In the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, Ex Post Facto laws are expressly forbidden.
In English, that means that no law may be passed condemming actions that have already occurred. Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so take my advice with the appropriate quantities of salt.
Ghostscript comes with a Postscript to PDF converter. So you're only problem is to get Postscript documents. On a Windows PC, all you need to do is add a driver for any PostScript printer and then check the "Print to File" box. Rename the file to have a.ps extension since Windows will force.prn and then you're set.
On UNIX or Linux, generating a.ps is generally easy and ps2pdf is included in the ghostscript distribution.
It's really easy to write a program that will run on Mac Os X, Windows, Solaris, Linux, IRIX, etc. in just one object file. All you need to do is write it in Java.
Contrary to popular belief, modern Java programs written by competant software engineers can be quite fast. Unfortunately, none of the Java Open Source projects seem to be doing that, and have petered out. Too bad.
More importantly, if you don't do serious work in assembler sometimes, you won't understand the machine.
I agree. Everyone needs to write a non-trivial program in assembly for at least one computer. That single project will give you in intimate understanding of the underlying architecture on modern computers, and make all of your work better.
It's best, however, if that project does not escape into the real world, because your assembly hack is not a good program. You'll not use complex data structures or advanced object oriented design in assembly - there's too many nit-picky details for mere mortals.
The tools of the modern C++, Java, programming languages allow a fully thought-out, engineered software design. The tools of the assembler allow near optimal implementations of hige-traffic areas. A good mix of these tools can provide fast, robust, and maintainable projects.
Why are optimizing compilers bad? You can still optimize the slow stuff by hand, and you can get the (mythical) 2x performance boost over the rest of your code too. And how did you find out where that 99% of your run-time was spent? In the profiler.
My point was that there is a much bigger win from prifiling your program and reengineering the hot spots (perhaps by assembly, but better algorithms and data structures in the general case).
The only time you should have to resort to assembly is when you have absolutely performance critical tasks, ie Interrupt Service Routines.
There's two ways to look at this. A good programmer shouldn't need to resort to assembly in nearly all cases since a good algorithm and software design will do the trick. Hand-optimized assembly is difficult to maintain.
Learning to spot optimizable spots in assembly is probably not a good application of time, since a profiler will happily tell you where in your code you should consider optimizing.
This story reminds me of the movie Real Genius. The parallels are staggering: Big laser mounted in a plane to be able to fire anywhere. In the movie, they talked about a 5 MegaWatt laser, and here they are saying the laser is more than 1 MegaWatt. Hmmmm.
Piling more anecdotal evidence upon that which I already mentioned:
The DJ I was refering to didn't commit suicide, he just became really wierd. (oops, my bad)
His awake time was monitored by a doctor, and he didn't use any special drugs. They wouldn't even let him use the bathroom alone (for fear of a nap?).
In summary, I think one case of life-altering sleeplessness is enough to scare me away from a sleep-deprivation study, let alone a lifestyle. I hope humanity in general share my idea.
I was considering taking place in a sleep deprivation study (I had a ton of homework to do anyway...) until I heard about a Radio DJ who went 2 weeks without sleep and was forever changed. He became irritable and eventually commited suicide. From this anecdote (the facts may be a little off), I conclude that people need at least a little sleep for the brain to function normally. I'd hate to see a world where no one got sleep.
Aren't decency laws determined on a local scale and not on a national scale? To me, this means that shirts cannot be banned from the United States, but instead from localities within the United States. Those localities have to specifically ban those shirts based on content. I am reasonably certain that no locality is going to claim that source code is indecent unless it explicitly uses profanities (although a creative perl script could swear at you and a passerby would never know it).
After reading through the release notes, I see that this release no longer need to ever use IPv4, and can use IPv6 100%. This seems like a pretty big deal.
I read that as saying that if I redistribute the software (as an executable), then I also need to redistribute the source. If I choose to not distribute the executable, then I either didn not distribute the software at all (personal use only) or I distributed it as source (ok). Of course, IANAL.
