The vendors will support Vista hook, line and sinker. That way they can sell a new round of hardware. They sold us new keyboards that way when win95 came out - and they'd love to sell yet another round of hardware for the new bloated Windows. The upside to that is that x86 Linux with it's countless hacks and workarounds to get modern day functionality running will seem even less bloated than it does allready. Despite it being something that would have been a nightmare 10 years ago.
Hey, Guys! Get with the programm. Ruby on Rails is so last-season. Django is where the musics at. And for good reasons too. It's more mature, easyer to use, faster in developement, less performance hungry, has a documentation that's up to date and has a grown up backend kit. It's only that they GPLd it last summer, that's why it hasn't gotten all the press yet. And this is not to start a flamewar. Compare them both and you'll see what I mean. The RoR and Django guys are good friends btw.
I'm kinda serious about it: How realistic is it for us to buy SCO?
Imagine this farce finally coming to an end with no options left for SCO. There will be a shareholder lawsuit. Stock will plummet somewhere around then and SCO be dirt cheap. We should be able to get 51 percent together if SCO cost something like 20 cents per share or something. No?
How many SCO shares are there? How does this stock market thing work in detail in the US?
Imagine buying SCO and turning it into some neat community run open source portal or something. We could keep the cool logo and name and add some of the old dignity to it again. Do some fun stuff too: Hand out fancy offical titles to everybody with shares, print some cool T-Shirts with witty wisecrack onliners and Darl Jokes to fund backoffice and bandwidth... the usual thing. That would be neat, wouldn't it?. Giving Darl McBride the boot and gratiously handing out any evidence to prove his wrongdoing to former shareholders. Ahhh, I'm feeling great allready...
Is this a pointless pipe dream our could we (slashdotters and OSS community) pull this off? After all, the Blender community managed to round up 100 000 Euros in seven weeks - albeight under slightly different circumstances.
I get the rave about the iPod. It is a cool device and the facts go for it. Lot's of other player's don't hold up and simply look like rushed to market. Even the sleek ones from Philips or Sony.
Yet I have a question to the ones using the iPod - especially those who've used another player before:
Is this a potential competitor? It's practically bloated with features most of which the iPod lacks. Controlls look a generation or two behind iPod and the video display is smaller but all the rest seems really cool. What do you say? Potential competitor to iPod (especially if one likes the features) or not?
Opinions and experiences please (que below). Thanks.
I first look at the website. If it looks like crap, I'm away. This may sound silly - and it is funny, I admit - but there's a serious end to it.
If the people in charge don't have what it takes to build a website that doesn't look like someone did doo-doo on my screen, chances are their framework and documentation is a pile of half-backed bits and pieces. This is usually true on a larger scale. This rule doesn't apply to non-oss tools though.
When it get's into the details I look at language used, databases supported and the general liveness of the community and friendliness towards new users. Widespread usage is a criteria aswell when builing for now and future customers. Example: Because PHP is used everywhere, I'm willing to make a tradeoff against Python, even though I think Python is some much better as a PL. For most cases that is. In a way, dynamic languages are sort of frameworks themselves.
It's actually not unlikely that she senses this with her hearing nerves. Though it wouldn't be soundwaves because these could be meashured aswell. This type of sensetivity is uncommon but not unheard of. She's had it scientifically tested and says she feels it like a pulse. The hearing nerves are now to be sensetive to certain e-magnetic frequencies and cause sensations remotely simular to hearing. Tinitus is a damage of the hearing nerves and has been proven to be inducable with magnetic fields. However people who sense radiowaves are hardly displaying ESP rather than a heightend sensetivity for... well... radiowaves.
Haven't we all thought this at a point? If you hear about FOSS and it's concept for the first time it's totally normal to ask "But then I have to give my software away that I build with these tools/for this OS?". Grapsing all the details about GPL and Co. takes a little insight into the fine details of the rule. More often than not do people here on slashdot mix it up themselves.
Cut the guy's some slack. After all, they noticed it before the took any action. And it's good to see officials taking care. They should be thanked for looking into the matter imediately.
I see a lot of wannabees rant about this university being run by unscientify crackpots. And that the sun and radio and tv is more radiation blah blah... I've got news for you: Microwaves damage health. Period. The debate is at which intensity do they start doing that. I generally turn my Wifi of if I'm not using it and have stopped carrying my cellphone close to my body, since it's on all day. I turn it off at night. I also hold it away from my head when I make a call until the cell handshake is over and the remote connect is there. My Siemens M35 even has a beep to indicate when the connect is there. Smart people the Siemens engineers, aren't they? Handshake you ask? That's the high-power meep-meep-meep you hear in nearby active FM radios just before you make or recieve a call. It's what establishes the conection to the cell network for communication. I even know a woman who can sense the cellphone handshake (she has e-magnetic field sensetivity) from meters away and has the habbit of anouncing cellphone calls seconds before a phone rings. Fun to watch with unsuspecting others near by:-) . Her life isn't that fun though. When her neighbor above leaves his 20" CRT on she can't sleep. She's got other trouble with that aswell and people often don't believe her and think she's crazy. On it goes: My father was a high profile radar electronics engineer - with Military (Nato, Cruise Missile), Airbus, Nasa/Grumman Aircraft (Lunar Module, Space Shuttle, etc) and some others. He forbid us to have a Microwave oven (they ALL leak Microwaves) and steared clear and went the other way whenever we got to close to a radar bubble when going hiking. There are people who've had terminal brain tumors due to intense cellphone usage and I work with doctors (medical IT) who keep all equipment far away and well cased according to TCO.
Bottom line: Don't think it's not unhealthy just because most people don't care. A little common sense and forsight is needed when handling technology. You don't get universal flawless wireless conectivity without a tradeoff. Anyone who believes that is a crackpot himself.
This article is totally pointless and backwards. The guy got it all wrong. Who the hell said fast leveling is WoWs prime objective?
