I don't know if it is in the plan, but one thing that I would like to see is that if you are doing moderation, it doesn't count against your page views. I know that sometimes I am selected as a moderator (which I am guessing most people are), and during those times I probably do alot more page views (looking for the good comments and such). I think that I would be less likely to spend the effort moderating if I knew that it was counting against me. Or maybe something like 25 free pages for every moderation point used - something where you would gain something through moderation? I doubt I use 25 pages for every points, and it would probably put me ahead a couple.
How does this top OS X? Sure its Linux, but that's it....
I've had the same thoughts. I think the reason that I like running Linux (GNOME) better is the configurability. I guess maybe I'm fickle, but it seems like I am changing my GTK+ theme once a week, with my window manager and background. I just can't do that with Mac OS. I can't get it so that I feel completely comfortable. I am guessing though, in the future, there will be Mac OS UI tweeks that will make it better for me to use...
We'll see. Apple has alot more leverage in this deal now that it has been ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly. MS needs to have Office on Mac, otherwise they are only choosing one platform for their office suite. I don't think that they are going to port it to Linux anytime soon, but I could be supprised.
I agree. The Alpha guys have been working on this for quite a while. If you want to learn a little bit more about it here is my Master's
Thesis on the topic. (Actually on scheduling in an SMT system, and also looking at four threads, but the intro should be enlightening). Also the biblography should provide you with everything you'd want to read about it (atleast 2 years ago).
Specifically I'd be interesting in the Bonobo aspects of GNOME. Perhaps a book looking at Bonobo in comparison with COM and the Star Office object model.
Let's say that I don't have write access to the Linux kernel tree. So I go grab a copy and make a branch on my machine and fix it. So then I post to the kernel mailing list saying that I've fixed this bug. Linus gets all excited and want so merge my branch in, but he can't because I am offline. So he forgets, and nothing happens.
Now you could say that I could upload it to the central server, but I don't have write access to that. I wouldn't imagine that they would give me (a non-kernel developer, trust me, I'd break something) access to the tree.
I think that the last few years and Microsoft could be summed up by saying that they are attacking other markets. How do you feel this is effected by the monopoly status? Do you think they are using their monopoly to get into these markets, or just their cash?
Actually I would say that in many ways that Evolution embraces these philosophies. 'Evolution' is really no more than a collection of utilities, all tied together. If you run Evolution you'll notice that there are about three or four different applications running tied into one shell. So while you might think of Evolution as 'one application' in reality it is not - it is a shell to use little applications that happen to be developed by the same developers (not all, but many).
I know that these guys are big Bonobo fans, and I am too. What that creates is a return of the Unix design philosophy to the GUI. Small applications can be embedded to create larger applications. Look at GnuCash: you could say that all the really needed is a ledger to manage data. In someways that would be true. But then they attached it to Guppi, and, now you can graph your data too! Think of it like a pipe that is much easier to use:)
This is really weird. I found this site last night and was reading it, now this question...
Anyway:
This site on film scanners talks specifically about film scanners, but also about the technology associated with them. I also really liked the discussion on ink jet printers (which I knew nothing about). Good luck!
Maybe I'm just being an optimist, but it would be really cool to use this for High Definition DVDs. Heck, it wouldn't even cost more (besides the drive mechanics) because by that time most TVs will have to accept HD over the air, so over the firewire is cheap!
I think that too many people look to not have a well rounded education. I remember people in my CS classes, where all they wanted to do is learn how to code. The idea of learning how the compiler works they considered a waste of time. Who cares? And the hardware? They really didn't care about that. I recently had a CS from Standford tell me that the I couldn't get the 4th bit from an integer because the computer stores that in decimal.
Some of your examples are valid, but many are not. I think that you have to realize that it is total imposible to build a Gantt chart for an entire project in a semester. Just like it would be imposible to build a entire peice of useful software. There are always corners that are cut. You need to yourself, abstract what is being taught into the general principles. Those don't change with time, your first 10 years or anything else.
I think people look at college as learning the details, it is not about the details, they are unimportant. The idea is that you need to learn the principles.
I think that a great way for a non-coder to help with an open-source project is to provide documentation. Heaven knows that most projects need this pretty badly. I think these are the best to write 'new user' documentation anyway. Stuff with screen shots rocks:)
Congressman, I think that most people on Slashdot feel that their opinions are not widely known, or understood in Washington. What do you feel is the best way to inform our representatives of how we feel? It seems like writing a letter isn't any good without a significant campaign contribution. Is there a better way?
