people think africa (speaking of south africa) has changed for the better since 1994, but it has only gotten worse
Are you suggesting that South Africa was a better place during Apartheid? For the majority of South African people, it has changed for the best, I'm sorry if that caused problems to you, but your problems there weren't the tiniest part of those people suffered during Apartheid.
"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants".
I think this quote was common among medieval scholars, I don't remember whos said it first though (Saint Bernard?).
It was trying to resolve what was seen as a paradox: Ancient Greeks and Roman were supposed to be absolutly superior to people of the middle-age but science could lead to new discoveries.
I think slashdoters are quick to make comment and sometimes to quick
From what I read about the Simputer project it adresses (or aims to adress) a lot of the problems that people here are talking about:
It doesn't intend to sell simputer to individuals but to collectivities (villages...)
It will provide a simple graphical interface with text to speech in English and various Indian languages
The goal of the interface is to be usable by people who can't read or write (I'm not sure anyone has tried this before)
I consider a comment such as "they should feed their people first" to be more a spontaneous reaction than an insightful comment (not that spontaneous reaction is always bad). They consider that IT is important and that their people shouldn't be left behind, at least they're trying, give them credit for that!
A lot of people would be surprised of the extent to which IT is in use in so-called Thrid World countries, this is an interesting phenomenon and will surely lead to interesting results
Well obviously this feature will stay in Python, so there's no use discussing it for ages.
If it prevents you from coding, fine they're are other languages that share some of Python's most interesting features.
I honestly can't see the interest of this discussion, I'm not telling anyone to shut up of course, but you don't have to use Python if it don't suits you.
You don't have to be "GPL nuts" to find this question interesting
Considering that Python's license is almost GPL-compatible, it would be interesting to know the reason why they chosed not to take the final step toward a fully GPL compatible license
I think there are to many license in open-source and free software. I'm sure there are situation when neither the GPL nor the BSD licences are good choices, but then you've got to make the reasons clear. You're not talking to lawyers but to hackers most of the time
The dreamcast is the only online console right now, and according to UPS my ethernet adapter should be on my doorstep this afternoon. Phantasy Star Online ought to kick ass, and give Everquesters a run for their money.
I don't think that Phantasy Star Online works with anything else than the modem. I'm not even sure there is any game coming with ethernet support.
The console market is a mass market, only a fraction of console owners have access to broadband, only a fraction of these are able to burn a Dreamcast ISO...
I think that Sony's PS2 hype has done more harm to the Dreamcast than piracy. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Dreamcast piracy only 6-8 months old?
This tax is collected by the music industry and they are responsible for its "distribution".
The information on where this money goes is not public, it's the same kinda RIAA like body that collected the tax on tapes that manages all this.
From what I understand, Bastille Linux allows the user to have a more secure Linux box by answering (simple?) questions. But who do you think should use it, experienced users who know already how to lock down their system but need a tool to do it quick or newbies who don't know anything about security?
This is a question for any administration automation tool, but it's a real issue, can you secure a Linux system without learning what's really going on?
Maybe it would be a good idea to distribute Bastille Linux as a Book+CD package
A few years ago, I started to loose grip on PC's hardware architecture. I'm not able to understand it anymore, it seems really complex to me, RAM in particular.
My question is : is it because this particular hardware platform still has its roots in the original IBM PC and it has become unmanagable, or is it normal technological progress (i.e. it's more complex because it's more advanced)?
Re:One last defense of my gender on /.
on
Deja For Sale
·
· Score: 1
It's very strange what your telling her.
If I'm not mistaking, you're saying that she should hide the fact that she's a woman, or else it's some kind of provocation...
Think about it for a minute, if some people call her name because "she advertises her gender" (as you wrote) and not because of the content of her posting, it's their guilt, not hers.
"On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog?" Not at all, on the Internet, everybody assumes you're white, male and lives in the US. Why should you hide the fact that you're not?
I think it's a neverending debate because the good question is not "Which one is better as a first language?" The question you should ask yourself is "Which one is better for me?"
I found Python to be better suited for me, and of course I'm trying to convert everyone to Python. But I know there are (lots of) people who prefer Perl.
From what I understood of the report, they're not talking about IT, programming or geeks, they're talking about "office workers".