I've been registred for 8 months now and am at level 21 with my first character (a Dwarven Priest). Yeah, go ahead, just laugh. I'm laughing at you just now. *The sound of ten thousand slashdotters spewing ten thousand cups of coffee across their monitors*
Whenever I log in I usually run around join parties here and there do some soloing. Sometime I get a powerleveling rage and do half a bar in one night. But most of the time I just move about and explore the world. And that's where the fun is - if you haven't notived. It can be real fun btw moving through territory that's 'meant' for 15 levels higher. It takes some real skill to do that. Yeah, leveling is a neat extra but if you're only looking at your bar you might aswell be playing a browsergame. And they're for free.
I sometimes feel pitty for those constatly racing from quest to quest - most of them are probably unemployed and lack the ratrace in real life. I come to WoW to avoid the rat race.
Bottom line: This article is bullshit. If your into powerleveling - which really is boring and pointless - quit the complaining. At stop saying WoW teaches the wrong stuff. It's a fantasy world, for crikeys sake. Do fantasy stuff or let it be. If there's one thing you'd like to learn from this than maybe it's that leveling isn't what it's all about.
My daughter get's what was good for me and gets spared what wasn't benefitial for me. Meaning: When she's old enough (14-15) she'll get a programable computer (probably my old Sharp PC 1403) and I'll teach her some basic or teach her to use the manual the right way. She (we) won't get a TV. She's not getting a mindless video console with unlimited access.
She'll get my GameBoy Advance when she's old enough (around about 12) but no games that are mindless and rely on randomness. Instead she'll get some good intelligent ones that rely and train on strategy, tactics and foresight (remember Qix?) and her access to them will be limited (2 hrs/week, no more than half an hour a day). She'll get that as a bonus on top of the fairy tales and stories me and my wife read to her. Not as a sorry excuse for me to have my peace. She'll not get Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon 1,2,3,4 and 5 plus special editions.
When she's old enough (15-16) she'll get an Inet capable computer, her own password protected chatserver for her and her classmates and friends - we'll set it up together and she'll learn some basics about setting up a Jabber Server (so will I:-) ) - and her first basics in CLI/Bash and scripting with Python. I'll slowly introduce her to some nice powerfull GUI (KDE, in some screeching pink theme it will be I guess:-) ) + apps and show her that using them in the right manner requires training, precision and foresight. By that time she'll also have learned to search up information and help on her own on what interests her (read: how to use and recognize a good manual/book, what an index and a glossary is/what google is and does). She'll not get a mindless course in MS Office, and she will not be one of those poor sobs that mistake "Spreadsheet Tool" with "Excel" or "Wordprocessor" with "MS Word" or "Presentation Programm" with "PowerPoint". She'll also have learned by then that the point about computers is getting them to do stuff themselves (programming)- and not sitting in front of them doing mindless repetetive tasks (nice typewriter + video console + creative tool + film studio is a bonus, not the only thing; it's a computer darling, that's what's special about it - it automates simple mind tasks that normally only humans can do)
In other words: When my daughter is released into the world on her own she will have experienced love, parents who talk to and respect one another, a father that is authoritive but loving and 3 square meals a day. She'll know how to cook, bake, knit, build a shelf, hold a drill, sew (I'm teaching her that, not mom), what clothes go good together, what electicity is, what 230 Volts and 50Hz mean (that's in germany, folks) and the names of the flowers and birds that are around, how to behave at the dinner table, how to play guitar... and all the rest thats needed. She'll probably have the little bonus of a solid Aikido training. I got her to come along with her classmate - if she keeps up (keep your fingers crossed!) till she's grown up I'll feel sorry for any poor sob that get's pissy with her. But on top of all that she'll have her head in the right place when it comes to technology due to a father who's profession is in the field and helped her along the right way. And she'll be aware of the fact that she's priviliged (compared to 50 million indian untouchables for instance) and be gratefull for it.
Bottom line: Turn your brains on. You know the drill, your children don't. Love, true tlc, the basics plus some good cultural extras and then a desire to do it right when introducing your children into tech is all they can ever have whished for later on. Everything else will fall in place. And you are right in being rather more slow and moderate than the rest of the meek when introducing them to tech. Just don't forget: It's not that OSS tool you're working on that is your favourite pet project anymore - it's your siblings. If it's not "dad needs to make money" stuff your doing at your home computer learn to turn your attention to them imediately whenever they need it - especially when sitting in front of your favourite box.
These are the 2 cents from a father (Software Developer) of an 8 year old girl
The business mechanisim of OSS is marxisim. It's a marxisims wet dream actually. Everybody takes what he needs, makes what he wants and all have the right amount of it.
It's software, people. It's sequences of bits. It's imaterial and the fact that you can duplicate it for no cost at all is what it's all about. What failed miserably in the real world (for obvious reasons) works extremely well in the virtual world. Marxisim.
Groups are organized not by money but by a mix of effective hierarchy, mutual interests, code of honor, hype & marketing (Ruby on Rails anyone? No way would it have come that far with the ususal crappy OSS website and without socially competent advocates) and some other soft skills. It's more like a tribal thing than a capitalistic one. It doesn't need money to work. The whole point about OSS is to make it work without money. It scares the living piss out of Microsoft and other entities that are big in the money game and have no foot in the OSS game, because it's not their league.
Remember the Mambo/Joomla! incident a few months ago? Miro thought it could pull some stunt by 'controlling' or 'regaining control' of what had become of Mambo through the community. The community walked away in something like 2 days flat. And people don't even care if there was some agenda behind it by Jamboworks. The new Joomla! thing serves the purposes of the community better while the Mambofoundation appears as nothing other than a sad and sorry scheme to benefit of others work without paying back.
Companies controlling OSS? Not if you're not willing to play the OSS game. SUN is a good positive example. For some fuzzy reason Java is considered 'sort of open source allready anyway' even by the most fanatic free-speech advocates. Why? Because they actually do their homework and really contribute. They're giving away their OS, generally nice like with the OSS community and share the ups (OpenOffice) and downs (declining interest by old school business) and thus have gained a solid reputation amoungst OSS people. By now SUN would damage itself if it would take that back again. Like SCO did. SCO played hardball - arguably in a notably stupid manner - and got the reciept for that imediately.
