X already has cut and paste unified. I hope that in 2004, we have finally developed an user who doesn't get primary-selection and clipboard confused.
A 3D World/avatar interface to Jabber.
A non-beta, working GNOME2 Jabber client would be a better start. I made the mistake of seeing Exodus on Windows, and now I hunger for something like that for GNOME.
Nitpick on nitpick: The thing was actually called "kernal", not "kernel". That's how it's officially referred as, believe it or not. Kernal ROM. I am guessing that it originated as a typoed term, and they later explained that it actually was an acronym for "Keyboard Entry Read, Network And Link". (Source for this trivia here.) No idea why they put "network" there though =)
And GEOS was not the only program that implemented its own I/O routines. Every turboloader did this...
The article completely omits the fact that you could program in assembly right out of the box - most people seemed to start by writing BASIC "loaders" that read the program from data statements and poked it to memory - also, many magazines published machine language programs in this format. There were commercial and hobbyist-built assemblers, crossassemblers (for Amiga and PC), and even interpreters/compilers for other languages (notably Logo and Pascal - I forgot the package that I once futilely used).
Reason number 3 why Debian rules: Menu system works in concert with the package system itself. (Reason number 1 is APT, reason number 2 is make-kpkg.)
Debian's menu system is well thought of. A couple of categories (Apps, Games, XShells, and a couple of more), with subcategories. Most menus are kept 2 levels deep, so there's no endless wading through the menus.
All menu entries are put in menu directories (/usr/lib/menu for packaged apps,/etc/menu for system-wide custom entries, ~/.menu for user-specific entries) as plain text files. File names correspond to installed packages (if package is not installed, the file isn't processed - except for menu files called "local.*"). Likewise, each entry in these files have such control.
And all of this stuff is processed by update-menus to produce menus for whatever desktop you are using. It does GNOME menus, it does WindowMaker menus, it even does fvwm2 and even the bloody twm - whatever has a pre-packaged menu generation method.
The entries are also aware of the environment they are to be executed. X-only apps won't be generated in text-based menus. text-based apps that need terminal get launched in an xterm (or whatever you think is your excuse of a terminal emulator).
In conclusion, I'd say Debian has one heck of a menu system. Not perhaps fit for everyone since to add entries you need to generate specially formatted text file, but from geek point of view, it's infinitely frosty.
The only really bad side is that Debian maintainers tend to add bloody everything to the menus. Oh yeah, bitmap(1) and whatever X tools nobody uses do get in the entries. Then again, it's trivial to override these at ~/.menu so that they won't be added to the menus...
will this work for browsers for those with disabilities?
Why, it just might. Personally, I'm still waiting for a good text-to-speech extension for Mozilla/Firebird, one that might take markup into account. At the moment, I use Lynx to dump page to text, and use Festival. And no, I'm not blind, I just pick boring texts to make me go to sleep =)
I think its only fair, considering I clicked on slashdot Games article and am now freakin' blind.
Could be worse. I didn't go blind - in fact I found the color scheme tolerable. Except that nowadays I have this weird tendency to use strange language, LIKE PLAY, d00D! FCUING AWP CaMPR3rS!...huh, sorry about that.
Darl McBride now claims ownership of the new Finder in Panther, and Final Cut Pro.
More news: This claim of ownership is based on Apple's shady aquisition of Shake composition software, since Shake has (had?) a Linux port! This Linux IP has contaminated Apple's whole software line, past present and future! The proof? Shake also has an IRIX port - isn't that clearly SysV or what?
What kind of caveman doesn't have Flash? Sorry, but I'm genuinely curious. It's a free download you know.
I think I ran xboard (which, if I remember correctly, can show games in the.pgn format just fine) on a 486. And I bet eboard works on a very modest system as well.
All this while Flash has slight problems running on my mother's p166, and some stuff even makes my p3-600 sweat but not fall. =/
Nah, for me, Baldur's Gate party controls were step backwards and NWN was a step forwards. It's all a matter of perspective. I like the way NWN focuses on the character you control, rather than having to specifically control the complete strangers I met along the way.
And practically speaking, NWN does use a 2D engine that just happens to use 3D models. People seem to want vertical axis to be used better, though - I bet HotU will have some goblins jabbering about "we needs z-axis!" the way SoU kobolds went on about cloaks and robes and horses =)
And original BG engine apparently didn't allow people to bake bread. Savages.
