OK when I spoke of someone "studying maths at university" I meant studying pure maths or maths for it's own sake. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear.
Most good universities have course in "Maths for engineers/scientists/etc" - i.e. practical courses to give you mathematical tools to use in other arenas. If yours doesn't perhaps you ought to speak to someone about it.
When it comes to using maths in another discipline I agree with the original poster - there are more appropriate ways to teach it.
The assumption in what you say is that only applications are interesting and the maths behind them is 'painful' and 'boring'. A lot of mathematicians would disagree with you:)
I think everything you say is true for children and those learning maths as a tool.
But for those learning maths for its own sake - which I would hope is the case for someone studying it at university - it has to be the other way around. To gain an understanding of maths is to gain an understanding of abstract concepts not applications.
Just like in the sciences - many times we study something because it is interesting and find a use for it later on.
Take numbers - if you see numbers as basically real-world objects - the number of fingers on my left hand, my height, my bank balance - then you will run into conceptual problems with the generalised number systems. Complex numbers have no easy real-world analogues.
So it really comes down to whether you are teaching someone various uses for numbers - counting on your fingers, how to measure things, figuring out if I can afford a new PC - or whether you are teaching someone about numbers themselves.
Maths is so useful that people are always going to want to do the former - I just hope that we keep on doing the later.
Look at it from Oracle's point of view. One of your biggest assets is the sole access to the source code of your product.
Doesn't matter whether you make more money from Services or Licenses. At the end of the day people come to you for Licenses if they want Oracle DBMS. They come to you for Services because you know the Oracle DBMS better than anyone in the world. So BOTH your revenue streams are dependant (at least in part) on the fact you have the Source.
So if you give the Source away - you've given away your competitive advantage. MAYBE you can make money from distribution - but not from Licenses. CERTAINLY you can make money from Services - you're doing it now - but giving away the Source is giving away your main competitive advantage in this arena. In a few years - maybe less - you are just one amongst many Services companies competing for the Oracle DBMS Services market.
So would you survive financially? Definitely. Would you be making more money than you are now? Almost certainly not. In order for that to happen - the increase in the overall Oracle Services market would have to be so much that Oracle Corp's share offsets the loss of License Fees.
Best case scenario you're taking a big risk for a moderate financial gain. I can't see the shareholders going for it can you?
Re:When did Linux first appear?
on
Linux Anecdotes
·
· Score: 2
According to Rebel Code (excellent book by the way) 0.01 was released September '91 - but Linus only told a group of friends he'd met ont the Minix newsgroup. 0.02 was announced on the newsgroup on 5th Oct 1991.
I'd be very happy indeed if Word only trashed my documents once every twenty times I used it, or if Outlook only locked up once every twenty times I started it, or if Windows 98 only hung on shutdown (requiring a fsck^H^H^H^Hscandisk on bootup) once every twenty times
I've been using Windows 98 for two and half years - in that time it's hung a handful of times.
I've been using Word for much longer and never had it trash my documents - although it has saved my skin a couple of times by recovering a document for me. To be fair I only use it for small documents - maybe 3 or 4 times a month - so I'm not exactly stressing it.
As for Outlook - I've used it constantly at work for the last 3 years. I rely it on it. It's always been completely stable. The only problem I've had is the FunLove virus. I haven't seen another email client with as much functionality, capacity and stability. There's certainly no free software (that I'm aware of) that will handle the volume of email I go through at work.
I'm no Microsoft zealot at all - but I have found the stability and useability of these programs to be acceptable. If your experience is that Win 98, Word and Outlook crash, hang and corrupt your files more than 1 in 20 times - you've either had very bad luck or you need some help with configuration.
You are right. This is the classic thing most people struggle with when they study probability - the difference between the probability of the next in a series of mutually exclusive events versus the probability of the group of events seen as a whole
True story - when I was studying Maths at University we had a lecture on this - the example was rolling dice. A single roll always has the same probability regardless of what you just rolled. On the other hand the probability of rolling say 3 6's in a row is a different thing.