While Western politicians and activists babble about all that, big business is just going to cut to the chase and hire from whichever countries have actually managed to come up with educational systems that churn out needed skills, rather than waiting for this reform business to work itself out.
Wrong. Big business does whatever gives big business the biggest buck fast (within the next quarter). Meanwhile the capital is eating itself. More and more people are not running for the money but the self-inflating money. Money is the only good that doesn't lose but gains value when put on a shelf. A bank account that is. This kind of business makes sence in the short term for an individual business - given money won't get worthless someday. In every other way this course of action is descructive and shortsighted, benefits no one and damages all. And that's no 'debate morass' - it's a simple fact and can be found by taking a closer look anywhere in the world. The Bottom Line is: The 'free market' as we know it today has flaws. Not huge ones, but flaws that give to much power into the hands of to few without anybody really noticing it. This will have to change, globally. Because if it doesn't global economy is going the way of the dodo. I actually expect something like a global currency within the next 30 years. The only question remaining is: Will the people have to learn it the hard way or will they be smart?
Every main home I've got on Linux or OS X has a/Work directory with all the projects I've ever done in it. Theres also a/old-stuff for projects that I don't work on any more. This is covered by a regular overturning backup (external HDD on my Mac, hotswap carriers + frame on my PC). I do backups every 3 to 5 weeks and whenever I move my Mac around (12" iBook laptop) incase I drop it and lose my data or something. I do Python, PHP, ActionScript and some other things and memorize where the good snippets are so I can check them out when I need that particular function again. Copy and Paste Coding is bad pratice and only will take you that far though. With PHP and JavaScript building libraries is as easy as 1-2-3. You don't have to do anything OOP yet. Just put your PHP functions into logical groups and seperate files (like all the DB stuff in one). This will get you started in OOP. Especially in PHP where there is no thing they call "Namespaces" and you function calls start to look like
function generate_table_assoc_list_view($tableName1, $tableName2, $targetViewForEdit, $pageSize, $pageNumber)
very fast if you can't bother not putting everything in one class. Truth is, no other PL is better at demonstrating the advantages in 'good practices' (OOP, DRY, etc) than good ol'e verbose and messy PHP. By introducing you to weedy code faster than you can think. When you are as far as to do solid OOP you'll notice that a lot of stuff has been done allready and move to using finished libs in the OOP community. You'll then start coding your stuff only after looking at 3rd party packages and when your absolutely shure that the stuff you need hasn't been done yet.
It might also be time for you now to check out Version Management. I suggest Subversion, since everybody is using it or switching to it. There's a good free book on it aswell.
You forgot Nirvana. And Starship Troopers.... RoboCop? Dark Star? Applseed, Akira GitS (if Animees are alowed in you list)? Immortel? And 5th Element is definitely better than Terminator 2 and Predator. 2001?
I've never understood the bickering about Matirx 2.
People keep telling me it doens't have a good plot. And it's just more of what was cool in Matrix 1.
No, Really? WHO CARES if it has no Plot! I don't even bother to follow the plot. And having more of what was cool in Matrix 1 is the whole point of making a sequel. And admit it, Matrix 2 excells at doing just that.
I personally very much enjoy Matrix 2 as an extended over-the-top MTV videoclip with cool Shadorun Cyberpunk poses and some neat effects and ideas put to life. The people making Matrix 2 had fun doing it and it shows in every part of the movie. No plot needed. Period.
On top of that it has some of the coolest scenes in recent filmmaking. I'll try to name them (no specific order): 1.) Morpheus Speach - Now THAT is a cool movie speech. I'd say one of the best ever. The closing plea of the good guy lawyer in "Snow falling on Chedars" is a simular good one that comes to mind, but the Morpheus speach rules. 2.) The love scene (intercut with rave) - The best love scene involving sex I've seen in an american movie. At last a hollywood love scene that doesn't suck. 3.) The Twins (and their few but quality wisecrack remarks) - "We are getting aggrevated." "Yes we are."; "Could we move along?"... absolutely hilarious. 4.) Parking Garage Fight - One of those scenes that show that this is more of a Shadowrun Videoclip than anything else. Short and only a prelude to the chase and highway scenes but perfectly coreographed. Every character in the scene has it's place including the Keymaker that hardly appears (he's only a plot device in a movie that doesn't want and need a plot) 5.) Highway - all of it; emphasis on Morpheus welcoming the Twins with a Katana and a SMG (what a shot, comes close to the classic Decker hanging from the scyscraper by two fingers)) 6.) "Now that's a cool trick" / "Das ist ja ein cooler trick."- I mention this because the german synchorised version of Trinitys line comes across so witty and faceless I nearly pee myself everytime I hear it. One of the rare cases where the dub is so much better than the original. I actually switch languages to german whenever the scene comes up. I'd have Kari Anne Moss redub that in the tone of the german version for a special edition if I could. It's that funny. 7.) Various other witty one/twoliners - "... you're way up in the mountains." "Really?"; "Yes. Me, me, me" "...And me too."; etc...... There are some more scenes that are quite good aswell (and I don't even mean the Smith-Brawl), but that is the bulk of what makes the movie really worthwhile to me.
Given, the sad and sorry attempts at philosophy in the movie really suck big time and for those who really want a plot I'd recommend not to watch this one. But if you're into cool scenes and action this movie totally rocks.
Zope is a good technology choice for this project. And SchoolTool is a very neat project indeed. I always thought the world lacked such a product.
But no matter what technology and what sort of software you're building - be it OSS or not - you need a plan how to do it and should stick to that plan as far as possible. That's the lesson he learned.
