Have to agree. The attribution of recipe style to women's "funny way of looking at the world" is the stupidest thing I've read on Slashdot in a long time, and that's saying something. Jeeezus... if you ever want to talk about learned helplessness, how about the stereotypical engineer in a kitchen!
So this guy claims it was him all along; that it was a hoax. Why should we believe him? There is no more evidence to support his claim than the claim that it was really BigFoot out there. Maybe it was somebody *else* in a suit. This claim is meaningless, just like the guy that claimed to be responsible for the classis nessie shot. No proof, not supporting evidence; just a claim.
I have to ask the same question. Why are people so freaked about Fedora? I downloaded it, installed in in place of my trusty RH8, and it's great. Looks like RedHat 10 to me. Up2date's caused zero problems for me, and everything else is slick as a whistle, too. The only difference is that I no longer worry about whether my RHN account is still active. This is a great distro. Why are we all having fits about having to find another one?
For writing short papers, and even long ones, a micro-WP like WordPad or Apple's TextEdit is just right for the job. The only other thing a student could possibly justify wanting is Powerpoint-like software for making classroom presentations. (Actually, come to think of it, you should be prepared for that request near the end of the semester.)
Yes. I've pretty much completely moved all of my writing to either TextEdit (which is probably the nicest little RTF editor I've seen) for anything small that doesn't need headers/footers, and a DTP program (I use Frame) for anything more complex. "Word Processors" as such are a complete waste of time.
As for Powerpoint, I just set up an 8x6 template in Frame (with a background image) and then generate PDFs... which look better than Powerpoint slides anyway (typographically) and work really well for presentations.
But, one of the very best things about MOO was MOOcode, a very sweet little OOP language (straight outa PARC) that was elegant, easy to learn, and tightly coupled with the context... from this interview, and the hype pages for Game Neverending, I don't get the sense that they've picked this aspect up at all; it's one thing to say that players can build stuff, but quite another to make it truly fun and engaging. Can anyone fill us in on what object-building is actually based on in GNE?
This is exactly what I do. Works great, since the X session's GUI ends up on my laptop, but the audio goes to the soundcard in the server. No muss, no fuss. Just don't bother with the visualization plugins.
First, be prepared to be *very* unproductive at first: your first weeks, if you are actually involved in the baby, will wipe you out totally. Eventually you will get focus, time, and productivity back.
After a couple of months, my wife and I moved to an alternating-days arrangement. On work days, I can work as hard or as long as I need, but on baby days, I'm entirely on his schedule. Keeping these separate is actually a great arrangement, because you can totally "be there" in both realms. It boils down to a 3-day workweek, so not everybody can do it, but if you can, I recommend it.
Last, pump the downtempo groove stuff. My little guy has spent tons of time dozing on my shoulder in front of cool XMMS visuals (GOOM) to SomaFM's Groove Salad stream. It either puts them to sleep or at least mellows them out. Subwoofers make happy babies!
Is there life after Walmart?
on
Low Tech Toys?
·
· Score: 1
Walmart, Toys R Us, Kay Bee, Discovery and Disney stores are just a few to 'just say no' or 'it's too low tech' How can something so simple fade into obscurity?
Because people equate Walmart, etc. with reality. Of this list, I'm a bit surprised that Discovery didn't have them, but the others... what do you expect? Good heavens, kaleidoscopes are not hard things to find, but maybe Walmart isn't the best place to look. Or are there any other stores left in your town?
Wow. Well, you make some pretty good arguments here; when you add all that up, it does sound pretty bad. But it doesn't get away from the fact that OSX works damn well in practice, and, in the 10 months that I've been working with it daily, I can't say that any of the issues you bring up have caused me any problem at all. In fact, it's head-and-shoulders the most usable OS I've ever worked with.
Three possible reasons for that:
1) I'm the designers' ideal user - I think Mac when I'm holding the mouse, and I think Unix when I'm in the terminal, and I don't tend to mix up my thinking (for example, I make symlinks when I want symlinks, and aliases when I want aliases). Maybe this isn't typical behaviour...
2) Or, the designers did a really good job of usability testing, which may explain why the elegant architectures you talk about in the early drafts got changed in the later releases?
3) Or, my use of OSX is light enough that I don't encounter the conflicts very much. I work mostly in Python/Zope/XML, and the iApps; I'm not writing applications or compiling much of anything. But, where would that put me on the standard distribution of OSX users? Certainly not out on the fringes.
