You need to see a doctor. You need a complete physical and a complete mental examination. What you describe is not even close to normal. You need to be checked for metabolic problems, depression, hormone imbalances, and a whole lot more.
I recently went through a real bad spot physically and mentally. I completely lost interest in most everything and became pretty depressed. Turns out my testosterone levels had dropped way below normal. I'm a diabetic. It turns out the most widely used diabetic medication, metformin (aka glucophage) suppresses testosterone production. It does it so well that it is used to suppress testosterone when that is medically necessary. I also had a low grade infection that I may have had for years and infections also suppress testosterone production.
Yes ladies, I can tell you I know from first hand experience what hot flashes and night sweats feel like. I had them and they suck.
After a couple of weeks of testosterone injections I was back to my inquisitive hard coding happy self.
The description you gave of your changes at age 30 are *not* normal and should be looked at carefully by a couple or three different doctors.
You would formulate an approximation to gravity exactly the way we humans did find our current favorite approximation to gravity.
First, we had to notice it. Yep, first part is thinking to ask the question, why do we stick to the ground? Then later Galileo Galilei did a whole bunch of experiments and came up with an equation that described how thing fall near his home in Italy on planet Earth. He also notice things in the sky that were not supposed to be there.
A while later after people had collected lots of data about the motion of the things in the sky a fellow named Newton came up with a set of equations that described how the things in the sky moved and he figured out how to tie that motion in the way thing fall on Earth. Smart guy Newton.
Then we started collecting information about motion of the stars and a little planet named Mercury and found that Newton's equations no longer seemed to work and eventually a guy named Einstein came up with some equations that describes that data, plus all the date collected since Galileo Galilei and that is pretty much our current theory of gravity.
except that we now know that Einstien's equations break down at certain points. And, we are seeing indications that maybe gravity is an emergent effect of something a lot deeper. It looks like the natural laws of our Universe may have changed over time. Controversial results, but that is the way science works.
IMHO, it looks like Physics is getting ready for a huge change. But, I am not a physicist.
What is wrong with believing in immutable laws? The same thing that is wrong with believing anything. It throws you off the path. If you believe there are immutable laws you will not notice, or you will ignore, evidence that points to variable laws.
Think about who long it took for the fact that continents move to be accepted? Deep down geologists did not believe that continents could possible move. The hardest thing in science is getting past the unreasoned and unquestioned belief. Or, think about how long it took for western science to accept the idea that the Earth is billions of years old. The whole of western culture had the deeply held belief that the Earth was only a few thousand years old. And, yet, if you measure the rate at which sediment piles up in a lake or ocean and then look at a wall of sedimentary rock that is thousands of feed thick you find your self having to believe two completely contradictory ideas. Either the Earth is old enough for sediment to build up into a thousand foot wall. In which case the Earth is very old and a basic "truth" is actually a lie. Or, something else made that wall look like sediment, when it isn't.
You get trapped in the problem of believing in a god that lies with his works but tells the truth with his words, or the other way around.
The number of examples of science taking decades or centuries to get past a widely held cultural belief is huge.
When I was a kid we had the problem that the official version of history said that the first humans came into North America about 10,000 years ago. And yet, there was an ever growing pile of evidence of people who were here more than 12,000 years ago who seem to have suddenly disappeared.
Now we know about the comment that hit North America about 12,000 years ago and the evidence makes sense.
But, back in the '60s and '70s it was almost impossible to even publish a paper that showed carbon dated evidence of people being in NA that long ago. Why? Because some very powerful scientists *believed* that people were not here that early.
Belief has no place in science. You have to look at the evidence and go from there. Trouble is that we humans have beliefs and we often are not even aware of them.
A comment or two about the Diamond Sutra. I have for a long time had a hobby of reading the "religious" writings of many cultures. Some I have found simply incomprehensible. Others are more accessible but take a lot of work. I started in on the Buddhist Sutras quite awhile ago an
It took me a long time to decide to reply to you. I've replied to all of these points so many times that it is hard for me to make myself bother. But, you seem to be making an attempt at a rational response so I'm going to do the same.
Your first point about the flowering of Islamic culture between 800 and 110 AD is correct. The intellectual center of the western world at that time was Baghdad.
The video link you posted to support that was not a link to the entire video. The link picked out just the tiny part of the video that supported your claim about Badhdad. The rest of the video was about the negative, but pervasive, effect of religion on the history of science. After the section on Baghdad it went on to talk about how Imam Ghalazi lead Islam away from rationality and investigation into a form of fundamentalism that assumed that all answers were in the Qu'ran. He even convinced the entire Islamic world that mathematics is the work of Satan.
He then cautioned his audience about the rise of Fundamentalist Christianity in the US. He used examples to show that they are trying to go down the same path that Islam went down. The only difference is the name of the book Superstition is superstition no matter what book it is based on.
Islam has been in a nasty, mentally incestuous, dark age in which superstition has completely replaced reason and investigation ever since. deGrasses was warning us that we could be heading back into the same kind of dark age.
I suppose the crusades could have helped people accept Ghalazi's world view, especially when Islam was losing the crusades. You see the same thing in the US now that Islam has started crusading against us. A lot of people think this is happening because people have turned away from god. I've even met mental midgets who are claiming that the US Constitution was written by Jesus. They must not understand the difference between 200 and 2000 years.
As to the crusades. Why do you guys keep bringing them up? The crusades were carried out by a religious theocracy that was operating in a nasty mentally incestuous, system in which reason and investigation had been replaced by the superstitious belief that all answers can be found in the Bible. We are not those people. We did not participate in the Crusades. The simple fact that Mecca was not nuked withing 48 hours of the attacks on 9/11/2001 proves we are not those people.
I think the trouble is that Islamic culture has been trapped in a deep freeze since the 1100s and you do not understand the rate of change, or the amount of change, that has happened in the western and asian cultures.
Israel. Oh my. Yes, I understand exactly what how the Palestinians feel about Israel. I do not understand why the UN established Israel. There is no question in my mind that the Palestinians suffered a grave injustice when that happened.
I have been thinking about this problem and studying it for many years. I believe that the desire to create a "happy ending" to the holocaust was one of the reasons it happened. Another reason was simply to acknowledge what was all ready happening. At the end of WWII the surviving Jews decided to take back the original land of Israel. At the end of WWII the UK was in no condition to continue to occupy Palestine and letting the Jews recreate Israel may have been seen as a way to get the same effect without having to spend any UK resources on the project. I also know that a lot of Christian Fundamentalists in the US supported the establishment Israel because that must happen to allow other biblical prophecies to take place. (Hey superstition gets into everything if you let it.) I also suspect that the UN believed that the Palestinians would not be able to stop the creation of Israel and were no real threat to Israel. And, it seems, from what I have been able to dig out of articles and commentaries that they didn't believe that the other Islamic states would take any meaningful actions to help the Palestinians.
Nope, I've been pointing out the differences between western cultural values and their conflict with the values of the islamic cultures for a long time and I have always either been ignored or modded up.
I've asked the same question in different forms several times. Most people understand that this is not about race or ethnicity. It is about basic values.
Oh wow! You just demonstrated a total lack of understanding of science. Science understands that there can never be a statement that can be taken as anything but an approximation based on the current best evidence. There can be no absolutes in science.
You should read the Diamond Cutter Sutra and then think about what I said. The Buddha said it 2500 years ago much better than I will ever be able to say it. But, here is a shot at it...
I said it the way I said to get the idea across in as few words as possible and in the hope that people would think about it. The previous poster got the joke, and the point.
You at least get the opportunity to come to an understanding of science.
If you look at what has happened so far you will notice one thing. Up until they tried top kill BP has not take a single action that would put the well out of production. Every thing they have tried has had the goal of putting that well back in to production. When the last one failed they proposed an approach that requires them to cut the top of the control structure, an act that has a possibility of *increasing* the rate that oil is leaking. So, first they attempt a top kill and a junk shot that, of course, fails. Now, they have "no choice" but to try this risky technique. This risky technique which is designed to put the well back into production. And, oh yeah, it might still leak. But, they'll be getting the oil so what do they care? They have never been focused on stopping the leak. They have always been focused on getting the well back in production.
Have you noticed how many complaints there have been from the folks on the gulf about the lack skimmers operating? Where are they? They all seem to be under contract to BP. CNN reported yesterday that a whole fleet were sitting doing nothing until an official of homeland security tracked them down and forced them to start skimming. Why is that? The reason is simple. Every barrel of oil they skim up is evidence that can be used against BP in court. Why did they lie about the size of the spill in the first place? Because anything they say about the size of the leak is an admission that could be used against them in court. Why did I see a BP representative, again on CNN, state that the pipe was 5 inches in diameter when it is 22 inches in diameter? The list goes on and on an on...
Why, because BP is worried about leaving evidence that can be used in court. They are not worried about cleaning up the spill or even limiting the damage. They are interested in reducing the amount of evidence that can be used against them in court and getting the well back into operation. Killing the place that produces 80% of the seafood consumed in the US does not matter to them killing the ecology of the entire gulf does not mater to them. When the oil starts to wash up on their private beaches in the UK and Europe, you can bet there will be plenty of skimmers working. There will be no shortage of booms to block the oil. They care no more for us than their ancestors cared about the people in the the Americas, Asia, or Africa.
Who are these people? The people running BP are the same British Aristocracy that raped India, introduced opium to China, started slavery in North America, and created the "troubles" in Ireland. These are the same people who we Americans revolted against. They are the same kind of people that the French were smart enough to feed to Dr. Guillotine's machine. These are people who for hundreds of generations have believed that they had the right to enslave other people and use them any way they choose. Are they hereditary sociopaths? Or, are they just raised to believe in their own superiority? I do not know. I do know that any aristocracy is institutionalized injustice.