The Sharp PC 1402 (PC for 'Pocket Computer') is one from the famous Sharp Pocket computer series. The 1402 came with 4 KB of RAM and 32 KB of ROM. I have it's successor right here with 32 KB RAM. It's got Basic, a qwerty keyboard, a 24 symbol, 1-line dot-matrix LCD and a slew of buttons for scientific calculating. Way into the ninties I was fiddeling with these. I even programmed a full-range Shadowrun Character generator for the 1403. With Cash-Register Character Printout and all. (You could get a cash register type printer for it) You could also get a 2.5" DiskDrive for it. The 1402 and 1403 run approximately 200 hrs on a set of batteries - an off-grid uptime to date still unmatched by any other portable. Which is the prime reason I bought one. I'd actually use it as a PDA today if the display and the memory where a bit larger. IIRC the successor Sharp E-500s still is available and still used by engineers a lot. These babys totally rock.
I had a suicidal phase in my early twens. I tricked myself through it with the Steppenwolf trick (Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, good classic novel): "If killing myself is the only option left, I might aswell carry on and see what comes out of this bizar nightmare." That was a smart idea. My life hasn't improved (it was very good back then allready), but my perception of it has. Thruth is, suiciders are, in a way, pittyfull, self-focused 'sissies'. I'm glad I didn't do anything stupid back then.
That said, I've read alot from people who where clinically dead and came back and have stories to tell about other dead people they met. That's simple put and getting it right would take to long, but check out the books from Raymond Moody, George Ritchie and Robert Allan Monroe if your interested in the details. All these people basically tell the same things you can find in the tibetan and egyptian books of the dead. Some of it is very interesting indeed.
The most scary and insightfull piece detailing on suiciders after death I've found just the other day though, in a lecture from Rudolf Steiner (early last century philosopher and anthroposophist/theosoph). Curiously enough it sort of emphasises what I've found out myself about being suicidal:
(roughly translated from the german original) [...going into detail of afterlife and the initial difficulties in shedding ties to the physical world after death (aka 'purgatory')...] "Amoung the various emotions man carries throughout his life is an underlying joy of being alive, a joy of life in general, of having a physical body. Thus it is one of the most intense feelings of loss not having a physical body anymore. Now we see the misery and pain all those people feel that have come to death by suicide. While with dying naturally, the seperation of the three body [he's talking physical, etherical and astral body, anthoposophical 'techno-babble'] is a relatively easy one - even with a stroke seperation and death is prepared - sudden seperation of these in a heathly condition by a violent death - such as that of one commiting suicide - causes an imediate intense sence of loss, that causes terrible suffering. [...] The commiter of suicide starts for a scary search of the suddenly withdrawn physical body. It is a terrible fate. Nothing can be compared to it."
And then comes the really interesting part:
" Some may now say: 'One that wants to commit suicide doesn't long for life within the physical body - otherwise he wouln't have ended it'. That is an illusion. It is especially the suicidal that longs to much for the joys of physical life. But because circumstances he's finds himself in deny him those joys he longs for, that's why he chooses death. And that's why the misery of loss due to the lack of a physical body is exeptionally intense for those who commited suicide."
Makes a scary sort of sense, doesn't it?
Bottom line: No matter if you believe in Afterlife or not, don't kill yourself purposefully. It could be that an exeptionally painfull walk though purgatory is waiting for you. And once you find out if there is an afterlife or not by killing youself, it will be to late:-) .
Convergence has to be done right in order not to suck. Just because it's done bad most of the time doesn't mean that convergence sucks. It's the way it's implemented.
The big difference between Consoles and Computers nowadays is that the OS and core functions on one are on the hardware and are on volatile and modifiable storage on the other.
Build one size fits all device that doesn't suck and boots into the GUI in 3 seconds flat and you've got a sale on your hands. No matter how many features it's got.
If there is a strong notion amoungst the employees to all get down on the same language and do whatever needs to be done in that, even if it isn't that good at doing it, you may go ahead.
Scritping in Java must be anoying compared to Python. BeanShell might be a different issue but still. And one would have to argue wether BeanShell still fits a "go Java" rule. In order to do effective scripting in Java you have to be firm in it.
Parsing, Printing and Document Conversion could suck aswell. It's all about libraries, knowing them and the people knowing how to write and document OOP properly.
If everyone in the outfit is determined and willing and diciplined enough to join in and you get down to documentation standards and get together a nice set of libs for all company tasks at hand it may very well turn out well.
Otherwise just use the best tool for the job, regardles of what PL it is.
My gosh, that's what I call a blatant Rip of Apples Expose. But it's cool. A rip - but a cool one nonetheless. Goes to show a basic rule: A flat-out rip is allways better than a sad and sorry failure at rying to be 'innovative'. Yet that Novell lacks the balls to openly admit that it's inspired by OS X and Expose goes to show what losers they are.
At last, finally OSS has beaten Microsoft in their prime field of expertise. Copying stuff from Apple.:-)
He should have kept his feet calm instead of walking out into political territory with creationist thing. Nobody would have ever noticed his non-existant degree.
At the last Blender conference I had the opportunity to speak to two well respected large contributers to the open source world. Both had independently of one another met RMS at occasions. One being a symposium on open source with high representatives of the EU in Amsterdam. They each told some stories about their experiences in dealing with RMS and went into details only as far as it wouldn't be discusting (at one occasion talking about RMS we were having dinner).
The bottom line is: By second hand hearsay of what RMS is like and by firsthand judgement of hearning the stories I can only say that RMS would generally be classified as medium-type mentally ill. At least. His social skills are non-existant, his conversation capabilites are deeply flawed (yelling and throwing around chairs in the back room when a EU representative wouldn't let herself be interupted by him in a public discussion is just one example) and his table manners are over the top excess gross (here's where we - the listeners - where spared of too many details).
That been said, I'd like to quote Noam Chomsky in RMSes favour, like one of the people did who met him in person: "If your not outraged, your not paying attention."
RMS gave us the GPL (which I apprechiate) and Emacs (which I could do without) - but I really don't want to deal with him in RL after learning about the details of his general attitude. Everyone I know that met RMS agrees with me on that. It would be best for all if he'd take a timeout and have others fight for OSS.
