I was always of the understanding that his creation of us in his image referred to us having free will. That feature that distinguishes us from, say, Gabriel and Lucifer. Presumably other aliens would have it to...
It depends on the direction of the change. Making laws tighter, yeah, sure, because they get written into treaties (copyright), or because politicians like power (terrism!). But we still lack such novelties as freedom of speech.
Actually, I think the only western country that allows distilling scotch whisky or, indeed, any distilled drink, without paying an expensive licence is New Zealand. People who come from colder climes can accidentally leave their brew in the snow if they want it a bit stronger, but if you want to do it properly, you'll be struggling to find a plausible explanation for it.
Is this just a feature of the current administration, or has it been heading this way for a while and it's unlikely to be changed next year? For instance, in the 1980s during the Hawke Government in Australia, the Prime Minister wasn't a particularly powerful member of the Cabinet. But the current Prime Minister seems to pretty much (want to) run the show on his own. And although the the Governor-General could technically refuse to sack a minister, that's only likely to happen if the Prime Minister doesn't have the confidence of Parliament and can't effectively govern anyway.
According to whom? If the Canadian (provincial) governments are unable to declare something to be a right worth protecting, then where do rights come from (in Canada)?
No. What I'm saying is that Microsoft should keep their toolkits binary compatible when they're roughly the same. Every one of those programs with menus could have menus that look the same --- Gtk+ 2 programs written and compiled in 2003 look the same as Gtk+ 2 programs written in 2008 even though there's been substantial revisions and changes to the appearance.
Word and Explorer and the Media Player and Messenger should all look basically the same, taking into account the different UI elements. The color schemes of the menu bars for the two versions of Visual Studio and for Visio and for Outlook should all be identical. When in 2006 Microsoft says "we were idiots for coming up with that design, lets fix it", then their fixes should apply to versions released before, to the extent they can. If something was wrong about it for Outlook, why not fix it for everything all at once?
But Microsoft doesn't work like that. The last version of Word that had the appearance of the surrounding GUI was Word 95. There's no reason for this, but it does look damned ugly.
That depends on if you own all the source code. If someone else owns it, then you can't charge any more than reasonable costs for the media and postage. If you own all the code, then obviously the GPL can't stop you from doing whatever you want, although it would be very strange of you to charge thousands of dollars for the source code and then let people give it away.
Okay, lets ignore the differences between the innovations. Once we've done that, we realise it's still stupid — on the one hand, Explorer, Windows Media Player and Windows Live Messenger share the same innovation, but look different (the two Explorers are almost the same, so we'lll give them a pass); and on the other, Visio, Outlook the two versions of Visual Studio, Microsoft Expression Blend and Notepad all have the same basic idea --- a menu bar, optionally followed by a toolbar --- yet they are nothing alike in implementation! There's absolutely no reason for this. (And from an aesthetics position, none seem to blend in nicely with the Vista window decorations, unlike Explorer).
There's nothing wrong with innovation, but do it right at least...
Maybe it's just the images and the size they're enlarged too, but I really don't like the look of its upright font! Based only on what I can see, the "a" is too stylised with its straight top, and the difference between the thickest and thinest strokes is much too much, with both too (absolutely) extreme. Also, the widest strokes are at horizontal and the thinest at vertical (i.e. the pen is held flat), whereas most Latin fonts put the pen at an angle. This is what gives it the "stylised" appearance you notice, but I think it's too garish. Like earlier versions of Mac OS X's apparance, compared to the Mona Lisa.
But you're right, the italics look pretty good.
Computer Modern is impractical for (journal) articles. The thinest parts are too likely to be rendered illegible in a photocopy, and journal articles are likely to be photocopied. It is also quite a wide font, so that it will take up a lot of space in a format where space is usually at a premium. It worked okay in the Art of Computer Programming — I was surprised when I saw it, and realised that — but otherwise it falls flat.