Easiness: Hum... try cranking up the difficulty and then trying some of the challenging mods. =) How easy the game is supposed to be is subjective, of course. I do not personally equate "needs hundreds of reloads to get through" as "hard", but rather as "frustrating". It remains to be seen how difficult the tricks in HotU are.
Camera angles: Camera unlocking was implemented ages ago, and HotU will have it enabled by default! Also they have skyboxes and fog distance (I think), so this mostly eliminates the need for camera hack.
Party control: IMHO party control sucks and I like the NWN way of controlling only one character (this is the way it works in the Greatest RPG Ever Made, Ultima VII, and what God has made, that man shan't misimplement). Aside of this, HotU will have up to two henchmen and lifts the henchman restriction.
AI: From what I heard, this will still likely suck. =/
I used to write my own database frontends with PHP or Perl... but at one point I was thinking - why do I need to code these goddamned frontends, each one different, each one specific? Oh, I've wished to see something like Rekall, something I could just easily make a data entry interface with, something simple to make queries with... though I hear OO.o is getting something like this too.
(And an off-topic opinion: Is it just me, or does PHP's XML support suck? Every language that only provides a raw Expat interface (eeeyuch) is born of Satan. XML::Twig is the Only Real Way.)
How is it you plan to use an optical range instrument for SETI work?
Ah, the radio telescopes gaze so far. That's the problem. Someone's got to actually look around and note UFOs that are flying close by!
If SETI folks insist using radio telescopes, the best thing to do is to hire the X-Prize winners to make a low-cost space freighter, go up to Hubble and add some additional antenna bits and make some hardware changes, and tadah, you have a really cheap orbital radio telescope. Or at least you will have until the bubblegum freezes and break.
Agreed, random encouters are good. On the other hand, they shouldn't make the experience infuriating.
Last week I played through Skara Brae in Ultima VII. I went to talk to this guy. When going to talk to that other guy, I fought skeletons and ghosts. Then I went to talk to that third guy, and then to the first guy again, and en route I fought some skeletons and ghosts and tentacle thingies. Ultimately, I grew tired of combat (which kept me on toes, but was actually neither dangerous nor exciting), and used Exult teleport cheat to go to the key persons. I would have got the place done only about 15 minutes and three whole experience points later if I had not resorted to teleporting... Well, at least combat in U7 is not annoying - hit 'c', see the baddies die horribly, hit 'c' again - and the dialogue, characters and the quests itself in the city were just brilliant. I enjoyed every moment.
The point was, there was too much combat in the ghost town. The sign said the town had a population of 54 or something before the disaster. I killed approximately that many thingies before I got tired.
I'm not saying Ultima VII is worst offender, though. In fact, along with Bioware's offerings, it's one of the least annoying RPGs I've played in recent times, even in regards to random encounters.
Japanese RPGs are far more annoying. I played GBA Breath of Fire yesterday, and quickly remembered the only thing that really frustrated me - fighting one-xp blobs (with epic music!) and stuff every three steps I take on the overworld, and fighting killer monsters every two steps in dungeons. Thank god for Mrbl3 and "Auto" in combat menu.
> (not (didp you (stealp you sco-code)))
t
> (didp you (stealp you sco-code))
nil
> (or (not (didp you (stealp you sco-code))) (didp you (stealp you sco-code)))
t
...that can be hacked by any pimply faced teenager with 100$ worth of computer equipment?
I just realized how lucky we are in Finland. Let's ignore for a while the fact that here electronic voting is not considered an option at the time (as far as I know), and the fact that this is a technologically advanced country where these machines with cardboard-thick security would be laughed out of...
The potential hax0rs, the "pimply-faced teenagers" (and slightly older, not quite as pimply-faced adults) are notoriously apolitical - getting them to voting site would result in a matter-antimatter kind of reaction. =)
I'm not exactly a musician, but I'm most notably someone who cares about written word, graphical design, and such - in short, I'd be a printer.
And I think GNU Lilypond absolutely rules. Definitely this is the best notation software I've seen - produces easily the most beautiful computer-printed scores I've seen. All this free.