I would guess that most of it would be looking at future sales. Most companies keep track of their orders and also have forcasters looking at the industry. I am guessing that their orders were down significantly, and their forcasters were saying that it isn't going to get any better soon. Also, if they are like everyone else in this industry they have way to much inventory for the demand that is out there. I really doubt that this will effect Slashdot as I am guessing that page views are not down, just hardware sales. I think that Slashdot is probably pretty self-sufficient.
This really isn't a finance thing, more of a 'it does us no good to make a million of these things if we are only going to sell 10'.
In recent months there has been some, well, lots of debate over changing the DTV standards to include COFDM instead of VSB. What do you think will happen with this standard? Is every digital TV sold going to become obsolete? How do you see this effecting television sales and broadcaster deployment?
What this brings to the Desktop is the same thing that Pipes bring to the shell. Imagine being able to write a Perl script that takes a set of data, puts it into a spreadsheet and the displays it in a different program. The neat part is the scripting.
This also allows opensource projects to be more manageable. If we look at the Mozilla project as an example we can see that if there is just to much source code no one is willing to jump in. If we break everything out into components with well defined interfaces then each component is really easy to manage, and for new developers to work on. I think that this is the single most important part of the GNOME project - it is what is going to save Open Source as it moves into larger and larger programs.
It is pretty apparent that one of the main reasons for creating Helix was to remove the idea of GNOME from Linux, and make it a more generic UNIX desktop. How successful is this? Are you finding many UNIX vendors that are interested in replacing CDE or are they happy with the status quo? Are there additionaly techinical problems with these 'ports'?
Also, thank you for doing this. GNOME is by far not only a Linux thing, and I find CDE almost completely unusable...
I really do think that overall the idea of certifying Software Engineers is a good idea. And I think it should be done in a similar manner to the way that Engineers are licensed with the EIT and other such testing. I seem to be the only one that beleives this, so let me justify myself a little bit.
If someone goes out and designs software, markets it a market, and then sells it there is no gaurentee that the software will do anything more than sit on the desk in a nice box. If that software is implemented, and then a huge bug comes up the purchaser is SOL. They can bitch, mabye get some press, but they are still screwed out of all the deployment time, training, and purchasing of the product. Now I am not talking about bugs like the 'File' is misspelled on the menu bar, things like the software won't do what it is entended to do. If the software was 'Engineered' there is some responcibility.
What then happens is that the company can be taken to court, and the court decides if the oversite was a resonable one. Usually this starts off with the company justifing why that bug/design feature was there in the first place. Something like "we didn't expect it to work at tempatures over 139F." And if it is a desert rover they would loose, but if it was made to work in Greenland they wouldn't. This should be a similar notion for software. They need to show that they had a reasonable amount of testing in the areas of 'reasonable bugs'. If they neglected to test the TCP/IP stack (Windows:^) then they can be sued for TCP/IP errors.
This really comes out very similar to the Lemon Law, discussed previously, but it is handled in a different way.
The other neat thing that happens here is that a specific Software Engineer could loose their license for actions here... So then they could never write software again. Wow, sounds pretty drastic eh? But I think what this does is show people that everything that they do can have perminate consequences. Very perminate ones. I think that in general people need that hanging over their heads.
What will this do to the industry? It will slow down inovation in the industry - that is kinda obvious. I think that as software has become pervasive, and almost required to live today, this needs to happen though. It may take killing a bunch of people to get Washington to look at it, and the industry to accept it, but it will happen. I hope that mabye (just mabye) it could be handle preemptively so that people don't have to die.
How do I think that this should effect free software? I think that it should effect software when it is sold. The idea of Free software should be consittered 'academic', just like people can do 'bridge research' and not worry about being sued. This makes the roles of RedHat, Debian, SuSe et al, even more important. They would have to take the software from the free communities and verify them 'reasonably bug free' by their own standards and then realease them. While this would make the startups that happened there less of a reality, I think it would make the distributions on a whole better.
I welcome your replys, I think I will probally get quite a few...
