We don't need yet another new WIMP toolkit. We need to totally abstract the UI to give the user more freedom, and to separate UI from functionality. See e.g. http://iki.fi/tuomov/vis/ for some ideas.
RTFA. The so-called "tractor beams" discussed in the article are not sci-fi tractor beams at all. What they're proposing is flying by the asteroid with suitably heavy spacecraft that would attract the asteroid and nudge it off course.
There's a rather big problem, perhaps the one single big problem of SVN with this: svn diff and svn merge don't follow history over copies, only svn log does.
Yeah, it has some nice features... and an absolutely crappy interface. Also the forced version numbering scheme and the need to have something that looks like an email address (developer@no.spam.invalid) in archive name are just brain damaged.
For the distributedness, Arch rules, but Subversion is just so much more pleasant to use and doesn't try force any particular naming and versioning schemes on me like the fascist Arch.
How many mails do you send a day? A couple? Tens? Hundreds? How many of those do you send to people (or mailing lists) that you are frequently in contact with, and would thus have received a bypass key from?
Paying for email is wrong and evil and will be exploited. I think the best way to make spam disappear is to make it too much work for the spammers send spam. If the sender is not on your whitelist and authenticated with some sender-specific key, send him a puzzle that requires human effort to be solved. For example, send some sufficiently obfuscated image, with text in it, to which the sender must reply with the text contained in the image. Puzzles that can be solved with moderate computer power won't work. The spammers have the computing resources.
Gdk easy versus Xlib? In your dreams. Have you ever tried raw Xlib? Gdk? Anything that uses gobject and the typical G-overengineering approach is awful.
> I would be happy to send a small donation but have no cost effective way to do it.
Amen. But even credit card wouldn't help in my case (and the lack of one also rules out paypal where I live). The only cost-effective way for me to donate would be wire transfer to an EU bank account. Even international money orders are around 8.50e, in the same order with the actual donation.
There would be no point in tabbing if you couldn't drag or otherwise easily move the tabs between frames. In PWM's default configuration the middle button accomplishes this.
Drool with envy? I would never want a teenage bubble gum hell computer let alone a desk. Macs are *ugly*. Give me a dull beige box any day. Or, even better, a nice small black/dark laptop.
And the net is full of some bastardized Win-Latin1 (as opposed to standard ISO-Latin1 i.e. ISO-8859-1) pages and email and news messages where it nowhere says so. Yeah, M$ truely handles things well. NOT. They always have to make their own "standards" that are slightly altered from what the rest of the world uses.
However, the "theming" support should be _very_ abstract so that you can implement almost any kind of interfaces for apps. If the app, for example, doesn't need any kind of "canvas" to display graphics on, it should be possible to build a command line UI for the program. If the app needs a (single -- it should be possible to run apps in a single window) canvas, it still should not specify any GUI components, only logical groupings of operations and possibly some hints for some specific interface generators.
Anyway, this is how I'd like all apps that are not "just" command-line apps to be written.
What I'm afraid is that, if X gets replaced, the replacement will be some WIMP-only crap that doesn't allow "alternative" window managers like Ion, LarsWM and so on. X may not be perfect, but it is good for what it is. Sure, it might need some modernifications so that there aren't dozens of almost similar APIs as extensions, and sure, the XFree86 may be a bloated monstrosity, but that's not the X protocol's fault. There are really small X servers around.
Those who don't understand X are doomed to reinvent it, poorly. (Sorry, I had to:)
Syntax? What syntax? The problem with (La)TeX is that the documents are programs where commands may read ahead in the source file--in which way many of the inconsistent "syntax" extensions are implemented--making it difficult to implement e.g. a Latex to HTML converter (as can be seen from the dozens of such attempt none of which work satisfactorily). Disrecarding this difficulty, (La)TeX is really a joy to write unlike (SG|X)ML based formats (or *shudder* using a word processor) which are far too verbose to be edited without special programs that are inferior to good text editors.
> In my book, developing a cure that will make someone else money is better than developing no cure at all.
It is ok with me if they make money with it. It is not okay with me if they keep the results as secret or _especially_ if they patent them thereby forbidding everyone else from (possibly indepdendently) developing a similar cure. Patents are absolutely evil.
> And how convenient does this have to be? Credit Card? (Oh, wait, we don't trust 'those people' with our credit cards.)
Not everyone has or can get a credit card. That's why I can't buy most of the music I'd like. The distribution of most smaller labels sucks in this country and credit card is practically the only way to order from abroad. Wire transfer is the way to go. In the meanwhile, luckily we have all those OpenNap servers...
