Cubicle walls are never tall enough. Construct cubicle height extensions, but do so in the fashion of medieval fort walls. You know, a sort of corrugated wall top, towers at all four corners, etc. Make sure to include a large, wall-mounted pot to tip over boiling oil on your least-favorite neighbor. A positionable catapult or trebuchet is also a good idea. Large spikes for impaling the heads of annoying team memebers may be installed on the tops of the walls if so desired. Filling the doorway of your cubicle with a drawbridge could also be fun, and, if at all possible, install a small moat in all adjacent aisles.
If you have a free USB port, you may consider hanging one of those cheap video cameras up in a corner tower. Make sure to disguise it as castle guard.
This is a perfect excuse to buy a bugle and keep it at work. Any time the stress gets to be too much, just pick it up, play some fanfare, and issue a royal decree.
Also remember that it is perfectly acceptable to throw the contents of chamber pots over the castle walls.
If you get bored, consider erecting a tall tower in the middle of the cubicle. Put one of your computer's speakers up in a top window, disguised as a captive maiden, and play some tortured screaming through your sound card now and then. Make sure to vary it with the occasional cry for help.
"Two other X-43As will fly after the initial test at six-month intervals. If successful, the 12-foot-long, surfboard-shaped planes will smash the speed record of Mach 6.7, set by an X-15 in October 1967."
followed shortly by:
"The X-43A, or Hyper-X, will probably never carry commercial passengers because of the high acceleration, heat generated by friction with the atmosphere and the difficulty of turning a plane at such high speeds."
Something tells me that a 12 foot long commercial aircraft is going to have other problems besides heat/acceleration with enticing passengers onboard.
Well, that is unless they use footage from Dr. Strangelove as an advertisement. (Cue Slim Pickens' product endorsement - "YEEEEHAAAA!!!")
Sheesh. Do these writers ever run a brain-check on their articles?
Part of the problem is similar to what you witness in science fiction/fantasy.
What people create is influenced by what they are exposed to. How many fantasy writers do you think read LotR and immediately start to write a novel featuring elves, dwarves, & hobbits? C'mon, admit it - If someone uses the word "fantasy" in casual conversation, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Try and tell me it doesn't involve dwarves with giant battleaxes and barbarian elvish princesses in chain mail bikinis. This, along with the fact that the publishing business is a cautious one, is the reason why bookstores are chock-full of evil-wizard-must-be-overthrown, comet-headed-for-earth, far-future-star-(wars|trek)-with-names-filed-off novels.
The same thing is happening with computer games.
People who go into the gaming industry are generally people who like to play games. The games they play influence and inspire the games they create. No surprise there. However, what unique elements they bring to their own creations depend entirely upon their creativity and the breadth of their personal knowledge and experience. If you have a CRPG designer who is highly knowledgeable about and interested in the Dreamtime of the Australian aborigines, he or she has the potential to use such in a game. If your game designer's knowledge of mythology stems from reading the D&D Monster Manual a few too many times, you can pretty much assume that the game will involve fireballs, dragons, and orcs.
The fact that producing a game is becoming more and more of an expensive proposition doesn't help matters any. In the same way that Hollywood loves to give us "more of the same", game companies find it safer and easier to avoid risky new game ideas.
I really suspect that the best game designers are interested in more than just computer games.
Sometimes floppies are the cheapest and easiest method of data transfer/archival.
When I was an undergrad, my ISP was my university. Up until shortly before I graduated, connecting took anywhere from 2-3 minutes to a couple of hours due to the small size of their modem bank, and you were automatically kicked off after 2 hours. Downloading files of any size was not easy with my old 28.8K modem, and frequently it was much quicker and less frustrating to sneakernet data back and forth using floppies.
Now I have a DSL connection and just ftp files back and forth.
Over the course of a couple of years I probably purchased 200-300 disks in groups of 10 or 20. As Imation disks were what was available, they were generally what I purchased, although once their quality level became apparent, I did my best to find alternatives. I bought something like 100-150 imation disks and by now have tossed at least a third of those disks because they were immediately unusable or quickly became unreliable.
I no longer store anything of value on Imation disks, nor do I leave trivial files on them for more than a couple of days.
While having 15-20 out of 100-150 disks turn out to be defective immediately after purchase does not count as an exhaustive statistical study, it does seem indicative of a larger problem.
I have better luck with diskettes that I've dumpter dived.
Like Andre060 mentions below, I might have wondered if my drive was at fault, but I've seen Imation diskettes fail at home, at friend's houses, and in many school computers, so I kind of doubt that it's just the floppy drive.
The bottom line for me is that the risk isn't worth it. If I want disks I'll spend a few cents more for the privilege of imagining that my data will still be there tomorrow.
That's exactly the same thing I thought upon reading the blurb. Years ago when I used an apple//c on a regular basis, I almost *never* had a disk go bad on me. Most of them - and I bought the crudiest, cheapest, $30-for-100-disks kind I could find - still work 15 years after I acquired them. Admittedly, we're talking ***LOW*** data storage rates, so perhaps the individual bits weren't as suceptible to random EM fields, but still...
In the early 90's when I started using msdos pc's, the 1.44 meg disks I bought were also pretty reliable. You could buy sony, fujitsu, 3M, etc. Most of those disks still work today.
Nowadays Imation (the-diskette-manufacturer-formerly-known-as-3M) has the cheap disk market pretty sewn up around here. Walmart, school bookstores, and corner convenience stores all seem to stock Imation disks and nothing else. The downside? I tend to get 1 or 2 bad diskettes from every box of 10 I buy. This is _straight_ out of the box. I stuff one in the drive, write something to it, and find out that it's immediately unretrievable.
Part of the trouble is the stinkin' cheap quality of the disks. If you have one, pull it out and try flexing it slightly. Note that the two halves of the disk shell are only connected together at the corners. Imagine how many dust particles get through the unsealed seam during regular use. Now imagine those dust particles carving deep trenches in the regions where your data is stored. Lovely.
If you have get one of these drives, be careful what brand media you buy for them.
Alarm clocks are the bane of my existance. The difference between how I feel if I wake up to an alarm clock and how I feel if I just wake up when my body is rested is unbelievable. So why don't I just rearrange my schedule so I don't need an alarm clock? My natural waking period is from slightly before noon to ~2am at night. I've tried modifying it, but I end up slipping back into this schedule whenever I have a vacation. Grad school and most jobs aren't very accomodating to such a schedule.
Waking up to an alarm clock leaves me feeling like I were a tooth just ripped out of someone's mouth, blood-covered and nerve dangling. Anything that's too gentle doesn't wake me up (music). Anything that's within arm's reach I learn to turn off in my sleep. If my life gets hectic enough, I am capable of getting up, walking across the room, resetting the alarm for noon, and crawling back in bed without ever actually waking up.
The unfortunate reality is that, no matter when I get up, my mind and body don't really wake up until when they want to. If I force myself out of bed before 10-11 am I will be clumsy, slow-moving, weak, and slow of thought until at least 10-11.
If forced to sit through a lecture, I'll almost invariably fall asleep. It's somewhat ironic that I can fall asleep in ~5 minutes during a lecture, no matter how much I resist, while it usually takes me up to an hour to fall asleep when I crawl in bed around midnight. Heck, I fall alseep driving easier than I do in bed.
The only really happy solution is to stay awake until I am dog tired and then sleep until my body is ready to get up. My body physically wants at least 10 hours of sleep a night. When I'm maintaining a regular workout schedule, it wants even more.
Somewhat OT, but still tangentially related...
There's a very interesting story by J.G. Ballard about a society in which clocks were outlawed because people felt enslaved by time. Most people used resettable timers to keep track of necessary intervals, but as a whole, schedules were very lax. The story follows the protagonist, who was obsessed with clocks and imprisoned for such, on his search for timepieces.