Now, through what is recognized as a huge mistake in the 14th amendment these aristocrats are able to hide behind the facade of a a corporation to hide from justice. Corporations were never intended to have the right to due process, or the right to freedom of speech, or the protection of the 4th and 5th amendments. Those are *human* rights. They are the rights of natural persons. Corporations are not supposed to have those rights. People have them. People can be held responsible for criminal actions by sending them to jail, or even (I live in Texas) by execution. But, no matter what a corporation does they can only be forced to pay a fine. You can't imprison a corporation. You can't execute a corporation. And, corporations have enormous amounts of money to spend on their own defence. Huge amounts of money to spend on lobbying. But, a corporation can not make a decision. People who run corporations make the decisions. If they decide to commit a crime their corporation pays a fine
Naw.... I saw my first posting by a dumb ass moslem screaming about how we are all going to be killed in the great jihad blah blah blahdy blah blah back on usenet when the Internet was young and you could still have an arapnet domain.
This crap has been happening for centuries. Every time some poor bastard realizes that those fast moving lights in the sky were put there by us and that not one of their countries could do the same thing or when they saw the steam powered steel ships come into harbor and they realized that not one of their countries could... You get the picture. Contact with the west destroyed their image of themselves as a great culture so they have to kill us all.
that islam is having a very hard time dealing with the 16th century. I hate to image what will happen if it/they what ever, it actually comes into contact with the 21st century. Oh, yeah... that was what happened in 9/11/2001 and just a while ago in Times Square.
The question is which happens first? Either 1) these so called islamic "civizations" learn to accept basic concepts like "human rights" or 2) they finally become a real danger. By real danger I mean they actually set off a nuke in a western city, release a ton of nerve gas, set off a dirty bomb, start the black death 2.0, or do a bunch of little things that just really piss us off. Like say, killing the South Park guys.
If 1 happens first, then cool. Everyone gets to live. But if 2 happens, what then? Do we keep trying to bottle them up and worrying about whether it is safe to have lunch in the park today? Or, do we just start killing them? I think that is going to be a major test of *our* so called civilization.
My bet is that our great great grandchildren will be ashamed of what we do. But, I'm also betting that there are going to be very very few great great grandchildren who are raised as moslems.
IMHO, the belief in absolute truth is the greatest enemy of humanity. The belief in absolute truth is absolute evil.
I once saw a detailed analysis, written a few years after WWII, that showed in great detail that every technology needed to build a V2 missile was in existence by 1910. But, the V2 didn't go into operation until the 1940s and development started more than 10 years earlier.
Now we have the laser as an example of another technology that could have been invented 30 to 40 years earlier. But, in fact, neither of them was invented earlier.
The point is that first you have to imagine that something is possible, and that goes beyond just having a theoretical proof of the possibility. Then you have to believe that it is possible. But, even that is not enough. You have to have someone who was exposed to the knowledge required to invent the thing who has the belief and who has access and understanding of the precursor technologies.
Then, that person, or persons, has to have the will and the resources needed to finally build a working model.
After that comes the hard part. The hard part is convincing people that what you have done is something new and valuable. In the case of the V2 the large holes that appeared in the European landscape were plenty of proof. In the case of the laser the poor guy couldn't even get his paper announcing his invention published because the people doing peer review didn't understand what he said.
The challenge is to go out and identify research that actually points to world changing new technology. If you can do that, then you are a genius and you will be doing a huge service for humanity.
I remember the first article I saw about the laser. I'm not sure if it is was in Popular Science or Scientific American, but I remember that it was described as a solution without a problem. For years after it was invented no one had any idea of what to do with the damn thing.
Now, it seems like they are everywhere there is one in every CD, DVD, and Blue Ray drive. We use them to align everything along that nice straight line. We are testing laser laser weapons. We use them to remove hair and correct eyes. They are critical to many manufacturing processes including precision cutting. Not to mention the whole field of holography and holographic optical elements.
But, It took many years for people to even start imagining what the thing was good for. And, even longer for the technology to get to where they could be used for practical applications. The history of the laser is a perfect study in how a really new idea develops into a useful technology. After 50 years we are only seeing the beginning of the application of the Laser.
As far as I can tell the author of the article has a very narrow definition of "the game industry". He seems to think that only the dinosaurs that cater to ultra hardcore gamers are part of the "game industry". What the article is really saying is that the iPad, and the new smart phones are taking sales away from the old dinosaurs like Nintendo, EA, and the others. What that means is that Apple, the cell phone manufactures, Google (of Android fame), and those thousands and thousands of small independent developers who are coding those hundreds of thousands of apps, including a huge number of games, are now a large and growing part of "the game industry".
The game industry is now a lot larger than just the dinosaurs that have been ignoring most of the population for the last 30 years.
I've been playing video games since the '70s. The number of games that I want to play has dropped every year since then. It has been at least 5 years since I saw a game that I was willing to pay even the used price for. People like me, boomers, have most of the money left in this crappy economy which means we can afford games, hardware, and broadband. We are nearing or have already retired so we have lots of time to play games. But, the dinosaurs only write games for people who want to play one more remake of the same tired old plot. Plots that were innovative 30 years ago and are now as boring as the 2000th rerun of a TOS episode.
I'm so glad to see the dinosaurs losing market share. I am so happy to see the huge number of actually fun games available for ubiquitous hardware at reasonable prices.
The current "game industry" is dying and they don't have a clue what they are doing to deserve it. They have been ignoring most of the market for 30 years. Maybe now they will get a clue, but I doubt it.
I've been a brand new programmer just out of school and I have been a hiring manager. I think I have something to offer.
First off. If you need advice on personal hygiene you most likely would not have gotten the job at all. But, if you do have problems with bad breath, find a good dentist and get your teeth cleaned on at least twice a year, get the cavities fixed, and learn to floss and brush. I'm allergic to an ingredient in pretty much all toothpastes so I use good old salt and soda and a high speed electric tooth brush.
The simple truth is that you will not advance, and you will not even get good work assignments if you stink.
Before you start at the job read everything you can get on the rules of conduct at the company. As a noob you *must* comply with all the rules. This is not a matter of "try". This is a matter of *must*. During your first 6 moths to a year are being evaluated and your ability to comply with company rules is part of what you will be evaluated on.
Dress properly. Most likely your company has written rules about how to dress. Comply with those rules. But, you can stretch them a bit. I always used to were highway patrol trooper boots. Many corporate executives are ex-military and a nice pair of shiny boots really makes a nice impression. If the company allows you to wear jeans, were them. But, wear black jeans, maybe with a crease. Do not wear worn faded jeans until you are a senior developer. The higher up you get the worse you can dress. I remember a top VP at a major telco who came up from the technical side who would show up for meetings with the president of our division wearing jeans, and a denim jacket. It is a way to assert you authority. As a noob you have no authority.
It is a good idea to watch how your boss's boss dresses and dress in the same style, but make sure to wear cheaper clothes.
Always show up before the normal start of business. Never leave until after the normal close of business. If possible be the first one there and the last one to leave.
Work. Do not use the Internet for anything that is not directly related to work. Do not stand around talking in the halls unless you are stopped by someone senior to you. Then talk to them as long as they want to talk to you. Work. Get to your desk and start to work.
Do not ever start a sentence with "In school we were told to...". Everyone their went to school. They most likely have the experience to understand why what you were told is bullshit. They also know how easy it is to mis-understand what you thought you learned. If you see something going wrong talk to your boss about it in private. Do not send emails screaming about the problem to everyone involved. When you have that talk with you boss start the conversation with "I don't understand why we are doing this this way. Can you explain it to me?" In fact, when ever you think someone is doing something wrong tell them that you don't understand that approach, can you please explain it to me?
You will be given some projects that seem really stupid. You might even find out that other people have been assigned the same project. You might feel that being assigned such a simple project is demeaning. You might think that assigning the same project to two people shows distrust. Well, you are right. They do not trust you. Do the projects as quickly and as well as you possibly can. You are being tested to see if you can do the work. You are also being tested to see if you are willing to do what is needed no matter what. No one wants a prima donna. Sometimes the most senior people have to do the equivalent of sweeping the floor. If you are willing to do it, then you will be loved, trusted, and highly valued. If you do it, but give off a negative vibe your value will be greatly reduced. If you you refuse, you will eventually find yourself without a job.
Ask a lot of questions. You do not know how things work at that company. You do not know much at all. You have a degree. If you are lucky and worked as a programmer before and duri
The author is mistaking his goals as a teacher ...
on
Flash Is Not a Right
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· Score: 1
for reality.
I'm a teacher. I try to make students look at as many different platforms as possible. I benefited from the same attitude from my teachers. It is a good thing to do. But, it has nothing at all to do with rights.
He is also confusing legal rights with actual rights. In the US we have no legal right to write code on an ipad in flash. As human beings we have an absolute right to use our property anyway we see fit so long as it does no harm to others or to future generations. In terms of real human rights Apple has no right to tell me or anyone else how we can use an ipad after we have purchased it. The fact that Apple has a legal right to tell us how to use our own property disgusts me and is a sad sad commentary on how far our society has fallen. The fact that they have that legal right *and use it* disgusts me. That is why I do not buy Apple products and never will.
We only have our true rights as humans, as intrinsic parts of the universe, to the point that we are willing to resist with the full force of "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" something the majority of US are no longer willing to do. We do not think about the implications of our actions. Many of us, like the teacher, are so misguided they no longer understand the concept of rights. I wonder if he as any idea of the responsibilities the come with our true rights? Maybe we give up on our rights so that we can pretend we do not have the associated responsibilities.
Damn this kind of crap really pisses me off. I suggest that every developer who understands just how horribly their rights are being trampled should simply boycott Apple products. There are many other platforms on which you can make a few bucks. Think about how nice it will be for people who also boycott Apple products to be able to say "There is no app for that on Apple".
The alternatives, such as picketing Apple stores, or any acts of violence against Apple property and management is not acceptable because of the chance of injury to the innocent and naive. No matter how good it would feel, it is not acceptable when dealing with something as powerless as inconsequential as Apple.