Of course most of the replies here will be "I'm not depressed", "I'm happy with my job", "Computers are cool" and so on. But it's not about you. I think that computer induced stress is a reality for non-IT people working on computers. But it's not about computers, it's about the way they are used in the corporate world. Let me explain.
Computers have been a tool for corporate management to "industrialize" (is that a word?) white collar work. Before widespread availability of computers, white collar work was made by people who had a knowledge of their job, who were highly trained compared to industry workers. Now, the knowledge, the workflow are in the IT infrastructure and white collar workers are a commodity. You can fire one a day and "train" another one in a few day. You can pay them low salaries (IT professionals are well paid because they are highly trained, but the overall salaries of white collar workers are lower now they were 30 years ago).
And some time, we are guilty too when we teach to people we train to use computers that "the computer cannot make mistakes", that they are the one guilty of misusing these well designed applications, they are the "lusers".
I think that's an important factor in the evolution of OS's and software in general. A lot of people are talking about "computer illiteracy", but that's what management want, thay don't want computer litterate office workers, they want low-paid, expandable ones.
I'm currently really learning regular expressions and I think that's a tool most user should (and can) learn, that's one of the tools you need for everyday computer work, but you don't have them in MS Office, nor in most mainstream software.
People who use computers (well, everybody now) in their work need to learn the basic of programming and how the internal work. We need to realize this just like a century ago we realized that it was better for society that everybody learned to read and write.
People need to win over the computer sometimes.
I recently rediscovered the commandline while installing a X-Free-free debian 2.2 on my Linux box. Previously, I had Mandrake 7 installed with KDE, but I had a hard time trying to manage it.
It makes me wonder what these graphical environments are good for. I'm not an expert admin neither a unix old timer, but I discovered that all the graphical configuration tools really hide the system to the user. If you don't know how to configure your system "by hand" you'll run into trouble sooner or later, and if you know it why would you want to use the graphical tools?
I think Linux (as any unix) is a complex OS and you _have_ to read a lot of docs to understand it, I'm not sure there will be point-and-click administration any time soon. KDE and Gnome give you the (wrong) feeling that you don't have to understand at least the basic of Linux architecture to use it.
A lot of people say that KDE or Gnome will put Linux on the end-user's desktop, I would agree as long as these users have a system administrator who knows what he's doing.
Why is this related to Debian? Because I found Debian to be very command line friendly, I can understand its directory tree (maybe all Linux distribution have the same) and I'm able to use what I learned in a Unix administration book (not Linux specific) I just bought.
I'm not trying to start a flame war, I'm not comparing Linux with Windows or MacOS. I just realised I didn't understand what I was doing with Mandrake's Drakconf. Now I'm learning what all these/etc/*.conf files are for and one day (hopefully) I'll get Apache running.
Well, look at what games are really selling. It doesn't encourage innovation from publishers to see most of the games that received good appreciation for their innovative approach ending as commercial failures. Look what happened to Looking Glass, maybe Eidos is to blame there but how come Thief I & II didn't sell more when most of the reviewers considered it very good games (I did too).
Let's see if Black & White sells _enough_ to be worth 4 years of devellopment.
Anyway my most anticipated game is Anarchy Online...
The industrial revolution: the way goods were produced was radically altered. Instead of skilled craftpersons organically creating the end product, the unskilled laborers tend to the machines that make the product. Social effect: deskilling of workers
In the same way, IT is used to replace skilled intellectual workers with unskilled people in front of computers. So, there's a change.
I would say that it's a new period of the industrial age.
Speed isn't always the only goal. Usability and code maintenance are meaningful too. Isn't Slashdot a "real" application? If you use a GUI at all you've already traded speed for other features.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that's the best feature of OpenOffice: its file formats are xml
It's way better than html IMO, you can process these files with any of the numerous tools that dig XML
OpenOffice Writer supports footnotes, you should check it out
Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
Some parts of the US are already available
Are you suggesting that South Africa was a better place during Apartheid? For the majority of South African people, it has changed for the best, I'm sorry if that caused problems to you, but your problems there weren't the tiniest part of those people suffered during Apartheid.
"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants".
I think this quote was common among medieval scholars, I don't remember whos said it first though (Saint Bernard?).
It was trying to resolve what was seen as a paradox: Ancient Greeks and Roman were supposed to be absolutly superior to people of the middle-age but science could lead to new discoveries.
