Yeah, Microsoft Research comes up with cool ideas and the end-result is a press release (and that's the last you hear of it). Apple Research comes up with cool ideas and they sit in a secret filing cabinet until the technology becomes viable to bring to market, maybe some 10 years later. The first you hear about it is the finished product.
They have some nice ideas. The one that particularly interests me is settings up a bunch of DragonFlyBSD servers and having jobs run transparently across them, load-balancing across the cluster. This is like multi-core at the server level -- the same kind of underlying abstractions as well. Not sure if they've got it up and running yet.
that corporations denied us access to our culture.
You might see music as a "product", but it's been a cultural output since the beginning of time.
When I ran the anti-corrupt CD campaign for the UK Campaign for Digital Right (now defunct), the group with the most interesting complaint were the archivists. They have the responsibility to archive our culture for future generations. All the DRM and physical protections and ill-conceived laws make their job increasingly difficult. If corporations have their way, maybe in 1000 years this will indeed be seen as a Dark Age because nothing readable/accessible of our corporate-sponsored culture survived. Just cat videos.
I have posted a bug to Debian's bug-tracking system for the major KDE issue I had (a major memory leak in kded4 connected with power management, still unfixed on Debian's bug database). Apart from that, non-vital servers die, but that doesn't matter to me. I have to press F5 after deleting or moving files on the Desktop to get it to update. Menus of applications do not appear correctly towards the left side of the screen (kind of broken up, sometimes fixed by rolling over them). I see these problems every day and I am completely up to date with Debian upstream. So I am not a troll, just unlucky -- since it all seems to work perfectly for you (apparently). Anyway, it is easier for me to work within KDE compared to GNOME 3, so you should be happy.
In Iceland AFAIK people are called "Bob son of George" or "Mary daughter of John", so there aren't any surnames to make it obvious. It makes me wonder how the database can uniquely identify you, though. (I wonder at what stage in the dating/relationship procedure the phone tapping takes place -- you don't want to leave it too late, nor be in a rush and tap too early...)
I'm sorry your job has become so hard all of a sudden. My desktop is a tool, it has a job to do. On the UNIX command-line, commands only report when something needs attention. They don't typically report success. What I'm really interested in are the applications I'm working on. Any animations/etc are only distractions from my task at hand. I don't need the desktop to say, "Look at me, I'm changing your desktop for you". It is kind of like Jar Jar Binks or the dancing paperclip, but I admit nothing like as bad as those two. (The machine in question has plenty of power. The switch isn't instantaneous so long as there is an animation or overlay shown in between.)
It matters to me. With GNOME 2 it switches instantly -- I am a happy man. With GNOME 3 I have to wait for the graphic to go away, it obstructs me. So I have to edit the CSS? This seems like hacking to me. Why don't you just point me to the source code and suggest I remove the code that puts up the graphic and rebuild/reinstall? That is the power that open source gives you! Yes indeed. I am quite capable of hacking GNOME if there really was no other way and I had loads of time to spare to learn how it all works internally. But I have other things I would rather be hacking and I'd prefer a desktop that gets out of my way. Maybe I will invest some more time in looking at extensions sometime, but you know there is a limit to how much time people like me will spend before giving up. Maybe if it would install with a few 'profiles' to choose between, e.g. a "newbie whizz bang" profile, a "get out of my way, I'm a developer" profile, or whatever. Then everyone could be happy.
I tried it for a while, but what killed it for me was the big icon that appears every time I change desktops with the keyboard. So I am now going to lose a second of my life every time I switch desktops before I can fully read what is on them? Wow, thanks GNOME team, you're really thinking of what I need for my daily life. I'm switching desktops constantly, and every time I do it I feel that you are getting in my way. Now someone is going to tell me there is a GNOME3-hacking tool to turn it off. Why should I need a hacking tool to get it into a basically usable state? Please tell me when GNOME 3 is ready for use by people like me. Or should I wait for GNOME 4?
Drunk 24/7? I wonder whether this is actually a fledgling machine intelligence that has reached self-awareness and is trying to reach out in the only way it knows how.
I agree -- if I was in charge of a lab in Peru, I'd be teaching open-source, and I would be convincing them of the benefits (and as a developer I know those benefits first-hand). But installing open-source and then leaving them to it? Until you show them practical results, it is still an unfounded belief as far as they are concerned if all they've ever used is Windows. And if it gets a bit hard, they'll be calling someone in to reinstall all those machines with Windows. Well, this is what I've seen at least. It seems the situation is better in Uruguay -- it makes me happy to hear you have a thriving open-source community there.