Try this instead: As yourself: lynx -source http://go-gnome.com > install.sh vi install.sh Read the source. Notice that a binary is included. That binary is the installer, and can be obtained here
As root: sh < install.sh
This is the preferred insecure method with a little bit of intelligence applied so that you understand what you're running. If you don't trust the binary from HelixCode, then you're probably out of luck, and then you'll have to compile the whole mess. If your only issue is the superuser "lynx | sh" then this will alleviate your fears. The installer shell script isn't too complex, so just read the source and do your own audit.
I'm not authoratative enough on GTK for Windows to answer your question, but the GIMP runs very well on Windows. It doesn't crash (much) and the GIMP itself is a development version. I think Tor Lillqvist has done a wonderful job of porting GTK to Windows. Keep in mind, other stuff like Dia and FreeCiv have been ported too. This leads me to believe that GTK for Win32 is a good platform.
21.... [An icon] wastes screen-space on meaningless images, fails to provide adequate clues to what is inside the files represented by those blurry little images, forces users to choose icons for the desktop when the system could choose them better itself.. This sounds like some of what Nautilus (the new Gnome file manager) is trying to do. Instead of having icons for documents, make the icon be a tiny picture of the document. For sounds, play some of the sound when the mouse lingers over it. It actually seems like a good idea to me.
32. You shouldn't have to put files in directories. The directories should reach out and take them. If a file belongs in six directories, all six should reach out and grab it automatically, simultaneously. This sounds like the virtual folders in Evolution. It would be interesting to try and extend this concept to the entire hard drive. It may be difficult to intelligently catalog everything, but a virtual folders type interface may be good.
Slashdot is not exactly a paragon of virtue in regards to web design--it's got its strong points (good use of contrast, consistent positioning of navigation, etc.) and weaknesses (smallish type in some spots, addiction to embedded tables...bad Slashdot, no cookie...and lack of polish on the graphics).
Forgive me for being confused, but why exactly are embedded tables bad? (Please respond by normal e-mail tonyj@cs.umd.edu)
When something is as massive as a comet, you need some really big horkin engines (technical term) to move said comet. We (humanity) don't have those engines. Even a little orbital adjustment of a small comet would be extremely challenging. If this comet is large enough to navigate a spacecraft to it and lang on it, we can assume it's too large to move.
If you look at the bottom of the article, you'll see a link to another article titled NASA scraps comet mission. That's why the ESA said that they'd win the comet race.
Since when did "There's too much choice" become a bad thing? If you don't like the overabundance of toolkit choices, then fine. Use GTK. Now you don't have a choice. Of course, you could use another toolkit as well, no one is stopping you. Compare to the windows situation. There, you can choose from MFC or the Borland stuff. Other folks have put out other toolkits. The same number of choices are there, you just don't hear about it because Microsoft has succeeded in making MFC the ubiquitous choice.
As for the themeability of the Linux, I agree that they are inconsistant and confusing, but there is still the choice from before. Take the default KDE setting. There. Now you have given away your choices and the confusion is gone. For users with a clue, they can change their window manager and theme to anything they want. Ditto on Windows. You can swap out the entire explorer interface and use Litestep instead. That program doesn't suck much. (Explorer doesn't suck much either, from the interface point of view) If you're curious about what windows stuff is out there, go to www.desktopz.org and look at all of the neat eye candy they have (you can even change the window decorations).
Reading ahead further, you mention ISAPNP, wave your hands and say Windows is better. The point is that once the guru gets your computer set up, you don't need to mess with any of that stuff. If you have Linux, you need to reboot every year or so (Upgrade that kernel for security reasons, or perhaps just to reset the jiffies, I don't care). With Windows, you need to reboot every month or so (unless it crashed). Remember, we're talking about desktops, so we have to deal with Internet Explorer and surfing the web (or Netscape and surfing). These browsers have varying levels of suckiness, but the bottom line is in Linux, the browser crashes, and you never have to reboot to fix it. In Windows, the browser crashes, and sometimes you do need to reboot. I'm generous, I said 1 month.
Slashdot Mirror
US Constitution, Amendment 5:
... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
No person shall be
There is always a recourse for these actions if they directly effect a US citizen. 102.C explicitly recognizes this.