That evening I was playing Monopoly with some friends. One guy, Richard - Business & Marketing - had a strange habit. He asked to be allowed to 'nominate' his dice roll, he would roll the dice several times and then say 'OK the next one counts'. He was convinced that if he had rolled a series of low scores the probability of a high score was greater!
I started off thinking I could just explain his 'simple error' to him. Later, frustrated I was just begging him to trust my word as a Mathematician. Never under-estimate the power of competitive spirit!
...is that the 'mud' puzzle relies on all the boys reasoning correctly and quickly.
Based on the evidence of their eyes none of the boys can reliably argue they have or have not mud. Once the winning boy sees that neither of the other boys has worked anything out he ASSUMES that it is because he (winner) has mud on his head. However that is a good bet rather than a proof. The other boys could be poor logicians or just slower than him.
So the mud puzzle has a 'best bet' answer based on some difficult to quantify factors (the other boys' abilities), whereas the hats problem has a answer which has a probability of success you can calculate absolutely.
Meta-movie wise, we have people who are more efficient within a computer system than the unenlightened (term is my own)
I think you'll find the word 'unenlightened' has been around for a while - so I don't think you can claim it as your term. I think you probably mean that you have your own special meaning for 'unenlightened' presumably those who are not 'efficient within a computer system'.
'Meta-movie' is a new one on me though - you could claim that one and get away with it. Although it's a strange concoction. The Meta- prefix usually implies some sort of self-referential function - e.g. meta-data is data which describes other data, meta-moderation is moderation of the moderators etc.
So I guess a meta-movie would be a movie about a movie. But that doesn't fit the context you use it in.
At least not in the way people mean when they talk about breaking them.
Physics - indeed science in general - is basically a collection of so-far not disproven hypotheses - which are based on observation, experimentation and logical (mathematical) deduction.
There are no immutable 'laws' - there are only hypothesis for which no exception has been found.
It's actually really important that scientists don't think in terms of 'laws' - because most major leaps forward occur due to someone 'breaking' then re-inventing one of these laws. Or put it another way - we come across these observations which don't fit the hypothesis so we have to ask 2 questions
1) are the observations correct?
2) is the hypothesis correct?
If we think in terms of unbreakable laws we'll throw out Question 2 at the beginning.
Fortunately most scientists don't talk in terms of laws - it's a popular science term.
Not only does the GPL allow you to charge whatever you like for distribution but FSF and Stallman encourage you to make as much money as you can this way and plough the profits back into Free Software. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
The main point of the GPL is to make sure that Free Software stays Free. It is designed to keep the Source available down the chain. So if you distribute Binaries+Source you can charge what you like. If you you have Binary only CD or download then the cost of also acquiring the Source has to be reasonable. This is to stop someone making the cost of Source so high as to effectively restrict it again.
1. fscking is not an adjective it's a verb - it has to do with checking your file systems for errors. File systems are something that computers have not human beings. I know you find Europeans strange and all but we are still human!
2. Both MATH and MATHS are shortenings of MATHEMATICS (note the s here). So technically neither are formally correct since they are contractions not the word itself.
3. The EU does not have subjects it has citizens.
4. The EU covers many millions of non-English speaking people. I suspect the majority of the EU do not refer to either MATH or MATHS but their own language equivalent.
5. The UK has subjects who bizarrely are also EU citizens - but that's a quirk due mainly to the fact that whilst we do have a constitution (despite what you might have heard) it's not a written one.
6. "There is only one correct math, you know." That's incorrect - there are many types of maths - all you really require is a set of axioms and a logically consistent way of stating and proving arguments. If anything that makes MATHS sound more correct than MATH - since it's a collection of disciplines rather than a single one.
7. I think you mean "There is only one correct way to spell math." But that's untrue also. Maths is accepted as correct in the UK and Math in the US. Correct spelling is a relatively new concept anyway. Language is fluid - attempts to define it and then set that definition in stone always fail. In a hundred years they could be calling it Mat (or Mats).
8. Or perhaps you really meant - "All your MATH are belong to us"
If you want to write letters to mommy and daddy, or a letter to the editor at your local newspaper, then Abiword, kword, staroffice, etc, are fine. If you do SERIOUS writing: research, scientific publishing, etc, then they are pathetic toys of no use - merely glorified text editors.