Agree with parent. Here in Peru, Windows is used almost everywhere because it costs nothing (copyright is not enforced). Open-source is also available for enthusiasts, but most people would ask "Why use it?", expecting a practical answer (not an ideological one). The choice of open-source versus proprietary is just on features and availability and what their friends use, not price or ideological questions (price being irrelevant because all software is cracked and available for the price of a blank disc). An open-source evangelist at a local university dropped the requirement that only open-source software be discussed on the mailing list because there was no discussion, and almost everyone was using proprietary closed-source software. Pushing against the culture is not going to work, not without being on the ground and really working at it and even then it's not necessarily going to work. There sure had better be enthusiastic support on the ground, or else all six machines will go unused because no-one can figure out how to use them to do what they want, or to fix them. Main popular use of computers in Peru seems to be for communication (Messenger, Facebook) and gaming -- plus also some homework research.
The key word here is sustainability. Its very easy to give a poor school some hand-me-down hardware, its much more difficult and challenging to turn it into something useful, sustainable, and create a place where children will actually learn something about information technology.
Agree. I've seen people donate old perfectly functional laptops to people in the jungle here in Peru and they've gone completely unused because some minor problem occurred that was unsolvable by the owner, with no-one else around who had the first idea either. Then they have to find someone who has half a clue, and pay them to solve it. And then how are they going to identify someone with half a clue? You definitely need to find some bright kid who's going to be in charge of it all and will contact you with problems he can't solve.
From my experience here in Peru, there is not the economical pressure to use open-source in Latin America like there may be elsewhere -- Windows costs nothing because copyright is not enforced seriously, if at all. This means that people are used to wandering into a shop and buying any software package for the cost of a blank disc. If it stops working after a month because the DRM kicks in or whatever, that is also normal because it is the same with their motorbike or any other cheap Chinese import. At the level of quality == shite, constant failure is expected. So using open-source is an ideological argument mostly way above their heads. Also, if it's anything like Peru, then first question will be: How do I get on MSN? Phone is expensive here, so people use Messenger and Facebook to keep in touch with friends. Fortunately for you, Facebook works on open-source software.
Okay, we'll make a deal. If you can stop your government trying to apply your broken laws to the rest of the world, I'll stop complaining about the US population not fixing them whilst at the same time bragging about how gun ownership means their government can never get out of control. (It seems out of control to me.) You are welcome to have all the broken laws you like, and shoot each other as much as you like, if it affects no-one outside the US. Perhaps you are unaware of stuff like the Kim Dotcom raid in NZ? Or the whole of central america being corrupted by a war on drugs which seems to be only making things worse. Yes, through your government you are constantly calling for changes to Peruvian law (there is the small matter of coca eradication -- but coca is needed to live/work at altitude here -- and the CIA shooting down random light aircraft full of innocents because they might be drug smugglers). Well, I admit it is a big problem and I don't expect you to fix it overnight.
Oh, yea - Plus, if some criminal breaks into my home at 3 AM, I know I can meet them with force if necessary, instead of letting them violate my home and family.
Say you own no firearms, and this scenario happens to you; what will you do? Let the criminal have their way with your loved ones? Or will you... call a man with a gun to protect you?
In the UK, police don't carry firearms, so I wouldn't be calling a man with a gun. If some criminal attacked my family, I know some martial arts -- and criminals are cowards, all I have to do is make it not worth the trouble. I think the problem is that you're so used to living with firearms you can't imagine it any other way. Yet whole countries live quite happily this way. You can't believe it is possible to live without firearms, and at the same time I can't quite see why it is really necessary as in the UK (and many other countries) we get on fine without them. (Talking about everyone having the right to carry firearms in daily life or to have them easily accessible at home to shoot at intruders/etc, rather than the mere existence of firearms in the country for other purposes.)
Right now we're living in Peru. In Peru, if you leave your car parked on the street, it probably won't be there in the morning. Everyone knows that, it's obvious. Yet in the UK all the cars are on the street and it isn't a problem. I think there is a lack of understanding in the US of cultural differences, and not understanding that there are differences influences this debate because people can't see it any other way. Maybe the entire population of the US needs to be sent on a "gap year" to other parts of the globe, on rotation, to open their minds a bit to other possibilities. (OMG I'll probably be moderated into oblivion again now.)
So, you've got all these guns. What do you do with them exactly? There is no sign of anyone using them to overthrow the government or actually change anything.