In the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, Ex Post Facto laws are expressly forbidden.
In English, that means that no law may be passed condemming actions that have already occurred. Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so take my advice with the appropriate quantities of salt.
Your example is incomplete. You also need to state that every even number other than two is divisible by two, and is thus not prime.
Ghostscript comes with a Postscript to PDF converter. So you're only problem is to get Postscript documents. On a Windows PC, all you need to do is add a driver for any PostScript printer and then check the "Print to File" box. Rename the file to have a .ps extension since Windows will force .prn and then you're set.
.ps is generally easy and ps2pdf is included in the ghostscript distribution.
On UNIX or Linux, generating a
It's really easy to write a program that will run on Mac Os X, Windows, Solaris, Linux, IRIX, etc. in just one object file. All you need to do is write it in Java.
Contrary to popular belief, modern Java programs written by competant software engineers can be quite fast. Unfortunately, none of the Java Open Source projects seem to be doing that, and have petered out. Too bad.
More importantly, if you don't do serious work in assembler sometimes, you won't understand the machine.
I agree. Everyone needs to write a non-trivial program in assembly for at least one computer. That single project will give you in intimate understanding of the underlying architecture on modern computers, and make all of your work better.
It's best, however, if that project does not escape into the real world, because your assembly hack is not a good program. You'll not use complex data structures or advanced object oriented design in assembly - there's too many nit-picky details for mere mortals.
The tools of the modern C++, Java, programming languages allow a fully thought-out, engineered software design. The tools of the assembler allow near optimal implementations of hige-traffic areas. A good mix of these tools can provide fast, robust, and maintainable projects.
Why are optimizing compilers bad? You can still optimize the slow stuff by hand, and you can get the (mythical) 2x performance boost over the rest of your code too. And how did you find out where that 99% of your run-time was spent? In the profiler.
My point was that there is a much bigger win from prifiling your program and reengineering the hot spots (perhaps by assembly, but better algorithms and data structures in the general case).
The only time you should have to resort to assembly is when you have absolutely performance critical tasks, ie Interrupt Service Routines.
There's two ways to look at this. A good programmer shouldn't need to resort to assembly in nearly all cases since a good algorithm and software design will do the trick. Hand-optimized assembly is difficult to maintain.
Learning to spot optimizable spots in assembly is probably not a good application of time, since a profiler will happily tell you where in your code you should consider optimizing.
This story reminds me of the movie Real Genius. The parallels are staggering: Big laser mounted in a plane to be able to fire anywhere. In the movie, they talked about a 5 MegaWatt laser, and here they are saying the laser is more than 1 MegaWatt. Hmmmm.
The DJ I was refering to didn't commit suicide, he just became really wierd. (oops, my bad)
His awake time was monitored by a doctor, and he didn't use any special drugs. They wouldn't even let him use the bathroom alone (for fear of a nap?).
In summary, I think one case of life-altering sleeplessness is enough to scare me away from a sleep-deprivation study, let alone a lifestyle. I hope humanity in general share my idea.
I was considering taking place in a sleep deprivation study (I had a ton of homework to do anyway...) until I heard about a Radio DJ who went 2 weeks without sleep and was forever changed. He became irritable and eventually commited suicide. From this anecdote (the facts may be a little off), I conclude that people need at least a little sleep for the brain to function normally. I'd hate to see a world where no one got sleep.
The movie was called Real Genius starring Val Kilmer. There, they used a Giant Space Laser to pop an aluminum foil ball full of popcorn.
Aren't decency laws determined on a local scale and not on a national scale? To me, this means that shirts cannot be banned from the United States, but instead from localities within the United States. Those localities have to specifically ban those shirts based on content. I am reasonably certain that no locality is going to claim that source code is indecent unless it explicitly uses profanities (although a creative perl script could swear at you and a passerby would never know it).
After reading through the release notes, I see that this release no longer need to ever use IPv4, and can use IPv6 100%. This seems like a pretty big deal.
I read that as saying that if I redistribute the software (as an executable), then I also need to redistribute the source. If I choose to not distribute the executable, then I either didn not distribute the software at all (personal use only) or I distributed it as source (ok). Of course, IANAL.