Every time a keyboard-related story comes up, someone has to bring up the old ibm mechanical keyswitch keyboards. I guess it's me this time.
I used to have one from an old ibm AT - you know, the type with f1-f10 on the side (missing f11 & f12 - annoying every once in awhile.) Some guy in the wealthy section of town tossed it out on the curb on "massive garbage pick-up day" and I swooped down on it. Beautiful device. It had a *metal* backing and must have massed 5 kilos. The grad students with whom I shared an office thought I was a crazy computer nut because of the incessant clicking. Well, that or a secret agent of invading alien locusts, grinding my mandibles in evil anticipation of succulent human flesh. Maybe that's why they never talked to me...
Eventually I picked up a couple of newer ibm keyboards (101 key model M's) at a surplus sale to replace it, since the lack of f11 & f12 caused problems. They don't have the metal backing, but they still have the "click" feel. Another plus is the fact that the keyboard cable plugs into the back and is therefore interchangeable with one of greater length. 9-foot keyboard cables are your friend. Put that server and its howling fans far, far away from your ears.
I even have a couple of ibm keyboards I rescued off a pair of terminals. They look almost exactly like the 101 key PC ones, but they have 24 function keys and a connector which most closely resembles the AT keyboard connector, but with the pins spaced a bit differently. I've been meaning to try and interface them to my PC. (Clicky keys + 12 extra function keys...I could map out half of my most frequently-used apps to function keys!)
Anybody know anything more about these keyboards?
Part# 1386887, model M, appear to date back to 1986.
As it is, I dream of having a ergonomic keyboard WITH mechanical keyswitches, but I don't know anyone who makes such.
What I have noticed is that Imation floppy disks, which are the ones commonly available in places like Wal-mart, are of such low quality that at least one or two disks out of a pack of ten fail on the first use. The others usually follow quickly. I don't remember 3M (what Imation used to call itself) making such crappy diskettes, but I know the ones I've bought with an Imation label in the last couple of years have been of very poor quality.
Something to note about these Imation diskettes. If you have one, get it out, hold it up, and try to slip your fingernail between the halves. Yeah, you see the seam where the two halves are joined together - see if you can stick your fingernail in between them. Interesting, isn't it? The casing halves are only stuck together at the corners. Now consider what the inevitable amount of flexing that these diskettes undergo will do. Yeah, that's right, that little seam is going to flex open fairly often, allowing all sorts of !@#$#% crud to encounter the delicate magnetic media inside. Nice design. No telling what other sort of cost-cutting measures have been implemented that are less obvious to a casual appraisal.
Now floppy disks have admittedly become so inexpensive that users may not be so irate in terms of money wasted when a disk dies, but I think we'd all agree that it hasn't got any less irksome when a disk dies and we lose an important document or program.
More expensive brands of diskettes actually have the seams fused together. I think it's a worthwhile investment.
The assumption that people who write programs in their spare time are part of some big "team" lies behind most of the "Why don't OSS/hobby programmers work together on projects rather than choosing to work separately?" pieces that turn up on a regular basis.
Some people seem to think that its tantamount to a crime for an individual to want to start a project of his or her own, especially if its proposed functionality overlaps that of an already existing program. Why is this? What we do in our free time is our own business. Several posters have already noted valid reasons for wanting to start a project yourself, including educational value, difficulty getting involved with a project already underway, trouble reading code that someone else has written, etc. I'd also like to propose another reason. People reinvent the wheel because they think previous implementations suck. If I had access to the MS word source code and decided that I wanted a fast, lightweight, command-key-driven (Don't talk to me about wordstar...) word processor, would I be better off trying to prune and reshape MS word or simply starting from scratch?
Where do you think revolutionary changes come from? Starting with a clean slate truly gives you freedom, although admittedly usually at the cost of greater effort.
Would the Wright brothers have ever built a working airplane if they had just bought a standard wagon & team of horses and worked hard on modifying the pre-existing model of transportation to add the "flight" feature?
I have no linux agenda. Don't get me wrong: I think that having a free unix clone is just great, and I love the fact that I can examine the code of all these neat programs I use, but I don't expect linux to take over the world, nor do I expect it to become the OS of choice for the masses without undergoing a frightening (and to me undesireable) level of "windowsification". Why is this relevant? I think another unspoken basis for the "OSS programmers should just contribute to existing projects unless filling in areas of functionality that have not been covered" sort of rant we just read is the feeling that hobby/part-time programmers who write software for linux are all part of some big, loosely-coordinated team (with Linux & a few others vaguely directing from the top) whose goal is to build Linux into The Perfect Desktop OS (tm).
Well, it's not so. People code for free because they want to, and if anyone thinks someone can be easily coerced into spending personal time working on another person's pet project out of a vague sort of trumped-up community responsibility, then I refer them to the aphorism about herding cats.
Linux filled a niche, stimulated lots of related development, and became fairly successful. Changing the primary mode of development from individual-desire-based to community-directed is a big step, and one I'm not sure should be taken, even if doing so were possible.
This is all fun, but it ain't The Glorious Revolution, folks.
Easy there. I suspect the issue is more complex than is given credit for by most people. I've been in college for over 10 years now, (what you get when you change your mind after getting your first degree and then decide to go to grad school in the field of your second) and I've seen a very wide variety of nationalities, English, and communication skills employed in the instructional role. There are quite legitimately people who can't communicate. Although *some* of them are non-native english speakers, many of then are natives of the USA who just don't have the skills necessary to convey information in a concise and lucid manner. (It's always boggled me that primary and secondary level instructors go through years of training on how to teach while college professors are assumed to be capable teachers just because of their knowledge of the material.) In my own department, those whose English is still rudimentary grade papers. After a year or so, with their English improving, they sometimes move on to actual teaching.
It's both true that universities need to pay careful attention to who they employ as instructors, both at the TA level and at the professor/lecturer level, and also true that students need to get used to communicating with people whose first language was not English. In many of the cases I've observed, the students who complained that their instructor's English was not up to par had simply not expended the necessary effort to become acclimated to his or her accent. Once the students took that step, their complaints ceased.
Just because you grew up in an area where everyone was a native English speaker doesn't mean that you will never have to interact with a non-native one on a personal or professional basis. Corporations are a lot less national than they used to be.
Always nice to see someone supporting alternative business models.
"So, ya want some more?"
"please...."
"bring me $300 tomorrow morning"
....
But seriously. If someone freely gives you something, they surrender all the rights of ownership to you. I seriously doubt that an agreement which you don't even see (and by extension have a chance to agree or disagree with) until after you are given a product has any legal weight. Sooner or later shrink-wrap licenses are going to be struck down as unconstitutional.
The Cuecat people are just pissed because their dreams of wealth are crumbling due to the flaws of a hare-brained marketing scheme. They screwed up, and now they're threatening those who took advantage of their offer, in hopes of squeezing money out of the market with a legal fist, if not with a genuinely marketable product.
See a trend here? (Despite the dropping of the "a" from the end of "Penta".) Admittedly it sounds like Intel was going for the new 5-sided processor. (Boy do I want to see the Socket they would use for that.)
Go back and re-read my post. Consider that only one part of it pertained explicitly to the Catholic church. Note that my post was strictly a reaction to a prior post, a post in which the Pope was referenced once. Now tell me just how your "logic" allows you to state that I hate Catholicism in particular?
Secondarily, consider exactly what I wrote:
"Let's see: the Pope has the arrogance to appologize for actions for which he was not responsible, an act which prevailing political and social opinion renders expedient. So, long after the crusaders raped, murdered, and pillaged the people and lands of the middle east, the Pope comes out and tells the descendents of the inhabitants: 'Sorry 'bout that.' What piety."