I really object to the tone of this - the implication that scientific papers or research articles are somehow more important than other kinds of writing. You have a good point that the linux WPs don't have the features you obviously need - but why do you feel it necessary to make that point by putting down other people's work?
Let me put it this way - if I was responsible for deciding which features got included when in a Word Processor, I think I'd go for the most widely used ones first. Like it or not 99% of all Word Processing is writing letters and simple documents.
I wasn't saying LinuxPPC was evil. I just said I found it hard to install.
You didn't - that's great for you. But before you dismiss my point of view - I'm guessing you're either more of a techie than me, or more familiar with Macs or both.
Oh and we didn't start with a blank hard disk. We started with a blank disc plus a disc with Mac OS on. Dual boot installations are always trickier than a clean install from scratch.
The ability to pipeline commands is something that currently can only be had at the command line; I have seen a couple of discussions on/. about possibly extending this concept to a GUI, but as of now, it hasn't been done.
Have a look at Microsoft GraphEdit. It's a very simple interface to a series of 'filters' - programs which convert one kind of input into another type of output. You choose a filter and it's displayed as a box on screen. It has one little tabs for it's inputs and outputs. To pipe commands you connect one filter's output with another's input with a line. Some filters have more than one output or input - e.g. split an AVI into audio and video streams.
Once you've joined all the dots you press a 'play' type button and it goes off and runs the commands you've defined. It's pretty cool.
Of course it hasn't got scripting in the sense of a programming language. Nor has it got the ability to take an output from any program - it's got to be written to conform the the filter standard - and I don't know how open it is. But it is the closest thing I've seen in a GUI to a CLI pipe.
I don't think we'll successfully make the computer an appliance until we have something that's still 20-30 years off. Powerful Artificial Intelligence with Natural Language processing (probably tied to voice recognition but that's not essential).
Why do I think that? Because there's never been a machine like the computer before. Let me discuss two types of machine that computers are most often compared to - appliances and tools.
Appliances are machines which do one thing well - TVs, Phones, Stereos, Cars - whatever. They have one main function to perform. So when you learn to use a TV - you learn a few key concepts - ON/OFF, channels, Volume - and you can work it. If you master all the functions your TV has to offer - you still basically do only one thing with it - watch TV programs. It's easy to use because it only does one thing.
Tools are different in that they can be used to do many things. However often they still only do one thing - it's just that that one thing can be applied to many situations. A screw-driver can be used to fix or remove screws from a variety of objects. What's interesting is that although there's more applications for a tool than an appliance - the key to unlock that potential lies in the skill, knowledge and experience of the user - not in the tool itself.
Of course there are tools that can perform more than one function - the Swiss Army Knife. But that's really a group of tools stuck together. The point is it still has a limited number of things it can do.
Now a computer is programmable - which is to say if you can describe a way to do it the computer can do it. There's an infinite number of things it can do (which is not the same as saying it can do everything). But now the key to all this power is the programming. Programming is something of a specialised skill - like being a car mechanic or TV repair person. If you're a programmer and you have the software tools - you can acheive an unlimited number of things with your computer. If you're not a programmer - you're limited to those things for which someone has already written a program, or for which you can persuade, pay a programmer to write a program for.
You can make an OS which makes a computer easy to learn - which makes it more like an appliance - but you limit what someone can do with it. Or you can make an OS that makes it easy for you to write programs - but then it's no longer easy to use.
The logical solution is to make software (I wouldn't call it an OS but you could) which means you communicate to the computer in natural language and it writes the programs to do what you want it to do.
"Good morning Computer can you record the movie on TV tonight, do my tax returns and while you're doing that I'd like to play a first person shooter based game based on that SciFi novel I read last week."
Please. When's the last time you installed a Linux distribution? 1995?
He probably tried to install one of the Mac distributions
About a year ago I tried to help my friend install LinuxPPC on his Mac. We got it up and running in the end - but it was like the bad old days. I'd say that LinuxPPC was a year ago where Linux for x86 was in 94/95. (I did my first install in 94 so I know what it was like).
