I know it's off topic to reply to a.sig, but the page you link to pre-assumes that there is only one Matrix, it doesn't prove it. One has to start somewhere, and the writeup may be a very good one, but one could come to a very different conclusion if one didn't begin with that assumption.
I agree completely with the point you made in your post. However, I am curious about your reason to use Mandrake (a great distro IMHO). I don't want to start a flame war, but how can you use GNU/Linux at all, since so many of the main developers are based in the US (not least of which are Linus and RMS)? Wouldn't OpenBSD be more in line with your political views, since it's based in Canada? I know this is kind of off topic and I'm nitpicking, so don't reply if you don't want to.
If SCO can make wild accusations and unsubstantiated claims of violations against Linux, what's to stop them from doing the same against *BSD or GNU software (remember, BSD people use GCC too)? SCO doesn't go after *BSD because they're not as well known and widely used as Linux (for whatever reason), not because they're any less infringing.
Indeed, they are claiming the IBM suit is not about copyrights and patents (I refuse to use the term IP, since I don't believe it is a valid concept). If neither copyrights nor patents are involved, how can it affect GNU/Linux users and developers other than IBM?
What the CEO said in the conference call just confirmed to me that the attack on Linux is nothing more than FUD. He said that SCO saw they weren't making money distributing GNU/Linux, so they decided to discontinue it and focus on their own Unix products. My interpretation is that they need to encourage people to start using SCO products that cost lots of money; why would they switch from something that's free? When it was asked what current Caldera Linux users should do, the CEO said that SCO Unix products work nearly everywhere GNU/Linux ones do. He also pointed out how some people are delaying their use of GNU/Linux because of SCO's recent letter, so they're succeeding in the FUD campaign.
Microsoft's licensing agreement with SCO comes way too close to be a coincidence. They either saw a great opportunity to contribute to some Linux FUD and ran with it, or they were in on it from the start.
Yeah, a corporation's responsibility is to its stockholders. As much money as possible should be returned to them. Then, they can give to charities. Charitable giving should be done by individuals. There's a lot less potential for abuse that way.
Indeed, that's why I frequent Starbucks about once every six months. Sometimes I buy the Starbucks brand beans to make in my own machine; that's a lot cheaper.
I think you're right. "To be" is an infinitive, so "to be Slashdotted" is probably some kind of infinitive phrase. Of course, you shouldn't verb nouns anyway.
As a United Statesian (what is Estadounidense in English?) growing up in South and Central America, I always preferred US money for its value, but the local currencies for their appearance. US money is so boring and uniform, though it's usually pretty clean (that is, lacking dirt). Also, US coins all being round is boring. In Suriname, we had square ones.
I didn't know what VC meant until I read the article (which I did before reading comments). Of course, maybe/. posts should be written in such a way that those who haven't read the article look dumb. That would make it easier to weed out a lot of clueless posts.
You're not delusional as much as ignorant. First, IPv6 has existed for a number of years. It is not a reinvention, but a an evolution of IP to make it more scalable. Second, the value of IP and the Internet is that they are generic, not burdened by application specific details. There's a reason for the protocol stack: to keep application details at the top.
Some people don't care about the difference, but Bob demonstrated his ignorance by stating that RMS is an "open-source software guru," when Richard doesn't even agree with Open Source. Bob failed to notice that there are idealogical, business, and pleasure (Linus did it just for fun) reasons for Free/Open Source software. In general, Bob's attitude seems to be that the bottom line is all that matters, which is silly, IMHO.
Well, that's certainly true, at least until things like MathML and SVG are universally implemented. Hopefully, XHTML + MathML + SVG + CSS will enable all the stuff needed for those types of documents without resorting to a page description language, but PS or PDF will still probably be preferable for printing.
Isn't it really a procedural language? Does it have functions as first class objects and higher-order functions? I guess some definitions of "functional" only involve having functions.
If you're that concerned about what "society" thinks about cool, but useless hacks, I question how much of a nerd (or geek for that matter) you really are.
You can write any program in PostScript you could write in any other language, assuming all other languages are constrained to Turing machines. Probably most currently are.
I read an article recently that pointed out that the Turing machine wasn't intended to be a universal computer, able to solve all computable problems. Turing described a couple of other machine models which were intended to be more general than the one which currently bears his name. He only described them in very general terms, so most people have forgotten about them.
After Turing was dead, some computer scientists decided that the one model he had described in detail was sufficient for everything, though he and some of his contemporaries had been convinced otherwise.
I haven't yet learned it myself, but I've talked to my roommate extensively about Forth. He uses it for embedded system development. Apparently, quite a bit is done in Forth using only the stack. He told me it took him a couple of years to completely assimilate the Forth way of thinking, but now he prefers it to the C way. He said he writes better C code now for having learned Forth. The trick seems to be writing very short, concise words and aggressively refactoring them whenever possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I know it's off topic to reply to a .sig, but the page you link to pre-assumes that there is only one Matrix, it doesn't prove it. One has to start somewhere, and the writeup may be a very good one, but one could come to a very different conclusion if one didn't begin with that assumption.
No thanks, I don't want to see any nekked barristers.