I like it because it allows me to work on musical scores just as easily as I work on any text. Also, it has - if I need it - support for macro-like constructs, so it also mildly interests me as a programmer. I think that on the time I've spent with the program, have also developed my own understanding on the fundamental issues of music.
And it's also very cool as an interchange medium - the program reads plain text files that use very readable but at the same time flexible notation. I can put snippets of score on text-only places. Mouse-based note entry has ever since only made me angry! (If I want a quarter E, I'll write "e4", not click around for a minute trying to get it look right!) Also, I recently discovered the elegance of Lilypond's LaTeX2e interfacing; this is probably very important when producing well-typeset music-related documents...
Also, be sure to read their "marketing material" (the "switch" tour and the essay on computerized music engraving, right on the front page). Every open source project should take note - a great way to market the software.
There are still shortcomings (some of the more recently added features are not feature-complete or are, from what I heard, hacks that miraculously work - and also the MIDI output needs semi-manual unrolling of loops, which is sort of annoying)...
And all this time I thought JavaScript was a very ugly hack to do stuff on client side, if your web host was too cheap to allow anything at all to be done at server side. And, uh, link roll-overs.
When I've done web interfaces, I've always assumed that either a) the user has disabled Javascript or b) it'll give me big fat Javascript error when they try to access it with a browser that is not my browser's current version. (I have a very low pain threshold. Microsoft's vision of web standards has taught me enough.)
So, Javascript elements on the web interface should always be extra, not critical to actual functionality. Every page should still work, even if it'd be ugly, without JS. Form entry validators and confirmation dialogs are good, as long as they're validated by server as well. Link roll-overs are good. I've still not found anything else that might benefit from JS.
Which I recognized as such, but I failed to comprehend its ultimate purpose or point.
i was pointing out that i had seen banner ads and popup ads in java
Yes, but in recent times? I don't know because the applet implementation I have here is broken at the moment, and my popups are fairly dead thanks to non-broken browser.
I have mostly been noting that wherever Java was used, if at all, people have started using Flash instead - which only has the added benefit of Not Taking Forever to Load and then Crashing, and probably being slightly more artist-friendly.
Without casting doubt in regards to relevancy of this ad-hominem to discussion at hand, I'd like to point out that since it is November, it is relatively cold outside. Therefore, being a person who finds cold temperature inconvinient (but not completely disabling), I prefer to stay in properly heated areas, which thus means - due to conservation of energy and its utilization to practical tasks only - staying indoors. This naturally only applies to months where average temperature outside is far below 5 degrees Celsius.
This could be a good thing. Maybe there won't be any linux compatibility so I won't be attacked by "Sparkle" ads when I browse the internet.
Next up: SVG, SMIL, ECMAScript. And once there's any browser support and a decent authoring toolbox, the ad folks bloody well won't resist using them...
...but since no company is pushing them (especially with Flash around, or this newfangled Microsoft thingy in future if ever), it will never get popular or anything, luckily =)
Whatever ad designer got the great idea to use flash should be beaten with a clue bat.
Agreed, but, ah, could be worse. Could be Java. *shiver*
Now, since every Blender story had dozens of people who immediately said that "changing Blender's interface will make it useless!" whenever somebody brought up how difficult it was to use: are you sticking with your old version?
I've been toying with Blender since the first Linux releases and been an active user since 1.5 days.
And I will not be sticking to the old versions. I don't hold Blender's interface that "sacred". The interface had its great strengths, but it had its weaknesses as well.
The goal of the UI project, as I have understood it, has been to keep the good parts in and improve the bad parts. And so far, I have been pleased with Blender 2.30, even when I've only used it briefly. I've mostly been able to work as usual in Blender 2.30, it isn't that different - and some things are definitely changes for the better, for newbies and old users alike.
The goal has been to improve, and they're doing it.
And I can't wait until they do what they promised earlier and allow the scripts to be bound to UI (so that scripts would be invokable via menus or button palettes), GIMP and other proggies have had that for years... *drool*
What's the "benefit of using MX records" ?? (Getting out of my territory here:)
Mail for one domain can be handled by another. I don't know the specifics since I haven't looked at it that much, but it's probably something along the lines of "Mail for scienceguy@research.example.com is actually handled by mail.example.com".