From what I've heard I doubt whether LinuxPPC has moved on at the same rate as the core x86 distributions. So if you're installing Linux on a Mac you probably are in 1995.
1. The fortune program of my Psion has this in its tiny database -
The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned
I tend to believe that. I hated Windows 95 when I moved from my familiar Windows 3.1 - because I had learned the interface. Similarly I hate the famously easy Mac OS interface when I occasionally use my friend's Mac - because it's not the Windows 95,98,NT interface I'm now used to.
Give me a few days of constant use and I'm sure I'll be proficient with it.
2. A successful linux UI will be one that will be designed as if the command line never existed
Maybe, maybe not. Such a UI would be well suited to a non-techie desktop user. To me the most successful linux UI IS the command line.
It always amazes me the way people talk about the GUI for linux. Linux is an open-source clone of unix.
Open-source means it is driven by the people who write it - so it's primarily a programmers OS. It also mean that it's pulled in different directions and that for every problem there's 5 different solutions (none of them finished!). There is no coherent design in linux as a whole because what we call linux (i.e. the distributions) are loose collections of a lot of different people's work. Linux is a pick-n-mix of OS, tools, GUI, applications.
And being Unix-like means its greatest strength is the power of the command-line. The power of the command line is the ability to combine many programs each of which do a single thing well. What Unix command line has over say DOS is the ability to script those combinations allowing more flexibility. I've yet to see these things done well in a GUI, where they've been attempted at all. Which is not to say that GUIs are bad - they just have different strengths.
My point is that linux origins and its development style tend to direct it away from being an end-user desktop OS. It tends towards being a server OS with a quirky but useable GUI.
wow I didn't realise how strongly I felt until I wrote this! Rant over.
Slashdot Mirror
OK when I spoke of someone "studying maths at university" I meant studying pure maths or maths for it's own sake. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear.
Most good universities have course in "Maths for engineers/scientists/etc" - i.e. practical courses to give you mathematical tools to use in other arenas. If yours doesn't perhaps you ought to speak to someone about it.
When it comes to using maths in another discipline I agree with the original poster - there are more appropriate ways to teach it.
sure - and I can think of others. Certain field equations in electronics express current in terms of complex numbers.
That wasn't really my point - I was trying to explain how understanding based on analogy can limit you.
btw - I'm not anti that way of teaching maths - but there has to be both - particularly at higher levels.
The assumption in what you say is that only applications are interesting and the maths behind them is 'painful' and 'boring'. A lot of mathematicians would disagree with you :)
I think everything you say is true for children and those learning maths as a tool.
But for those learning maths for its own sake - which I would hope is the case for someone studying it at university - it has to be the other way around. To gain an understanding of maths is to gain an understanding of abstract concepts not applications.
Just like in the sciences - many times we study something because it is interesting and find a use for it later on.
Take numbers - if you see numbers as basically real-world objects - the number of fingers on my left hand, my height, my bank balance - then you will run into conceptual problems with the generalised number systems. Complex numbers have no easy real-world analogues.
So it really comes down to whether you are teaching someone various uses for numbers - counting on your fingers, how to measure things, figuring out if I can afford a new PC - or whether you are teaching someone about numbers themselves.
Maths is so useful that people are always going to want to do the former - I just hope that we keep on doing the later.
You're right to focus on the economic issue.
Will it happen? I very much doubt it.
Look at it from Oracle's point of view. One of your biggest assets is the sole access to the source code of your product.
Doesn't matter whether you make more money from Services or Licenses. At the end of the day people come to you for Licenses if they want Oracle DBMS. They come to you for Services because you know the Oracle DBMS better than anyone in the world. So BOTH your revenue streams are dependant (at least in part) on the fact you have the Source.
So if you give the Source away - you've given away your competitive advantage. MAYBE you can make money from distribution - but not from Licenses. CERTAINLY you can make money from Services - you're doing it now - but giving away the Source is giving away your main competitive advantage in this arena. In a few years - maybe less - you are just one amongst many Services companies competing for the Oracle DBMS Services market.