I think slashdoters are quick to make comment and sometimes to quick
From what I read about the Simputer project it adresses (or aims to adress) a lot of the problems that people here are talking about:
It doesn't intend to sell simputer to individuals but to collectivities (villages...)
It will provide a simple graphical interface with text to speech in English and various Indian languages
The goal of the interface is to be usable by people who can't read or write (I'm not sure anyone has tried this before)
I consider a comment such as "they should feed their people first" to be more a spontaneous reaction than an insightful comment (not that spontaneous reaction is always bad). They consider that IT is important and that their people shouldn't be left behind, at least they're trying, give them credit for that!
A lot of people would be surprised of the extent to which IT is in use in so-called Thrid World countries, this is an interesting phenomenon and will surely lead to interesting results
Well obviously this feature will stay in Python, so there's no use discussing it for ages.
If it prevents you from coding, fine they're are other languages that share some of Python's most interesting features.
I honestly can't see the interest of this discussion, I'm not telling anyone to shut up of course, but you don't have to use Python if it don't suits you.
You don't have to be "GPL nuts" to find this question interesting
Considering that Python's license is almost GPL-compatible, it would be interesting to know the reason why they chosed not to take the final step toward a fully GPL compatible license
I think there are to many license in open-source and free software. I'm sure there are situation when neither the GPL nor the BSD licences are good choices, but then you've got to make the reasons clear. You're not talking to lawyers but to hackers most of the time
The dreamcast is the only online console right now, and according to UPS my ethernet adapter should be on my doorstep this afternoon. Phantasy Star Online ought to kick ass, and give Everquesters a run for their money.
I don't think that Phantasy Star Online works with anything else than the modem. I'm not even sure there is any game coming with ethernet support.
No, I think you're wrong
The console market is a mass market, only a fraction of console owners have access to broadband, only a fraction of these are able to burn a Dreamcast ISO...
I think that Sony's PS2 hype has done more harm to the Dreamcast than piracy. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Dreamcast piracy only 6-8 months old?
Of course if SEGA denies it then it must be false.
Sega's PR people are very special you know, they always tell the truth
...the companies are.
This tax is collected by the music industry and they are responsible for its "distribution". The information on where this money goes is not public, it's the same kinda RIAA like body that collected the tax on tapes that manages all this.
And believe me, artists aren't getting a dime.
Is there really no copyright law or are they just not enforced?
Also the only statistics (Acrobat document) I found give a number of 100,000 people with Internet access for Nigeria, 10,000 would be for Mali
From what I understand, Bastille Linux allows the user to have a more secure Linux box by answering (simple?) questions. But who do you think should use it, experienced users who know already how to lock down their system but need a tool to do it quick or newbies who don't know anything about security?
This is a question for any administration automation tool, but it's a real issue, can you secure a Linux system without learning what's really going on?
Maybe it would be a good idea to distribute Bastille Linux as a Book+CD package
It means that my Debian box runs without an OS!
It has a life of its own... I tried to unplug it and it tried to bite me!!!
Really scary, Night of the OS-less computers
A few years ago, I started to loose grip on PC's hardware architecture. I'm not able to understand it anymore, it seems really complex to me, RAM in particular.
My question is : is it because this particular hardware platform still has its roots in the original IBM PC and it has become unmanagable, or is it normal technological progress (i.e. it's more complex because it's more advanced)?
Didn't find the fixed width font.
It's very strange what your telling her.
If I'm not mistaking, you're saying that she should hide the fact that she's a woman, or else it's some kind of provocation...
Think about it for a minute, if some people call her name because "she advertises her gender" (as you wrote) and not because of the content of her posting, it's their guilt, not hers.
"On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog?" Not at all, on the Internet, everybody assumes you're white, male and lives in the US. Why should you hide the fact that you're not?
I think it's a neverending debate because the good question is not "Which one is better as a first language?" The question you should ask yourself is "Which one is better for me?"
/tu t/tut.html u rse.html
I found Python to be better suited for me, and of course I'm trying to convert everyone to Python. But I know there are (lots of) people who prefer Perl.
So, here is my unofficial "Choose between Perl and Pyhton in 2 days" guide:
Day 1
Download and install
Python at http://www.python.org/download/ http://www.perl.com/pub/lang uag e/info/software.html
Download/Browse/Print (whatever suits you) some tutorials
Python at http://www.python.org/doc/current
Perl at http://ww w.c clabs.missouri.edu/things/instruction/perl/perlco
Rest of the 2 days:
Follow the tutorials and try to write some very short programs of your own.