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The vendors will support Vista hook, line and sinker. That way they can sell a new round of hardware. They sold us new keyboards that way when win95 came out - and they'd love to sell yet another round of hardware for the new bloated Windows. The upside to that is that x86 Linux with it's countless hacks and workarounds to get modern day functionality running will seem even less bloated than it does allready. Despite it being something that would have been a nightmare 10 years ago.
Hey, Guys! Get with the programm. Ruby on Rails is so last-season.
Django is where the musics at. And for good reasons too. It's more mature, easyer to use, faster in developement, less performance hungry, has a documentation that's up to date and has a grown up backend kit. It's only that they GPLd it last summer, that's why it hasn't gotten all the press yet.
And this is not to start a flamewar. Compare them both and you'll see what I mean.
The RoR and Django guys are good friends btw.
I'm kinda serious about it: How realistic is it for us to buy SCO?
... the usual thing. That would be neat, wouldn't it?. Giving Darl McBride the boot and gratiously handing out any evidence to prove his wrongdoing to former shareholders. Ahhh, I'm feeling great allready...
Imagine this farce finally coming to an end with no options left for SCO. There will be a shareholder lawsuit. Stock will plummet somewhere around then and SCO be dirt cheap. We should be able to get 51 percent together if SCO cost something like 20 cents per share or something. No?
How many SCO shares are there? How does this stock market thing work in detail in the US?
Imagine buying SCO and turning it into some neat community run open source portal or something. We could keep the cool logo and name and add some of the old dignity to it again. Do some fun stuff too: Hand out fancy offical titles to everybody with shares, print some cool T-Shirts with witty wisecrack onliners and Darl Jokes to fund backoffice and bandwidth
Is this a pointless pipe dream our could we (slashdotters and OSS community) pull this off? After all, the Blender community managed to round up 100 000 Euros in seven weeks - albeight under slightly different circumstances.
Cue educated opinions please.
I get the rave about the iPod. It is a cool device and the facts go for it. Lot's of other player's don't hold up and simply look like rushed to market. Even the sleek ones from Philips or Sony.
Yet I have a question to the ones using the iPod - especially those who've used another player before:
Is this a potential competitor? It's practically bloated with features most of which the iPod lacks. Controlls look a generation or two behind iPod and the video display is smaller but all the rest seems really cool. What do you say? Potential competitor to iPod (especially if one likes the features) or not?
Opinions and experiences please (que below). Thanks.
I first look at the website. If it looks like crap, I'm away.
This may sound silly - and it is funny, I admit - but there's a serious end to it.
If the people in charge don't have what it takes to build a website that doesn't look like someone did doo-doo on my screen, chances are their framework and documentation is a pile of half-backed bits and pieces. This is usually true on a larger scale. This rule doesn't apply to non-oss tools though.
When it get's into the details I look at language used, databases supported and the general liveness of the community and friendliness towards new users. Widespread usage is a criteria aswell when builing for now and future customers. Example: Because PHP is used everywhere, I'm willing to make a tradeoff against Python, even though I think Python is some much better as a PL. For most cases that is. In a way, dynamic languages are sort of frameworks themselves.
Sorry, Pal, but you're not up to date.
Rails is soooo last season. Get a life!
django is what's on.
It's actually not unlikely that she senses this with her hearing nerves. Though it wouldn't be soundwaves because these could be meashured aswell. This type of sensetivity is uncommon but not unheard of. She's had it scientifically tested and says she feels it like a pulse. The hearing nerves are now to be sensetive to certain e-magnetic frequencies and cause sensations remotely simular to hearing. ... well ... radiowaves.
Tinitus is a damage of the hearing nerves and has been proven to be inducable with magnetic fields.
However people who sense radiowaves are hardly displaying ESP rather than a heightend sensetivity for
Haven't we all thought this at a point? If you hear about FOSS and it's concept for the first time it's totally normal to ask "But then I have to give my software away that I build with these tools/for this OS?".
Grapsing all the details about GPL and Co. takes a little insight into the fine details of the rule. More often than not do people here on slashdot mix it up themselves.
Cut the guy's some slack. After all, they noticed it before the took any action. And it's good to see officials taking care. They should be thanked for looking into the matter imediately.
I see a lot of wannabees rant about this university being run by unscientify crackpots. And that the sun and radio and tv is more radiation blah blah ... :-) . Her life isn't that fun though. When her neighbor above leaves his 20" CRT on she can't sleep. She's got other trouble with that aswell and people often don't believe her and think she's crazy.
I've got news for you: Microwaves damage health. Period.
The debate is at which intensity do they start doing that.
I generally turn my Wifi of if I'm not using it and have stopped carrying my cellphone close to my body, since it's on all day. I turn it off at night. I also hold it away from my head when I make a call until the cell handshake is over and the remote connect is there. My Siemens M35 even has a beep to indicate when the connect is there. Smart people the Siemens engineers, aren't they?
Handshake you ask? That's the high-power meep-meep-meep you hear in nearby active FM radios just before you make or recieve a call. It's what establishes the conection to the cell network for communication. I even know a woman who can sense the cellphone handshake (she has e-magnetic field sensetivity) from meters away and has the habbit of anouncing cellphone calls seconds before a phone rings. Fun to watch with unsuspecting others near by
On it goes:
My father was a high profile radar electronics engineer - with Military (Nato, Cruise Missile), Airbus, Nasa/Grumman Aircraft (Lunar Module, Space Shuttle, etc) and some others. He forbid us to have a Microwave oven (they ALL leak Microwaves) and steared clear and went the other way whenever we got to close to a radar bubble when going hiking.
There are people who've had terminal brain tumors due to intense cellphone usage and I work with doctors (medical IT) who keep all equipment far away and well cased according to TCO.
Bottom line:
Don't think it's not unhealthy just because most people don't care. A little common sense and forsight is needed when handling technology. You don't get universal flawless wireless conectivity without a tradeoff. Anyone who believes that is a crackpot himself.
This article is totally pointless and backwards. The guy got it all wrong.
Who the hell said fast leveling is WoWs prime objective?