So would you survive financially? Definitely. Would you be making more money than you are now? Almost certainly not. In order for that to happen - the increase in the overall Oracle Services market would have to be so much that Oracle Corp's share offsets the loss of License Fees.
Best case scenario you're taking a big risk for a moderate financial gain. I can't see the shareholders going for it can you?
According to Rebel Code (excellent book by the way) 0.01 was released September '91 - but Linus only told a group of friends he'd met ont the Minix newsgroup. 0.02 was announced on the newsgroup on 5th Oct 1991.
Answer to your sig - 'cos liGNUx is ugly
I've been using Windows 98 for two and half years - in that time it's hung a handful of times.
I've been using Word for much longer and never had it trash my documents - although it has saved my skin a couple of times by recovering a document for me. To be fair I only use it for small documents - maybe 3 or 4 times a month - so I'm not exactly stressing it.
As for Outlook - I've used it constantly at work for the last 3 years. I rely it on it. It's always been completely stable. The only problem I've had is the FunLove virus. I haven't seen another email client with as much functionality, capacity and stability. There's certainly no free software (that I'm aware of) that will handle the volume of email I go through at work.
I'm no Microsoft zealot at all - but I have found the stability and useability of these programs to be acceptable. If your experience is that Win 98, Word and Outlook crash, hang and corrupt your files more than 1 in 20 times - you've either had very bad luck or you need some help with configuration.
You are right. This is the classic thing most people struggle with when they study probability - the difference between the probability of the next in a series of mutually exclusive events versus the probability of the group of events seen as a whole
True story - when I was studying Maths at University we had a lecture on this - the example was rolling dice. A single roll always has the same probability regardless of what you just rolled. On the other hand the probability of rolling say 3 6's in a row is a different thing.
That evening I was playing Monopoly with some friends. One guy, Richard - Business & Marketing - had a strange habit. He asked to be allowed to 'nominate' his dice roll, he would roll the dice several times and then say 'OK the next one counts'. He was convinced that if he had rolled a series of low scores the probability of a high score was greater!
I started off thinking I could just explain his 'simple error' to him. Later, frustrated I was just begging him to trust my word as a Mathematician. Never under-estimate the power of competitive spirit!
We never finished the game...
...is that the 'mud' puzzle relies on all the boys reasoning correctly and quickly.
Based on the evidence of their eyes none of the boys can reliably argue they have or have not mud. Once the winning boy sees that neither of the other boys has worked anything out he ASSUMES that it is because he (winner) has mud on his head. However that is a good bet rather than a proof. The other boys could be poor logicians or just slower than him.
So the mud puzzle has a 'best bet' answer based on some difficult to quantify factors (the other boys' abilities), whereas the hats problem has a answer which has a probability of success you can calculate absolutely.
I understood you - I was just kinda teasing :)
You have an interesting way of expressing yourself.
Meta-movie wise, we have people who are more efficient within a computer system than the unenlightened (term is my own)
I think you'll find the word 'unenlightened' has been around for a while - so I don't think you can claim it as your term. I think you probably mean that you have your own special meaning for 'unenlightened' presumably those who are not 'efficient within a computer system'.
'Meta-movie' is a new one on me though - you could claim that one and get away with it. Although it's a strange concoction. The Meta- prefix usually implies some sort of self-referential function - e.g. meta-data is data which describes other data, meta-moderation is moderation of the moderators etc.
So I guess a meta-movie would be a movie about a movie. But that doesn't fit the context you use it in.
So help me out here - what does Meta-movie mean?
Neo is found by Morpheus - but Neo has been searching for Morpheus for some time.
At least not in the way people mean when they talk about breaking them.
Physics - indeed science in general - is basically a collection of so-far not disproven hypotheses - which are based on observation, experimentation and logical (mathematical) deduction.
There are no immutable 'laws' - there are only hypothesis for which no exception has been found.
It's actually really important that scientists don't think in terms of 'laws' - because most major leaps forward occur due to someone 'breaking' then re-inventing one of these laws. Or put it another way - we come across these observations which don't fit the hypothesis so we have to ask 2 questions
1) are the observations correct?
2) is the hypothesis correct?
If we think in terms of unbreakable laws we'll throw out Question 2 at the beginning.