There is a huge range of legible text fonts. The limits are more by tradition and custom — no-one would set a book in Courier or (nowadays) fraktur, and sans-serif fonts are used only rarely; this is not because they're illegible, but because these styles are not common in extensive text.
But even limiting ourselves to conventional serif fonts, there's still a massive range of fonts. Anyone who can't see the difference doesn't care. Not a problem for the reader, but it is a problem for the book's designer. (Personally, I hate so-called modern fonts. Fortunately, you mostly only ever see them in stuff produced by TeX.)
That's precisely the point behind METAFONT. It's meant so that you can specify the basic shape of the letters and a shitload of parameters, and you'll get a lot of italic letters ("n" or "i", but not "a" and "z"), weights, sizes etc. essentially for free. Obviously some things still need to be done manually; I doubt you could generate old style or lining figures from the same source.
The problem with METAFONT is that most people can't design something graphical without seeing it; and that there's a lot of work involved in correctly parameterising a font. But as evidence that it's possible, that's precisely how Computer Modern is designed, which comes with bold, italic and small caps fonts and distinct sizes from very small to title case. I personally don't like the look of Computer Modern — or any "modern" font — but Knuth's done it.
You noticed the pun. At the time you pressed "Submit" you intended the pun. Why deny it? If you think its tasteless, edit what came before. If you like it, admit it; we won't think any less of you (I mean seriously, he's a murderer according to a jury of his peers).
Saying "no pun intended" is fine, because you can't unsay something. Writing "no pun intended" on a computer is silly and makes the language meaningless. Meaningless language is bad because it defeats the purpose.
language is a tool, to facilitate written and oral communication.
Precisely, so it's awkward when people in one field usurp terms with confusing new meanings. Everyone knows a kilometre, kilograms, kilolitres, kilo- this, kilo- that. Why should kilobytes be any different?
Maybe a linguist can pitch in to explain why tebibyte sounds so awful?
It's your own personal opinion, but the repeated/b/ sound is probably what's causing you distress though. Repeated (or similar) syllables are frequently skipped in many languages at different times in a process called "haplology" (which could do with some haplology itself).
For instance in English, most people (I speak to) say words like "particularly", "library", "similarly", without the "ar" syllable (so "particu'ly, libr'y, simi'ly"), ro "probably" with only one b (so "prob'ly"). If you think "tebibyte" sounds bad, you might want to do the same thing to that and have "kibbyte, mebbyte, gibbyte, tebbyte".
In any case, it's important that kilo- and other prefixes have only one meaning. It should be the original meaning i.e. 1000. Usage will sort out any infelicities of pronunciation before long, as long as no-one's too caught up in our spelling system. After all, this is English. Spelling has practically nothing to do with pronunciation.
Please, anonymous coward, stand by your assertions and tell me where I used quotations incorrectly; I would rather be told why I'm wrong than insulted. Also, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" is perhaps a good guide to use when you're about to kill someone, but if you're merely telling someone why they're wrong and how to fix it, you're doing them a favor. Notice that most compilers don't abide perfectly by the standard and almost certainly have bugs, yet they're quite happy to tell me when I've made an error, and I'm quite happy to know about it.
Nevertheless, the number of times I've seen people use semicolons when they mean colons you would not believe! I don't know... it's as if they have an inferiority complex and they can't bring themselves to use a full-fledged colon.
They're not there for licensing reasons. If Solaris had good enough drivers I would run it on my laptop --- but again, for licensing reasons that's not going to happen either. Both the GPL and Solaris's licence have advantages and disadvantages, but this is the reason why all free software should use compatible licences.
You misuse the semicolon. A semicolon is not used in the same contexts as a colon. Instead, it is used to join two sentences (which would otherwise be complete), or to separate items in a list when the use of a comma would be ambiguous. Therefore:
"John was ready already; Anna made him wait."
"They offered lasagne; hamburgers, chips and salad; tacos, enchilladas and burritos; or fried frogs legs."