I've been running Lucid since alpha 3 on 2 PCs. One is an Dell c640. It crashes. Constantly. But, only in firefox. Using the search box is a sure way to get the black screen. Sure, it doesn't crash the machine. It comes back to the login prompt quickly and you can log in again. Just to have it crash again in 20 or 30 minutes. Just clicking on the link to the article I'm commenting on caused the desktop to crash and restart. I always install the newest version of Ubuntu on at least one machine. Up until 9.10 the apha 1 version always installed. At 9.10 I could not install alpha 1, it did not run. On 10.4 I was unable to install alpha 1 and 2. Alpha 3 installed but was barely usable. I'm currently running the release candidate. Right now the scroll bar to the right edge of the edit region I'm typing into is locked up. This is the buggiest version of Ubuntu I have ever seen. The spell checker is marking my questionable words, but right clicking does not bring up spelling corrections. And, I can't use the moue to place the cursor in the right half of the edit box I currently using. In other words is is totally messed up.
The new default theme is painful to look at and impossible to use. Ok, it is for me. I'm 57. I have old eyes. I wear bifocal glasses. The extreme changes in brightness across the default background cause painful eye strain. Gray text on a gray background, you have got to be kidding. Is there anyone with any knowledge of human factors engineering at Ubuntu? I don't think so. Do they even care about the usability of the UI? Clearly not.
Should I mention the stupidity of moving the windows buttons? Never mind. Oh, and if you flame me and ask me why I ever bothered to leave Windows, please check your history and notice that I started using Unix before there was a Windows. I did not move from Windows to Linux. I moved from Unix to Linux. The OS I use is not a religious thing with me. One OS, is pretty much like another. OTOH, I am outraged at being forced to support a criminal organization. Extortion is extortion no matter whether the money goes to MS or the mob. At least with the mob you will get what you paid for.
On the other hand, the bugs will eventually be fixed. If it survives long enough this just might be the most important version of Linux that ever shipped. Take a look at two new features. The music store and the me-menu. The me-menu looked like a total waste of time to me until I understood that it just might give me a way to keep up with Facebook and Linkedin without having to check in to the sites or do it through email. My friends and most of my relatives, all the ones I want to contact anyway, are all on Facebook. My business contacts are all on Linkedin. These are very important to me. If it pans out, the me-menu could be great. It could be horrible too. It could be especially horrible if I have to sign up for stuff I don't want to use the stuff I do want or if they treat experienced adults as poorly in the me-menu as they do in the UI. If I can't read it, I can't use it.
The big winner is the music store. Ubuntu includes support for mp3 format music. The music store sells mp3s without DRM. But, to use the music store you have to use Ubuntu 10.4 or greater. That means that a lot of people who are willing to pay for music but are not willing to have it locked to a single platform are going to flock to Ubuntu to buy music. I'm one of those people. I buy CDs and rip them so that I can get DRM free music. I've never stolen a track. But, I will not buy music that can only play on one platform. I will not buy music that I can't back up, burn to a CD, or play on any old music system I happen to buy. If losing the player means losing the music then it is not worth buying either the music or the player.
If the music store really is what it is claimed to be, it will be the best reason to stay with, or move to, Ubuntu that anyone has ever come up with. There are a few of my old favorites that they don't have, like Utah Phillips. But, the have The Great Society, the 13th Floo
Since you suggested Gnumeric I tested it. Nice spreadsheet. Unfortunately, although it does handle circular references, it does it in a very odd way. Oddly enough, I can see exactly why they do it that way, but it makes it useless for doing what Excel is so good at.
Basically the formula a1: =a1+1 That is, in the cell a1 you have the formula =a1+1. Since the initial value of a1 defaults to 0 you would expect a1 to increment by 1 each time the sheet recalculates. But, on Bnumeric is increments by 2. Instead of giving you 0,1,2,3.... you get 2,4,6,8....
So, I tried the spreadsheet in Google Docs. It has a lot of advantages. But, it flags circular references as errors. I was not able to find any way around that. That spreadsheet provides minimal functionality. Great for casual use, no good for serious use.
I then tried KSpread in the KOffice suite. I found the UI to be peculiar. But, after only about and hour I was starting to like it it. OTOH, I was never able to find out how to make all the tools on the toolbar visible or how to get rid of the drawing tool menu. Why does that even show up? BUT, it handles circular references just fine. It works. Except... I could not find a way to set the iteration count. That means that if I want to process 100,000 samples I have to press F9 100,000 times. Close, so close...
So, I am looking for more info on KSpread. After looking at KOffice for a while I've decided to spend a lot more time looking at KOffice. To bad it is so closely associated with KDE. It looks like it could be a good alternative to OO.o. Of course, it runs just fine on any Linux/X11 based system, but a lot of people don't know that that.
Its a "single click change"? Would you mind telling me that single click? It requires you go know that a program named gnome-gconf-editor exits. It isn't in the menus anywhere. You then have to know where the info you have to find is hidden. Then you have to understand the syntax used in that specific field for that specific app. Then you have to actually edit the info. That is not a single click change.
I've been working with X11 based desktops since X11R3 and it still took me a good half hour of googling to find the info and another half hour to fix it.
OBTW, you have to know not to do it as root and you have to repeat the fix for each user.
So, please, tell me how it is a single click.
I guess I have to say this one more time for you folks who think that the Linux Desktop is a clone of the Windows desktop. It is not and never has been.
The windows desktop is a clone of the Alto and Star desktop developed at PARC in the '70s on into the early '80s. The Apple desktop is also a clone of the PARC desktop systems. MS did start borrowing from Apple by sometime around 3.0 when Apple sued MS over copyright violation. BTW, Apple lost.
The court ruled that Apple didn't own the copyright and neither did MS. The few things that were copyrightable belonged to PARC who didn't bother to sue until it was too late. When PARC sued they sued MS and Apple, not the X consortium or any Unix vendor. Why is that?
If you check your facts. You will find that the X Consortium got legal permission from PARC to use the desktop metaphor. The X11 desktop is the only one of the three, Apple, MS, and X, who have the legal right to clone PARC's work.
Check the dates. X and its predecessor W (yes before X11 was X10, X9, X8.. and before X there was W and guess what W is short for) predate Windows. The version of the X11 protocol we currently use was finalized in '87. MS released Windows 2.0 in December of '87. X1 came out in '84. Windows 1.0 came out in '85.
By the time that horrible thing called Windows 3.0 came out in '90 X11R4 was out in commercial products. By the time Window 3.1 came out in '92 X11R5 was out with the font sever and a standardized 3d graphics systems called PEX. (PEX looked strong enough in the market to force SGI to release an open version of their Graphics Language that we all know and love as OpenGL.)
Windows is not older than X11. While all you noobs moved from Windows to Linux/X11 some of us used Unix/Linux plus X11 all the way from the '80s until today. Only noobs moved from Windows. The rest of us either never used Windows or moved from Unix/X11 to Windows and then to Linux/X11. (Ok, that was fun to write. But I guess it may be considered a bit unfair to call most people under the age of 30 or even 40 "noobs". Even if you are.:-)
I got a laugh out of your "Moire" wallpaper comment. The Moire thing was there because way back in the before times pixels had one bit. Unix systems tended to have high resolution with 1 bit per pixel while PCs had very low resolutions with as many as 4 bits per pixel. In '87 when the VGA display first came out for PCs giving them an amazing 640x480 resolution with 16 wonderful colors I was using X11 on machines with multiple 24 bit color + alpha planes, a z buffer, multiple shaders, and support for stereo viewing using quad color buffers and shutter glasses.
Ah, that feels really good. But I do find myself thinking about Hank Hill yelling at Beavis and Butthead when he found them in his shed.
Stonewolf
P.S.
"I am the Great Cornholio, I need tp for my bunghole"
I had a flash of insight as I was walking into the house yesterday. I was asking myself the same question you just asked.
With out the need to pay any attention to customer feedback, how can you possibly get FOSS that is meets customer requirements.
The insight that I came up with is that you take FOSS projects and you use them as the basis of commercial products. The people doing the commercial product can add the polish and clean up the human factors problems.
What is wrong with that? The people who make the project into a product that people will pay for don't have any incentive to pay the people who developed the original project. That is not acceptable. The people who make a salable product from a project have not incentive to donate their changes back to the project. Which means the project does not benefit from the extra work. The GPL, and many other FOSS licenses do not permit code to be used this way.
Are there examples of products that came about this way? Yes, Crossover Office and Cedega both start as forks of Wine back before they changed the license to prevent exactly that. I understand that the TCP/IP stack on Windows came from the BSD licensed TCP/IP stack on BSD and that even AutoLisp started from a simple Lisp interpreter that was originally placed in the public domain.
And then, I realized that that is exactly what RedHat did and what Ubuntu is trying to do.
I can see that RedHat has done a pretty good job. And, by setting up Fedora they have created a way to feed back code to the community and to get the community to contribute to their bottom line.
Ubuntu has attracted so manSo far I don't see that Ubuntu is doing very well at working with its community. But, the reason it is so popular is because they have made it so easy to install. y users, including me, because they have made it so very easy to install and maintain Ubuntu. They have made the Linux desktop into something that is really pretty to use. So far, pretty much all their popularity has come from making a Linux distribution that can be installed and maintained by most everyone.
It seems to me that Ubuntu is trying to do exactly what I would suggest we do to improve OSS. To really improve OSS we need to add a clause to every license that allows the code to be used in commercial products but that requires that 3% of the gross be paid to the developers of the original code. There would have to be a formula to break up the royalty based on the percentage of code each library and the application makes up of the final project.
Oh well, Ubuntu has done a good job with infrastructure problems. But, now that they are starting to mess with the UI they need to hire some real human factors people, psychologist, and an expert on design for the mass market. Their problem right now is they do not have those skills in house, but they think they do.
I've made the mistake of working for someone who has already made a large fortune. He thought he could not make a mistake. He got fired from his own company. It was not sad to watch. I'm afraid that the same thing is happening at Ubuntu.