Fortunately most scientists don't talk in terms of laws - it's a popular science term.
You were right the first time.
Not only does the GPL allow you to charge whatever you like for distribution but FSF and Stallman encourage you to make as much money as you can this way and plough the profits back into Free Software. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
The main point of the GPL is to make sure that Free Software stays Free. It is designed to keep the Source available down the chain. So if you distribute Binaries+Source you can charge what you like. If you you have Binary only CD or download then the cost of also acquiring the Source has to be reasonable. This is to stop someone making the cost of Source so high as to effectively restrict it again.
Do you know if it's possible to do an upgrade from 7.0 - through a proxy?
1. fscking is not an adjective it's a verb - it has to do with checking your file systems for errors. File systems are something that computers have not human beings. I know you find Europeans strange and all but we are still human!
2. Both MATH and MATHS are shortenings of MATHEMATICS (note the s here). So technically neither are formally correct since they are contractions not the word itself.
3. The EU does not have subjects it has citizens.
4. The EU covers many millions of non-English speaking people. I suspect the majority of the EU do not refer to either MATH or MATHS but their own language equivalent.
5. The UK has subjects who bizarrely are also EU citizens - but that's a quirk due mainly to the fact that whilst we do have a constitution (despite what you might have heard) it's not a written one.
6. "There is only one correct math, you know." That's incorrect - there are many types of maths - all you really require is a set of axioms and a logically consistent way of stating and proving arguments. If anything that makes MATHS sound more correct than MATH - since it's a collection of disciplines rather than a single one.
7. I think you mean "There is only one correct way to spell math." But that's untrue also. Maths is accepted as correct in the UK and Math in the US. Correct spelling is a relatively new concept anyway. Language is fluid - attempts to define it and then set that definition in stone always fail. In a hundred years they could be calling it Mat (or Mats).
8. Or perhaps you really meant - "All your MATH are belong to us"
Have a nice day.
If you want to write letters to mommy and daddy, or a letter to the editor at your local newspaper, then Abiword, kword, staroffice, etc, are fine. If you do SERIOUS writing: research, scientific publishing, etc, then they are pathetic toys of no use - merely glorified text editors.
I really object to the tone of this - the implication that scientific papers or research articles are somehow more important than other kinds of writing. You have a good point that the linux WPs don't have the features you obviously need - but why do you feel it necessary to make that point by putting down other people's work?
Let me put it this way - if I was responsible for deciding which features got included when in a Word Processor, I think I'd go for the most widely used ones first. Like it or not 99% of all Word Processing is writing letters and simple documents.
Yeah.
I think the real reason behind that decision is Apple deciding they'd take less flak for not releasing a DVD-player than for releasing a mediocre one.
Why are you taking this personally?
I wasn't saying LinuxPPC was evil. I just said I found it hard to install.
You didn't - that's great for you. But before you dismiss my point of view - I'm guessing you're either more of a techie than me, or more familiar with Macs or both.
Oh and we didn't start with a blank hard disk. We started with a blank disc plus a disc with Mac OS on. Dual boot installations are always trickier than a clean install from scratch.
Have a look at Microsoft GraphEdit. It's a very simple interface to a series of 'filters' - programs which convert one kind of input into another type of output. You choose a filter and it's displayed as a box on screen. It has one little tabs for it's inputs and outputs. To pipe commands you connect one filter's output with another's input with a line. Some filters have more than one output or input - e.g. split an AVI into audio and video streams.
Once you've joined all the dots you press a 'play' type button and it goes off and runs the commands you've defined. It's pretty cool.
Of course it hasn't got scripting in the sense of a programming language. Nor has it got the ability to take an output from any program - it's got to be written to conform the the filter standard - and I don't know how open it is. But it is the closest thing I've seen in a GUI to a CLI pipe.
I don't think we'll successfully make the computer an appliance until we have something that's still 20-30 years off. Powerful Artificial Intelligence with Natural Language processing (probably tied to voice recognition but that's not essential).
Why do I think that? Because there's never been a machine like the computer before. Let me discuss two types of machine that computers are most often compared to - appliances and tools.
