstrating that it clearly works and could probably be pushed to market soonish. Now Bluetooth, which also works "well enough" to meet the current standard of quality, is rolled back. More time = better product. So I'm happy with the delay.
1. Sometimes everyone gets a joke except you. Personally I hate it when that happens, but it sure beats being the only one to get the joke you told.
2. What I want to know is who the hell thought this was informative? From the mod breakdown Informative=1, Funny=2, Total=3.
just a nit to pick: the G3 is based on the 603e architecture, not the 604e, so you're statement should read "optimized for the 603/G3 processor, not the 604e/Anything else".
like i said, just picking nits...
I'm glad to see that they are sticking with the tradition of the roman pantheon as nomenclature.... I did a paper in university on the pre-christian festivals of S/1999J1...
It's actually free as in water and air. Water is free... but I still pay a buck for it in a bottle... air is free, but I still pay a (couple of) buck(s) for it to come in a can. Selling free things is nothing new.
Like I said, there were holdouts, myself among them. But when it comes to the economics of the situation, it's the "masses" who call the shots. The qwerty keyboard is a "swindle", so's VHS... but they got the mindshare and the marketshare...
Negativland wrote an excellent article covering CDs:
wow. I'd totally forgotten about Negativeland. I remember that the Soviet Union has 11 time zones, but I forgot the band...
The short version is: instead of letting the market decide, the record companies muscled distributors into going to CDs.
Yes, but the market definitely played along. Labels tried to muscle in DAT's and minidiscs and they fell completely flat. And the CD conversion was a slow process. Manufacturers throw out a format to the early-adopters and the audiophiles. If they replace their Beatles collection, the push is on.
Like I said, we tend to forget the lessons of our childhood :)
As the proud ownder of 3000 vinyl, 33.3 rpm, Long-Playing records I gotta say:
1. Yes, people will put up with it. There were a few holdouts against the CD revolution (yrs truly included... digital is for data, art is inherently analog). But the "upgrade" went smoothly.
2. Dramatic switches in media are rare because they are truly qualitative switches. Sure, the introduction of the caseette tape in the 60's looked threatening to the vinyl record, but ultimately they were both analog formats. A $5 cable from Radio shack allowed for conversion to the new medium. Currently, it's all digital so media switches are even less dramatic. We won't need a $5 cable... just a free piece of software.
3. Hardware for old media will always be an non issue. Try finding a turntable today. Now try finding one that plays 78's. Not easy, but far from impossible... as long as a reasonable amount of old media exists, the hardware to use it will be available. Period. Sure that hardware may be "obsolete" but if you're using "obsolete" media and are willing to put up with the limitations of said media, the hardware won't be an issue at all. Player piano rolls suck. So do player pianos. But they're no worse than they were a hundred years ago. If you want better sound, get a better system (media and hardware), but if you like player pianos, you're getting the same quality as you would have 100 years ago.
I used crunchy core as a metaphor... remember when you were 8 and grandma got that box o' assorted chocolates and you winged them, one by one, against the wall? Which ones gished and made a big mess? The caramel centres! Which ones maintained their structural integrity and suffered no data loss? The ones with the crunchy centres! Sheesh. It's amazing how fast we forget the lessons of our childhood.
In any event, I bought my first computer (a Vic20) from the Calgary Computer Store (current home of OpenBSD) so I'm beholden to buy each new release... even if i don't install it on anything. :)
seriously, though. I was really hoping the crunchy BSD centre would lure *nix-ers to the mac's creamy coating UI.
I believe the original yiddish would be "Good Guy, Schmood Guy."
I can't bear using MS products
I don't blame you, however the reality is that a biiig chunk o' "society" regards MS Office (that's pronounced Mizz Office, I believe) as being the defacto standard of crunchy office goodness. If they're willing to believe that, then maybe they're willing to accept the "treadless Panzer" that is StarOffice as a reasonable alternative. Remember frymaster's 27th law "what you, as a geek, regard as good software, they, as end users, don't."
I am writing a book with vi/POD and filters
I wrote my first and only book (unpublished, no good) in a stack of staple-bound scribblers with a pen (black, biro-style). Of course, now I can tell my friends that waaay back in '88 I wrote a novel on "a wireless notebook".
1. It stops the not-for-consumer-apps cynics out there who have been spouting off that the gpl is "fine for behind-the-scenes stuff" but will never cut it in the consumer app field where actually selling seats is the prime revenue source.