I've been registred for 8 months now and am at level 21 with my first character (a Dwarven Priest). Yeah, go ahead, just laugh. I'm laughing at you just now.
*The sound of ten thousand slashdotters spewing ten thousand cups of coffee across their monitors*
Whenever I log in I usually run around join parties here and there do some soloing. Sometime I get a powerleveling rage and do half a bar in one night. But most of the time I just move about and explore the world. And that's where the fun is - if you haven't notived.
It can be real fun btw moving through territory that's 'meant' for 15 levels higher. It takes some real skill to do that. Yeah, leveling is a neat extra but if you're only looking at your bar you might aswell be playing a browsergame. And they're for free.
I sometimes feel pitty for those constatly racing from quest to quest - most of them are probably unemployed and lack the ratrace in real life. I come to WoW to avoid the rat race.
Bottom line:
This article is bullshit. If your into powerleveling - which really is boring and pointless - quit the complaining. At stop saying WoW teaches the wrong stuff. It's a fantasy world, for crikeys sake. Do fantasy stuff or let it be. If there's one thing you'd like to learn from this than maybe it's that leveling isn't what it's all about.
My daughter get's what was good for me and gets spared what wasn't benefitial for me.
:-) ) - and her first basics in CLI/Bash and scripting with Python. I'll slowly introduce her to some nice powerfull GUI (KDE, in some screeching pink theme it will be I guess :-) ) + apps and show her that using them in the right manner requires training, precision and foresight. By that time she'll also have learned to search up information and help on her own on what interests her (read: how to use and recognize a good manual/book, what an index and a glossary is/what google is and does).
... and all the rest thats needed. She'll probably have the little bonus of a solid Aikido training. I got her to come along with her classmate - if she keeps up (keep your fingers crossed!) till she's grown up I'll feel sorry for any poor sob that get's pissy with her.
Meaning: When she's old enough (14-15) she'll get a programable computer (probably my old Sharp PC 1403) and I'll teach her some basic or teach her to use the manual the right way.
She (we) won't get a TV. She's not getting a mindless video console with unlimited access.
She'll get my GameBoy Advance when she's old enough (around about 12) but no games that are mindless and rely on randomness. Instead she'll get some good intelligent ones that rely and train on strategy, tactics and foresight (remember Qix?) and her access to them will be limited (2 hrs/week, no more than half an hour a day). She'll get that as a bonus on top of the fairy tales and stories me and my wife read to her. Not as a sorry excuse for me to have my peace.
She'll not get Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon 1,2,3,4 and 5 plus special editions.
When she's old enough (15-16) she'll get an Inet capable computer, her own password protected chatserver for her and her classmates and friends - we'll set it up together and she'll learn some basics about setting up a Jabber Server (so will I
She'll not get a mindless course in MS Office, and she will not be one of those poor sobs that mistake "Spreadsheet Tool" with "Excel" or "Wordprocessor" with "MS Word" or "Presentation Programm" with "PowerPoint". She'll also have learned by then that the point about computers is getting them to do stuff themselves (programming)- and not sitting in front of them doing mindless repetetive tasks (nice typewriter + video console + creative tool + film studio is a bonus, not the only thing; it's a computer darling, that's what's special about it - it automates simple mind tasks that normally only humans can do)
In other words: When my daughter is released into the world on her own she will have experienced love, parents who talk to and respect one another, a father that is authoritive but loving and 3 square meals a day. She'll know how to cook, bake, knit, build a shelf, hold a drill, sew (I'm teaching her that, not mom), what clothes go good together, what electicity is, what 230 Volts and 50Hz mean (that's in germany, folks) and the names of the flowers and birds that are around, how to behave at the dinner table, how to play guitar
But on top of all that she'll have her head in the right place when it comes to technology due to a father who's profession is in the field and helped her along the right way. And she'll be aware of the fact that she's priviliged (compared to 50 million indian untouchables for instance) and be gratefull for it.
Bottom line: Turn your brains on. You know the drill, your children don't. Love, true tlc, the basics plus some good cultural extras and then a desire to do it right when introducing your children into tech is all they can ever have whished for later on. Everything else will fall in place. And you are right in being rather more slow and moderate than the rest of the meek when introducing them to tech.
Just don't forget: It's not that OSS tool you're working on that is your favourite pet project anymore - it's your siblings. If it's not "dad needs to make money" stuff your doing at your home computer learn to turn your attention to them imediately whenever they need it - especially when sitting in front of your favourite box.
These are the 2 cents from a father (Software Developer) of an 8 year old girl
The business mechanisim of OSS is marxisim. It's a marxisims wet dream actually. Everybody takes what he needs, makes what he wants and all have the right amount of it.
It's software, people. It's sequences of bits. It's imaterial and the fact that you can duplicate it for no cost at all is what it's all about. What failed miserably in the real world (for obvious reasons) works extremely well in the virtual world. Marxisim.
Groups are organized not by money but by a mix of effective hierarchy, mutual interests, code of honor, hype & marketing (Ruby on Rails anyone? No way would it have come that far with the ususal crappy OSS website and without socially competent advocates) and some other soft skills. It's more like a tribal thing than a capitalistic one. It doesn't need money to work. The whole point about OSS is to make it work without money. It scares the living piss out of Microsoft and other entities that are big in the money game and have no foot in the OSS game, because it's not their league.
Remember the Mambo/Joomla! incident a few months ago? Miro thought it could pull some stunt by 'controlling' or 'regaining control' of what had become of Mambo through the community. The community walked away in something like 2 days flat. And people don't even care if there was some agenda behind it by Jamboworks. The new Joomla! thing serves the purposes of the community better while the Mambofoundation appears as nothing other than a sad and sorry scheme to benefit of others work without paying back.
Companies controlling OSS? Not if you're not willing to play the OSS game. SUN is a good positive example. For some fuzzy reason Java is considered 'sort of open source allready anyway' even by the most fanatic free-speech advocates. Why? Because they actually do their homework and really contribute. They're giving away their OS, generally nice like with the OSS community and share the ups (OpenOffice) and downs (declining interest by old school business) and thus have gained a solid reputation amoungst OSS people. By now SUN would damage itself if it would take that back again. Like SCO did. SCO played hardball - arguably in a notably stupid manner - and got the reciept for that imediately.