I know the context as well as anyone living 700 years after the event can know it. That is to say, I read the history. I can't possibly understand the actual context.
I have never seen any indication that anyone in the west feels guilty about the Crusades. I certainly don't. I don't think I ever met anyone from the west who cares about them one way or another.
Did you grow up in western civilization? And you care? That would be very interesting to me.
I too was a software developer and development manager. I did that for 30 years before becoming a teacher. BTW, I *love* teaching. It is the most rewarding, and frustrating, work I have ever done.
I did not work on spread sheets. Most of my development work was on lower level parts of the system. I spent 6 years working on the X server. I worked on graphics drivers. Later I worked on what would now be called engine code for games. Basically infrastructure types of things. If our code didn't work, the system didn't work. Our bugs were as visible as the current Ubuntu X.org bug. The only time I ever saw the features over bugs attitude was when I was a contractor (working on X) at IBM. So, I've never really internalized that point of view. I see it, but it is still foreign to me.
The thing about OO.o is that I use it all the time too. Even though we have Windows and MS Office at school many of my students do not have it at home and cannot afford it. Now days they all have some sort of a computer. Between Goodwill and other sources of recycled computers I almost never have a student who does not have a computer at home. But, software like MS Office is out of their reach. Many still do not have Internet either. So I love OO.o because I can just hand out disks to students and they can have an office suite at home. Up until now I have always been able to make most assignments doable with both MS Office and OO.o. (Access is a special case, OO.o Database is actually pretty nice, but not enough like Access to be usable as an alternative.)
So, now I find a great way to teach many concepts and find that I can only use it with Excel. That is frustrating. But, I didn't get to the real deep anger I currently feel until I looked at the history of that bug. Like I said, there have been over 100,000 bugs filed since #956 and 9 years have passed. But, that wasn't what really ticked me off. It was when I saw that OO.o has lost 9 years of opportunities to be accepted into the sciences and engineering because they will not fix that bug. The thing is, it really isn't a bug. They built it that way on purpose. So, it is either a new feature or a feature change.
For 9 years scientists and engineers have been asking for a version of OO.o that can run their spread sheets. For 9 years they have been forced back to using Excel. From the descriptions of why they want OO.o Calc it is clear that Calc is what they need. They need a spread sheet that can be used on very high end machines. Machines that don't run Windows.
I really am a true believer in FOSS. Everyone can have FOSS. Not just people who happen to be rich enough. I hate seeing students ability to work and learn in school because they can't afford an office suite. I would like to see it be available everywhere. When I see a FOSS group missing such a huge opportunity to extend the use and support of FOSS it is very frustrating. When I see them passing up the opportunity just because the use people want to make of the software is not what the developer imagined it would be used for... Well, that just makes me want to start smashing heads.
As William Gibson said "The street finds its own uses for technology." A developer should be flattered and amazed when someone says "You know, if it just had this little feature I could use it for X" where X is something completely outside of the developers experience and imagination. I have always felt that way.
In this case the developers attitude is exactly the opposite. Instead of going "Oh wow, that is so cool" and then adding or fixing the problem, their reaction is "No, it shouldn't be use that way. You have to do things the way we say you must do them." And, since there is a product that does what the users want, they just pay what to them is a very small price and go use the product that works.
I truly hate MS. I had to deal with them during one of their many legal battles with the US government. I was chatting with a bunch of MS managers and engineers waiting f
I don't know what version you are running, but Lucid lynx, from alpha 1 to today are by far the most unstable version of Linux I have ever run. I've been running Linux since the middle '90s. It is less stable than any version of Windows I have ever used. It is less stable than any version of DOS I ever used and it is less stable than any version of CP/M I ever used. It is less stable than VMS, BSD 3.1, Tops20, and even less stable than Exec 8 running on an ancient and over loaded 1108a.
Right now I will be lucky it if runs long enough for me to finish posting this note.
I've been an open source user and developer since long before there was a Linux. And, I've been a Linux user for a long time. Used Redhat, Debian, and now Ubuntu. I've been using Ubuntu since 5 something. I like Ubuntu. It is easy to install, gets easier all the time. It works, which is really nice. And, it has very good support for things like Flash and proprietary graphics card drivers. You can complain that it doesn't have some detail covered that is critical to you, but that's OK. I've been very happy with Ubuntu.
Well, I was. I always try to test the alpha and beta releases. In the early days I could down load the first alpha and it would work. It might get a little weird, but it would work. In the worst case I can remember the computer would at least boot up to the command prompt. That is until the 10.4 release. That just plain wouldn't boot until we got to alpha 3. It wouldn't even install. It has been awful ever since. I don't know if it is a problem with X.org, but every time I type in the search field on firefox I get a black screen. After a few seconds the login screen comes up and I can login. The machine did not reboot. It looks like typing in the search field on firefox is crashing the X server. Now, back in the early '90s I helped get a little program called xcrashme written and distributed and after that was around for a few years the X server was damned near bullet proof. What did they do to mess it up so badly? I went to file a bug report. It turned out to be a duplicate. Seems a lot of people have reported the problem. I haven't seen any action on it.
Then there is the little thing about the user interface in 10.4. Nobody in their right mind, at least no body who had any respect for their users, would change something as basic as the location and order of the window buttons. But, Shuttleworth has done just that. The reason? To make room for a "cool" something that will appear in a later version of Ubuntu. The only discussion involved in the decision was the coolness of the feature and the vague technical argument that somehow it reduces mouse movement, because the buttons are now on the same side of the screen as the menus. Oh, yeah, like the amount of time anyone spends opening new apps is worth retraining your hands to find the new buttons. On the bug discussion list Shuttleworth would not even admit that human factors might have some validity in the discussion. Only the coolness and the bullshit argument about mouse movement were treated as worthy of consideration. Shuttleworth even posted data showing his own mouse movement. The data did not support moving the buttons. But, he claimed it did. He saw what he wanted to see. After all, the new thing is so cool we should all be grateful for the inconvenience.
Why doesn't Ubuntu care about the effect the change will have on their customers? Because they have no customers. They are in it to be cool and to score techie points with other people who do not understand why proprietary software actually tries not to piss off their customers. If you don't believe me ask a human factors engineer why purple is an awful background color for a GUI and then ask what percentage of the public can read light gray text on a dark gray background. Then look at the new Ubuntu default theme. It sure is "cool". I used ssh -Y to log in from a computer with a different theme so I could work select a readable theme and move the buttons back to where I'm used to having them.
The backlash from the users has been astonishing. Even more astonishing is Shuttleworth's "I'm to cool to care" attitude.
At least for now you can move the buttons back and choose another theme. What happens when he puts his uber cool new feature into the UI? I guess I am looking for a new Linux distribution.
That was bad enough... But, then I ran into OO.o Issue #956 (http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=956). Have you heard about this one? It was filed May 25, 2001. For comparison current issue numbers for OO.o are now above 110,000.
The crusades ended over 700 years ago. Since then the Catholic church has changed dramatically. The pope is no longer the ruler of any kind of an empire. In fact, in the US, he is pretty much just a dirty joke. Since the end of the crusades western civilization has gone through the Renaissance, the Reformation, a long series of civil wars, that has all but eliminated the direct influence of organized religion on government. We've gone through the whole experience of the new world and contact with the civilizations of the Americas, Japan, China, India, Africa, Southeast Asia.... the list is too long to write and I appologize to those I missed.
In other words we have changed. We are not the people who carried out the crusades.
In the US we have as a basic concept of law that the government may not interfere with the practice of your religion so long as that practice does not infringe on the rights of other people to live their lives as they see fit. We aren't perfect on holding to that principle. But, it explains why I can be a Buddhist living in Texas who drives past a Mosque on my way to the grocery store. My friends, neighbors, coworkers, and relatives include everything from born again fundamentalist Christians to Wiccans, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, Mormons, and Atheists.
Here in Texas you can celebrate Cinco De Mayo in front of the Alamo. We can watch Anime on December 7th. And on St. Patrick's Day, my Irish relatives can sit down with my Scots Irish (Orangemen all by their ancestory) relatives and all drink a beer and toast Ireland. Not one of them cares about which side their ancestor were on. We're all just Irish on St. Patty's day.
And yet, when I listen to Muslim Clerics and such talking about why they hate us they always talk about something that some people from Europe did some folks from where they live 700 years ago. We aren't the people who did it them. And you are not the people it happened to. What kind of sickness is at the core of a society that keeps a grudge for 700 years?
Of course, that is the problem. The extremist Muslims seem to still be nursing a grudge from 700 years ago. Every heard a European express a grudge against the Mongols 700 years ago? No? Me neither. But, we are dealing with people who use something that happened 700 years ago as justification for killing us.
One last comment: You don't want to piss off every South Park fan in the world. You really don't. Kill South Park and millions of people who don't currently even bother to vote will become your implacable enemies. Blowing up lower Manhattan is one thing. Messing with a favorite TV show, now that is something you do not want to do.
Stonewolf
P.S.
I'm a great great grandson of John D. Lee. (look up "The Mountain Meadow Massacre. And yes, according to my family he did it.) So I understand what religious fanaticism can do to people at a deep personal level. I truly hope that this problem passes into history with no more violence. But, I deeply fear that it will lead to the deaths of millions, if not billions, of people.
That is because you are not a greed head telecom CEO who is still trying to make a 1200% profit on caller ID even though everyone else gives it away.
If they see you making a profit by the use of their network they feel they are entitled to at least 90% of the profit because you could not do it without their network.
That is their point of view, sick as it is. It is a lot like the pirates of old who would take half your cargo and let you go.
Slashdot Mirror
You need to see a doctor. You need a complete physical and a complete mental examination. What you describe is not even close to normal. You need to be checked for metabolic problems, depression, hormone imbalances, and a whole lot more.