What am I saying? I am saying that the appologies are meaningless because the people involved in the conflict are long dead and cannot be affected by such an appology. All the "sorry's" in the world are pointless; those directly hurt by the actions of the church experience no relief. Those members of the church who caused the distress in the first place are not around any longer to express regret. The words of the pope are meaningless to the descendents of the Moors. W/o a belief in the pope's spiritual authority these people may as well have been listening to Cheerios ads. The current pope cannot effectively appologize for the actions of past members of his church because *he is not them!* His words change nothing. Just so, any appologies coming from MS will do nothing to bring back competitors they have crowded out of the market, nor will it compensate consumers for all the hours of productivity lost to bad software. It will be an appology made at no cost, just like the pope's, and therefore about as meaningful.
>Why don't you just come out from behind your thin >veneer of 'logic' and admit that you hate
My "thin veneer of 'logic'?
If you disagree with what I wrote and wish to complain about it then *why don't you post a rebuttal?* Sniffling noisily about how I supposedly hate organized religion does nothing to back up an opinion I presume differs from mine.
>organized religion, and the Catholic brand of it >in particular... it won't make your post any >more palatable, but it'll give you your first >whiff of honesty.
Does a person need to state: "I hate XXX" for him or her to critique it?
Again, if you have a refutation then feel free to post it. Not that I expect to see one.
If you find my post unpalatable, then you might want to consider just why...I suspect the answer lies with you rather than me.
zeke
Heh. "cause unrest". I think I've just been complimented.
The bulk of the responses seem to fall into three categories:
(A) "We have mp3 - why do we need Ogg?"
(B) "Mp3 is too entrenched for any competitor to ever succeed."
(C) "Ogg is not as good as mp3, or requires higher bandwidth."
Bah! Don't you people *think*?!?
The mp3 format is not going to get better. Vorbis is being actively developed. Just because it may not be better than mp3 at this moment (And I make no such claims here - check the advogato interview for more info, or better yet download the software and play with it.) does not mean that it will not become so in the forseeable future.
Beta never caught on because (A) it was very expensive and (B) Sony had the licensing locked up tight. If Sony had been *giving away* VCR's the home movie industry might have developed differently.
So what does Vorbis have going for it?
FREE FREE and powerful FREE and powerful and open source.
What attracted you to linux in the first place?
This is a major boon to anyone who wants to legally stream audio but can't afford to pay for an mp3 encoder. If all you want to do is listen to music on your computer, then maybe you don't care what format it is. Do consider this: A free encoder will allow a whole lot more people to provide content online. Heck, with this, any band that wanted to and could afford a bit of bandwidth could put up their own songs online w/o suffering through mp3.com or running the legal risk of using an mp3 encoder w/o paying for it.
I don't think mp3 is as entrenched as some of you seem to believe. How many of you have both a Realaudio player and a separate mp3 player on your computer? What would it take to get you to download another? How about if it were just an XMMS plugin?
> Gates created BASIC, >and bought or stole >everything else, starting with QDOS.
So you don't buy Gates' official party line?
Try comparing the two sometimes. Who created what?
>Churches ask for voluntary contributions. >Microsoft levies a tax.
Microsoft licensing tells you that it is federal crime to use their software w/o paying for it. What's the penalty? Fines and prison time.
The bible - official party line again - commands you to tithe. What happens when you don't obey god? You commit a sin. What's the price of sin? Death/hell.
(And before you start talking about how accepting christ makes you eternally saved and forgiven of all your sins - I know the protestant party line. I also know that opinions are mixed with regard to the final price you pay for unconfessed, unforgiven sins.)
>Christ heals the lame; Gates makes your computer >lame.
Once again you are comparing more Pro-christ propaganda with Anti-gates propaganda. Why don't you compare pro- with pro-? Is it because you've already made up your mind about both of them?
Many people would assert that christian religious beliefs left them crippled with guilt. Many MS advocates would say that Windows makes personal computing easy and powerful. Who do you believe? More importantly, why?
>The Pope is spending this year confessing the >sins of the Catholic Church; Microsoft either >won't admit that it has done any wrongdoing at >all, or doesn't understand it.
Let's see: the Pope has the arrogance to appologize for actions for which he was not responsible, an act which prevailing political and social opinion renders expedient. So, long after the crusaders raped, murdered, and pillaged the people and lands of the middle east, the Pope comes out and tells the descendents of the inhabitants: "Sorry 'bout that." What piety. How long do you really think it will be, once Microsoft gets its fanny whacked by the Supreme court, before MS starts "appologizing" for its ruthless behavior. Do you really think they'll mean it? Do you really think the "appologies" of the Pope are motivated more by personal conviction (and the supreme arrogance that has to go with it) than by political expediency?
>Christ was crucified because the political powers >of the day couldn't control him; today, we're not
We know very little about the crucifixtion of Christ other than the accounts preserved in the Bible, all of which are second-hand or written down long after the fact, and all of which were written by people favorable to the christian movement, and therefore all suspect as propaganda.
>sure if Gates will get crucified by the political >powers, or simply co-opted.
If Gates is "crucified" I am sure that he will find some other way to exert his influence in the computing world. If he is not crucified I suspect that he will simply return to his old ways, albeit a tad more cautiously than before. In any case, to quote: "History is written by the victors". I seriously doubt that any efforts by the US government can rid us of the MS monopoly. Only market changes and unforseen social/computing paradigm shifts will bring out some new front runner in the computing world. Barring these, how do you think the public will see Mr. Gates in 30 years?
That's where this trend is leading us. It fits right in with forcing anonymous remailers to disclose the identities of their users and requiring ISPs to make private emails available to federal agents. It fits right in with all attempts at privacy invasion and censorship.
(loosely defined)
Censorship is the attempt to deny certain resources to certain individuals.
What's the easiest way to do that? What do *you* think?
Sooner or later you will only be able to legally access the internet under your own name or official identification code. (i.e. - SSN) This will quickly, forcibly, and permanently divide the internet into countries, states, ethnic backgrounds, etc. In other words, it will make all the data previously collected by various governments and organizations once again useful in dealing with the online community. It will also make the internet the single most powerful tool for gathering information about individuals that has ever existed. If we don't work against it, this will happen in our lifetime.
Neither governments nor companies like the level of individual freedom available on the internet. In the US government's case, however, efforts to reduce online freedom are in part hampered by the Bill of Rights. *Companies*, OTOH, have no such qualms nor feel themselves bound by any such restrictions. When was the last time you had to tell the insistent Radio Shack salesman to Bugger Off because he wanted your name and address? Why do we get targeted banner ads from certain web sites? What are those cookies really there for?
The more knowledge you have about your consumer base, the more efficient your marketing, sales, support - and prosecution - become.
Ever downloaded some piece of software under a fake name because you didn't want to be in a company's database? This is going away. You're going to be in every database under the sun. How long before companies simply pay the US government for access to parts or all of the citizen database?
The internet represents a vast and growing segment of population for whom national boundaries and allegiences seem less important than shared interests. The internet represents a route for information to travel, circumventing whatever official propaganda is being disseminated.
Why is this happening? Though it is true that the US government fears losing control of its citizens, the real movers in the effort to restrict online freedoms are companies who feel threatened by what the internet represents. (Easy, unmonitored distribution of digital media, free association of potential or actual customers, etc, discussion of unregulated or unsupported use of a company's products. Think Intel. Think Dual-Celeron. Think overclocking. Do you really believe that Intel wouldn't be happy to squash all such activity if they could?) These companies know how to deal with this threat. They see the government as a tool for dealing with its constituents. Which is easier, developing an encryption method that will keep people from copying your product or making the legal consequences of copying (or making copying possible. (Or even thinking about making copying possible.)) so dire as to prevent it from happening. Companies know what they want. They want a growing, mindless, locked-in consumer base that they can depend on. Personally I'm convinced that some companies would, if it were possible, push for the pass of legislation MANDATING a certain level of consumerism on our part.