While Western politicians and activists babble about all that, big business is just going to cut to the chase and hire from whichever countries have actually managed to come up with educational systems that churn out needed skills, rather than waiting for this reform business to work itself out.
Wrong. Big business does whatever gives big business the biggest buck fast (within the next quarter). Meanwhile the capital is eating itself. More and more people are not running for the money but the self-inflating money. Money is the only good that doesn't lose but gains value when put on a shelf. A bank account that is.
This kind of business makes sence in the short term for an individual business - given money won't get worthless someday. In every other way this course of action is descructive and shortsighted, benefits no one and damages all. And that's no 'debate morass' - it's a simple fact and can be found by taking a closer look anywhere in the world.
The Bottom Line is:
The 'free market' as we know it today has flaws. Not huge ones, but flaws that give to much power into the hands of to few without anybody really noticing it. This will have to change, globally. Because if it doesn't global economy is going the way of the dodo. I actually expect something like a global currency within the next 30 years. The only question remaining is: Will the people have to learn it the hard way or will they be smart?
This is covered by a regular overturning backup (external HDD on my Mac, hotswap carriers + frame on my PC). I do backups every 3 to 5 weeks and whenever I move my Mac around (12" iBook laptop) incase I drop it and lose my data or something.
I do Python, PHP, ActionScript and some other things and memorize where the good snippets are so I can check them out when I need that particular function again.
Copy and Paste Coding is bad pratice and only will take you that far though. With PHP and JavaScript building libraries is as easy as 1-2-3. You don't have to do anything OOP yet. Just put your PHP functions into logical groups and seperate files (like all the DB stuff in one). This will get you started in OOP. Especially in PHP where there is no thing they call "Namespaces" and you function calls start to look like very fast if you can't bother not putting everything in one class. Truth is, no other PL is better at demonstrating the advantages in 'good practices' (OOP, DRY, etc) than good ol'e verbose and messy PHP. By introducing you to weedy code faster than you can think.
When you are as far as to do solid OOP you'll notice that a lot of stuff has been done allready and move to using finished libs in the OOP community. You'll then start coding your stuff only after looking at 3rd party packages and when your absolutely shure that the stuff you need hasn't been done yet.
It might also be time for you now to check out Version Management. I suggest Subversion, since everybody is using it or switching to it. There's a good free book on it aswell.
You forgot Nirvana. And Starship Troopers. ... RoboCop? Dark Star? Applseed, Akira GitS (if Animees are alowed in you list)? Immortel? And 5th Element is definitely better than Terminator 2 and Predator. 2001?
Dude, your list needs a serious redo.
I've never understood the bickering about Matirx 2.
... absolutely hilarious. ... There are some more scenes that are quite good aswell (and I don't even mean the Smith-Brawl), but that is the bulk of what makes the movie really worthwhile to me.
People keep telling me it doens't have a good plot. And it's just more of what was cool in Matrix 1.
No, Really? WHO CARES if it has no Plot! I don't even bother to follow the plot. And having more of what was cool in Matrix 1 is the whole point of making a sequel. And admit it, Matrix 2 excells at doing just that.
I personally very much enjoy Matrix 2 as an extended over-the-top MTV videoclip with cool Shadorun Cyberpunk poses and some neat effects and ideas put to life. The people making Matrix 2 had fun doing it and it shows in every part of the movie. No plot needed. Period.
On top of that it has some of the coolest scenes in recent filmmaking. I'll try to name them (no specific order):
1.) Morpheus Speach - Now THAT is a cool movie speech. I'd say one of the best ever. The closing plea of the good guy lawyer in "Snow falling on Chedars" is a simular good one that comes to mind, but the Morpheus speach rules.
2.) The love scene (intercut with rave) - The best love scene involving sex I've seen in an american movie. At last a hollywood love scene that doesn't suck.
3.) The Twins (and their few but quality wisecrack remarks) - "We are getting aggrevated." "Yes we are."; "Could we move along?"
4.) Parking Garage Fight - One of those scenes that show that this is more of a Shadowrun Videoclip than anything else. Short and only a prelude to the chase and highway scenes but perfectly coreographed. Every character in the scene has it's place including the Keymaker that hardly appears (he's only a plot device in a movie that doesn't want and need a plot)
5.) Highway - all of it; emphasis on Morpheus welcoming the Twins with a Katana and a SMG (what a shot, comes close to the classic Decker hanging from the scyscraper by two fingers))
6.) "Now that's a cool trick" / "Das ist ja ein cooler trick."- I mention this because the german synchorised version of Trinitys line comes across so witty and faceless I nearly pee myself everytime I hear it. One of the rare cases where the dub is so much better than the original. I actually switch languages to german whenever the scene comes up. I'd have Kari Anne Moss redub that in the tone of the german version for a special edition if I could. It's that funny.
7.) Various other witty one/twoliners - "... you're way up in the mountains." "Really?"; "Yes. Me, me, me" "...And me too."; etc...
Given, the sad and sorry attempts at philosophy in the movie really suck big time and for those who really want a plot I'd recommend not to watch this one. But if you're into cool scenes and action this movie totally rocks.
My two cents on Matrix 2.
Zope is a good technology choice for this project. And SchoolTool is a very neat project indeed. I always thought the world lacked such a product.
But no matter what technology and what sort of software you're building - be it OSS or not - you need a plan how to do it and should stick to that plan as far as possible. That's the lesson he learned.
The Sharp PC 1402 (PC for 'Pocket Computer') is one from the famous Sharp Pocket computer series. The 1402 came with 4 KB of RAM and 32 KB of ROM. I have it's successor right here with 32 KB RAM.
It's got Basic, a qwerty keyboard, a 24 symbol, 1-line dot-matrix LCD and a slew of buttons for scientific calculating. Way into the ninties I was fiddeling with these. I even programmed a full-range Shadowrun Character generator for the 1403. With Cash-Register Character Printout and all. (You could get a cash register type printer for it)
You could also get a 2.5" DiskDrive for it.