I recently went through a real bad spot physically and mentally. I completely lost interest in most everything and became pretty depressed. Turns out my testosterone levels had dropped way below normal. I'm a diabetic. It turns out the most widely used diabetic medication, metformin (aka glucophage) suppresses testosterone production. It does it so well that it is used to suppress testosterone when that is medically necessary. I also had a low grade infection that I may have had for years and infections also suppress testosterone production.
Yes ladies, I can tell you I know from first hand experience what hot flashes and night sweats feel like. I had them and they suck.
After a couple of weeks of testosterone injections I was back to my inquisitive hard coding happy self.
The description you gave of your changes at age 30 are *not* normal and should be looked at carefully by a couple or three different doctors.
Stonewolf
You would formulate an approximation to gravity exactly the way we humans did find our current favorite approximation to gravity.
First, we had to notice it. Yep, first part is thinking to ask the question, why do we stick to the ground? Then later Galileo Galilei did a whole bunch of experiments and came up with an equation that described how thing fall near his home in Italy on planet Earth. He also notice things in the sky that were not supposed to be there.
A while later after people had collected lots of data about the motion of the things in the sky a fellow named Newton came up with a set of equations that described how the things in the sky moved and he figured out how to tie that motion in the way thing fall on Earth. Smart guy Newton.
Then we started collecting information about motion of the stars and a little planet named Mercury and found that Newton's equations no longer seemed to work and eventually a guy named Einstein came up with some equations that describes that data, plus all the date collected since Galileo Galilei and that is pretty much our current theory of gravity.
except that we now know that Einstien's equations break down at certain points. And, we are seeing indications that maybe gravity is an emergent effect of something a lot deeper. It looks like the natural laws of our Universe may have changed over time. Controversial results, but that is the way science works.
IMHO, it looks like Physics is getting ready for a huge change. But, I am not a physicist.
What is wrong with believing in immutable laws? The same thing that is wrong with believing anything. It throws you off the path. If you believe there are immutable laws you will not notice, or you will ignore, evidence that points to variable laws.
Think about who long it took for the fact that continents move to be accepted? Deep down geologists did not believe that continents could possible move. The hardest thing in science is getting past the unreasoned and unquestioned belief. Or, think about how long it took for western science to accept the idea that the Earth is billions of years old. The whole of western culture had the deeply held belief that the Earth was only a few thousand years old. And, yet, if you measure the rate at which sediment piles up in a lake or ocean and then look at a wall of sedimentary rock that is thousands of feed thick you find your self having to believe two completely contradictory ideas. Either the Earth is old enough for sediment to build up into a thousand foot wall. In which case the Earth is very old and a basic "truth" is actually a lie. Or, something else made that wall look like sediment, when it isn't.
You get trapped in the problem of believing in a god that lies with his works but tells the truth with his words, or the other way around.
The number of examples of science taking decades or centuries to get past a widely held cultural belief is huge.
When I was a kid we had the problem that the official version of history said that the first humans came into North America about 10,000 years ago. And yet, there was an ever growing pile of evidence of people who were here more than 12,000 years ago who seem to have suddenly disappeared.
Now we know about the comment that hit North America about 12,000 years ago and the evidence makes sense.
But, back in the '60s and '70s it was almost impossible to even publish a paper that showed carbon dated evidence of people being in NA that long ago. Why? Because some very powerful scientists *believed* that people were not here that early.
Belief has no place in science. You have to look at the evidence and go from there. Trouble is that we humans have beliefs and we often are not even aware of them.
A comment or two about the Diamond Sutra. I have for a long time had a hobby of reading the "religious" writings of many cultures. Some I have found simply incomprehensible. Others are more accessible but take a lot of work. I started in on the Buddhist Sutras quite awhile ago an
It took me a long time to decide to reply to you. I've replied to all of these points so many times that it is hard for me to make myself bother. But, you seem to be making an attempt at a rational response so I'm going to do the same.
Your first point about the flowering of Islamic culture between 800 and 110 AD is correct. The intellectual center of the western world at that time was Baghdad.
The video link you posted to support that was not a link to the entire video. The link picked out just the tiny part of the video that supported your claim about Badhdad. The rest of the video was about the negative, but pervasive, effect of religion on the history of science. After the section on Baghdad it went on to talk about how Imam Ghalazi lead Islam away from rationality and investigation into a form of fundamentalism that assumed that all answers were in the Qu'ran. He even convinced the entire Islamic world that mathematics is the work of Satan.
He then cautioned his audience about the rise of Fundamentalist Christianity in the US. He used examples to show that they are trying to go down the same path that Islam went down. The only difference is the name of the book Superstition is superstition no matter what book it is based on.
Islam has been in a nasty, mentally incestuous, dark age in which superstition has completely replaced reason and investigation ever since. deGrasses was warning us that we could be heading back into the same kind of dark age.
I suppose the crusades could have helped people accept Ghalazi's world view, especially when Islam was losing the crusades. You see the same thing in the US now that Islam has started crusading against us. A lot of people think this is happening because people have turned away from god. I've even met mental midgets who are claiming that the US Constitution was written by Jesus. They must not understand the difference between 200 and 2000 years.
As to the crusades. Why do you guys keep bringing them up? The crusades were carried out by a religious theocracy that was operating in a nasty mentally incestuous, system in which reason and investigation had been replaced by the superstitious belief that all answers can be found in the Bible. We are not those people. We did not participate in the Crusades. The simple fact that Mecca was not nuked withing 48 hours of the attacks on 9/11/2001 proves we are not those people.
I think the trouble is that Islamic culture has been trapped in a deep freeze since the 1100s and you do not understand the rate of change, or the amount of change, that has happened in the western and asian cultures.
Israel. Oh my. Yes, I understand exactly what how the Palestinians feel about Israel. I do not understand why the UN established Israel. There is no question in my mind that the Palestinians suffered a grave injustice when that happened.
I have been thinking about this problem and studying it for many years. I believe that the desire to create a "happy ending" to the holocaust was one of the reasons it happened. Another reason was simply to acknowledge what was all ready happening. At the end of WWII the surviving Jews decided to take back the original land of Israel. At the end of WWII the UK was in no condition to continue to occupy Palestine and letting the Jews recreate Israel may have been seen as a way to get the same effect without having to spend any UK resources on the project. I also know that a lot of Christian Fundamentalists in the US supported the establishment Israel because that must happen to allow other biblical prophecies to take place. (Hey superstition gets into everything if you let it.) I also suspect that the UN believed that the Palestinians would not be able to stop the creation of Israel and were no real threat to Israel. And, it seems, from what I have been able to dig out of articles and commentaries that they didn't believe that the other Islamic states would take any meaningful actions to help the Palestinians.
History has shown that the Palestinians are in
Nope, I've been pointing out the differences between western cultural values and their conflict with the values of the islamic cultures for a long time and I have always either been ignored or modded up.
I've asked the same question in different forms several times. Most people understand that this is not about race or ethnicity. It is about basic values.
Oh wow! You just demonstrated a total lack of understanding of science. Science understands that there can never be a statement that can be taken as anything but an approximation based on the current best evidence. There can be no absolutes in science.
You should read the Diamond Cutter Sutra and then think about what I said. The Buddha said it 2500 years ago much better than I will ever be able to say it. But, here is a shot at it...
I said it the way I said to get the idea across in as few words as possible and in the hope that people would think about it. The previous poster got the joke, and the point.
You at least get the opportunity to come to an understanding of science.
Nope. :-)
Stonewolf
If you look at what has happened so far you will notice one thing. Up until they tried top kill BP has not take a single action that would put the well out of production. Every thing they have tried has had the goal of putting that well back in to production. When the last one failed they proposed an approach that requires them to cut the top of the control structure, an act that has a possibility of *increasing* the rate that oil is leaking. So, first they attempt a top kill and a junk shot that, of course, fails. Now, they have "no choice" but to try this risky technique. This risky technique which is designed to put the well back into production. And, oh yeah, it might still leak. But, they'll be getting the oil so what do they care? They have never been focused on stopping the leak. They have always been focused on getting the well back in production.
Have you noticed how many complaints there have been from the folks on the gulf about the lack skimmers operating? Where are they? They all seem to be under contract to BP. CNN reported yesterday that a whole fleet were sitting doing nothing until an official of homeland security tracked them down and forced them to start skimming. Why is that? The reason is simple. Every barrel of oil they skim up is evidence that can be used against BP in court. Why did they lie about the size of the spill in the first place? Because anything they say about the size of the leak is an admission that could be used against them in court. Why did I see a BP representative, again on CNN, state that the pipe was 5 inches in diameter when it is 22 inches in diameter? The list goes on and on an on...
Why, because BP is worried about leaving evidence that can be used in court. They are not worried about cleaning up the spill or even limiting the damage. They are interested in reducing the amount of evidence that can be used against them in court and getting the well back into operation. Killing the place that produces 80% of the seafood consumed in the US does not matter to them killing the ecology of the entire gulf does not mater to them. When the oil starts to wash up on their private beaches in the UK and Europe, you can bet there will be plenty of skimmers working. There will be no shortage of booms to block the oil. They care no more for us than their ancestors cared about the people in the the Americas, Asia, or Africa.
Who are these people? The people running BP are the same British Aristocracy that raped India, introduced opium to China, started slavery in North America, and created the "troubles" in Ireland. These are the same people who we Americans revolted against. They are the same kind of people that the French were smart enough to feed to Dr. Guillotine's machine. These are people who for hundreds of generations have believed that they had the right to enslave other people and use them any way they choose. Are they hereditary sociopaths? Or, are they just raised to believe in their own superiority? I do not know. I do know that any aristocracy is institutionalized injustice.
