Well you could put (the analog of) ifdefs into the Makefile. e.g. if there
were big differences between conventional and big iron ways of doing things
with feature 'foo', you would have 'foo-garbage.c' and 'foo-bigiron.c' and
have make figure things out accordingly.
Of course then you would have to ensure that both offer a similar interface
so that either can be used transparently. This *could* be a maintainence
nightmare. I think there are a lot of ways that this *could* be done, but
it depends greatly on the details involved whether it will be practical or
not. I find it hard to believe that Linus would have looked over something
as obvious as ifdefs or makefile tricks, so he's probably used his
(undoubtedly god-like) judgement to decide that it would be a bad idea in
the long run.
Either you haven't bothered actually *reading* what he said or you don't
think there's any difference between "Microsoft aims its products at" and
"Microsoft products are used by". Either way, though, he's wrong. I'll
grant you that much.
Uhh the executive branch presumably dictates the actions of the prosecutor
in this case, whereas the judicial branch would be in charge of the court in
general. e.g. the president would say "maybe we should just drop all the
charges" and that's the end of that.
Of course school children need them. How else are they going to learn
anything?! Have you seen the state of the TV and VCR sets in public school
today? They're practically ancient!
Okay, yes, I'll admit that gold really has nothing to do with it:).
Still, my other points I think stand. In order for digital money to have
value, someone has to give it value, be that the US government or somebody
else. Frankly, I don't see how it would be possible to make that possible
unless that authority controlled it entirely (i.e. you would have an
"account" with them).
But there has to be some central authority that gives the money value. US
currency only has value because people respect the value that the US
government give it (and even then only because they have a lot of gold to
back it up). Digital money is by definition just a number. Anyone can
write down a number, so it doesn't have any money by itself. Someone has to
give that number some value. If that authority is the US government, then
you'll have to have a "government money account" instead of a bank account.
There's no free lunch here, though.
Uhh digital money doesn't have any value unless it's backed up with something real. Instead of a "bank account" you'll have a "something else account". I don't see much gain.
Unless you honestly think that if I write down the number "5000" somewhere, I'll have $5000 of "digital money".
Well I can't remember exactly what Rob said, but I don't think that's
completely true. I think Rob would have said something to the effect that
Andover's take-over wouldn't have any impact on the editorial content, which
is true.
Most of the Linux demosceners have more or less taken the TBL approach: give
up on the whole "bare metal" idea and just make some cool look effects
nonetheless. It's certainly not anywhere near as cool. You could try this site for an example.
OpenCP would be very cool, though. MikMod is pretty good I must say, but a
player just isn't a player without a few (dozen) FFTs.
Yes, I think people did realise that a few months ago. Then something
(maybe it was timothy or something) set it all straight, saying something
like: "Andover does the ad stuff; the Slashdot editors do the content stuff;
never the twain shall meet". So Slashdot's policy has nothing to do with
Andover's policy and vice versa.
Re:Kills frame-squatting dead.
on
Typosquatting
·
· Score: 2
Actually, I can browse most of the popular sites with my low-tech browser
just fine. In the case that I need graphics (e.g. I want to look around an
image gallery but pavuk will take too long), I get by just fine with Mozilla
with Javascript turned off. In the odd case that Javascript is *needed* in
order to browse the site, I can type in URLs by hand, or, more commonly, go
somewhere else. I've yet to see an actual use for Javascript.
By default, OL2000 sends plain text *and* TNEF. e.g. if TNEF is *not*
stripped out, then Joe Pineuser well get a message that has (a) the
plain-text message; and (b) an attachment which will be useless to him. But
he can still read the message!
I could agree that sending plain text + TNEF by default is dumb because it
needlessly uses up bandwidth, but it's not the end of the world or anything.
Your average Slashdotter, who reads all his mail on an a 40 year-old
teletype, will still be able to read them just fine. He just might be kind
of annoyed because it takes him 15 seconds to get the message from the IMAP
server instead of 5.
First off: Corel is the one that's making (was making?) a Debian-based
distro, right? I often get Corel and Caldera mixed up. If I'm wrong,
s/Corel/Caldera/g for this post.