Wasn't that tether used to keep the astronaut attached to the spacecraft rather than an electromagnetic experiment?
Try this instead:
As yourself:
lynx -source http://go-gnome.com > install.sh
vi install.sh
Read the source. Notice that a binary is included. That binary is the installer, and can be obtained here
As root:
sh < install.sh
This is the preferred insecure method with a little bit of intelligence applied so that you understand what you're running. If you don't trust the binary from HelixCode, then you're probably out of luck, and then you'll have to compile the whole mess. If your only issue is the superuser "lynx | sh" then this will alleviate your fears. The installer shell script isn't too complex, so just read the source and do your own audit.
I'm not authoratative enough on GTK for Windows to answer your question, but the GIMP runs very well on Windows. It doesn't crash (much) and the GIMP itself is a development version. I think Tor Lillqvist has done a wonderful job of porting GTK to Windows. Keep in mind, other stuff like Dia and FreeCiv have been ported too. This leads me to believe that GTK for Win32 is a good platform.
21. ... [An icon] wastes screen-space on meaningless images, fails to provide adequate clues to what is inside the files represented by those blurry little images, forces users to choose icons for the desktop when the system could choose them better itself..
This sounds like some of what Nautilus (the new Gnome file manager) is trying to do. Instead of having icons for documents, make the icon be a tiny picture of the document. For sounds, play some of the sound when the mouse lingers over it. It actually seems like a good idea to me.
32. You shouldn't have to put files in directories. The directories should reach out and take them. If a file belongs in six directories, all six should reach out and grab it automatically, simultaneously.
This sounds like the virtual folders in Evolution. It would be interesting to try and extend this concept to the entire hard drive. It may be difficult to intelligently catalog everything, but a virtual folders type interface may be good.
The point is that the LinuxPPC people believe that knowing the password is useless. The veracity of that belief is to be determined.
Forgive me for being confused, but why exactly are embedded tables bad? (Please respond by normal e-mail tonyj@cs.umd.edu)
From the specs page
When something is as massive as a comet, you need some really big horkin engines (technical term) to move said comet. We (humanity) don't have those engines. Even a little orbital adjustment of a small comet would be extremely challenging. If this comet is large enough to navigate a spacecraft to it and lang on it, we can assume it's too large to move.
If you look at the bottom of the article, you'll see a link to another article titled NASA scraps comet mission. That's why the ESA said that they'd win the comet race.
Since when did "There's too much choice" become a bad thing? If you don't like the overabundance of toolkit choices, then fine. Use GTK. Now you don't have a choice. Of course, you could use another toolkit as well, no one is stopping you. Compare to the windows situation. There, you can choose from MFC or the Borland stuff. Other folks have put out other toolkits. The same number of choices are there, you just don't hear about it because Microsoft has succeeded in making MFC the ubiquitous choice.
As for the themeability of the Linux, I agree that they are inconsistant and confusing, but there is still the choice from before. Take the default KDE setting. There. Now you have given away your choices and the confusion is gone. For users with a clue, they can change their window manager and theme to anything they want. Ditto on Windows. You can swap out the entire explorer interface and use Litestep instead. That program doesn't suck much. (Explorer doesn't suck much either, from the interface point of view) If you're curious about what windows stuff is out there, go to www.desktopz.org and look at all of the neat eye candy they have (you can even change the window decorations).
Reading ahead further, you mention ISAPNP, wave your hands and say Windows is better. The point is that once the guru gets your computer set up, you don't need to mess with any of that stuff. If you have Linux, you need to reboot every year or so (Upgrade that kernel for security reasons, or perhaps just to reset the jiffies, I don't care). With Windows, you need to reboot every month or so (unless it crashed). Remember, we're talking about desktops, so we have to deal with Internet Explorer and surfing the web (or Netscape and surfing). These browsers have varying levels of suckiness, but the bottom line is in Linux, the browser crashes, and you never have to reboot to fix it. In Windows, the browser crashes, and sometimes you do need to reboot. I'm generous, I said 1 month.