I'd actually like and immediately subscribe to a "legit" music downloading service if: 1) it had a monthly fee (I might be willing to pay up to 40e depending on the service) instead of pay per download crap and no fscking credit card or exploitatively priced international money order requirements 2) the format was OGG or MP3 3) all files were available in at least 256kbps CBR or equivalent VBR (MP3) 4) good download speeds (hundreds of kbytes a second) 5) all the smaller label stuff was available.
I saw one disc where the propaganda text was in at least 10 different languages and you were forced to watch it in all those languages. That makes at least two minutes.
DVD menus are awkward two. Why the fsck can't the player remember that I want the original soundtrack and subtitles in Finnish (if possible)? Why do I have to surf through multiple levels menus just to watch a film? Shouldn't pressing the 'play' button be enough? VHS much less a pain in the ass to use.
> I don't think any phone can be a good PDA without either a touchscreen or qwerty keyboard.
I wonder why don't they get rid of keys alltogether and move to using just a touch screen that could display the approriate keys. That way there would be space for a big display without lame sliding or folding lids for the keyboard.
> IANAL, but I believe what's here currently is that any software you write is automatically copyright of the author (unless you signed your rights away to a company or academic institution).
I don't know about the rest of the Europe, but in Finland you don't even have to sign the rights away for _software_: the employer automatically owns all software you write. This is sick, BSA has had their will once again. Other copyrightable immaterial works are owned by the author unless he gives the rights away. Everything that is patentable is also automatically the employer's if case it is somehow related to a field the company practices -- even if it is not related to _your_ work. Sick.
Another problem with LCD/TFT is that they do not reproduce all colours properly. (I think the problems were something like forests looking too purple and such.) So, even if TFT generally takes over, CRT might still be preferred for image processing applications. Nevertheless, I'd prefer a big TFT if they were cheap, which they're not.
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We don't need yet another new WIMP toolkit. We need to totally abstract the UI to give the user more freedom, and to separate UI from functionality. See e.g. http://iki.fi/tuomov/vis/ for some ideas.
RTFA. The so-called "tractor beams" discussed in the article are not sci-fi tractor beams at all. What they're proposing is flying by the asteroid with suitably heavy spacecraft that would attract the asteroid and nudge it off course.
There's a rather big problem, perhaps the one single big problem of SVN with this: svn diff and svn merge don't follow history over copies, only svn log does.
Yeah, it has some nice features... and an absolutely crappy interface. Also the forced version numbering scheme and the need to have something that looks like an email address (developer@no.spam.invalid) in archive name are just brain damaged.
For the distributedness, Arch rules, but Subversion is just so much more pleasant to use and doesn't try force any particular naming and versioning schemes on me like the fascist Arch.
Productively... wasted... blah.
How many mails do you send a day? A couple? Tens? Hundreds? How many of those do you send to people (or mailing lists) that you are frequently in contact with, and would thus have received a bypass key from?
Paying for email is wrong and evil and will be exploited. I think the best way to make spam disappear is to make it too much work for the spammers send spam. If the sender is not on your whitelist and authenticated with some sender-specific key, send him a puzzle that requires human effort to be solved. For example, send some sufficiently obfuscated image, with text in it, to which the sender must reply with the text contained in the image. Puzzles that can be solved with moderate computer power won't work. The spammers have the computing resources.
Gdk easy versus Xlib? In your dreams. Have you ever tried raw Xlib? Gdk? Anything that uses gobject and the typical G-overengineering approach is awful.
> Its cheaper, but not quite as good looking or easy to use as the iPod...as an mp3 player
I prefer the looks of the iRiver players. I don't like the "trendy" teenage hell Apple designs at all.
> Aside from Dream Theater and Iron Maiden I bet that no one else knows who any of those bands are.
There are only two on the list that I don't know. (Zao, The Almighty Punchdrunk.)
As for my favourite albums of the year... there's too many I like to list or compare (everything from progmetal to technical death metal).
> I would be happy to send a small donation but have no cost effective way to do it.
Amen. But even credit card wouldn't help in my case (and the lack of one also rules out paypal where I live). The only cost-effective way for me to donate would be wire transfer to an EU bank account. Even international money orders are around 8.50e, in the same order with the actual donation.
There would be no point in tabbing if you couldn't drag or otherwise easily move the tabs between frames. In PWM's default configuration the middle button accomplishes this.
Drool with envy? I would never want a teenage bubble gum hell computer let alone a desk. Macs are *ugly*. Give me a dull beige box any day. Or, even better, a nice small black/dark laptop.