But anyways, keep your eyes and ears open. And when the time comes, get your mouth open and start yelling. Go vote. It's the only way we're going to avoid the internet becoming a combination survelliance camera and network TV. It's also the only way we're going to avoid falling into the immensely stupid trap of applying mindless nationalism to the internet.
Yes, I have used open source programs whose interfaces weren't the most intuitive or effective. OTOH, I've also used a heck of a lot of commercial programs whose interfaces were confusing, labyrinthe, and poorly organized. MS-Office comes to mind.
A large part of the problem, though, stems from the fact that most people don't want to learn a new interface for each program they use. Is this bad? I submit that it is neither good nor bad, but simply human nature. Why work hard when you can be lazy? Why waste your energy? Unfortunately, standardization of user interfaces, the usual solution to this problem, is not always a very good one. Ever used a program that had pull-down menus for a total of about 5 possible actions? Ever wondered why the programmer didn't simply use a single screen keystroke menu? Ever seen a program so menu-driven that you had to navigate through several levels of submenus to get to a single, frequently-used option? Good interfaces are designed around both the task the program is designed to perform and the capabilities of the prospective user. Some tasks are much easier to perform with a CLI. Some are easier to perform with a GUI. Some of them work just fine with simple text menus. Think about the Roguelike games. Imagine using pulldown menus to play them. Fun, eh? Now imagine using only a CLI to do stuff in the Gimp. A GUI environment gives us more options as far as possible interfaces, but it shouldn't keep us from using non-GUI interfaces if they are more efficient.
Chainsaws with pull-down menus...
Think about it - haven't you ever used a program with a non-standard interface that was *perfectly* suited to the task at hand. Sure, you may have spent a few extra minutes getting used to it, but once you picked up the basics you could really fly. Standardization and innovation inevitably conflict. The joy of open source is that you can *fix* that awful interface if you really want to. Part of what is desperately needed with many programs is decent documentation. If a UI is properly documented, then at least it will be usable, if not enjoyable.
In truth, different people interact with a program on many different levels of efficiency and knowledge, and that if the UI designer has not addressed the issue by providing different available levels of interaction in the UI (Ex: Beginner - Menus; Expert - Hotkeys) then there will always be a set of users unhappy with the interface. Efforts aimed at making linux suitable for the masses seem mainly aimed at grafting on beginner-level interfaces to expert level tools. This is not always going to be possible. The level of complexity inherent in managing a modern operating system requires a certain level of knowledge and understanding, otherwise systems management descends to the "Reinstall If Buggered" stage. This is where windows is now. Do we really want this *that* much?
And even if the UI designer has done his best to account for beginners and experts, what can he do to deal with the reality that individuals organize their own mental models of the world in different ways? Some people work well with pictures, some with written words, some with verbal explanations, etc. There are no perfect solutions to the UI problem.
The way that MS-Windows and the Mac OS solve the problem is by introducing a certain set of UI primitives and using them over and over again. Once the user becomes familiar with these, he or she is capable of dealing with virtually all of the programs available under the operating system. Unfortunately the relatively small number of UI primitives available restricts drastically the sort of allowed user interfaces. The larger the primitive base available, the more flexibility the UI designer has in tailoring his interface to the needs of the program. At the same time, the larger the primitive base, the higher the likelihood that the new user will be unfamiliar with some of the primitives used and therefore the steeper the learning curve. It's always a trade-off.
What do you want - programs anyone can pick up and use but which never lose a certain amount of UI awkwardness or programs that require a certain level of learning to use but reward you with flexibility, power, and efficiency?
xf86config works just fine. Sure it's a bit tedious to run through the entire proceedure each time you want to set up your system, but at least doing so is easy and relatively foolproof for most supported cards and monitors. Once you get used to the format you can just edit the config file by hand to make any changes you wish. Unfortunately, in the rush to make new, prettier, more user-friendly (brain-dead) tools, many linux distributions seem to be in the process of substituting buggier, less effective programs for older, simpler, *debugged* tools. Just because you could write your user interface to include 3-D shaded buttons and dialogue boxes doesn't mean that you should. "KISS"
If you really want to take full advantage of your monitor, then read the Modeline Howto. (the one by ESR) It'll be well worth your time. I used to run an old Nec Multisync II and used the modeline howto to tweak the very last bit of resolution out of the monitor that I could. (And I found out just how much I dislike interlaced modes!) Right now I have an old pseudo-fixed-frequency IBM 6091-19 that I have running in modes all the way from 640x480 (certain games) up to 1280x1024. If I hadn't read through the modeline howto, I probably would have never gotten it working.
For those of you out there having trouble with your monitors, try searching the manufacturer's website for specs. If that doesn't work, then try searching dejanews with the name/model of the monitor and the keyword "spec*". This has almost always worked for me. If neither of these approaches works, then you can always try fooling around with conservative settings and gradually working your way up to higher resolutions/refresh rates. (Note that I am NOT responsible if you toast your monitor or video card!) If you're trying new modes out in your XF86Config file, make sure you're never more than a Ctrl-Alt-(+/-) away from a "safe" mode. (cref: Modeline Bondage)
If you have some new, high-powered monitor, then you may never have to muck with figuring out your own modelines, but if you're using old, discarded hardware, which is where linux shines, then it can *really* improve the usability of your display. Trust me: if you can use a calculator, then you can write your own modelines, and you may very well get _better_ ones than you'd get from xf86config.
And the question no one ever seems to ask is: "Does human life have any inherent value?" If your answer is "yes", then I urge you to stop a moment and try and set down the reasons for your belief. On what assumptions do you base your valuation of human life? Can you say honestly that you do so because of carefully-thought out reasons, rather than simply as a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of your *own* life being terminated? Is there anything besides unexamined emotion behind your fear of what Singer proposed?
I can already see some of the responses:
"Humans are intelligent..."
And why does that make us special? And if somehow it really does then is intelligence a binary situation or a spectrum?
"All life has value..."
Why?
"They all have potential..."
Everything has potential. That leftover lasagna I'm pondering whether to eat or throw away has the potential to become part of a living, thinking (heh) human being. (Which, if I understand what a lot of the posters seem to be assuming, is the height of privelege. We are the wonders of creation after all.) If I throw it out, has it missed its chance? Am I an evil so-and-so for denying it the chance to tour my digestive tract, and perhaps flake off as bits of dead skin a couple of months later, indistinguishable from the hamburger I ate the next day? Virtually everything anyone ever does affects the future of someone else, positively, negatively, frequently both. If you are afraid of infringing upon someone else's potential I suggest you stay in bed. Oops. You just reduced your own potential. Oh no. What if someone else's potential depended on you fulfilling yours? Or not fulfilling? How can you handle the emotional stress?
Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, Shockwave Rider.
Admittedly, Brunner doesn't have a firm conception of "cyberspace" as a separate existance, the base idea for most of later cyberpunk work, but these 3 novels capture very well the whole corporate-run, enviromentally decaying, privacy-free world that informs most of cyberpunk literature.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously, *you* married the wrong person.
Top O' the world, ma!
Shotgun Willie
Cubicle walls are never tall enough. Construct cubicle height extensions, but do so in the fashion of medieval fort walls. You know, a sort of corrugated wall top, towers at all four corners, etc. Make sure to include a large, wall-mounted pot to tip over boiling oil on your least-favorite neighbor. A positionable catapult or trebuchet is also a good idea. Large spikes for impaling the heads of annoying team memebers may be installed on the tops of the walls if so desired. Filling the doorway of your cubicle with a drawbridge could also be fun, and, if at all possible, install a small moat in all adjacent aisles.