I agree completely with the point you made in your post. However, I am curious about your reason to use Mandrake (a great distro IMHO). I don't want to start a flame war, but how can you use GNU/Linux at all, since so many of the main developers are based in the US (not least of which are Linus and RMS)? Wouldn't OpenBSD be more in line with your political views, since it's based in Canada? I know this is kind of off topic and I'm nitpicking, so don't reply if you don't want to.
If SCO can make wild accusations and unsubstantiated claims of violations against Linux, what's to stop them from doing the same against *BSD or GNU software (remember, BSD people use GCC too)? SCO doesn't go after *BSD because they're not as well known and widely used as Linux (for whatever reason), not because they're any less infringing.
Indeed, they are claiming the IBM suit is not about copyrights and patents (I refuse to use the term IP, since I don't believe it is a valid concept). If neither copyrights nor patents are involved, how can it affect GNU/Linux users and developers other than IBM?
What the CEO said in the conference call just confirmed to me that the attack on Linux is nothing more than FUD. He said that SCO saw they weren't making money distributing GNU/Linux, so they decided to discontinue it and focus on their own Unix products. My interpretation is that they need to encourage people to start using SCO products that cost lots of money; why would they switch from something that's free? When it was asked what current Caldera Linux users should do, the CEO said that SCO Unix products work nearly everywhere GNU/Linux ones do. He also pointed out how some people are delaying their use of GNU/Linux because of SCO's recent letter, so they're succeeding in the FUD campaign.
Microsoft's licensing agreement with SCO comes way too close to be a coincidence. They either saw a great opportunity to contribute to some Linux FUD and ran with it, or they were in on it from the start.
Yes, I guess it was a poor attempt at humor.
Yeah, a corporation's responsibility is to its stockholders. As much money as possible should be returned to them. Then, they can give to charities. Charitable giving should be done by individuals. There's a lot less potential for abuse that way.
Indeed, that's why I frequent Starbucks about once every six months. Sometimes I buy the Starbucks brand beans to make in my own machine; that's a lot cheaper.
I think you're right. "To be" is an infinitive, so "to be Slashdotted" is probably some kind of infinitive phrase. Of course, you shouldn't verb nouns anyway.
As a United Statesian (what is Estadounidense in English?) growing up in South and Central America, I always preferred US money for its value, but the local currencies for their appearance. US money is so boring and uniform, though it's usually pretty clean (that is, lacking dirt). Also, US coins all being round is boring. In Suriname, we had square ones.
I didn't know what VC meant until I read the article (which I did before reading comments). Of course, maybe /. posts should be written in such a way that those who haven't read the article look dumb. That would make it easier to weed out a lot of clueless posts.
You're not delusional as much as ignorant. First, IPv6 has existed for a number of years. It is not a reinvention, but a an evolution of IP to make it more scalable. Second, the value of IP and the Internet is that they are generic, not burdened by application specific details. There's a reason for the protocol stack: to keep application details at the top.
Some people don't care about the difference, but Bob demonstrated his ignorance by stating that RMS is an "open-source software guru," when Richard doesn't even agree with Open Source. Bob failed to notice that there are idealogical, business, and pleasure (Linus did it just for fun) reasons for Free/Open Source software. In general, Bob's attitude seems to be that the bottom line is all that matters, which is silly, IMHO.
And who tends to promote interoperability more than Free Software and Open Source authors?
Well, that's certainly true, at least until things like MathML and SVG are universally implemented. Hopefully, XHTML + MathML + SVG + CSS will enable all the stuff needed for those types of documents without resorting to a page description language, but PS or PDF will still probably be preferable for printing.
I'd be trying this out right now, except my Postscript printer is the CUPS Ghostscript driver, so it'd be kinda silly.
How is PDF more device independent than PS?
Isn't it really a procedural language? Does it have functions as first class objects and higher-order functions? I guess some definitions of "functional" only involve having functions.
If you're that concerned about what "society" thinks about cool, but useless hacks, I question how much of a nerd (or geek for that matter) you really are.
Now that's a cool (and useful) hack. The only downside is that you can't get the results back from the printer except on hardcopy.
So, how has PDF improved representing equations and figures over Postscript?
You can write any program in PostScript you could write in any other language, assuming all other languages are constrained to Turing machines. Probably most currently are.
I read an article recently that pointed out that the Turing machine wasn't intended to be a universal computer, able to solve all computable problems. Turing described a couple of other machine models which were intended to be more general than the one which currently bears his name. He only described them in very general terms, so most people have forgotten about them.
After Turing was dead, some computer scientists decided that the one model he had described in detail was sufficient for everything, though he and some of his contemporaries had been convinced otherwise.
I haven't yet learned it myself, but I've talked to my roommate extensively about Forth. He uses it for embedded system development. Apparently, quite a bit is done in Forth using only the stack. He told me it took him a couple of years to completely assimilate the Forth way of thinking, but now he prefers it to the C way. He said he writes better C code now for having learned Forth. The trick seems to be writing very short, concise words and aggressively refactoring them whenever possible.
It might work to simply put it in notepad, then print. Of course, notepad or windows might add junk and break the syntax.
Why? Sexyfully is funnier.