Third day:
Go back to work with sore, red eyes.
Later: Learn them both, and C too!
Although I wish there was support for C style {bracketing} for statements
Of course you know it does as Fredrik Lundh wrote:
In fact, Python already supports block delimiters:
if foo: #{
foo1();
foo2();
foo3();
#}
Hum!
From what I understood of the report, they're not talking about IT, programming or geeks, they're talking about "office workers".
Of course most of the replies here will be "I'm not depressed", "I'm happy with my job", "Computers are cool" and so on. But it's not about you. I think that computer induced stress is a reality for non-IT people working on computers. But it's not about computers, it's about the way they are used in the corporate world. Let me explain.
Computers have been a tool for corporate management to "industrialize" (is that a word?) white collar work. Before widespread availability of computers, white collar work was made by people who had a knowledge of their job, who were highly trained compared to industry workers. Now, the knowledge, the workflow are in the IT infrastructure and white collar workers are a commodity. You can fire one a day and "train" another one in a few day. You can pay them low salaries (IT professionals are well paid because they are highly trained, but the overall salaries of white collar workers are lower now they were 30 years ago).
And some time, we are guilty too when we teach to people we train to use computers that "the computer cannot make mistakes", that they are the one guilty of misusing these well designed applications, they are the "lusers".
I think that's an important factor in the evolution of OS's and software in general. A lot of people are talking about "computer illiteracy", but that's what management want, thay don't want computer litterate office workers, they want low-paid, expandable ones.
I'm currently really learning regular expressions and I think that's a tool most user should (and can) learn, that's one of the tools you need for everyday computer work, but you don't have them in MS Office, nor in most mainstream software.
People who use computers (well, everybody now) in their work need to learn the basic of programming and how the internal work. We need to realize this just like a century ago we realized that it was better for society that everybody learned to read and write.
People need to win over the computer sometimes.
I recently rediscovered the commandline while installing a X-Free-free debian 2.2 on my Linux box. Previously, I had Mandrake 7 installed with KDE, but I had a hard time trying to manage it. /etc/*.conf files are for and one day (hopefully) I'll get Apache running.
It makes me wonder what these graphical environments are good for. I'm not an expert admin neither a unix old timer, but I discovered that all the graphical configuration tools really hide the system to the user. If you don't know how to configure your system "by hand" you'll run into trouble sooner or later, and if you know it why would you want to use the graphical tools?
I think Linux (as any unix) is a complex OS and you _have_ to read a lot of docs to understand it, I'm not sure there will be point-and-click administration any time soon. KDE and Gnome give you the (wrong) feeling that you don't have to understand at least the basic of Linux architecture to use it.
A lot of people say that KDE or Gnome will put Linux on the end-user's desktop, I would agree as long as these users have a system administrator who knows what he's doing.
Why is this related to Debian? Because I found Debian to be very command line friendly, I can understand its directory tree (maybe all Linux distribution have the same) and I'm able to use what I learned in a Unix administration book (not Linux specific) I just bought.
I'm not trying to start a flame war, I'm not comparing Linux with Windows or MacOS. I just realised I didn't understand what I was doing with Mandrake's Drakconf. Now I'm learning what all these
Well, look at what games are really selling. It doesn't encourage innovation from publishers to see most of the games that received good appreciation for their innovative approach ending as commercial failures.
Look what happened to Looking Glass, maybe Eidos is to blame there but how come Thief I & II didn't sell more when most of the reviewers considered it very good games (I did too).
Let's see if Black & White sells _enough_ to be worth 4 years of devellopment.
Anyway my most anticipated game is Anarchy Online...
The industrial revolution: the way goods were produced was radically altered. Instead of skilled craftpersons organically creating the end product, the unskilled laborers tend to the machines that make the product. Social effect: deskilling of workers
In the same way, IT is used to replace skilled intellectual workers with unskilled people in front of computers. So, there's a change.
I would say that it's a new period of the industrial age.
Speed isn't always the only goal. Usability and code maintenance are meaningful too.
Isn't Slashdot a "real" application? If you use a GUI at all you've already traded speed for other features.