I don't think *any* operating system or *any* distro should try and tailor
to too large a population. This is a big problem for Windows. Windows was
a *great* operating system for, say, 30% of the population. But Microsoft
doesn't seem to be happy until it gets 100% of the market share. Hence,
Windows isn't really "great" for anybody; it's just "pretty good" for most
people.
I wouldn't want to see Debian fall into the same trap. Pick an audience and
go with it; don't try to be everything. Maybe Debian won't be the distro
that Joe Sixpack uses. Big deal. Corel will be there to pick up that part
of the population. Debian is tailored towards hackers; Corel is tailored
towards Joe Sixpack. Both are similar (based on the Debian package manager)
and both do what they do well. Everybody wins.
Of course that's an idelic situation and we're not there yet. But I get
annoyed whenever Debian (or whoever) does something cool and then someone
shouts "but they're neglecting demographic X!" I highly doubt that there
will ever be a single product that will be good for everybody.
Objective C is (I think) a very good compromise between C and Smalltalk.
Compiled Objective C is more often than not taking advantage of an already
heavily optimised C compiler. Beyond that, you can take advantage of C
structs, typedefs, macros, functions, etc. in exactly the same way as you
would in a C program.
In order to do C-ish things in Smalltalk, you have to do a bit of work. In
order to do more Smalltalk-ish things in Objective C (e.g. adding methods
are subclasses at run-time), you might have to do a bit of work. It's a
trade-off and I think it's a very good one.
Personally, though, I'd choose Objective C over Smalltalk even if they were
effectively the same, just because I hate Smalltalk syntax so much:)
As mentioned elsewhere, both OpenStep and Objective C are ancient. You're
right, though, in that they're not as popular as Win32 and C++. Mind you if
I wanted Win32 and C++ I guess I could, oh I don't know, use Windows?
That said, I believe the full API is available in Java form, too. Why
anyone would want to use that instead of the already existing Java API is
beyond me, but there you go.
Yes, that's true. Largely, the problem with sex with children is that the
culture doesn't support it. I don't think anyone's recommending huge
cultural changes just so people can have sex with children, though:)
Well first off, no I'm not the original author, and I don't rape children.
You still seem to be under the impression that paedophiles go around trying
to pick up children. For a few, this is the case (though they wouldn't be
"paedophiles", but I don't want to get in arguments over terminology). The
vast majority, though, have more or less no contact with children (beyond
what one would normally find in the general public). Whether they're
impressionable or not isn't relevant because there's no sexual contact
involved. Paedophilia is not about actions. It's not about going out and
having sex with minors.
Why don't you find some paedophiles and find out: (a) how many have had sex
with a minor; (b) how many have had any sexual relations with a minor; (c)
how many have had a romantic relationship with a minor (e.g. holding hands,
talking); (d) how many have even approached a minor in the hopes of starting
a romantic relationship. Most have a clear sense of what will do harm to
the child on what won't, and will be able to draw the line. The problem is
that the *only* paedophiles you hear about are the rapists, which is a very
small part of the paedophile population.
And, off on a tangent here, one of the best thing about children is that
they *can* have a meaningful conversation. They don't talk about the
weather; they don't talk about politics; they don't talk about getting
drunk; they don't talk about work; they don't talk about money. They
generally only talk about things which are *shudder* interesting. If
something's on their mind, they tell you what they're thinking, and then
they stop. If you actually try listening to what children say, I think
you'll find them quite intelligent. I fail to see why anyone would *want*
to talk about something like world current events when they can talk about a
nice picture instead.
Yes. There is no cure for corrupt node syndrome. This is similar to NNTP.
Your NNTP server could replace every one of the articles you read with
goatsex advertising. The same is true for your HTTP proxy, etc.
Of course Freenet is different in that it's more chain-y than other
protocols, so there's a larger chance of getting a corrupt node. Hopefully,
whatever node you use (and whatever node they use, etc.) will be actively
maintaining, and will always be adding new nodes and removing old nodes so
as to keep the network mostly pure.
The claim that Freenet is completely anonymous is not entirely true.