And the net is full of some bastardized Win-Latin1 (as opposed to standard ISO-Latin1 i.e. ISO-8859-1) pages and email and news messages where it nowhere says so. Yeah, M$ truely handles things well. NOT. They always have to make their own "standards" that are slightly altered from what the rest of the world uses.
> But not a European one.
h tm l
Yeah, riiiight.
http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/samples/index.en.
And now _that_ would be fast.
ROTFLMAO.
However, the "theming" support should be _very_ abstract so that you can implement almost any kind of interfaces for apps. If the app, for example, doesn't need any kind of "canvas" to display graphics on, it should be possible to build a command line UI for the program. If the app needs a (single -- it should be possible to run apps in a single window) canvas, it still should not specify any GUI components, only logical groupings of operations and possibly some hints for some specific interface generators.
Anyway, this is how I'd like all apps that are not "just" command-line apps to be written.
What I'm afraid is that, if X gets replaced, the replacement will be some WIMP-only crap that doesn't allow "alternative" window managers like Ion, LarsWM and so on. X may not be perfect, but it is good for what it is. Sure, it might need some modernifications so that there aren't dozens of almost similar APIs as extensions, and sure, the XFree86 may be a bloated monstrosity, but that's not the X protocol's fault. There are really small X servers around.
:)
Those who don't understand X are doomed to reinvent it, poorly. (Sorry, I had to
> TeX has a horrible syntax
Syntax? What syntax? The problem with (La)TeX is that the documents are programs where commands may read ahead in the source file--in which way many of the inconsistent "syntax" extensions are implemented--making it difficult to implement e.g. a Latex to HTML converter (as can be seen from the dozens of such attempt none of which work satisfactorily). Disrecarding this difficulty, (La)TeX is really a joy to write unlike (SG|X)ML based formats (or *shudder* using a word processor) which are far too verbose to be edited without special programs that are inferior to good text editors.
> In my book, developing a cure that will make someone else money is better than developing no cure at all.
It is ok with me if they make money with it. It is not okay with me if they keep the results as secret or _especially_ if they patent them thereby forbidding everyone else from (possibly indepdendently) developing a similar cure. Patents are absolutely evil.
> The biggest boon of Freenet, not to mention other efforts an anonymous P2P, is for people in countries with oppressive regimes.
Including countries with oppressive patent and trademark legislation.
Oh, wait, Freenet didn't work through firewalls.
> And how convenient does this have to be? Credit Card? (Oh, wait, we don't trust 'those people' with our credit cards.)
Not everyone has or can get a credit card. That's why I can't buy most of the music I'd like. The distribution of most smaller labels sucks in this country and credit card is practically the only way to order from abroad. Wire transfer is the way to go. In the meanwhile, luckily we have all those OpenNap servers...
I'd actually like and immediately subscribe to a "legit" music downloading service if:
1) it had a monthly fee (I might be willing to pay up to 40e depending on the service) instead of pay per download crap and no fscking credit card or exploitatively priced international money order requirements
2) the format was OGG or MP3
3) all files were available in at least 256kbps CBR or equivalent VBR (MP3)
4) good download speeds (hundreds of kbytes a second)
5) all the smaller label stuff was available.
I saw one disc where the propaganda text was in at least 10 different languages and you were forced to watch it in all those languages. That makes at least two minutes.
DVD menus are awkward two. Why the fsck can't the player remember that I want the original soundtrack and subtitles in Finnish (if possible)? Why do I have to surf through multiple levels menus just to watch a film? Shouldn't pressing the 'play' button be enough? VHS much less a pain in the ass to use.
> I don't think any phone can be a good PDA without either a touchscreen or qwerty keyboard.
I wonder why don't they get rid of keys alltogether and move to using just a touch screen that could display the approriate keys. That way there would be space for a big display without lame sliding or folding lids for the keyboard.
> IANAL, but I believe what's here currently is that any software you write is automatically copyright of the author (unless you signed your rights away to a company or academic institution).
I don't know about the rest of the Europe, but in Finland you don't even have to sign the rights away for _software_: the employer automatically owns all software you write. This is sick, BSA has had their will once again. Other copyrightable immaterial works are owned by the author unless he gives the rights away. Everything that is patentable is also automatically the employer's if case it is somehow related to a field the company practices -- even if it is not related to _your_ work. Sick.
Another problem with LCD/TFT is that they do not reproduce all colours properly. (I think the problems were something like forests looking too purple and such.) So, even if TFT generally takes over, CRT might still be preferred for image processing applications. Nevertheless, I'd prefer a big TFT if they were cheap, which they're not.