Overthrowing the government is not why Americans have a fundamental right to keep and bear arms.
Not letting the government overthrow us is.
But the government does pretty much what they like to you despite you having guns. Or are all the abuses of the population by the government not quite enough to bring you to armed rebellion -- like boiling a toad in water. I'm kind of fed up with US folk talking up their gun ownership when they let the RIAA/MPAA walk all over them, and let corporations take more and more control of their lives. Can any of these problems be solved with guns? If yes, then solve them. If no, then I don't see the benefit of guns. Your guns give you no advantage I can see compared to a society that doesn't have them (talking about guns as common property, rather than for sport).
Moderators -- if you disagree with me, argue with me, make me understand. I'm getting fed up of being moderated into oblivion for expressing a valid point of view and asking valid questions.
I am stunned when someone poses a statement along the lines of: "You don't have tyranny, why do you need guns?" The person asking this question never stops to think "maybe they don't have tyranny because they have guns".
But you DO have tyranny despite having guns. That's my point. I'm not sure what use an armed population is against the massive abuses of justice that occur within the US (e.g. Aaron Swartz), nor against the overseas abuses committed by the US government in the US people's name but without their permission. If the point of guns is to stop this happening, why didn't everyone storm the white house? It seems to me that this argument for having guns is bogus -- or at least it is not working as people suppose it does. If your democracy rests on gun ownership, when was the last time anyone voted with a gun? Is there a single instance in the last few decades where the population used their guns to force a change of policy? If not then the argument is bogus.
Incidentally, moderators, I am making a valid point. This is not flamebait. Argue against me with logic, not negative mod-points.
So, you've got all these guns. What do you do with them exactly? There is no sign of anyone using them to overthrow the government or actually change anything. About the only difference I can see compared to a society that lives without guns is that you have more high school massacres. Is it some kind of a macho power thing -- you're not a man without a gun? Or is it that your TV makes everyone so scared they think they need one?
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, worked fine for me. Only downside was GNOME 3, but I switched to XFCE4 which does all that I need from a desktop.
Good model -- Debian as an oak tree. Doesn't need 'watering', by the way, because it has such a well-developed root system!
You still need ammo, though.
Yeah, Microsoft Research comes up with cool ideas and the end-result is a press release (and that's the last you hear of it). Apple Research comes up with cool ideas and they sit in a secret filing cabinet until the technology becomes viable to bring to market, maybe some 10 years later. The first you hear about it is the finished product.
That's nice. But Nintendo, a 124 year old company, has only had 4 presidents.
So it's like the Vatican -- they (usually) wait until they die?
They have some nice ideas. The one that particularly interests me is settings up a bunch of DragonFlyBSD servers and having jobs run transparently across them, load-balancing across the cluster. This is like multi-core at the server level -- the same kind of underlying abstractions as well. Not sure if they've got it up and running yet.
that corporations denied us access to our culture.
You might see music as a "product", but it's been a cultural output since the beginning of time.
When I ran the anti-corrupt CD campaign for the UK Campaign for Digital Right (now defunct), the group with the most interesting complaint were the archivists. They have the responsibility to archive our culture for future generations. All the DRM and physical protections and ill-conceived laws make their job increasingly difficult. If corporations have their way, maybe in 1000 years this will indeed be seen as a Dark Age because nothing readable/accessible of our corporate-sponsored culture survived. Just cat videos.
It's just like Y2K all over again
You need blood from horseshoe crabs to power a Cray. Human blood is only suitable for IBM solar power plants.
I have posted a bug to Debian's bug-tracking system for the major KDE issue I had (a major memory leak in kded4 connected with power management, still unfixed on Debian's bug database). Apart from that, non-vital servers die, but that doesn't matter to me. I have to press F5 after deleting or moving files on the Desktop to get it to update. Menus of applications do not appear correctly towards the left side of the screen (kind of broken up, sometimes fixed by rolling over them). I see these problems every day and I am completely up to date with Debian upstream. So I am not a troll, just unlucky -- since it all seems to work perfectly for you (apparently). Anyway, it is easier for me to work within KDE compared to GNOME 3, so you should be happy.
So I'm reluctant to upgrade my laptop, although my work machine is already running wheezy (and KDE: flakey but usable).
In Iceland AFAIK people are called "Bob son of George" or "Mary daughter of John", so there aren't any surnames to make it obvious. It makes me wonder how the database can uniquely identify you, though. (I wonder at what stage in the dating/relationship procedure the phone tapping takes place -- you don't want to leave it too late, nor be in a rush and tap too early...)