In no circumstance can you write "As a proud LDD touting, LWN gazing, MSc wielding geek; the Solaris kernel is a heck of a lot better coded..." without looking like a semiliterate try-hard. In general, the best advice for using a semicolon is "don't, unless you know you're sure".
As a self-confessed geek, you should know the importance of correct punctuation. It's not just helpful to compilers.
Yeah, I worked out how to pronounce the X's in "Xerox"---same as any word. It's the E that confuses me. Is it short (head), long (heed) or a short i like in "pretty"/"zero"?
It's funny, but I've never once seen a Biro-brand biro. (On the other hand, I don't even know whether "Xerox" how pronounced, and Kleenex is just a brand name. "Glad Wrap", though, is one of many brand names I use generically all the time, many without realising they're meant to be brand names.)
What? nonsense! The continent referred to is Europe. That's clear, given that British call people non-British/Irish Europeans "Continentals".
Anyway, the real problem is Europeans who reckon Australia is in Oceania. France has a better claim to being in Oceania than we do. Australia's a continent and in the larger grouping of the Asia-Pacific. And anyone who thinks the ocean directly south of Australia is the Indian Ocean.
In English, it's "American". Go ask a random selection of people from every English speaking country in the world a non-leading question about the meaning of the word "American" and the vast majority will be in agreement.
The situation is different in different languages --- but "America" and "American" are best treated as "false friends" in those languages.
I wasn't an expert when I started using Slackware. I guess I was when I stopped, though. (I switched to Debian a few years ago because I wanted to run it on a PPC. I'm now back to x86 chips, but I'm too lazy do everything, and Debian's easy enough to use now, unlike when I started with Slackware.)
Every GTK app supports configurable keyboard shortcuts. I think the method to use them is disabled by default in Gnome, but there's a way to enable it, or just use another GTK environment. Personally I find KDE completely unusable.
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I was always of the understanding that his creation of us in his image referred to us having free will. That feature that distinguishes us from, say, Gabriel and Lucifer. Presumably other aliens would have it to...
It depends on the direction of the change. Making laws tighter, yeah, sure, because they get written into treaties (copyright), or because politicians like power (terrism!). But we still lack such novelties as freedom of speech.
How nifty. I hope it passes, although it will have no bearing on me, at least in the short term, as I live in Australia.
Actually, I think the only western country that allows distilling scotch whisky or, indeed, any distilled drink, without paying an expensive licence is New Zealand. People who come from colder climes can accidentally leave their brew in the snow if they want it a bit stronger, but if you want to do it properly, you'll be struggling to find a plausible explanation for it.
Is this just a feature of the current administration, or has it been heading this way for a while and it's unlikely to be changed next year? For instance, in the 1980s during the Hawke Government in Australia, the Prime Minister wasn't a particularly powerful member of the Cabinet. But the current Prime Minister seems to pretty much (want to) run the show on his own. And although the the Governor-General could technically refuse to sack a minister, that's only likely to happen if the Prime Minister doesn't have the confidence of Parliament and can't effectively govern anyway.
According to whom? If the Canadian (provincial) governments are unable to declare something to be a right worth protecting, then where do rights come from (in Canada)?
No. What I'm saying is that Microsoft should keep their toolkits binary compatible when they're roughly the same. Every one of those programs with menus could have menus that look the same --- Gtk+ 2 programs written and compiled in 2003 look the same as Gtk+ 2 programs written in 2008 even though there's been substantial revisions and changes to the appearance.
Word and Explorer and the Media Player and Messenger should all look basically the same, taking into account the different UI elements. The color schemes of the menu bars for the two versions of Visual Studio and for Visio and for Outlook should all be identical. When in 2006 Microsoft says "we were idiots for coming up with that design, lets fix it", then their fixes should apply to versions released before, to the extent they can. If something was wrong about it for Outlook, why not fix it for everything all at once?