Now, through what is recognized as a huge mistake in the 14th amendment these aristocrats are able to hide behind the facade of a a corporation to hide from justice. Corporations were never intended to have the right to due process, or the right to freedom of speech, or the protection of the 4th and 5th amendments. Those are *human* rights. They are the rights of natural persons. Corporations are not supposed to have those rights. People have them. People can be held responsible for criminal actions by sending them to jail, or even (I live in Texas) by execution. But, no matter what a corporation does they can only be forced to pay a fine. You can't imprison a corporation. You can't execute a corporation. And, corporations have enormous amounts of money to spend on their own defence. Huge amounts of money to spend on lobbying. But, a corporation can not make a decision. People who run corporations make the decisions. If they decide to commit a crime their corporation pays a fine
Naw.... I saw my first posting by a dumb ass moslem screaming about how we are all going to be killed in the great jihad blah blah blahdy blah blah back on usenet when the Internet was young and you could still have an arapnet domain.
This crap has been happening for centuries. Every time some poor bastard realizes that those fast moving lights in the sky were put there by us and that not one of their countries could do the same thing or when they saw the steam powered steel ships come into harbor and they realized that not one of their countries could... You get the picture. Contact with the west destroyed their image of themselves as a great culture so they have to kill us all.
Sad sick puppies.
Stonewolf
that islam is having a very hard time dealing with the 16th century. I hate to image what will happen if it/they what ever, it actually comes into contact with the 21st century. Oh, yeah... that was what happened in 9/11/2001 and just a while ago in Times Square.
The question is which happens first? Either 1) these so called islamic "civizations" learn to accept basic concepts like "human rights" or 2) they finally become a real danger. By real danger I mean they actually set off a nuke in a western city, release a ton of nerve gas, set off a dirty bomb, start the black death 2.0, or do a bunch of little things that just really piss us off. Like say, killing the South Park guys.
If 1 happens first, then cool. Everyone gets to live. But if 2 happens, what then? Do we keep trying to bottle them up and worrying about whether it is safe to have lunch in the park today? Or, do we just start killing them? I think that is going to be a major test of *our* so called civilization.
My bet is that our great great grandchildren will be ashamed of what we do. But, I'm also betting that there are going to be very very few great great grandchildren who are raised as moslems.
IMHO, the belief in absolute truth is the greatest enemy of humanity. The belief in absolute truth is absolute evil.
Stonewolf
I once saw a detailed analysis, written a few years after WWII, that showed in great detail that every technology needed to build a V2 missile was in existence by 1910. But, the V2 didn't go into operation until the 1940s and development started more than 10 years earlier.
Now we have the laser as an example of another technology that could have been invented 30 to 40 years earlier. But, in fact, neither of them was invented earlier.
The point is that first you have to imagine that something is possible, and that goes beyond just having a theoretical proof of the possibility. Then you have to believe that it is possible. But, even that is not enough. You have to have someone who was exposed to the knowledge required to invent the thing who has the belief and who has access and understanding of the precursor technologies.
Then, that person, or persons, has to have the will and the resources needed to finally build a working model.
After that comes the hard part. The hard part is convincing people that what you have done is something new and valuable. In the case of the V2 the large holes that appeared in the European landscape were plenty of proof. In the case of the laser the poor guy couldn't even get his paper announcing his invention published because the people doing peer review didn't understand what he said.
The challenge is to go out and identify research that actually points to world changing new technology. If you can do that, then you are a genius and you will be doing a huge service for humanity.
Stonewolf
I remember the first article I saw about the laser. I'm not sure if it is was in Popular Science or Scientific American, but I remember that it was described as a solution without a problem. For years after it was invented no one had any idea of what to do with the damn thing.
Now, it seems like they are everywhere there is one in every CD, DVD, and Blue Ray drive. We use them to align everything along that nice straight line. We are testing laser laser weapons. We use them to remove hair and correct eyes. They are critical to many manufacturing processes including precision cutting. Not to mention the whole field of holography and holographic optical elements.
But, It took many years for people to even start imagining what the thing was good for. And, even longer for the technology to get to where they could be used for practical applications. The history of the laser is a perfect study in how a really new idea develops into a useful technology. After 50 years we are only seeing the beginning of the application of the Laser.
Got to love it.
Stonewolf
As far as I can tell the author of the article has a very narrow definition of "the game industry". He seems to think that only the dinosaurs that cater to ultra hardcore gamers are part of the "game industry". What the article is really saying is that the iPad, and the new smart phones are taking sales away from the old dinosaurs like Nintendo, EA, and the others. What that means is that Apple, the cell phone manufactures, Google (of Android fame), and those thousands and thousands of small independent developers who are coding those hundreds of thousands of apps, including a huge number of games, are now a large and growing part of "the game industry".
The game industry is now a lot larger than just the dinosaurs that have been ignoring most of the population for the last 30 years.
I've been playing video games since the '70s. The number of games that I want to play has dropped every year since then. It has been at least 5 years since I saw a game that I was willing to pay even the used price for. People like me, boomers, have most of the money left in this crappy economy which means we can afford games, hardware, and broadband. We are nearing or have already retired so we have lots of time to play games. But, the dinosaurs only write games for people who want to play one more remake of the same tired old plot. Plots that were innovative 30 years ago and are now as boring as the 2000th rerun of a TOS episode.
I'm so glad to see the dinosaurs losing market share. I am so happy to see the huge number of actually fun games available for ubiquitous hardware at reasonable prices.
The current "game industry" is dying and they don't have a clue what they are doing to deserve it. They have been ignoring most of the market for 30 years. Maybe now they will get a clue, but I doubt it.
Stonewolf
I've been a brand new programmer just out of school and I have been a hiring manager. I think I have something to offer.
First off. If you need advice on personal hygiene you most likely would not have gotten the job at all. But, if you do have problems with bad breath, find a good dentist and get your teeth cleaned on at least twice a year, get the cavities fixed, and learn to floss and brush. I'm allergic to an ingredient in pretty much all toothpastes so I use good old salt and soda and a high speed electric tooth brush.
The simple truth is that you will not advance, and you will not even get good work assignments if you stink.
Before you start at the job read everything you can get on the rules of conduct at the company. As a noob you *must* comply with all the rules. This is not a matter of "try". This is a matter of *must*. During your first 6 moths to a year are being evaluated and your ability to comply with company rules is part of what you will be evaluated on.
Dress properly. Most likely your company has written rules about how to dress. Comply with those rules. But, you can stretch them a bit. I always used to were highway patrol trooper boots. Many corporate executives are ex-military and a nice pair of shiny boots really makes a nice impression. If the company allows you to wear jeans, were them. But, wear black jeans, maybe with a crease. Do not wear worn faded jeans until you are a senior developer. The higher up you get the worse you can dress. I remember a top VP at a major telco who came up from the technical side who would show up for meetings with the president of our division wearing jeans, and a denim jacket. It is a way to assert you authority. As a noob you have no authority.
It is a good idea to watch how your boss's boss dresses and dress in the same style, but make sure to wear cheaper clothes.
Always show up before the normal start of business. Never leave until after the normal close of business. If possible be the first one there and the last one to leave.
Work. Do not use the Internet for anything that is not directly related to work. Do not stand around talking in the halls unless you are stopped by someone senior to you. Then talk to them as long as they want to talk to you. Work. Get to your desk and start to work.
Do not ever start a sentence with "In school we were told to...". Everyone their went to school. They most likely have the experience to understand why what you were told is bullshit. They also know how easy it is to mis-understand what you thought you learned. If you see something going wrong talk to your boss about it in private. Do not send emails screaming about the problem to everyone involved. When you have that talk with you boss start the conversation with "I don't understand why we are doing this this way. Can you explain it to me?" In fact, when ever you think someone is doing something wrong tell them that you don't understand that approach, can you please explain it to me?
You will be given some projects that seem really stupid. You might even find out that other people have been assigned the same project. You might feel that being assigned such a simple project is demeaning. You might think that assigning the same project to two people shows distrust. Well, you are right. They do not trust you. Do the projects as quickly and as well as you possibly can. You are being tested to see if you can do the work. You are also being tested to see if you are willing to do what is needed no matter what. No one wants a prima donna. Sometimes the most senior people have to do the equivalent of sweeping the floor. If you are willing to do it, then you will be loved, trusted, and highly valued. If you do it, but give off a negative vibe your value will be greatly reduced. If you you refuse, you will eventually find yourself without a job.
Ask a lot of questions. You do not know how things work at that company. You do not know much at all. You have a degree. If you are lucky and worked as a programmer before and duri
for reality.
I'm a teacher. I try to make students look at as many different platforms as possible. I benefited from the same attitude from my teachers. It is a good thing to do. But, it has nothing at all to do with rights.
He is also confusing legal rights with actual rights. In the US we have no legal right to write code on an ipad in flash. As human beings we have an absolute right to use our property anyway we see fit so long as it does no harm to others or to future generations. In terms of real human rights Apple has no right to tell me or anyone else how we can use an ipad after we have purchased it. The fact that Apple has a legal right to tell us how to use our own property disgusts me and is a sad sad commentary on how far our society has fallen. The fact that they have that legal right *and use it* disgusts me. That is why I do not buy Apple products and never will.
We only have our true rights as humans, as intrinsic parts of the universe, to the point that we are willing to resist with the full force of "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" something the majority of US are no longer willing to do. We do not think about the implications of our actions. Many of us, like the teacher, are so misguided they no longer understand the concept of rights. I wonder if he as any idea of the responsibilities the come with our true rights? Maybe we give up on our rights so that we can pretend we do not have the associated responsibilities.
Damn this kind of crap really pisses me off. I suggest that every developer who understands just how horribly their rights are being trampled should simply boycott Apple products. There are many other platforms on which you can make a few bucks. Think about how nice it will be for people who also boycott Apple products to be able to say "There is no app for that on Apple".
The alternatives, such as picketing Apple stores, or any acts of violence against Apple property and management is not acceptable because of the chance of injury to the innocent and naive. No matter how good it would feel, it is not acceptable when dealing with something as powerless as inconsequential as Apple.