I can't help but read your critique as primarily a theoretical one. But, I'll grant you that if the theoretical flaws are as you say, the hacks that are holding it together won't last for long. Time will tell, especially as we watch Apple release versions.
...but from a design point of view, OSX is an anathema. This article just makes it clearer: OSX is, not a port of MacOS or an enhancement of Unix, but a bloody (and fatal?) collision between the two, where both lost what clarity and integrity they had by attrition to the other.
What? Have you actually *used* it? How about this explanation instead: they've managed to create one unified operating system that keeps some very diverse users happy. If you're an end-user technophobe, what you see is a very nice, clean, end-user system, far nicer than Windows, and without the 10 years of cruft that OS9 had accumulated. On the other hand, if you understand computing, you have a complete Unix-ish system, again, without a lot of the cruft that other Unix systems have accumulated. The Apple engineers deserve major kudos for keeping the "collision" under control as well as they did... they of course have backward compatibility to deal with, too.
Yes, the file copy stuff is a little ridiculous, but geez, the complaints on that level are pretty few, considering how much elegant functionality there is in there otherwise.
Re:Not now, guys!? Please consider NOT switching.
on
Flirting With Mac OS X
·
· Score: 1
And from the other viewport...
Hello moderators! This post and its parent are the most intelligent things I've read on/. in months... these ought to be 5s.
Especially the old Apples and HPs... I know of lots of old Apple Laserwriter IIs that have been in constant office use for, well, what is it, 10 years now. Lots of metal parts -- they weigh a ton, too. If you keep them clean, they just go forever. The only trouble with these old tanks is that they're slow... newer laser printers may be faster (way more onboard memory, ethernet) but I wonder about the quality of the construction, plastic parts, etc.
I think Wittgenstein's notion of 'language games' suggests that this is pretty much all there is to it anyway. But we're so insecure about labelling anything that isn't human 'language' or 'learned' or 'intelligence'. So research like this looks like a big deal, instead of just the regular everyday way the world works.
Especially since all this bacteria on your workstation is probably your own -- as in, continuous with the bacteria that you already carry around with you. So big deal.
Now, that might point to an interesting distinction between "personal" computers and shared workstations, although I'll bet that personal computers are way dirtier, just by virtue of the fact that it's personal. On the other hand, those machines in university labs are probably pretty scungy.
> In your position, I'd prefer to get away from Frame's proprietary format once
> and for all. Yes, I know, I just said that foolproof filters don't exist. But if
> you're willing to invest the effort (a lot of effort, I'm afraid) you can use advanced
> tools to do a one-time conversion.
>
> The leading tool for this is Webworks Publisher [webworks.com]. A limited version,
> which might be adequate for this task, is provided with FrameMaker 6.0. Pick
> a convenient XML schema...
This isn't a bad idea, but it ignores an obvious route: get a copy of FrameMaker+SGML, do your document conversion to SGML inside FrameMaker, then export everything out to SGML (which, from there, is a trivial conversion to XML, if you want to end up there). Frame's SGML tools, and especially its automatic-structuring tools, are really quite decent.
Jeez, it's not like you can just turn it on and off... doesn't anyone else find that their productivity/alertness/smartness starts to fade gradually when you reach the end of a long day? What good is staying up for 24 hours if you spend the last half of that making stupid mistakes?
The point of keeping yourself well-slept is to be at peak form when you're awake.
Invest in a good mattress and a duvet -- maybe sleep will start looking like a more appealling activity! And you'll be better for it the next day.
> The Third World's poverty is not because of
> capitalism but despite it.
How can you just throw a statement out there like that completely unexamined? Just have a look at all the consumer goods that wallpaper your life and ask yourself where they're made. Next, ask yourself why they're not made here at home. It is entirely in the interests of a consumer society to have/maintain another region that is decidedly in a different economic boat.
Slashdot Mirror
Have to agree. The attribution of recipe style to women's "funny way of looking at the world" is the stupidest thing I've read on Slashdot in a long time, and that's saying something. Jeeezus... if you ever want to talk about learned helplessness, how about the stereotypical engineer in a kitchen!
So this guy claims it was him all along; that it was a hoax. Why should we believe him? There is no more evidence to support his claim than the claim that it was really BigFoot out there. Maybe it was somebody *else* in a suit. This claim is meaningless, just like the guy that claimed to be responsible for the classis nessie shot. No proof, not supporting evidence; just a claim.