The 1402 and 1403 run approximately 200 hrs on a set of batteries - an off-grid uptime to date still unmatched by any other portable. Which is the prime reason I bought one.
I'd actually use it as a PDA today if the display and the memory where a bit larger.
IIRC the successor Sharp E-500s still is available and still used by engineers a lot. These babys totally rock.
2. When was the last time Windows stopped working?
Must have been 3 or 4 years ago when I stopped using it. OS X crashed once on me (some obscure OSS game I think it was) and Linux like once or twice.
I had a suicidal phase in my early twens. I tricked myself through it with the Steppenwolf trick (Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, good classic novel): "If killing myself is the only option left, I might aswell carry on and see what comes out of this bizar nightmare."
:-) .
That was a smart idea. My life hasn't improved (it was very good back then allready), but my perception of it has. Thruth is, suiciders are, in a way, pittyfull, self-focused 'sissies'. I'm glad I didn't do anything stupid back then.
That said, I've read alot from people who where clinically dead and came back and have stories to tell about other dead people they met. That's simple put and getting it right would take to long, but check out the books from Raymond Moody, George Ritchie and Robert Allan Monroe if your interested in the details. All these people basically tell the same things you can find in the tibetan and egyptian books of the dead. Some of it is very interesting indeed.
The most scary and insightfull piece detailing on suiciders after death I've found just the other day though, in a lecture from Rudolf Steiner (early last century philosopher and anthroposophist/theosoph). Curiously enough it sort of emphasises what I've found out myself about being suicidal:
(roughly translated from the german original)
[...going into detail of afterlife and the initial difficulties in shedding ties to the physical world after death (aka 'purgatory')...] "Amoung the various emotions man carries throughout his life is an underlying joy of being alive, a joy of life in general, of having a physical body. Thus it is one of the most intense feelings of loss not having a physical body anymore. Now we see the misery and pain all those people feel that have come to death by suicide. While with dying naturally, the seperation of the three body [he's talking physical, etherical and astral body, anthoposophical 'techno-babble'] is a relatively easy one - even with a stroke seperation and death is prepared - sudden seperation of these in a heathly condition by a violent death - such as that of one commiting suicide - causes an imediate intense sence of loss, that causes terrible suffering. [...] The commiter of suicide starts for a scary search of the suddenly withdrawn physical body. It is a terrible fate. Nothing can be compared to it."
And then comes the really interesting part:
" Some may now say: 'One that wants to commit suicide doesn't long for life within the physical body - otherwise he wouln't have ended it'. That is an illusion. It is especially the suicidal that longs to much for the joys of physical life. But because circumstances he's finds himself in deny him those joys he longs for, that's why he chooses death. And that's why the misery of loss due to the lack of a physical body is exeptionally intense for those who commited suicide."
Makes a scary sort of sense, doesn't it?
Bottom line: No matter if you believe in Afterlife or not, don't kill yourself purposefully. It could be that an exeptionally painfull walk though purgatory is waiting for you. And once you find out if there is an afterlife or not by killing youself, it will be to late
Convergence has to be done right in order not to suck. Just because it's done bad most of the time doesn't mean that convergence sucks. It's the way it's implemented.
The big difference between Consoles and Computers nowadays is that the OS and core functions on one are on the hardware and are on volatile and modifiable storage on the other.
Build one size fits all device that doesn't suck and boots into the GUI in 3 seconds flat and you've got a sale on your hands. No matter how many features it's got.
If there is a strong notion amoungst the employees to all get down on the same language and do whatever needs to be done in that, even if it isn't that good at doing it, you may go ahead.
Scritping in Java must be anoying compared to Python. BeanShell might be a different issue but still. And one would have to argue wether BeanShell still fits a "go Java" rule. In order to do effective scripting in Java you have to be firm in it.
Parsing, Printing and Document Conversion could suck aswell. It's all about libraries, knowing them and the people knowing how to write and document OOP properly.
If everyone in the outfit is determined and willing and diciplined enough to join in and you get down to documentation standards and get together a nice set of libs for all company tasks at hand it may very well turn out well.
Otherwise just use the best tool for the job, regardles of what PL it is.
My gosh, that's what I call a blatant Rip of Apples Expose. But it's cool. A rip - but a cool one nonetheless.
:-)
Goes to show a basic rule: A flat-out rip is allways better than a sad and sorry failure at rying to be 'innovative'. Yet that Novell lacks the balls to openly admit that it's inspired by OS X and Expose goes to show what losers they are.
At last, finally OSS has beaten Microsoft in their prime field of expertise. Copying stuff from Apple.
He should have kept his feet calm instead of walking out into political territory with creationist thing.
Nobody would have ever noticed his non-existant degree.
At the last Blender conference I had the opportunity to speak to two well respected large contributers to the open source world. Both had independently of one another met RMS at occasions. One being a symposium on open source with high representatives of the EU in Amsterdam.
They each told some stories about their experiences in dealing with RMS and went into details only as far as it wouldn't be discusting (at one occasion talking about RMS we were having dinner).
The bottom line is:
By second hand hearsay of what RMS is like and by firsthand judgement of hearning the stories I can only say that RMS would generally be classified as medium-type mentally ill. At least. His social skills are non-existant, his conversation capabilites are deeply flawed (yelling and throwing around chairs in the back room when a EU representative wouldn't let herself be interupted by him in a public discussion is just one example) and his table manners are over the top excess gross (here's where we - the listeners - where spared of too many details).
That been said, I'd like to quote Noam Chomsky in RMSes favour, like one of the people did who met him in person: "If your not outraged, your not paying attention."
RMS gave us the GPL (which I apprechiate) and Emacs (which I could do without) - but I really don't want to deal with him in RL after learning about the details of his general attitude. Everyone I know that met RMS agrees with me on that.
It would be best for all if he'd take a timeout and have others fight for OSS.