Obviously, if I upload something to a node, I'm giving it my IP. However,
it doesn't know if I'm uploading it myself or if I'm uploading it on behalf
of someone else. If, however, I'm constantly giving it advertisiments,
etc., banning my IP would be a quasi-effective solution (especially if there
were something analogous to, say, the RBL).
Actually I think there is a Freenet library written in C. Back in the
"early" days of Freenet (0.2, maybe about four or five months ago), I made a
C Freenet client (which worked 80% okay) and kind of stayed in touch with
what other people were doing. I remember there was a half-decent perl
client out then too (which I usually used for reference).
The Freenet protocol is actually very simple, though (or at least it was
back then). If you can get the SHA1 hashing algorithm, then you're about a
quarter done. Don't be too surprised to see Freshmeat flooded (a la mp3
players, Napster, Gnutella, ICQ clients, etc.) with Freenet clones in the
next few months.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course then you would have to ensure that both offer a similar interface so that either can be used transparently. This *could* be a maintainence nightmare. I think there are a lot of ways that this *could* be done, but it depends greatly on the details involved whether it will be practical or not. I find it hard to believe that Linus would have looked over something as obvious as ifdefs or makefile tricks, so he's probably used his (undoubtedly god-like) judgement to decide that it would be a bad idea in the long run.
Either you haven't bothered actually *reading* what he said or you don't think there's any difference between "Microsoft aims its products at" and "Microsoft products are used by". Either way, though, he's wrong. I'll grant you that much.
For those of you, not unlike Signal 11, who are too stupid to look more than a few weeks into the future, consider something like instead.
Uhh the executive branch presumably dictates the actions of the prosecutor in this case, whereas the judicial branch would be in charge of the court in general. e.g. the president would say "maybe we should just drop all the charges" and that's the end of that.
You could probably set up a Perl script in a few minutes to make up the numbers for you.
You mean a Pentium MMX isn't 5x faster than a Pentium at the same clock speed? And a 486 isn't faster than a Pentium? I'm outraged!
Of course school children need them. How else are they going to learn anything?! Have you seen the state of the TV and VCR sets in public school today? They're practically ancient!
Still, my other points I think stand. In order for digital money to have value, someone has to give it value, be that the US government or somebody else. Frankly, I don't see how it would be possible to make that possible unless that authority controlled it entirely (i.e. you would have an "account" with them).
But there has to be some central authority that gives the money value. US currency only has value because people respect the value that the US government give it (and even then only because they have a lot of gold to back it up). Digital money is by definition just a number. Anyone can write down a number, so it doesn't have any money by itself. Someone has to give that number some value. If that authority is the US government, then you'll have to have a "government money account" instead of a bank account. There's no free lunch here, though.
Uhh digital money doesn't have any value unless it's backed up with something real. Instead of a "bank account" you'll have a "something else account". I don't see much gain. Unless you honestly think that if I write down the number "5000" somewhere, I'll have $5000 of "digital money".
Well I can't remember exactly what Rob said, but I don't think that's completely true. I think Rob would have said something to the effect that Andover's take-over wouldn't have any impact on the editorial content, which is true.
OpenCP would be very cool, though. MikMod is pretty good I must say, but a player just isn't a player without a few (dozen) FFTs.
Yes, I think people did realise that a few months ago. Then something (maybe it was timothy or something) set it all straight, saying something like: "Andover does the ad stuff; the Slashdot editors do the content stuff; never the twain shall meet". So Slashdot's policy has nothing to do with Andover's policy and vice versa.
Actually, I can browse most of the popular sites with my low-tech browser just fine. In the case that I need graphics (e.g. I want to look around an image gallery but pavuk will take too long), I get by just fine with Mozilla with Javascript turned off. In the odd case that Javascript is *needed* in order to browse the site, I can type in URLs by hand, or, more commonly, go somewhere else. I've yet to see an actual use for Javascript.
That was by far the worst post I've ever read.
Considering that it uses JavaScript, it would probably kill frame-squatting "slightly injured" instead of "dead".