Tho IS there some reason why IP addresses are not used for mail? I've seen it done in spam, tho that doesn't exactly count as a legit use.
The same reason DNS is used in general: IP addresses are difficult to remember and they can change, while DNS names are easy to remember and can be made to point just about everywhere.
And there's also the benefit of using MX records...
Slashdot Mirror
X already has cut and paste unified. I hope that in 2004, we have finally developed an user who doesn't get primary-selection and clipboard confused.
A non-beta, working GNOME2 Jabber client would be a better start. I made the mistake of seeing Exodus on Windows, and now I hunger for something like that for GNOME.
Nitpick on nitpick: The thing was actually called "kernal", not "kernel". That's how it's officially referred as, believe it or not. Kernal ROM. I am guessing that it originated as a typoed term, and they later explained that it actually was an acronym for "Keyboard Entry Read, Network And Link". (Source for this trivia here.) No idea why they put "network" there though =)
And GEOS was not the only program that implemented its own I/O routines. Every turboloader did this...
The article completely omits the fact that you could program in assembly right out of the box - most people seemed to start by writing BASIC "loaders" that read the program from data statements and poked it to memory - also, many magazines published machine language programs in this format. There were commercial and hobbyist-built assemblers, crossassemblers (for Amiga and PC), and even interpreters/compilers for other languages (notably Logo and Pascal - I forgot the package that I once futilely used).
Debian's menu system is well thought of. A couple of categories (Apps, Games, XShells, and a couple of more), with subcategories. Most menus are kept 2 levels deep, so there's no endless wading through the menus.
All menu entries are put in menu directories (/usr/lib/menu for packaged apps, /etc/menu for system-wide custom entries, ~/.menu for user-specific entries) as plain text files. File names correspond to installed packages (if package is not installed, the file isn't processed - except for menu files called "local.*"). Likewise, each entry in these files have such control.
And all of this stuff is processed by update-menus to produce menus for whatever desktop you are using. It does GNOME menus, it does WindowMaker menus, it even does fvwm2 and even the bloody twm - whatever has a pre-packaged menu generation method.
The entries are also aware of the environment they are to be executed. X-only apps won't be generated in text-based menus. text-based apps that need terminal get launched in an xterm (or whatever you think is your excuse of a terminal emulator).
In conclusion, I'd say Debian has one heck of a menu system. Not perhaps fit for everyone since to add entries you need to generate specially formatted text file, but from geek point of view, it's infinitely frosty.
The only really bad side is that Debian maintainers tend to add bloody everything to the menus. Oh yeah, bitmap(1) and whatever X tools nobody uses do get in the entries. Then again, it's trivial to override these at ~/.menu so that they won't be added to the menus...
Why, it just might. Personally, I'm still waiting for a good text-to-speech extension for Mozilla/Firebird, one that might take markup into account. At the moment, I use Lynx to dump page to text, and use Festival. And no, I'm not blind, I just pick boring texts to make me go to sleep =)
Could be worse. I didn't go blind - in fact I found the color scheme tolerable. Except that nowadays I have this weird tendency to use strange language, LIKE PLAY, d00D! FCUING AWP CaMPR3rS! ...huh, sorry about that.
More news: This claim of ownership is based on Apple's shady aquisition of Shake composition software, since Shake has (had?) a Linux port! This Linux IP has contaminated Apple's whole software line, past present and future! The proof? Shake also has an IRIX port - isn't that clearly SysV or what?
=)
I think I ran xboard (which, if I remember correctly, can show games in the .pgn format just fine) on a 486. And I bet eboard works on a very modest system as well.
All this while Flash has slight problems running on my mother's p166, and some stuff even makes my p3-600 sweat but not fall. =/
Yes, I liked NWN. I still do.
Nah, for me, Baldur's Gate party controls were step backwards and NWN was a step forwards. It's all a matter of perspective. I like the way NWN focuses on the character you control, rather than having to specifically control the complete strangers I met along the way.
And practically speaking, NWN does use a 2D engine that just happens to use 3D models. People seem to want vertical axis to be used better, though - I bet HotU will have some goblins jabbering about "we needs z-axis!" the way SoU kobolds went on about cloaks and robes and horses =)
And original BG engine apparently didn't allow people to bake bread. Savages.