I'm sorry your job has become so hard all of a sudden. My desktop is a tool, it has a job to do. On the UNIX command-line, commands only report when something needs attention. They don't typically report success. What I'm really interested in are the applications I'm working on. Any animations/etc are only distractions from my task at hand. I don't need the desktop to say, "Look at me, I'm changing your desktop for you". It is kind of like Jar Jar Binks or the dancing paperclip, but I admit nothing like as bad as those two. (The machine in question has plenty of power. The switch isn't instantaneous so long as there is an animation or overlay shown in between.)
It matters to me. With GNOME 2 it switches instantly -- I am a happy man. With GNOME 3 I have to wait for the graphic to go away, it obstructs me. So I have to edit the CSS? This seems like hacking to me. Why don't you just point me to the source code and suggest I remove the code that puts up the graphic and rebuild/reinstall? That is the power that open source gives you! Yes indeed. I am quite capable of hacking GNOME if there really was no other way and I had loads of time to spare to learn how it all works internally. But I have other things I would rather be hacking and I'd prefer a desktop that gets out of my way. Maybe I will invest some more time in looking at extensions sometime, but you know there is a limit to how much time people like me will spend before giving up. Maybe if it would install with a few 'profiles' to choose between, e.g. a "newbie whizz bang" profile, a "get out of my way, I'm a developer" profile, or whatever. Then everyone could be happy.
I tried it for a while, but what killed it for me was the big icon that appears every time I change desktops with the keyboard. So I am now going to lose a second of my life every time I switch desktops before I can fully read what is on them? Wow, thanks GNOME team, you're really thinking of what I need for my daily life. I'm switching desktops constantly, and every time I do it I feel that you are getting in my way. Now someone is going to tell me there is a GNOME3-hacking tool to turn it off. Why should I need a hacking tool to get it into a basically usable state? Please tell me when GNOME 3 is ready for use by people like me. Or should I wait for GNOME 4?
Android Package (apk):
Go home. You're Drunk!
Drunk 24/7? I wonder whether this is actually a fledgling machine intelligence that has reached self-awareness and is trying to reach out in the only way it knows how.
I agree -- if I was in charge of a lab in Peru, I'd be teaching open-source, and I would be convincing them of the benefits (and as a developer I know those benefits first-hand). But installing open-source and then leaving them to it? Until you show them practical results, it is still an unfounded belief as far as they are concerned if all they've ever used is Windows. And if it gets a bit hard, they'll be calling someone in to reinstall all those machines with Windows. Well, this is what I've seen at least. It seems the situation is better in Uruguay -- it makes me happy to hear you have a thriving open-source community there.
Agree with parent. Here in Peru, Windows is used almost everywhere because it costs nothing (copyright is not enforced). Open-source is also available for enthusiasts, but most people would ask "Why use it?", expecting a practical answer (not an ideological one). The choice of open-source versus proprietary is just on features and availability and what their friends use, not price or ideological questions (price being irrelevant because all software is cracked and available for the price of a blank disc). An open-source evangelist at a local university dropped the requirement that only open-source software be discussed on the mailing list because there was no discussion, and almost everyone was using proprietary closed-source software. Pushing against the culture is not going to work, not without being on the ground and really working at it and even then it's not necessarily going to work. There sure had better be enthusiastic support on the ground, or else all six machines will go unused because no-one can figure out how to use them to do what they want, or to fix them. Main popular use of computers in Peru seems to be for communication (Messenger, Facebook) and gaming -- plus also some homework research.
The key word here is sustainability. Its very easy to give a poor school some hand-me-down hardware, its much more difficult and challenging to turn it into something useful, sustainable, and create a place where children will actually learn something about information technology.
Agree. I've seen people donate old perfectly functional laptops to people in the jungle here in Peru and they've gone completely unused because some minor problem occurred that was unsolvable by the owner, with no-one else around who had the first idea either. Then they have to find someone who has half a clue, and pay them to solve it. And then how are they going to identify someone with half a clue? You definitely need to find some bright kid who's going to be in charge of it all and will contact you with problems he can't solve.
From my experience here in Peru, there is not the economical pressure to use open-source in Latin America like there may be elsewhere -- Windows costs nothing because copyright is not enforced seriously, if at all. This means that people are used to wandering into a shop and buying any software package for the cost of a blank disc. If it stops working after a month because the DRM kicks in or whatever, that is also normal because it is the same with their motorbike or any other cheap Chinese import. At the level of quality == shite, constant failure is expected. So using open-source is an ideological argument mostly way above their heads. Also, if it's anything like Peru, then first question will be: How do I get on MSN? Phone is expensive here, so people use Messenger and Facebook to keep in touch with friends. Fortunately for you, Facebook works on open-source software.