2. It shows that Sun is actually willing to put some effort into being the "good guy" in the open source crowd. Let's face it, poll your average free software geek about Sun and you get some pretty damning responses: Sun's "open" license is a sham, java's slow and bloated, the hardware is too expensive, Solaris belongs in the Smithsonian... etc. Sun wants to be friends with those people really badly because they're the future CIO's of this world and they want those CIO's to want Sparcs. Simple. The last two years have seen Sun try some half-baked measures to get some respect and, by and large, they haven't worked. Now they're trying a full-baked one. And that's good news for everyone.
3. If you have a lot of spare time on your hands, and want to give StarOffice a bit of zip then maybe we'll all have a serious contender to that "other" office package.
Well, it's to be expected... ICANN has a situation where the division of sites by their tld uses two criteria. Geographic location and content-type. Obviously, location is going to lose because:
a) the net is supposed to be "without borders" (at least in public perception)
b) in the venture-capita-fueld ubercapitalist internet of today, web sites that don't appear to be us-based are regarded as either substandard or downright untrustworthy.
Gross generalizations? You bet. But like all gross generalizations, there's a damn big wad o' truth in there.
Lastly, this two-criteria division is just plain dumb. It's like shopping for a used car in the classifieds, only the classified people have said you can only describe your car by either colour or year. 1995 Ford or Blue Ford.
Really? There have to have been new countries since then... not that I can think of any offhand, but aren't names and borders changing annually?
-----------------------------------------------
Okay, perhaps this is not the perfect solution... however at present it presents the only vaguely-workable solution to the domain name disaster we are experiencing. A lot of people on this site have voiced some very strong opinions and some very viable ideas on solutions. ICANN is sure as hell not lurking
SlushDot
Colin Smith
Montressor
m.o
alarmo
Snarfangel
dsplat
Mr Z
CoughDropAddict
Greyfox
kerrbear
mtphoto
Additionally, there are several folks who have voiced very strong and (sometimes) very well reasoned opinions about domain name administration. I would like to remind said folks again that, while we enjoy your input here, it has zero chance of making an impact on reality if stays on slashdot. If said people need to be reminded of their identities, they are:
JohnJake
Duane Dibbley
DHartung
titus-g
cd_Csc
chrome koran
robman
haplo21112
hidden
Garry Anderson
Lastly, remember that since ICANN is not inviting you specifically to join, a vote of abstention (by not joining) will go unheard.... and if anyone has a better, workable solution, speak it.
------------------------------------------------
end copy/paste
Well, the domain name thing is new... I unfortunately, had to suffer through the 88 winter olympics as a resident Calgarian... Naturally, a lot of small businesses got warnings about their naming choices including one Greek restaurant owner who grew up 10 mi. from mount Olympus (no, not the one on mars). My fave of all time, though, was the Salvation Army's silhouette billboard campaign that featured one particular piece of artwork that the IOC claimed "looked" too much like a bobsled logo. The artwork in question featured a person in a wheelchair. If you can mistake a wheelchair for a bobsled, then you're suitably out of touch with winter sports that your mindshare shouldn't really matter to the IOC.
Correct, but misleading. Let's look at some facts:
Fact: All power other than nuclear that we use is solar power.
The sun grows plants which were kind enough to get crushed into oil for us. The sun evaporates water, allowing it to move up hill and provide us with hydro. sun = heat = atmospheric convection = windmill. biomass, see oil minus 1 billion years.
Fact: Transitions of state and transport invariably lead to losses in efficiency.
Godd ol' Isaac and his nifty laws. Keep 'em in yer wallet I say! Sun - > plant loses a lot of efficiency. Plant - > oil even more. So, we're not talking about "efficiency" when we talk about oil burning. We're talking about "convenience".
"Obvious" conclusion: We all burn the sun in our cars (unless you have a nuclear car. There's a thought "Car crash, millions die of cancer") We choose how we do that based on convenience not efficiency. Oil, ultimately, is the least efficient way, because even if we start burying leaves right now we'll never be able to generate more in time...
oh yeah, my electric company offers wind power. $15 more a month, which isn't bad. I've got that. Now all I have to do is pick up a voltsrabbit electric conversion kit and I'll be all set.
asdf
"Wizard needs food badly"
If this can help the new generations better appreciate my 80s-centric humour, I'm for it.
Knowing this was going to come down soon, I decided to head down to my local computer book store to pick up some guidance. My discovery? No pascal books. However I did find the following:
1. "C++ for C programmers"
2. "Java for C++ programmers"
3. "Visual Basic for the Java Savvy"
4. "From BASIC to VisualBASIC in 43 Days!"
5. "Oh No, Pascal! A guide to Pascal for BASIC programmers" (discount bin)
$250 later, I'm all set! Who says you can't leverage your skills in C in the modern programming paradigm?