Easiness: Hum... try cranking up the difficulty and then trying some of the challenging mods. =) How easy the game is supposed to be is subjective, of course. I do not personally equate "needs hundreds of reloads to get through" as "hard", but rather as "frustrating". It remains to be seen how difficult the tricks in HotU are.
Camera angles: Camera unlocking was implemented ages ago, and HotU will have it enabled by default! Also they have skyboxes and fog distance (I think), so this mostly eliminates the need for camera hack.
Party control: IMHO party control sucks and I like the NWN way of controlling only one character (this is the way it works in the Greatest RPG Ever Made, Ultima VII, and what God has made, that man shan't misimplement). Aside of this, HotU will have up to two henchmen and lifts the henchman restriction.
AI: From what I heard, this will still likely suck. =/
I know, I know...
I used to write my own database frontends with PHP or Perl... but at one point I was thinking - why do I need to code these goddamned frontends, each one different, each one specific? Oh, I've wished to see something like Rekall, something I could just easily make a data entry interface with, something simple to make queries with... though I hear OO.o is getting something like this too.
(And an off-topic opinion: Is it just me, or does PHP's XML support suck? Every language that only provides a raw Expat interface (eeeyuch) is born of Satan. XML::Twig is the Only Real Way.)
Ah, the radio telescopes gaze so far. That's the problem. Someone's got to actually look around and note UFOs that are flying close by!
If SETI folks insist using radio telescopes, the best thing to do is to hire the X-Prize winners to make a low-cost space freighter, go up to Hubble and add some additional antenna bits and make some hardware changes, and tadah, you have a really cheap orbital radio telescope. Or at least you will have until the bubblegum freezes and break.
Agreed, random encouters are good. On the other hand, they shouldn't make the experience infuriating.
Last week I played through Skara Brae in Ultima VII. I went to talk to this guy. When going to talk to that other guy, I fought skeletons and ghosts. Then I went to talk to that third guy, and then to the first guy again, and en route I fought some skeletons and ghosts and tentacle thingies. Ultimately, I grew tired of combat (which kept me on toes, but was actually neither dangerous nor exciting), and used Exult teleport cheat to go to the key persons. I would have got the place done only about 15 minutes and three whole experience points later if I had not resorted to teleporting... Well, at least combat in U7 is not annoying - hit 'c', see the baddies die horribly, hit 'c' again - and the dialogue, characters and the quests itself in the city were just brilliant. I enjoyed every moment.
The point was, there was too much combat in the ghost town. The sign said the town had a population of 54 or something before the disaster. I killed approximately that many thingies before I got tired.
I'm not saying Ultima VII is worst offender, though. In fact, along with Bioware's offerings, it's one of the least annoying RPGs I've played in recent times, even in regards to random encounters.
Japanese RPGs are far more annoying. I played GBA Breath of Fire yesterday, and quickly remembered the only thing that really frustrated me - fighting one-xp blobs (with epic music!) and stuff every three steps I take on the overworld, and fighting killer monsters every two steps in dungeons. Thank god for Mrbl3 and "Auto" in combat menu.
Bah. We're talking of Richard Stallman here!
> (not (didp you (stealp you sco-code)))
t
> (didp you (stealp you sco-code))
nil
> (or (not (didp you (stealp you sco-code))) (didp you (stealp you sco-code)))
t
Gee, never thought of doing that with CSS only. Great idea! And since it's CSS, trying it will likely to make me hate MSIE even more =)
I just realized how lucky we are in Finland. Let's ignore for a while the fact that here electronic voting is not considered an option at the time (as far as I know), and the fact that this is a technologically advanced country where these machines with cardboard-thick security would be laughed out of...
The potential hax0rs, the "pimply-faced teenagers" (and slightly older, not quite as pimply-faced adults) are notoriously apolitical - getting them to voting site would result in a matter-antimatter kind of reaction. =)
I'm not exactly a musician, but I'm most notably someone who cares about written word, graphical design, and such - in short, I'd be a printer.
And I think GNU Lilypond absolutely rules. Definitely this is the best notation software I've seen - produces easily the most beautiful computer-printed scores I've seen. All this free.
I like it because it allows me to work on musical scores just as easily as I work on any text. Also, it has - if I need it - support for macro-like constructs, so it also mildly interests me as a programmer. I think that on the time I've spent with the program, have also developed my own understanding on the fundamental issues of music.