But Microsoft doesn't work like that. The last version of Word that had the appearance of the surrounding GUI was Word 95. There's no reason for this, but it does look damned ugly.
That depends on if you own all the source code. If someone else owns it, then you can't charge any more than reasonable costs for the media and postage. If you own all the code, then obviously the GPL can't stop you from doing whatever you want, although it would be very strange of you to charge thousands of dollars for the source code and then let people give it away.
Okay, lets ignore the differences between the innovations. Once we've done that, we realise it's still stupid — on the one hand, Explorer, Windows Media Player and Windows Live Messenger share the same innovation, but look different (the two Explorers are almost the same, so we'lll give them a pass); and on the other, Visio, Outlook the two versions of Visual Studio, Microsoft Expression Blend and Notepad all have the same basic idea --- a menu bar, optionally followed by a toolbar --- yet they are nothing alike in implementation! There's absolutely no reason for this. (And from an aesthetics position, none seem to blend in nicely with the Vista window decorations, unlike Explorer).
There's nothing wrong with innovation, but do it right at least...
Maybe it's just the images and the size they're enlarged too, but I really don't like the look of its upright font! Based only on what I can see, the "a" is too stylised with its straight top, and the difference between the thickest and thinest strokes is much too much, with both too (absolutely) extreme. Also, the widest strokes are at horizontal and the thinest at vertical (i.e. the pen is held flat), whereas most Latin fonts put the pen at an angle. This is what gives it the "stylised" appearance you notice, but I think it's too garish. Like earlier versions of Mac OS X's apparance, compared to the Mona Lisa.
But you're right, the italics look pretty good.
Computer Modern is impractical for (journal) articles. The thinest parts are too likely to be rendered illegible in a photocopy, and journal articles are likely to be photocopied. It is also quite a wide font, so that it will take up a lot of space in a format where space is usually at a premium. It worked okay in the Art of Computer Programming — I was surprised when I saw it, and realised that — but otherwise it falls flat.
There is a huge range of legible text fonts. The limits are more by tradition and custom — no-one would set a book in Courier or (nowadays) fraktur, and sans-serif fonts are used only rarely; this is not because they're illegible, but because these styles are not common in extensive text.
But even limiting ourselves to conventional serif fonts, there's still a massive range of fonts. Anyone who can't see the difference doesn't care. Not a problem for the reader, but it is a problem for the book's designer. (Personally, I hate so-called modern fonts. Fortunately, you mostly only ever see them in stuff produced by TeX.)
That's precisely the point behind METAFONT. It's meant so that you can specify the basic shape of the letters and a shitload of parameters, and you'll get a lot of italic letters ("n" or "i", but not "a" and "z"), weights, sizes etc. essentially for free. Obviously some things still need to be done manually; I doubt you could generate old style or lining figures from the same source.
The problem with METAFONT is that most people can't design something graphical without seeing it; and that there's a lot of work involved in correctly parameterising a font. But as evidence that it's possible, that's precisely how Computer Modern is designed, which comes with bold, italic and small caps fonts and distinct sizes from very small to title case. I personally don't like the look of Computer Modern — or any "modern" font — but Knuth's done it.
(no pun intended)
You noticed the pun. At the time you pressed "Submit" you intended the pun. Why deny it? If you think its tasteless, edit what came before. If you like it, admit it; we won't think any less of you (I mean seriously, he's a murderer according to a jury of his peers).
Saying "no pun intended" is fine, because you can't unsay something. Writing "no pun intended" on a computer is silly and makes the language meaningless. Meaningless language is bad because it defeats the purpose.
language is a tool, to facilitate written and oral communication.
/b/ sound is probably what's causing you distress though. Repeated (or similar) syllables are frequently skipped in many languages at different times in a process called "haplology" (which could do with some haplology itself).
Precisely, so it's awkward when people in one field usurp terms with confusing new meanings. Everyone knows a kilometre, kilograms, kilolitres, kilo- this, kilo- that. Why should kilobytes be any different?