The whole thing is currently about 400 moderators, which is cool, but what about taking it to the next level? How about everyone being a moderator. I think there are about 20000 acounts on Slashdot, so that would make the scores range anywhere from +/-20000. It would let the community itself decide what it finds acceptable. It is an interesting idea, I don't know if it would work though. You would also need a variable limit though...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if it is in the plan, but one thing that I would like to see is that if you are doing moderation, it doesn't count against your page views. I know that sometimes I am selected as a moderator (which I am guessing most people are), and during those times I probably do alot more page views (looking for the good comments and such). I think that I would be less likely to spend the effort moderating if I knew that it was counting against me. Or maybe something like 25 free pages for every moderation point used - something where you would gain something through moderation? I doubt I use 25 pages for every points, and it would probably put me ahead a couple.
I've had the same thoughts. I think the reason that I like running Linux (GNOME) better is the configurability. I guess maybe I'm fickle, but it seems like I am changing my GTK+ theme once a week, with my window manager and background. I just can't do that with Mac OS. I can't get it so that I feel completely comfortable. I am guessing though, in the future, there will be Mac OS UI tweeks that will make it better for me to use...
We'll see. Apple has alot more leverage in this deal now that it has been ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly. MS needs to have Office on Mac, otherwise they are only choosing one platform for their office suite. I don't think that they are going to port it to Linux anytime soon, but I could be supprised.
I agree. The Alpha guys have been working on this for quite a while. If you want to learn a little bit more about it here is my Master's Thesis on the topic. (Actually on scheduling in an SMT system, and also looking at four threads, but the intro should be enlightening). Also the biblography should provide you with everything you'd want to read about it (atleast 2 years ago).
Doesn't have the firewire though...
Specifically I'd be interesting in the Bonobo aspects of GNOME. Perhaps a book looking at Bonobo in comparison with COM and the Star Office object model.
Let's say that I don't have write access to the Linux kernel tree. So I go grab a copy and make a branch on my machine and fix it. So then I post to the kernel mailing list saying that I've fixed this bug. Linus gets all excited and want so merge my branch in, but he can't because I am offline. So he forgets, and nothing happens.
Now you could say that I could upload it to the central server, but I don't have write access to that. I wouldn't imagine that they would give me (a non-kernel developer, trust me, I'd break something) access to the tree.
I guess I just don't get how useful this will be.
I think that the last few years and Microsoft could be summed up by saying that they are attacking other markets. How do you feel this is effected by the monopoly status? Do you think they are using their monopoly to get into these markets, or just their cash?
I know that these guys are big Bonobo fans, and I am too. What that creates is a return of the Unix design philosophy to the GUI. Small applications can be embedded to create larger applications. Look at GnuCash: you could say that all the really needed is a ledger to manage data. In someways that would be true. But then they attached it to Guppi, and, now you can graph your data too! Think of it like a pipe that is much easier to use :)
Anyway: This site on film scanners talks specifically about film scanners, but also about the technology associated with them. I also really liked the discussion on ink jet printers (which I knew nothing about). Good luck!
Maybe I'm just being an optimist, but it would be really cool to use this for High Definition DVDs. Heck, it wouldn't even cost more (besides the drive mechanics) because by that time most TVs will have to accept HD over the air, so over the firewire is cheap!
I think that too many people look to not have a well rounded education. I remember people in my CS classes, where all they wanted to do is learn how to code. The idea of learning how the compiler works they considered a waste of time. Who cares? And the hardware? They really didn't care about that. I recently had a CS from Standford tell me that the I couldn't get the 4th bit from an integer because the computer stores that in decimal.
Some of your examples are valid, but many are not. I think that you have to realize that it is total imposible to build a Gantt chart for an entire project in a semester. Just like it would be imposible to build a entire peice of useful software. There are always corners that are cut. You need to yourself, abstract what is being taught into the general principles. Those don't change with time, your first 10 years or anything else.
I think people look at college as learning the details, it is not about the details, they are unimportant. The idea is that you need to learn the principles.
I think that a great way for a non-coder to help with an open-source project is to provide documentation. Heaven knows that most projects need this pretty badly. I think these are the best to write 'new user' documentation anyway. Stuff with screen shots rocks :)
PS - Use the FDL
Congressman, I think that most people on Slashdot feel that their opinions are not widely known, or understood in Washington. What do you feel is the best way to inform our representatives of how we feel? It seems like writing a letter isn't any good without a significant campaign contribution. Is there a better way?