Stonewolf
I've been running Lucid since alpha 3 on 2 PCs. One is an Dell c640. It crashes. Constantly. But, only in firefox. Using the search box is a sure way to get the black screen. Sure, it doesn't crash the machine. It comes back to the login prompt quickly and you can log in again. Just to have it crash again in 20 or 30 minutes. Just clicking on the link to the article I'm commenting on caused the desktop to crash and restart. I always install the newest version of Ubuntu on at least one machine. Up until 9.10 the apha 1 version always installed. At 9.10 I could not install alpha 1, it did not run. On 10.4 I was unable to install alpha 1 and 2. Alpha 3 installed but was barely usable. I'm currently running the release candidate. Right now the scroll bar to the right edge of the edit region I'm typing into is locked up. This is the buggiest version of Ubuntu I have ever seen. The spell checker is marking my questionable words, but right clicking does not bring up spelling corrections. And, I can't use the moue to place the cursor in the right half of the edit box I currently using. In other words is is totally messed up.
The new default theme is painful to look at and impossible to use. Ok, it is for me. I'm 57. I have old eyes. I wear bifocal glasses. The extreme changes in brightness across the default background cause painful eye strain. Gray text on a gray background, you have got to be kidding. Is there anyone with any knowledge of human factors engineering at Ubuntu? I don't think so. Do they even care about the usability of the UI? Clearly not.
Should I mention the stupidity of moving the windows buttons? Never mind. Oh, and if you flame me and ask me why I ever bothered to leave Windows, please check your history and notice that I started using Unix before there was a Windows. I did not move from Windows to Linux. I moved from Unix to Linux. The OS I use is not a religious thing with me. One OS, is pretty much like another. OTOH, I am outraged at being forced to support a criminal organization. Extortion is extortion no matter whether the money goes to MS or the mob. At least with the mob you will get what you paid for.
On the other hand, the bugs will eventually be fixed. If it survives long enough this just might be the most important version of Linux that ever shipped. Take a look at two new features. The music store and the me-menu. The me-menu looked like a total waste of time to me until I understood that it just might give me a way to keep up with Facebook and Linkedin without having to check in to the sites or do it through email. My friends and most of my relatives, all the ones I want to contact anyway, are all on Facebook. My business contacts are all on Linkedin. These are very important to me. If it pans out, the me-menu could be great. It could be horrible too. It could be especially horrible if I have to sign up for stuff I don't want to use the stuff I do want or if they treat experienced adults as poorly in the me-menu as they do in the UI. If I can't read it, I can't use it.
The big winner is the music store. Ubuntu includes support for mp3 format music. The music store sells mp3s without DRM. But, to use the music store you have to use Ubuntu 10.4 or greater. That means that a lot of people who are willing to pay for music but are not willing to have it locked to a single platform are going to flock to Ubuntu to buy music. I'm one of those people. I buy CDs and rip them so that I can get DRM free music. I've never stolen a track. But, I will not buy music that can only play on one platform. I will not buy music that I can't back up, burn to a CD, or play on any old music system I happen to buy. If losing the player means losing the music then it is not worth buying either the music or the player.
If the music store really is what it is claimed to be, it will be the best reason to stay with, or move to, Ubuntu that anyone has ever come up with. There are a few of my old favorites that they don't have, like Utah Phillips. But, the have The Great Society, the 13th Floo
Since you suggested Gnumeric I tested it. Nice spreadsheet. Unfortunately, although it does handle circular references, it does it in a very odd way. Oddly enough, I can see exactly why they do it that way, but it makes it useless for doing what Excel is so good at.
Basically the formula a1: =a1+1 That is, in the cell a1 you have the formula =a1+1. Since the initial value of a1 defaults to 0 you would expect a1 to increment by 1 each time the sheet recalculates. But, on Bnumeric is increments by 2. Instead of giving you 0,1,2,3.... you get 2,4,6,8....
So, I tried the spreadsheet in Google Docs. It has a lot of advantages. But, it flags circular references as errors. I was not able to find any way around that. That spreadsheet provides minimal functionality. Great for casual use, no good for serious use.
I then tried KSpread in the KOffice suite. I found the UI to be peculiar. But, after only about and hour I was starting to like it it. OTOH, I was never able to find out how to make all the tools on the toolbar visible or how to get rid of the drawing tool menu. Why does that even show up? BUT, it handles circular references just fine. It works. Except... I could not find a way to set the iteration count. That means that if I want to process 100,000 samples I have to press F9 100,000 times. Close, so close...
So, I am looking for more info on KSpread. After looking at KOffice for a while I've decided to spend a lot more time looking at KOffice. To bad it is so closely associated with KDE. It looks like it could be a good alternative to OO.o. Of course, it runs just fine on any Linux/X11 based system, but a lot of people don't know that that.
Stonewolf
Its a "single click change"? Would you mind telling me that single click? It requires you go know that a program named gnome-gconf-editor exits. It isn't in the menus anywhere. You then have to know where the info you have to find is hidden. Then you have to understand the syntax used in that specific field for that specific app. Then you have to actually edit the info. That is not a single click change.
I've been working with X11 based desktops since X11R3 and it still took me a good half hour of googling to find the info and another half hour to fix it.
OBTW, you have to know not to do it as root and you have to repeat the fix for each user.
So, please, tell me how it is a single click.
I guess I have to say this one more time for you folks who think that the Linux Desktop is a clone of the Windows desktop. It is not and never has been.
The windows desktop is a clone of the Alto and Star desktop developed at PARC in the '70s on into the early '80s. The Apple desktop is also a clone of the PARC desktop systems. MS did start borrowing from Apple by sometime around 3.0 when Apple sued MS over copyright violation. BTW, Apple lost.
The court ruled that Apple didn't own the copyright and neither did MS. The few things that were copyrightable belonged to PARC who didn't bother to sue until it was too late. When PARC sued they sued MS and Apple, not the X consortium or any Unix vendor. Why is that?
If you check your facts. You will find that the X Consortium got legal permission from PARC to use the desktop metaphor. The X11 desktop is the only one of the three, Apple, MS, and X, who have the legal right to clone PARC's work.
Check the dates. X and its predecessor W (yes before X11 was X10, X9, X8.. and before X there was W and guess what W is short for) predate Windows. The version of the X11 protocol we currently use was finalized in '87. MS released Windows 2.0 in December of '87. X1 came out in '84. Windows 1.0 came out in '85.
By the time that horrible thing called Windows 3.0 came out in '90 X11R4 was out in commercial products. By the time Window 3.1 came out in '92 X11R5 was out with the font sever and a standardized 3d graphics systems called PEX. (PEX looked strong enough in the market to force SGI to release an open version of their Graphics Language that we all know and love as OpenGL.)
Windows is not older than X11. While all you noobs moved from Windows to Linux/X11 some of us used Unix/Linux plus X11 all the way from the '80s until today. Only noobs moved from Windows. The rest of us either never used Windows or moved from Unix/X11 to Windows and then to Linux/X11. (Ok, that was fun to write. But I guess it may be considered a bit unfair to call most people under the age of 30 or even 40 "noobs". Even if you are. :-)
I got a laugh out of your "Moire" wallpaper comment. The Moire thing was there because way back in the before times pixels had one bit. Unix systems tended to have high resolution with 1 bit per pixel while PCs had very low resolutions with as many as 4 bits per pixel. In '87 when the VGA display first came out for PCs giving them an amazing 640x480 resolution with 16 wonderful colors I was using X11 on machines with multiple 24 bit color + alpha planes, a z buffer, multiple shaders, and support for stereo viewing using quad color buffers and shutter glasses.
Ah, that feels really good. But I do find myself thinking about Hank Hill yelling at Beavis and Butthead when he found them in his shed.
Stonewolf
P.S.
"I am the Great Cornholio, I need tp for my bunghole"
Go away kid, play with yourself somewhere else.
I had a flash of insight as I was walking into the house yesterday. I was asking myself the same question you just asked.
With out the need to pay any attention to customer feedback, how can you possibly get FOSS that is meets customer requirements.
The insight that I came up with is that you take FOSS projects and you use them as the basis of commercial products. The people doing the commercial product can add the polish and clean up the human factors problems.
What is wrong with that? The people who make the project into a product that people will pay for don't have any incentive to pay the people who developed the original project. That is not acceptable. The people who make a salable product from a project have not incentive to donate their changes back to the project. Which means the project does not benefit from the extra work. The GPL, and many other FOSS licenses do not permit code to be used this way.
Are there examples of products that came about this way? Yes, Crossover Office and Cedega both start as forks of Wine back before they changed the license to prevent exactly that. I understand that the TCP/IP stack on Windows came from the BSD licensed TCP/IP stack on BSD and that even AutoLisp started from a simple Lisp interpreter that was originally placed in the public domain.
And then, I realized that that is exactly what RedHat did and what Ubuntu is trying to do.
I can see that RedHat has done a pretty good job. And, by setting up Fedora they have created a way to feed back code to the community and to get the community to contribute to their bottom line.
Ubuntu has attracted so manSo far I don't see that Ubuntu is doing very well at working with its community. But, the reason it is so popular is because they have made it so easy to install. y users, including me, because they have made it so very easy to install and maintain Ubuntu. They have made the Linux desktop into something that is really pretty to use. So far, pretty much all their popularity has come from making a Linux distribution that can be installed and maintained by most everyone.
It seems to me that Ubuntu is trying to do exactly what I would suggest we do to improve OSS. To really improve OSS we need to add a clause to every license that allows the code to be used in commercial products but that requires that 3% of the gross be paid to the developers of the original code. There would have to be a formula to break up the royalty based on the percentage of code each library and the application makes up of the final project.
Oh well, Ubuntu has done a good job with infrastructure problems. But, now that they are starting to mess with the UI they need to hire some real human factors people, psychologist, and an expert on design for the mass market. Their problem right now is they do not have those skills in house, but they think they do.
I've made the mistake of working for someone who has already made a large fortune. He thought he could not make a mistake. He got fired from his own company. It was not sad to watch. I'm afraid that the same thing is happening at Ubuntu.