If you have a free USB port, you may consider hanging one of those cheap video cameras up in a corner tower. Make sure to disguise it as castle guard.
This is a perfect excuse to buy a bugle and keep it at work. Any time the stress gets to be too much, just pick it up, play some fanfare, and issue a royal decree.
Also remember that it is perfectly acceptable to throw the contents of chamber pots over the castle walls.
If you get bored, consider erecting a tall tower in the middle of the cubicle. Put one of your computer's speakers up in a top window, disguised as a captive maiden, and play some tortured screaming through your sound card now and then. Make sure to vary it with the occasional cry for help.
zeke
Is a DMCA-circumventing computer virus.
"Um, jeez officer, I just hadn't run my virus checker in awhile. No, I _didn't_ notice those were foreign DVDs. *Honest*."
zeke
My favorite parts of the article:
"Two other X-43As will fly after the initial test at six-month intervals. If successful, the 12-foot-long, surfboard-shaped planes will smash the speed record of Mach 6.7, set by an X-15 in October 1967."
followed shortly by:
"The X-43A, or Hyper-X, will probably never carry commercial passengers because of the high acceleration, heat generated by friction with the atmosphere and the difficulty of turning a plane at such high speeds."
Something tells me that a 12 foot long commercial aircraft is going to have other problems besides heat/acceleration with enticing passengers onboard.
Well, that is unless they use footage from Dr. Strangelove as an advertisement. (Cue Slim Pickens' product endorsement - "YEEEEHAAAA!!!")
Sheesh. Do these writers ever run a brain-check on their articles?
zeke
Part of the problem is similar to what you witness in science fiction/fantasy.
What people create is influenced by what they are exposed to. How many fantasy writers do you think read LotR and immediately start to write a novel featuring elves, dwarves, & hobbits? C'mon, admit it - If someone uses the word "fantasy" in casual conversation, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Try and tell me it doesn't involve dwarves with giant battleaxes and barbarian elvish princesses in chain mail bikinis. This, along with the fact that the publishing business is a cautious one, is the reason why bookstores are chock-full of evil-wizard-must-be-overthrown, comet-headed-for-earth, far-future-star-(wars|trek)-with-names-filed-off novels.
The same thing is happening with computer games.
People who go into the gaming industry are generally people who like to play games. The games they play influence and inspire the games they create. No surprise there. However, what unique elements they bring to their own creations depend entirely upon their creativity and the breadth of their personal knowledge and experience. If you have a CRPG designer who is highly knowledgeable about and interested in the Dreamtime of the Australian aborigines, he or she has the potential to use such in a game. If your game designer's knowledge of mythology stems from reading the D&D Monster Manual a few too many times, you can pretty much assume that the game will involve fireballs, dragons, and orcs.
The fact that producing a game is becoming more and more of an expensive proposition doesn't help matters any. In the same way that Hollywood loves to give us "more of the same", game companies find it safer and easier to avoid risky new game ideas.
I really suspect that the best game designers are interested in more than just computer games.
zeke
Sometimes floppies are the cheapest and easiest method of data transfer/archival.
When I was an undergrad, my ISP was my university. Up until shortly before I graduated, connecting took anywhere from 2-3 minutes to a couple of hours due to the small size of their modem bank, and you were automatically kicked off after 2 hours. Downloading files of any size was not easy with my old 28.8K modem, and frequently it was much quicker and less frustrating to sneakernet data back and forth using floppies.
Now I have a DSL connection and just ftp files back and forth.
Over the course of a couple of years I probably purchased 200-300 disks in groups of 10 or 20. As Imation disks were what was available, they were generally what I purchased, although once their quality level became apparent, I did my best to find alternatives. I bought something like 100-150 imation disks and by now have tossed at least a third of those disks because they were immediately unusable or quickly became unreliable.
I no longer store anything of value on Imation disks, nor do I leave trivial files on them for more than a couple of days.
While having 15-20 out of 100-150 disks turn out to be defective immediately after purchase does not count as an exhaustive statistical study, it does seem indicative of a larger problem.
I have better luck with diskettes that I've dumpter dived.
Like Andre060 mentions below, I might have wondered if my drive was at fault, but I've seen Imation diskettes fail at home, at friend's houses, and in many school computers, so I kind of doubt that it's just the floppy drive.
The bottom line for me is that the risk isn't worth it. If I want disks I'll spend a few cents more for the privilege of imagining that my data will still be there tomorrow.
<flashback>
"The elephant never forgets"
zeke
That's exactly the same thing I thought upon reading the blurb. Years ago when I used an apple //c on a regular basis, I almost *never* had a disk go bad on me. Most of them - and I bought the crudiest, cheapest, $30-for-100-disks kind I could find - still work 15 years after I acquired them. Admittedly, we're talking ***LOW*** data storage rates, so perhaps the individual bits weren't as suceptible to random EM fields, but still...
In the early 90's when I started using msdos pc's, the 1.44 meg disks I bought were also pretty reliable. You could buy sony, fujitsu, 3M, etc. Most of those disks still work today.
Nowadays Imation (the-diskette-manufacturer-formerly-known-as-3M) has the cheap disk market pretty sewn up around here. Walmart, school bookstores, and corner convenience stores all seem to stock Imation disks and nothing else. The downside? I tend to get 1 or 2 bad diskettes from every box of 10 I buy. This is _straight_ out of the box. I stuff one in the drive, write something to it, and find out that it's immediately unretrievable.
Part of the trouble is the stinkin' cheap quality of the disks. If you have one, pull it out and try flexing it slightly. Note that the two halves of the disk shell are only connected together at the corners. Imagine how many dust particles get through the unsealed seam during regular use. Now imagine those dust particles carving deep trenches in the regions where your data is stored. Lovely.
If you have get one of these drives, be careful what brand media you buy for them.
zeke
Try MULE.
It's unlikely they'll have played it before, and it has all sorts of useful, business-relevant characteristics.
Don't know where the heck you'll scare up all those atari 800's, though. Maybe you can just run it under an emulator.
zeke
I *wish* I could do without an alarm clock.
Alarm clocks are the bane of my existance. The difference between how I feel if I wake up to an alarm clock and how I feel if I just wake up when my body is rested is unbelievable. So why don't I just rearrange my schedule so I don't need an alarm clock? My natural waking period is from slightly before noon to ~2am at night. I've tried modifying it, but I end up slipping back into this schedule whenever I have a vacation. Grad school and most jobs aren't very accomodating to such a schedule.
Waking up to an alarm clock leaves me feeling like I were a tooth just ripped out of someone's mouth, blood-covered and nerve dangling. Anything that's too gentle doesn't wake me up (music). Anything that's within arm's reach I learn to turn off in my sleep. If my life gets hectic enough, I am capable of getting up, walking across the room, resetting the alarm for noon, and crawling back in bed without ever actually waking up.
The unfortunate reality is that, no matter when I get up, my mind and body don't really wake up until when they want to. If I force myself out of bed before 10-11 am I will be clumsy, slow-moving, weak, and slow of thought until at least 10-11.
If forced to sit through a lecture, I'll almost invariably fall asleep. It's somewhat ironic that I can fall asleep in ~5 minutes during a lecture, no matter how much I resist, while it usually takes me up to an hour to fall asleep when I crawl in bed around midnight. Heck, I fall alseep driving easier than I do in bed.
The only really happy solution is to stay awake until I am dog tired and then sleep until my body is ready to get up. My body physically wants at least 10 hours of sleep a night. When I'm maintaining a regular workout schedule, it wants even more.
Somewhat OT, but still tangentially related...
There's a very interesting story by J.G. Ballard about a society in which clocks were outlawed because people felt enslaved by time. Most people used resettable timers to keep track of necessary intervals, but as a whole, schedules were very lax. The story follows the protagonist, who was obsessed with clocks and imprisoned for such, on his search for timepieces.
zeke
Every time a keyboard-related story comes up, someone has to bring up the old ibm mechanical keyswitch keyboards. I guess it's me this time.