I could agree that sending plain text + TNEF by default is dumb because it needlessly uses up bandwidth, but it's not the end of the world or anything. Your average Slashdotter, who reads all his mail on an a 40 year-old teletype, will still be able to read them just fine. He just might be kind of annoyed because it takes him 15 seconds to get the message from the IMAP server instead of 5.
So richtext is "proprietary" but PDF is perfectly fine?
I don't think *any* operating system or *any* distro should try and tailor to too large a population. This is a big problem for Windows. Windows was a *great* operating system for, say, 30% of the population. But Microsoft doesn't seem to be happy until it gets 100% of the market share. Hence, Windows isn't really "great" for anybody; it's just "pretty good" for most people.
I wouldn't want to see Debian fall into the same trap. Pick an audience and go with it; don't try to be everything. Maybe Debian won't be the distro that Joe Sixpack uses. Big deal. Corel will be there to pick up that part of the population. Debian is tailored towards hackers; Corel is tailored towards Joe Sixpack. Both are similar (based on the Debian package manager) and both do what they do well. Everybody wins.
Of course that's an idelic situation and we're not there yet. But I get annoyed whenever Debian (or whoever) does something cool and then someone shouts "but they're neglecting demographic X!" I highly doubt that there will ever be a single product that will be good for everybody.
In order to do C-ish things in Smalltalk, you have to do a bit of work. In order to do more Smalltalk-ish things in Objective C (e.g. adding methods are subclasses at run-time), you might have to do a bit of work. It's a trade-off and I think it's a very good one.
Personally, though, I'd choose Objective C over Smalltalk even if they were effectively the same, just because I hate Smalltalk syntax so much :)
That said, I believe the full API is available in Java form, too. Why anyone would want to use that instead of the already existing Java API is beyond me, but there you go.
Yes, that's true. Largely, the problem with sex with children is that the culture doesn't support it. I don't think anyone's recommending huge cultural changes just so people can have sex with children, though :)
You still seem to be under the impression that paedophiles go around trying to pick up children. For a few, this is the case (though they wouldn't be "paedophiles", but I don't want to get in arguments over terminology). The vast majority, though, have more or less no contact with children (beyond what one would normally find in the general public). Whether they're impressionable or not isn't relevant because there's no sexual contact involved. Paedophilia is not about actions. It's not about going out and having sex with minors.
Why don't you find some paedophiles and find out: (a) how many have had sex with a minor; (b) how many have had any sexual relations with a minor; (c) how many have had a romantic relationship with a minor (e.g. holding hands, talking); (d) how many have even approached a minor in the hopes of starting a romantic relationship. Most have a clear sense of what will do harm to the child on what won't, and will be able to draw the line. The problem is that the *only* paedophiles you hear about are the rapists, which is a very small part of the paedophile population.
And, off on a tangent here, one of the best thing about children is that they *can* have a meaningful conversation. They don't talk about the weather; they don't talk about politics; they don't talk about getting drunk; they don't talk about work; they don't talk about money. They generally only talk about things which are *shudder* interesting. If something's on their mind, they tell you what they're thinking, and then they stop. If you actually try listening to what children say, I think you'll find them quite intelligent. I fail to see why anyone would *want* to talk about something like world current events when they can talk about a nice picture instead.
Of course Freenet is different in that it's more chain-y than other protocols, so there's a larger chance of getting a corrupt node. Hopefully, whatever node you use (and whatever node they use, etc.) will be actively maintaining, and will always be adding new nodes and removing old nodes so as to keep the network mostly pure.
The claim that Freenet is completely anonymous is not entirely true. Obviously, if I upload something to a node, I'm giving it my IP. However, it doesn't know if I'm uploading it myself or if I'm uploading it on behalf of someone else. If, however, I'm constantly giving it advertisiments, etc., banning my IP would be a quasi-effective solution (especially if there were something analogous to, say, the RBL).
The Freenet protocol is actually very simple, though (or at least it was back then). If you can get the SHA1 hashing algorithm, then you're about a quarter done. Don't be too surprised to see Freshmeat flooded (a la mp3 players, Napster, Gnutella, ICQ clients, etc.) with Freenet clones in the next few months.