I would guess that most of it would be looking at future sales. Most companies keep track of their orders and also have forcasters looking at the industry. I am guessing that their orders were down significantly, and their forcasters were saying that it isn't going to get any better soon. Also, if they are like everyone else in this industry they have way to much inventory for the demand that is out there. I really doubt that this will effect Slashdot as I am guessing that page views are not down, just hardware sales. I think that Slashdot is probably pretty self-sufficient.
This really isn't a finance thing, more of a 'it does us no good to make a million of these things if we are only going to sell 10'.
In recent months there has been some, well, lots of debate over changing the DTV standards to include COFDM instead of VSB. What do you think will happen with this standard? Is every digital TV sold going to become obsolete? How do you see this effecting television sales and broadcaster deployment?
What this brings to the Desktop is the same thing that Pipes bring to the shell. Imagine being able to write a Perl script that takes a set of data, puts it into a spreadsheet and the displays it in a different program. The neat part is the scripting.
This also allows opensource projects to be more manageable. If we look at the Mozilla project as an example we can see that if there is just to much source code no one is willing to jump in. If we break everything out into components with well defined interfaces then each component is really easy to manage, and for new developers to work on. I think that this is the single most important part of the GNOME project - it is what is going to save Open Source as it moves into larger and larger programs.
It is pretty apparent that one of the main reasons for creating Helix was to remove the idea of GNOME from Linux, and make it a more generic UNIX desktop. How successful is this? Are you finding many UNIX vendors that are interested in replacing CDE or are they happy with the status quo? Are there additionaly techinical problems with these 'ports'?
Also, thank you for doing this. GNOME is by far not only a Linux thing, and I find CDE almost completely unusable...
I really do think that overall the idea of certifying Software Engineers is a good idea. And I think it should be done in a similar manner to the way that Engineers are licensed with the EIT and other such testing. I seem to be the only one that beleives this, so let me justify myself a little bit.
:^) then they can be sued for TCP/IP errors.
If someone goes out and designs software, markets it a market, and then sells it there is no gaurentee that the software will do anything more than sit on the desk in a nice box. If that software is implemented, and then a huge bug comes up the purchaser is SOL. They can bitch, mabye get some press, but they are still screwed out of all the deployment time, training, and purchasing of the product. Now I am not talking about bugs like the 'File' is misspelled on the menu bar, things like the software won't do what it is entended to do. If the software was 'Engineered' there is some responcibility.
What then happens is that the company can be taken to court, and the court decides if the oversite was a resonable one. Usually this starts off with the company justifing why that bug/design feature was there in the first place. Something like "we didn't expect it to work at tempatures over 139F." And if it is a desert rover they would loose, but if it was made to work in Greenland they wouldn't. This should be a similar notion for software. They need to show that they had a reasonable amount of testing in the areas of 'reasonable bugs'. If they neglected to test the TCP/IP stack (Windows
This really comes out very similar to the Lemon Law, discussed previously, but it is handled in a different way.
The other neat thing that happens here is that a specific Software Engineer could loose their license for actions here... So then they could never write software again. Wow, sounds pretty drastic eh? But I think what this does is show people that everything that they do can have perminate consequences. Very perminate ones. I think that in general people need that hanging over their heads.
What will this do to the industry? It will slow down inovation in the industry - that is kinda obvious. I think that as software has become pervasive, and almost required to live today, this needs to happen though. It may take killing a bunch of people to get Washington to look at it, and the industry to accept it, but it will happen. I hope that mabye (just mabye) it could be handle preemptively so that people don't have to die.
How do I think that this should effect free software? I think that it should effect software when it is sold. The idea of Free software should be consittered 'academic', just like people can do 'bridge research' and not worry about being sued. This makes the roles of RedHat, Debian, SuSe et al, even more important. They would have to take the software from the free communities and verify them 'reasonably bug free' by their own standards and then realease them. While this would make the startups that happened there less of a reality, I think it would make the distributions on a whole better.
I welcome your replys, I think I will probally get quite a few...
The whole thing is currently about 400 moderators, which is cool, but what about taking it to the next level? How about everyone being a moderator. I think there are about 20000 acounts on Slashdot, so that would make the scores range anywhere from +/-20000. It would let the community itself decide what it finds acceptable. It is an interesting idea, I don't know if it would work though. You would also need a variable limit though...