I used to have one from an old ibm AT - you know, the type with f1-f10 on the side (missing f11 & f12 - annoying every once in awhile.) Some guy in the wealthy section of town tossed it out on the curb on "massive garbage pick-up day" and I swooped down on it. Beautiful device. It had a *metal* backing and must have massed 5 kilos. The grad students with whom I shared an office thought I was a crazy computer nut because of the incessant clicking. Well, that or a secret agent of invading alien locusts, grinding my mandibles in evil anticipation of succulent human flesh. Maybe that's why they never talked to me...
Eventually I picked up a couple of newer ibm keyboards (101 key model M's) at a surplus sale to replace it, since the lack of f11 & f12 caused problems. They don't have the metal backing, but they still have the "click" feel. Another plus is the fact that the keyboard cable plugs into the back and is therefore interchangeable with one of greater length. 9-foot keyboard cables are your friend. Put that server and its howling fans far, far away from your ears.
I even have a couple of ibm keyboards I rescued off a pair of terminals. They look almost exactly like the 101 key PC ones, but they have 24 function keys and a connector which most closely resembles the AT keyboard connector, but with the pins spaced a bit differently. I've been meaning to try and interface them to my PC. (Clicky keys + 12 extra function keys...I could map out half of my most frequently-used apps to function keys!)
Anybody know anything more about these keyboards?
Part# 1386887, model M, appear to date back to 1986.
As it is, I dream of having a ergonomic keyboard WITH mechanical keyswitches, but I don't know anyone who makes such.
zeke
What I have noticed is that Imation floppy disks, which are the ones commonly available in places like Wal-mart, are of such low quality that at least one or two disks out of a pack of ten fail on the first use. The others usually follow quickly. I don't remember 3M (what Imation used to call itself) making such crappy diskettes, but I know the ones I've bought with an Imation label in the last couple of years have been of very poor quality.
Something to note about these Imation diskettes. If you have one, get it out, hold it up, and try to slip your fingernail between the halves. Yeah, you see the seam where the two halves are joined together - see if you can stick your fingernail in between them. Interesting, isn't it? The casing halves are only stuck together at the corners. Now consider what the inevitable amount of flexing that these diskettes undergo will do. Yeah, that's right, that little seam is going to flex open fairly often, allowing all sorts of !@#$#% crud to encounter the delicate magnetic media inside. Nice design. No telling what other sort of cost-cutting measures have been implemented that are less obvious to a casual appraisal.
Now floppy disks have admittedly become so inexpensive that users may not be so irate in terms of money wasted when a disk dies, but I think we'd all agree that it hasn't got any less irksome when a disk dies and we lose an important document or program.
More expensive brands of diskettes actually have the seams fused together. I think it's a worthwhile investment.
zeke
Repeat after me:
"We are not a team."
The assumption that people who write programs in their spare time are part of some big "team" lies behind most of the "Why don't OSS/hobby programmers work together on projects rather than choosing to work separately?" pieces that turn up on a regular basis.
Some people seem to think that its tantamount to a crime for an individual to want to start a project of his or her own, especially if its proposed functionality overlaps that of an already existing program. Why is this? What we do in our free time is our own business. Several posters have already noted valid reasons for wanting to start a project yourself, including educational value, difficulty getting involved with a project already underway, trouble reading code that someone else has written, etc. I'd also like to propose another reason. People reinvent the wheel because they think previous implementations suck. If I had access to the MS word source code and decided that I wanted a fast, lightweight, command-key-driven (Don't talk to me about wordstar...) word processor, would I be better off trying to prune and reshape MS word or simply starting from scratch?
Where do you think revolutionary changes come from? Starting with a clean slate truly gives you freedom, although admittedly usually at the cost of greater effort.
Would the Wright brothers have ever built a working airplane if they had just bought a standard wagon & team of horses and worked hard on modifying the pre-existing model of transportation to add the "flight" feature?
I have no linux agenda. Don't get me wrong: I think that having a free unix clone is just great, and I love the fact that I can examine the code of all these neat programs I use, but I don't expect linux to take over the world, nor do I expect it to become the OS of choice for the masses without undergoing a frightening (and to me undesireable) level of "windowsification". Why is this relevant? I think another unspoken basis for the "OSS programmers should just contribute to existing projects unless filling in areas of functionality that have not been covered" sort of rant we just read is the feeling that hobby/part-time programmers who write software for linux are all part of some big, loosely-coordinated team (with Linux & a few others vaguely directing from the top) whose goal is to build Linux into The Perfect Desktop OS (tm).
Well, it's not so. People code for free because they want to, and if anyone thinks someone can be easily coerced into spending personal time working on another person's pet project out of a vague sort of trumped-up community responsibility, then I refer them to the aphorism about herding cats.
Linux filled a niche, stimulated lots of related development, and became fairly successful. Changing the primary mode of development from individual-desire-based to community-directed is a big step, and one I'm not sure should be taken, even if doing so were possible.
This is all fun, but it ain't The Glorious Revolution, folks.
zeke
Easy there. I suspect the issue is more complex than is given credit for by most people. I've been in college for over 10 years now, (what you get when you change your mind after getting your first degree and then decide to go to grad school in the field of your second) and I've seen a very wide variety of nationalities, English, and communication skills employed in the instructional role. There are quite legitimately people who can't communicate. Although *some* of them are non-native english speakers, many of then are natives of the USA who just don't have the skills necessary to convey information in a concise and lucid manner. (It's always boggled me that primary and secondary level instructors go through years of training on how to teach while college professors are assumed to be capable teachers just because of their knowledge of the material.) In my own department, those whose English is still rudimentary grade papers. After a year or so, with their English improving, they sometimes move on to actual teaching.
It's both true that universities need to pay careful attention to who they employ as instructors, both at the TA level and at the professor/lecturer level, and also true that students need to get used to communicating with people whose first language was not English. In many of the cases I've observed, the students who complained that their instructor's English was not up to par had simply not expended the necessary effort to become acclimated to his or her accent. Once the students took that step, their complaints ceased.
Just because you grew up in an area where everyone was a native English speaker doesn't mean that you will never have to interact with a non-native one on a personal or professional basis. Corporations are a lot less national than they used to be.
zeke
Always nice to see someone supporting alternative business models.
"So, ya want some more?"
"please...."
"bring me $300 tomorrow morning"
....
But seriously. If someone freely gives you something, they surrender all the rights of ownership to you. I seriously doubt that an agreement which you don't even see (and by extension have a chance to agree or disagree with) until after you are given a product has any legal weight. Sooner or later shrink-wrap licenses are going to be struck down as unconstitutional.
The Cuecat people are just pissed because their dreams of wealth are crumbling due to the flaws of a hare-brained marketing scheme. They screwed up, and now they're threatening those who took advantage of their offer, in hopes of squeezing money out of the market with a legal fist, if not with a genuinely marketable product.
zeke
Um.
Pentagram.
Pentagon.
Pentium.
See a trend here? (Despite the dropping of the "a" from the end of "Penta".) Admittedly it sounds like Intel was going for the new 5-sided processor. (Boy do I want to see the Socket they would use for that.)
zeke
*sigh* I suspect I'm being trolled, but...
Go back and re-read my post. Consider that only one part of it pertained explicitly to the Catholic church. Note that my post was strictly a reaction to a prior post, a post in which the Pope was referenced once. Now tell me just how your "logic" allows you to state that I hate Catholicism in particular?
Secondarily, consider exactly what I wrote:
"Let's see: the Pope has the arrogance to appologize for actions for which he was not responsible, an act which prevailing political and
social opinion renders expedient. So, long after the crusaders raped, murdered, and pillaged the people and lands of the middle east, the Pope comes out and tells the descendents of the inhabitants: 'Sorry 'bout that.' What piety."