And it's also very cool as an interchange medium - the program reads plain text files that use very readable but at the same time flexible notation. I can put snippets of score on text-only places. Mouse-based note entry has ever since only made me angry! (If I want a quarter E, I'll write "e4", not click around for a minute trying to get it look right!) Also, I recently discovered the elegance of Lilypond's LaTeX2e interfacing; this is probably very important when producing well-typeset music-related documents...
Also, be sure to read their "marketing material" (the "switch" tour and the essay on computerized music engraving, right on the front page). Every open source project should take note - a great way to market the software.
There are still shortcomings (some of the more recently added features are not feature-complete or are, from what I heard, hacks that miraculously work - and also the MIDI output needs semi-manual unrolling of loops, which is sort of annoying)...
And all this time I thought JavaScript was a very ugly hack to do stuff on client side, if your web host was too cheap to allow anything at all to be done at server side. And, uh, link roll-overs.
When I've done web interfaces, I've always assumed that either a) the user has disabled Javascript or b) it'll give me big fat Javascript error when they try to access it with a browser that is not my browser's current version. (I have a very low pain threshold. Microsoft's vision of web standards has taught me enough.)
So, Javascript elements on the web interface should always be extra, not critical to actual functionality. Every page should still work, even if it'd be ugly, without JS. Form entry validators and confirmation dialogs are good, as long as they're validated by server as well. Link roll-overs are good. I've still not found anything else that might benefit from JS.
Which I recognized as such, but I failed to comprehend its ultimate purpose or point.
Yes, but in recent times? I don't know because the applet implementation I have here is broken at the moment, and my popups are fairly dead thanks to non-broken browser.
I have mostly been noting that wherever Java was used, if at all, people have started using Flash instead - which only has the added benefit of Not Taking Forever to Load and then Crashing, and probably being slightly more artist-friendly.
Without casting doubt in regards to relevancy of this ad-hominem to discussion at hand, I'd like to point out that since it is November, it is relatively cold outside. Therefore, being a person who finds cold temperature inconvinient (but not completely disabling), I prefer to stay in properly heated areas, which thus means - due to conservation of energy and its utilization to practical tasks only - staying indoors. This naturally only applies to months where average temperature outside is far below 5 degrees Celsius.
Next up: SVG, SMIL, ECMAScript. And once there's any browser support and a decent authoring toolbox, the ad folks bloody well won't resist using them...
...but since no company is pushing them (especially with Flash around, or this newfangled Microsoft thingy in future if ever), it will never get popular or anything, luckily =)
Agreed, but, ah, could be worse. Could be Java. *shiver*
Bah. ID should release Doom 3 this month and GPL Quake3Arena source as a christmas present =)
I've been toying with Blender since the first Linux releases and been an active user since 1.5 days.
And I will not be sticking to the old versions. I don't hold Blender's interface that "sacred". The interface had its great strengths, but it had its weaknesses as well.
The goal of the UI project, as I have understood it, has been to keep the good parts in and improve the bad parts. And so far, I have been pleased with Blender 2.30, even when I've only used it briefly. I've mostly been able to work as usual in Blender 2.30, it isn't that different - and some things are definitely changes for the better, for newbies and old users alike.
The goal has been to improve, and they're doing it.
And I can't wait until they do what they promised earlier and allow the scripts to be bound to UI (so that scripts would be invokable via menus or button palettes), GIMP and other proggies have had that for years... *drool*
Mail for one domain can be handled by another. I don't know the specifics since I haven't looked at it that much, but it's probably something along the lines of "Mail for scienceguy@research.example.com is actually handled by mail.example.com".
The same reason DNS is used in general: IP addresses are difficult to remember and they can change, while DNS names are easy to remember and can be made to point just about everywhere.
And there's also the benefit of using MX records...
My favorite was "Verified at 11/2/103 12:22:41 P.M.". I thought I'd never see stuff like this again, but I was wrong =)
Someone already posted the theoretical solution. Here's the practical solution:
perl -MSocket -e "print unpack("N",inet_aton('slashdot.org'));"
Uh, please don't. It's more pain than it's worth - You don't see many people using IP addresses for E-mail, don't you? There may be reasons for that.