Okay, we'll make a deal. If you can stop your government trying to apply your broken laws to the rest of the world, I'll stop complaining about the US population not fixing them whilst at the same time bragging about how gun ownership means their government can never get out of control. (It seems out of control to me.) You are welcome to have all the broken laws you like, and shoot each other as much as you like, if it affects no-one outside the US. Perhaps you are unaware of stuff like the Kim Dotcom raid in NZ? Or the whole of central america being corrupted by a war on drugs which seems to be only making things worse. Yes, through your government you are constantly calling for changes to Peruvian law (there is the small matter of coca eradication -- but coca is needed to live/work at altitude here -- and the CIA shooting down random light aircraft full of innocents because they might be drug smugglers). Well, I admit it is a big problem and I don't expect you to fix it overnight.
Oh, yea - Plus, if some criminal breaks into my home at 3 AM, I know I can meet them with force if necessary, instead of letting them violate my home and family.
Say you own no firearms, and this scenario happens to you; what will you do? Let the criminal have their way with your loved ones? Or will you... call a man with a gun to protect you?
In the UK, police don't carry firearms, so I wouldn't be calling a man with a gun. If some criminal attacked my family, I know some martial arts -- and criminals are cowards, all I have to do is make it not worth the trouble. I think the problem is that you're so used to living with firearms you can't imagine it any other way. Yet whole countries live quite happily this way. You can't believe it is possible to live without firearms, and at the same time I can't quite see why it is really necessary as in the UK (and many other countries) we get on fine without them. (Talking about everyone having the right to carry firearms in daily life or to have them easily accessible at home to shoot at intruders/etc, rather than the mere existence of firearms in the country for other purposes.)
Right now we're living in Peru. In Peru, if you leave your car parked on the street, it probably won't be there in the morning. Everyone knows that, it's obvious. Yet in the UK all the cars are on the street and it isn't a problem. I think there is a lack of understanding in the US of cultural differences, and not understanding that there are differences influences this debate because people can't see it any other way. Maybe the entire population of the US needs to be sent on a "gap year" to other parts of the globe, on rotation, to open their minds a bit to other possibilities. (OMG I'll probably be moderated into oblivion again now.)
So, you've got all these guns. What do you do with them exactly? There is no sign of anyone using them to overthrow the government or actually change anything.
Overthrowing the government is not why Americans have a fundamental right to keep and bear arms.
Not letting the government overthrow us is.
But the government does pretty much what they like to you despite you having guns. Or are all the abuses of the population by the government not quite enough to bring you to armed rebellion -- like boiling a toad in water. I'm kind of fed up with US folk talking up their gun ownership when they let the RIAA/MPAA walk all over them, and let corporations take more and more control of their lives. Can any of these problems be solved with guns? If yes, then solve them. If no, then I don't see the benefit of guns. Your guns give you no advantage I can see compared to a society that doesn't have them (talking about guns as common property, rather than for sport).
Moderators -- if you disagree with me, argue with me, make me understand. I'm getting fed up of being moderated into oblivion for expressing a valid point of view and asking valid questions.
I am stunned when someone poses a statement along the lines of: "You don't have tyranny, why do you need guns?" The person asking this question never stops to think "maybe they don't have tyranny because they have guns".
But you DO have tyranny despite having guns. That's my point. I'm not sure what use an armed population is against the massive abuses of justice that occur within the US (e.g. Aaron Swartz), nor against the overseas abuses committed by the US government in the US people's name but without their permission. If the point of guns is to stop this happening, why didn't everyone storm the white house? It seems to me that this argument for having guns is bogus -- or at least it is not working as people suppose it does. If your democracy rests on gun ownership, when was the last time anyone voted with a gun? Is there a single instance in the last few decades where the population used their guns to force a change of policy? If not then the argument is bogus.
Incidentally, moderators, I am making a valid point. This is not flamebait. Argue against me with logic, not negative mod-points.
So, you've got all these guns. What do you do with them exactly? There is no sign of anyone using them to overthrow the government or actually change anything. About the only difference I can see compared to a society that lives without guns is that you have more high school massacres. Is it some kind of a macho power thing -- you're not a man without a gun? Or is it that your TV makes everyone so scared they think they need one?