What am I saying? I am saying that the appologies are meaningless because the people involved in the conflict are long dead and cannot be affected by such an appology. All the "sorry's" in the world are pointless; those directly hurt by the actions of the church experience no relief. Those members of the church who caused the distress in the first place are not around any longer to express regret. The words of the pope are meaningless to the descendents of the Moors. W/o a belief in the pope's spiritual authority these people may as well have been listening to Cheerios ads. The current pope cannot effectively appologize for the actions of past members of his church because *he is not them!* His words change nothing. Just so, any appologies coming from MS will do nothing to bring back competitors they have crowded out of the market, nor will it compensate consumers for all the hours of productivity lost to bad software. It will be an appology made at no cost, just like the pope's, and therefore about as meaningful.
>Why don't you just come out from behind your thin >veneer of 'logic' and admit that you hate
My "thin veneer of 'logic'?
If you disagree with what I wrote and wish to complain about it then *why don't you post a rebuttal?* Sniffling noisily about how I supposedly hate organized religion does nothing to back up an opinion I presume differs from mine.
>organized religion, and the Catholic brand of it
>in particular... it won't make your post any
>more palatable, but it'll give you your first
>whiff of honesty.
Does a person need to state: "I hate XXX" for him or her to critique it?
Again, if you have a refutation then feel free to post it. Not that I expect to see one.
If you find my post unpalatable, then you might want to consider just why...I suspect the answer lies with you rather than me.
zeke
Heh. "cause unrest". I think I've just been complimented.
The bulk of the responses seem to fall into three categories:
(A) "We have mp3 - why do we need Ogg?"
(B) "Mp3 is too entrenched for any competitor to
ever succeed."
(C) "Ogg is not as good as mp3, or requires
higher bandwidth."
Bah! Don't you people *think*?!?
The mp3 format is not going to get better. Vorbis is being actively developed. Just because it may not be better than mp3 at this moment (And I make no such claims here - check the advogato interview for more info, or better yet download the software and play with it.) does not mean that it will not become so in the forseeable future.
Beta never caught on because (A) it was very expensive and (B) Sony had the licensing locked up tight. If Sony had been *giving away* VCR's the home movie industry might have developed differently.
So what does Vorbis have going for it?
FREE
FREE and powerful
FREE and powerful and open source.
What attracted you to linux in the first place?
This is a major boon to anyone who wants to legally stream audio but can't afford to pay for an mp3 encoder. If all you want to do is listen to music on your computer, then maybe you don't care what format it is. Do consider this: A free encoder will allow a whole lot more people to provide content online. Heck, with this, any band that wanted to and could afford a bit of bandwidth could put up their own songs online w/o suffering through mp3.com or running the legal risk of using an mp3 encoder w/o paying for it.
I don't think mp3 is as entrenched as some of you seem to believe. How many of you have both a Realaudio player and a separate mp3 player on your computer? What would it take to get you to download another? How about if it were just an XMMS plugin?
Does anybody really sweat a free download?
zeke
>And now the differences.
Oh dear.
>God created the universe.
So you buy the official party line, eh?
> Gates created BASIC, >and bought or stole >everything else, starting with QDOS.
So you don't buy Gates' official party line?
Try comparing the two sometimes. Who created what?
>Churches ask for voluntary contributions. >Microsoft levies a tax.
Microsoft licensing tells you that it is federal crime to use their software w/o paying for it. What's the penalty? Fines and prison time.
The bible - official party line again - commands you to tithe. What happens when you don't obey god? You commit a sin. What's the price of sin? Death/hell.
(And before you start talking about how accepting christ makes you eternally saved and forgiven of all your sins - I know the protestant party line. I also know that opinions are mixed with regard to the final price you pay for unconfessed, unforgiven sins.)
>Christ heals the lame; Gates makes your computer >lame.
Once again you are comparing more Pro-christ propaganda with Anti-gates propaganda. Why don't you compare pro- with pro-? Is it because you've already made up your mind about both of them?
Many people would assert that christian religious beliefs left them crippled with guilt. Many MS advocates would say that Windows makes personal computing easy and powerful. Who do you believe? More importantly, why?
>The Pope is spending this year confessing the >sins of the Catholic Church; Microsoft either >won't admit that it has done any wrongdoing at >all, or doesn't understand it.
Let's see: the Pope has the arrogance to appologize for actions for which he was not responsible, an act which prevailing political and social opinion renders expedient. So, long after the crusaders raped, murdered, and pillaged the people and lands of the middle east, the Pope comes out and tells the descendents of the inhabitants: "Sorry 'bout that." What piety. How long do you really think it will be, once Microsoft gets its fanny whacked by the Supreme court, before MS starts "appologizing" for its ruthless behavior. Do you really think they'll mean it? Do you really think the "appologies" of the Pope are motivated more by personal conviction (and the supreme arrogance that has to go with it) than by political expediency?
>Christ was crucified because the political powers >of the day couldn't control him; today, we're not
We know very little about the crucifixtion of Christ other than the accounts preserved in the Bible, all of which are second-hand or written down long after the fact, and all of which were written by people favorable to the christian movement, and therefore all suspect as propaganda.
>sure if Gates will get crucified by the political >powers, or simply co-opted.
If Gates is "crucified" I am sure that he will find some other way to exert his influence in the computing world. If he is not crucified I suspect that he will simply return to his old ways, albeit a tad more cautiously than before. In any case, to quote: "History is written by the victors". I seriously doubt that any efforts by the US government can rid us of the MS monopoly. Only market changes and unforseen social/computing paradigm shifts will bring out some new front runner in the computing world. Barring these, how do you think the public will see Mr. Gates in 30 years?
zeke
- Personal files.
- Criminalization of anonymity or pseudonymity.
That's where this trend is leading us. It fits right in with forcing anonymous remailers to disclose the identities of their users and requiring ISPs to make private emails available to federal agents. It fits right in with all attempts at privacy invasion and censorship.
(loosely defined)
Censorship is the attempt to deny certain resources to certain individuals.
What's the easiest way to do that? What do *you* think?
Sooner or later you will only be able to legally access the internet under your own name or official identification code. (i.e. - SSN) This will quickly, forcibly, and permanently divide the internet into countries, states, ethnic backgrounds, etc. In other words, it will make all the data previously collected by various governments and organizations once again useful in dealing with the online community. It will also make the internet the single most powerful tool for gathering information about individuals that has ever existed. If we don't work against it, this will happen in our lifetime.
Neither governments nor companies like the level of individual freedom available on the internet. In the US government's case, however, efforts to reduce online freedom are in part hampered by the Bill of Rights. *Companies*, OTOH, have no such qualms nor feel themselves bound by any such restrictions. When was the last time you had to tell the insistent Radio Shack salesman to Bugger Off because he wanted your name and address? Why do we get targeted banner ads from certain web sites? What are those cookies really there for?
The more knowledge you have about your consumer base, the more efficient your marketing, sales, support - and prosecution - become.
Ever downloaded some piece of software under a fake name because you didn't want to be in a company's database? This is going away. You're going to be in every database under the sun. How long before companies simply pay the US government for access to parts or all of the citizen database?
The internet represents a vast and growing segment of population for whom national boundaries and allegiences seem less important than shared interests. The internet represents a route for information to travel, circumventing whatever official propaganda is being disseminated.