Maybe a linguist can pitch in to explain why tebibyte sounds so awful?
It's your own personal opinion, but the repeated
For instance in English, most people (I speak to) say words like "particularly", "library", "similarly", without the "ar" syllable (so "particu'ly, libr'y, simi'ly"), ro "probably" with only one b (so "prob'ly"). If you think "tebibyte" sounds bad, you might want to do the same thing to that and have "kibbyte, mebbyte, gibbyte, tebbyte".
In any case, it's important that kilo- and other prefixes have only one meaning. It should be the original meaning i.e. 1000. Usage will sort out any infelicities of pronunciation before long, as long as no-one's too caught up in our spelling system. After all, this is English. Spelling has practically nothing to do with pronunciation.
Please, anonymous coward, stand by your assertions and tell me where I used quotations incorrectly; I would rather be told why I'm wrong than insulted. Also, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" is perhaps a good guide to use when you're about to kill someone, but if you're merely telling someone why they're wrong and how to fix it, you're doing them a favor. Notice that most compilers don't abide perfectly by the standard and almost certainly have bugs, yet they're quite happy to tell me when I've made an error, and I'm quite happy to know about it.
Nevertheless, the number of times I've seen people use semicolons when they mean colons you would not believe! I don't know ... it's as if they have an inferiority complex and they can't bring themselves to use a full-fledged colon.
They're not there for licensing reasons. If Solaris had good enough drivers I would run it on my laptop --- but again, for licensing reasons that's not going to happen either. Both the GPL and Solaris's licence have advantages and disadvantages, but this is the reason why all free software should use compatible licences.
You misuse the semicolon. A semicolon is not used in the same contexts as a colon. Instead, it is used to join two sentences (which would otherwise be complete), or to separate items in a list when the use of a comma would be ambiguous. Therefore:
"John was ready already; Anna made him wait."
"They offered lasagne; hamburgers, chips and salad; tacos, enchilladas and burritos; or fried frogs legs."
In no circumstance can you write "As a proud LDD touting, LWN gazing, MSc wielding geek; the Solaris kernel is a heck of a lot better coded..." without looking like a semiliterate try-hard. In general, the best advice for using a semicolon is "don't, unless you know you're sure".
As a self-confessed geek, you should know the importance of correct punctuation. It's not just helpful to compilers.
Yeah, I worked out how to pronounce the X's in "Xerox"---same as any word. It's the E that confuses me. Is it short (head), long (heed) or a short i like in "pretty"/"zero"?
It's funny, but I've never once seen a Biro-brand biro. (On the other hand, I don't even know whether "Xerox" how pronounced, and Kleenex is just a brand name. "Glad Wrap", though, is one of many brand names I use generically all the time, many without realising they're meant to be brand names.)
What? nonsense! The continent referred to is Europe. That's clear, given that British call people non-British/Irish Europeans "Continentals".
Anyway, the real problem is Europeans who reckon Australia is in Oceania. France has a better claim to being in Oceania than we do. Australia's a continent and in the larger grouping of the Asia-Pacific. And anyone who thinks the ocean directly south of Australia is the Indian Ocean.
In English, it's "American". Go ask a random selection of people from every English speaking country in the world a non-leading question about the meaning of the word "American" and the vast majority will be in agreement.
The situation is different in different languages --- but "America" and "American" are best treated as "false friends" in those languages.
I wasn't an expert when I started using Slackware. I guess I was when I stopped, though. (I switched to Debian a few years ago because I wanted to run it on a PPC. I'm now back to x86 chips, but I'm too lazy do everything, and Debian's easy enough to use now, unlike when I started with Slackware.)
Wow, someone else who doesn't like Firefox/Thunderbird/the direction Mozilla is heading. I thought I was the only one!
Every GTK app supports configurable keyboard shortcuts. I think the method to use them is disabled by default in Gnome, but there's a way to enable it, or just use another GTK environment. Personally I find KDE completely unusable.