Stonewolf
I know the context as well as anyone living 700 years after the event can know it. That is to say, I read the history. I can't possibly understand the actual context.
I have never seen any indication that anyone in the west feels guilty about the Crusades. I certainly don't. I don't think I ever met anyone from the west who cares about them one way or another.
Did you grow up in western civilization? And you care? That would be very interesting to me.
Stonewolf?
Oops, my bad.
You are absolutely correct.
My deepest apologies to anyone who was offend by my misspelling of Paddy.
If I said that on St. Paddy's day I could start a real brouhaha!
Stonewolf
That was a great reply! Thank you.
I too was a software developer and development manager. I did that for 30 years before becoming a teacher. BTW, I *love* teaching. It is the most rewarding, and frustrating, work I have ever done.
I did not work on spread sheets. Most of my development work was on lower level parts of the system. I spent 6 years working on the X server. I worked on graphics drivers. Later I worked on what would now be called engine code for games. Basically infrastructure types of things. If our code didn't work, the system didn't work. Our bugs were as visible as the current Ubuntu X.org bug. The only time I ever saw the features over bugs attitude was when I was a contractor (working on X) at IBM. So, I've never really internalized that point of view. I see it, but it is still foreign to me.
The thing about OO.o is that I use it all the time too. Even though we have Windows and MS Office at school many of my students do not have it at home and cannot afford it. Now days they all have some sort of a computer. Between Goodwill and other sources of recycled computers I almost never have a student who does not have a computer at home. But, software like MS Office is out of their reach. Many still do not have Internet either. So I love OO.o because I can just hand out disks to students and they can have an office suite at home. Up until now I have always been able to make most assignments doable with both MS Office and OO.o. (Access is a special case, OO.o Database is actually pretty nice, but not enough like Access to be usable as an alternative.)
So, now I find a great way to teach many concepts and find that I can only use it with Excel. That is frustrating. But, I didn't get to the real deep anger I currently feel until I looked at the history of that bug. Like I said, there have been over 100,000 bugs filed since #956 and 9 years have passed. But, that wasn't what really ticked me off. It was when I saw that OO.o has lost 9 years of opportunities to be accepted into the sciences and engineering because they will not fix that bug. The thing is, it really isn't a bug. They built it that way on purpose. So, it is either a new feature or a feature change.
For 9 years scientists and engineers have been asking for a version of OO.o that can run their spread sheets. For 9 years they have been forced back to using Excel. From the descriptions of why they want OO.o Calc it is clear that Calc is what they need. They need a spread sheet that can be used on very high end machines. Machines that don't run Windows.
I really am a true believer in FOSS. Everyone can have FOSS. Not just people who happen to be rich enough. I hate seeing students ability to work and learn in school because they can't afford an office suite. I would like to see it be available everywhere. When I see a FOSS group missing such a huge opportunity to extend the use and support of FOSS it is very frustrating. When I see them passing up the opportunity just because the use people want to make of the software is not what the developer imagined it would be used for... Well, that just makes me want to start smashing heads.
As William Gibson said "The street finds its own uses for technology." A developer should be flattered and amazed when someone says "You know, if it just had this little feature I could use it for X" where X is something completely outside of the developers experience and imagination. I have always felt that way.
In this case the developers attitude is exactly the opposite. Instead of going "Oh wow, that is so cool" and then adding or fixing the problem, their reaction is "No, it shouldn't be use that way. You have to do things the way we say you must do them." And, since there is a product that does what the users want, they just pay what to them is a very small price and go use the product that works.
I truly hate MS. I had to deal with them during one of their many legal battles with the US government. I was chatting with a bunch of MS managers and engineers waiting f
I don't know what version you are running, but Lucid lynx, from alpha 1 to today are by far the most unstable version of Linux I have ever run. I've been running Linux since the middle '90s. It is less stable than any version of Windows I have ever used. It is less stable than any version of DOS I ever used and it is less stable than any version of CP/M I ever used. It is less stable than VMS, BSD 3.1, Tops20, and even less stable than Exec 8 running on an ancient and over loaded 1108a.
Right now I will be lucky it if runs long enough for me to finish posting this note.
Stonewolf
my trust in OSS.
I've been an open source user and developer since long before there was a Linux. And, I've been a Linux user for a long time. Used Redhat, Debian, and now Ubuntu. I've been using Ubuntu since 5 something. I like Ubuntu. It is easy to install, gets easier all the time. It works, which is really nice. And, it has very good support for things like Flash and proprietary graphics card drivers. You can complain that it doesn't have some detail covered that is critical to you, but that's OK. I've been very happy with Ubuntu.
Well, I was. I always try to test the alpha and beta releases. In the early days I could down load the first alpha and it would work. It might get a little weird, but it would work. In the worst case I can remember the computer would at least boot up to the command prompt. That is until the 10.4 release. That just plain wouldn't boot until we got to alpha 3. It wouldn't even install. It has been awful ever since. I don't know if it is a problem with X.org, but every time I type in the search field on firefox I get a black screen. After a few seconds the login screen comes up and I can login. The machine did not reboot. It looks like typing in the search field on firefox is crashing the X server. Now, back in the early '90s I helped get a little program called xcrashme written and distributed and after that was around for a few years the X server was damned near bullet proof. What did they do to mess it up so badly? I went to file a bug report. It turned out to be a duplicate. Seems a lot of people have reported the problem. I haven't seen any action on it.
Then there is the little thing about the user interface in 10.4. Nobody in their right mind, at least no body who had any respect for their users, would change something as basic as the location and order of the window buttons. But, Shuttleworth has done just that. The reason? To make room for a "cool" something that will appear in a later version of Ubuntu. The only discussion involved in the decision was the coolness of the feature and the vague technical argument that somehow it reduces mouse movement, because the buttons are now on the same side of the screen as the menus. Oh, yeah, like the amount of time anyone spends opening new apps is worth retraining your hands to find the new buttons. On the bug discussion list Shuttleworth would not even admit that human factors might have some validity in the discussion. Only the coolness and the bullshit argument about mouse movement were treated as worthy of consideration. Shuttleworth even posted data showing his own mouse movement. The data did not support moving the buttons. But, he claimed it did. He saw what he wanted to see. After all, the new thing is so cool we should all be grateful for the inconvenience.
Why doesn't Ubuntu care about the effect the change will have on their customers? Because they have no customers. They are in it to be cool and to score techie points with other people who do not understand why proprietary software actually tries not to piss off their customers. If you don't believe me ask a human factors engineer why purple is an awful background color for a GUI and then ask what percentage of the public can read light gray text on a dark gray background. Then look at the new Ubuntu default theme. It sure is "cool". I used ssh -Y to log in from a computer with a different theme so I could work select a readable theme and move the buttons back to where I'm used to having them.
The backlash from the users has been astonishing. Even more astonishing is Shuttleworth's "I'm to cool to care" attitude.
At least for now you can move the buttons back and choose another theme. What happens when he puts his uber cool new feature into the UI? I guess I am looking for a new Linux distribution.
That was bad enough... But, then I ran into OO.o Issue #956 (http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=956). Have you heard about this one? It was filed May 25, 2001. For comparison current issue numbers for OO.o are now above 110,000.
The crusades ended over 700 years ago. Since then the Catholic church has changed dramatically. The pope is no longer the ruler of any kind of an empire. In fact, in the US, he is pretty much just a dirty joke. Since the end of the crusades western civilization has gone through the Renaissance, the Reformation, a long series of civil wars, that has all but eliminated the direct influence of organized religion on government. We've gone through the whole experience of the new world and contact with the civilizations of the Americas, Japan, China, India, Africa, Southeast Asia.... the list is too long to write and I appologize to those I missed.
In other words we have changed. We are not the people who carried out the crusades.
In the US we have as a basic concept of law that the government may not interfere with the practice of your religion so long as that practice does not infringe on the rights of other people to live their lives as they see fit. We aren't perfect on holding to that principle. But, it explains why I can be a Buddhist living in Texas who drives past a Mosque on my way to the grocery store. My friends, neighbors, coworkers, and relatives include everything from born again fundamentalist Christians to Wiccans, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, Mormons, and Atheists.
Here in Texas you can celebrate Cinco De Mayo in front of the Alamo. We can watch Anime on December 7th. And on St. Patrick's Day, my Irish relatives can sit down with my Scots Irish (Orangemen all by their ancestory) relatives and all drink a beer and toast Ireland. Not one of them cares about which side their ancestor were on. We're all just Irish on St. Patty's day.
And yet, when I listen to Muslim Clerics and such talking about why they hate us they always talk about something that some people from Europe did some folks from where they live 700 years ago. We aren't the people who did it them. And you are not the people it happened to. What kind of sickness is at the core of a society that keeps a grudge for 700 years?
Of course, that is the problem. The extremist Muslims seem to still be nursing a grudge from 700 years ago. Every heard a European express a grudge against the Mongols 700 years ago? No? Me neither. But, we are dealing with people who use something that happened 700 years ago as justification for killing us.
One last comment: You don't want to piss off every South Park fan in the world. You really don't. Kill South Park and millions of people who don't currently even bother to vote will become your implacable enemies. Blowing up lower Manhattan is one thing. Messing with a favorite TV show, now that is something you do not want to do.
Stonewolf
P.S.
I'm a great great grandson of John D. Lee. (look up "The Mountain Meadow Massacre. And yes, according to my family he did it.) So I understand what religious fanaticism can do to people at a deep personal level. I truly hope that this problem passes into history with no more violence. But, I deeply fear that it will lead to the deaths of millions, if not billions, of people.
That is because you are not a greed head telecom CEO who is still trying to make a 1200% profit on caller ID even though everyone else gives it away.
If they see you making a profit by the use of their network they feel they are entitled to at least 90% of the profit because you could not do it without their network.
That is their point of view, sick as it is. It is a lot like the pirates of old who would take half your cargo and let you go.
Stonewolf