Why is this happening? Though it is true that the US government fears losing control of its citizens, the real movers in the effort to restrict online freedoms are companies who feel threatened by what the internet represents. (Easy, unmonitored distribution of digital media, free association of potential or actual customers, etc, discussion of unregulated or unsupported use of a company's products. Think Intel. Think Dual-Celeron. Think overclocking. Do you really believe that Intel wouldn't be happy to squash all such activity if they could?) These companies know how to deal with this threat. They see the government as a tool for dealing with its constituents. Which is easier, developing an encryption method that will keep people from copying your product or making the legal consequences of copying (or making copying possible. (Or even thinking about making copying possible.)) so dire as to prevent it from happening. Companies know what they want. They want a growing, mindless, locked-in consumer base that they can depend on. Personally I'm convinced that some companies would, if it were possible, push for the pass of legislation MANDATING a certain level of consumerism on our part.
But anyways, keep your eyes and ears open. And when the time comes, get your mouth open and start yelling. Go vote. It's the only way we're going to avoid the internet becoming a combination survelliance camera and network TV. It's also the only way we're going to avoid falling into the immensely stupid trap of applying mindless nationalism to the internet.
zeke
So Gates has been misquoted all these years.
"64K (bugs) should be enough for anybody."
- B. Gates
zeke
Yes, I have used open source programs whose interfaces weren't the most intuitive or effective. OTOH, I've also used a heck of a lot of commercial programs whose interfaces were confusing, labyrinthe, and poorly organized. MS-Office comes to mind.
A large part of the problem, though, stems from the fact that most people don't want to learn a new interface for each program they use. Is this bad? I submit that it is neither good nor bad, but simply human nature. Why work hard when you can be lazy? Why waste your energy? Unfortunately, standardization of user interfaces, the usual solution to this problem, is not always a very good one. Ever used a program that had pull-down menus for a total of about 5 possible actions? Ever wondered why the programmer didn't simply use a single screen keystroke menu? Ever seen a program so menu-driven that you had to navigate through several levels of submenus to get to a single, frequently-used option? Good interfaces are designed around both the task the program is designed to perform and the capabilities of the prospective user. Some tasks are much easier to perform with a CLI. Some are easier to perform with a GUI. Some of them work just fine with simple text menus. Think about the Roguelike games. Imagine using pulldown menus to play them. Fun, eh? Now imagine using only a CLI to do stuff in the Gimp. A GUI environment gives us more options as far as possible interfaces, but it shouldn't keep us from using non-GUI interfaces if they are more efficient.
Chainsaws with pull-down menus...
Think about it - haven't you ever used a program with a non-standard interface that was *perfectly* suited to the task at hand. Sure, you may have spent a few extra minutes getting used to it, but once you picked up the basics you could really fly. Standardization and innovation inevitably conflict. The joy of open source is that you can *fix* that awful interface if you really want to. Part of what is desperately needed with many programs is decent documentation. If a UI is properly documented, then at least it will be usable, if not enjoyable.
In truth, different people interact with a program on many different levels of efficiency and knowledge, and that if the UI designer has not addressed the issue by providing different available levels of interaction in the UI (Ex: Beginner - Menus; Expert - Hotkeys) then there will always be a set of users unhappy with the interface. Efforts aimed at making linux suitable for the masses seem mainly aimed at grafting on beginner-level interfaces to expert level tools. This is not always going to be possible. The level of complexity inherent in managing a modern operating system requires a certain level of knowledge and understanding, otherwise systems management descends to the "Reinstall If Buggered" stage. This is where windows is now. Do we really want this *that* much?
And even if the UI designer has done his best to account for beginners and experts, what can he do to deal with the reality that individuals organize their own mental models of the world in different ways? Some people work well with pictures, some with written words, some with verbal explanations, etc. There are no perfect solutions to the UI problem.
The way that MS-Windows and the Mac OS solve the problem is by introducing a certain set of UI primitives and using them over and over again. Once the user becomes familiar with these, he or she is capable of dealing with virtually all of the programs available under the operating system. Unfortunately the relatively small number of UI primitives available restricts drastically the sort of allowed user interfaces. The larger the primitive base available, the more flexibility the UI designer has in tailoring his interface to the needs of the program. At the same time, the larger the primitive base, the higher the likelihood that the new user will be unfamiliar with some of the primitives used and therefore the steeper the learning curve. It's always a trade-off.
What do you want - programs anyone can pick up and use but which never lose a certain amount of UI awkwardness or programs that require a certain level of learning to use but reward you with flexibility, power, and efficiency?
I know which I prefer.
zeke
xf86config works just fine. Sure it's a bit tedious to run through the entire proceedure each time you want to set up your system, but at least doing so is easy and relatively foolproof for most supported cards and monitors. Once you get used to the format you can just edit the config file by hand to make any changes you wish. Unfortunately, in the rush to make new, prettier, more user-friendly (brain-dead) tools, many linux distributions seem to be in the process of substituting buggier, less effective programs for older, simpler, *debugged* tools. Just because you could write your user interface to include 3-D shaded buttons and dialogue boxes doesn't mean that you should. "KISS"
zeke
If you really want to take full advantage of your monitor, then read the Modeline Howto. (the one by ESR) It'll be well worth your time. I used to run an old Nec Multisync II and used the modeline howto to tweak the very last bit of resolution out of the monitor that I could. (And I found out just how much I dislike interlaced modes!) Right now I have an old pseudo-fixed-frequency IBM 6091-19 that I have running in modes all the way from 640x480 (certain games) up to 1280x1024. If I hadn't read through the modeline howto, I probably would have never gotten it working.
For those of you out there having trouble with your monitors, try searching the manufacturer's website for specs. If that doesn't work, then try searching dejanews with the name/model of the monitor and the keyword "spec*". This has almost always worked for me. If neither of these approaches works, then you can always try fooling around with conservative settings and gradually working your way up to higher resolutions/refresh rates. (Note that I am NOT responsible if you toast your monitor or video card!) If you're trying new modes out in your XF86Config file, make sure you're never more than a Ctrl-Alt-(+/-) away from a "safe" mode. (cref: Modeline Bondage)
If you have some new, high-powered monitor, then you may never have to muck with figuring out your own modelines, but if you're using old, discarded hardware, which is where linux shines, then it can *really* improve the usability of your display. Trust me: if you can use a calculator, then you can write your own modelines, and you may very well get _better_ ones than you'd get from xf86config.
zeke
And the question no one ever seems to ask is: "Does human life have any inherent value?" If your answer is "yes", then I urge you to stop a moment and try and set down the reasons for your belief. On what assumptions do you base your valuation of human life? Can you say honestly that you do so because of carefully-thought out reasons, rather than simply as a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of your *own* life being terminated? Is there anything besides unexamined emotion behind your fear of what Singer proposed?
I can already see some of the responses:
"Humans are intelligent..."
And why does that make us special? And if somehow it really does then is intelligence a binary situation or a spectrum?
"All life has value..."
Why?
"They all have potential..."
Everything has potential. That leftover lasagna I'm pondering whether to eat or throw away has the potential to become part of a living, thinking (heh) human being. (Which, if I understand what a lot of the posters seem to be assuming, is the height of privelege. We are the wonders of creation after all.) If I throw it out, has it missed its chance? Am I an evil so-and-so for denying it the chance to tour my digestive tract, and perhaps flake off as bits of dead skin a couple of months later, indistinguishable from the hamburger I ate the next day? Virtually everything anyone ever does affects the future of someone else, positively, negatively, frequently both. If you are afraid of infringing upon someone else's potential I suggest you stay in bed. Oops. You just reduced your own potential. Oh no. What if someone else's potential depended on you fulfilling yours? Or not fulfilling? How can you handle the emotional stress?
grumpy as usual,
zeke
Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, Shockwave Rider.
Admittedly, Brunner doesn't have a firm conception of "cyberspace" as a separate existance, the base idea for most of later cyberpunk work, but these 3 novels capture very well the whole corporate-run, enviromentally decaying, privacy-free world that informs most of cyberpunk literature.
Check it out.