Appliances are machines which do one thing well - TVs, Phones, Stereos, Cars - whatever. They have one main function to perform. So when you learn to use a TV - you learn a few key concepts - ON/OFF, channels, Volume - and you can work it. If you master all the functions your TV has to offer - you still basically do only one thing with it - watch TV programs. It's easy to use because it only does one thing.
Tools are different in that they can be used to do many things. However often they still only do one thing - it's just that that one thing can be applied to many situations. A screw-driver can be used to fix or remove screws from a variety of objects. What's interesting is that although there's more applications for a tool than an appliance - the key to unlock that potential lies in the skill, knowledge and experience of the user - not in the tool itself.
Of course there are tools that can perform more than one function - the Swiss Army Knife. But that's really a group of tools stuck together. The point is it still has a limited number of things it can do.
Now a computer is programmable - which is to say if you can describe a way to do it the computer can do it. There's an infinite number of things it can do (which is not the same as saying it can do everything). But now the key to all this power is the programming. Programming is something of a specialised skill - like being a car mechanic or TV repair person. If you're a programmer and you have the software tools - you can acheive an unlimited number of things with your computer. If you're not a programmer - you're limited to those things for which someone has already written a program, or for which you can persuade, pay a programmer to write a program for.
You can make an OS which makes a computer easy to learn - which makes it more like an appliance - but you limit what someone can do with it. Or you can make an OS that makes it easy for you to write programs - but then it's no longer easy to use.
The logical solution is to make software (I wouldn't call it an OS but you could) which means you communicate to the computer in natural language and it writes the programs to do what you want it to do.
"Good morning Computer can you record the movie on TV tonight, do my tax returns and while you're doing that I'd like to play a first person shooter based game based on that SciFi novel I read last week."
Uuugggh - admins doing cartwheels and licking themselves - that imagery is going to give me nightmares! Thanks a lot!
He probably tried to install one of the Mac distributions
About a year ago I tried to help my friend install LinuxPPC on his Mac. We got it up and running in the end - but it was like the bad old days. I'd say that LinuxPPC was a year ago where Linux for x86 was in 94/95. (I did my first install in 94 so I know what it was like).
From what I've heard I doubt whether LinuxPPC has moved on at the same rate as the core x86 distributions. So if you're installing Linux on a Mac you probably are in 1995.
1. The fortune program of my Psion has this in its tiny database -
The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned
I tend to believe that. I hated Windows 95 when I moved from my familiar Windows 3.1 - because I had learned the interface. Similarly I hate the famously easy Mac OS interface when I occasionally use my friend's Mac - because it's not the Windows 95,98,NT interface I'm now used to. Give me a few days of constant use and I'm sure I'll be proficient with it.2. A successful linux UI will be one that will be designed as if the command line never existed
Maybe, maybe not. Such a UI would be well suited to a non-techie desktop user. To me the most successful linux UI IS the command line.
It always amazes me the way people talk about the GUI for linux. Linux is an open-source clone of unix.
Open-source means it is driven by the people who write it - so it's primarily a programmers OS. It also mean that it's pulled in different directions and that for every problem there's 5 different solutions (none of them finished!). There is no coherent design in linux as a whole because what we call linux (i.e. the distributions) are loose collections of a lot of different people's work. Linux is a pick-n-mix of OS, tools, GUI, applications.
And being Unix-like means its greatest strength is the power of the command-line. The power of the command line is the ability to combine many programs each of which do a single thing well. What Unix command line has over say DOS is the ability to script those combinations allowing more flexibility. I've yet to see these things done well in a GUI, where they've been attempted at all. Which is not to say that GUIs are bad - they just have different strengths.
My point is that linux origins and its development style tend to direct it away from being an end-user desktop OS. It tends towards being a server OS with a quirky but useable GUI.
wow I didn't realise how strongly I felt until I wrote this! Rant over.
I'm English and we (mostly) use the Metric system.
The older system (feet and inches, pounds and ounces) is referred to as Imperial.
I take it in the US it's called 'English' - weird.
You mean Bruce Willis could 'bore' us 100 times quicker!
hehehe