The thing I miss most about gopher is that you got to say that you were the "gophermaster" -- that's gotta be 5x cooler than "webmaster" any day.
Why does it seem that Fedora is getting dismissed out of hand here? I installed it' it looks great. Why are you not taking it more seriously?
I have to ask the same question. Why are people so freaked about Fedora? I downloaded it, installed in in place of my trusty RH8, and it's great. Looks like RedHat 10 to me. Up2date's caused zero problems for me, and everything else is slick as a whistle, too. The only difference is that I no longer worry about whether my RHN account is still active. This is a great distro. Why are we all having fits about having to find another one?
For writing short papers, and even long ones, a micro-WP like WordPad or Apple's TextEdit is just right for the job. The only other thing a student could possibly justify wanting is Powerpoint-like software for making classroom presentations. (Actually, come to think of it, you should be prepared for that request near the end of the semester.)
Yes. I've pretty much completely moved all of my writing to either TextEdit (which is probably the nicest little RTF editor I've seen) for anything small that doesn't need headers/footers, and a DTP program (I use Frame) for anything more complex. "Word Processors" as such are a complete waste of time.
As for Powerpoint, I just set up an 8x6 template in Frame (with a background image) and then generate PDFs... which look better than Powerpoint slides anyway (typographically) and work really well for presentations.
You don't need an office suite.
The cat meowing is what makes it collectible, dude.
But, one of the very best things about MOO was MOOcode, a very sweet little OOP language (straight outa PARC) that was elegant, easy to learn, and tightly coupled with the context... from this interview, and the hype pages for Game Neverending, I don't get the sense that they've picked this aspect up at all; it's one thing to say that players can build stuff, but quite another to make it truly fun and engaging. Can anyone fill us in on what object-building is actually based on in GNE?
forward xmms to your laptop's X
This is exactly what I do. Works great, since the X session's GUI ends up on my laptop, but the audio goes to the soundcard in the server. No muss, no fuss. Just don't bother with the visualization plugins.
First, be prepared to be *very* unproductive at first: your first weeks, if you are actually involved in the baby, will wipe you out totally. Eventually you will get focus, time, and productivity back.
After a couple of months, my wife and I moved to an alternating-days arrangement. On work days, I can work as hard or as long as I need, but on baby days, I'm entirely on his schedule. Keeping these separate is actually a great arrangement, because you can totally "be there" in both realms. It boils down to a 3-day workweek, so not everybody can do it, but if you can, I recommend it.
Last, pump the downtempo groove stuff. My little guy has spent tons of time dozing on my shoulder in front of cool XMMS visuals (GOOM) to SomaFM's Groove Salad stream. It either puts them to sleep or at least mellows them out. Subwoofers make happy babies!
Walmart, Toys R Us, Kay Bee, Discovery and Disney stores are just a few to 'just say no' or 'it's too low tech' How can something so simple fade into obscurity?
Because people equate Walmart, etc. with reality. Of this list, I'm a bit surprised that Discovery didn't have them, but the others... what do you expect? Good heavens, kaleidoscopes are not hard things to find, but maybe Walmart isn't the best place to look. Or are there any other stores left in your town?
Come on, mod this up -- of all the millions of dumb obvious jokes on this topic, this has to be THE ONE.
Wow. Well, you make some pretty good arguments here; when you add all that up, it does sound pretty bad. But it doesn't get away from the fact that OSX works damn well in practice, and, in the 10 months that I've been working with it daily, I can't say that any of the issues you bring up have caused me any problem at all. In fact, it's head-and-shoulders the most usable OS I've ever worked with.
Three possible reasons for that:
1) I'm the designers' ideal user - I think Mac when I'm holding the mouse, and I think Unix when I'm in the terminal, and I don't tend to mix up my thinking (for example, I make symlinks when I want symlinks, and aliases when I want aliases). Maybe this isn't typical behaviour...
2) Or, the designers did a really good job of usability testing, which may explain why the elegant architectures you talk about in the early drafts got changed in the later releases?
3) Or, my use of OSX is light enough that I don't encounter the conflicts very much. I work mostly in Python/Zope/XML, and the iApps; I'm not writing applications or compiling much of anything. But, where would that put me on the standard distribution of OSX users? Certainly not out on the fringes.
I can't help but read your critique as primarily a theoretical one. But, I'll grant you that if the theoretical flaws are as you say, the hacks that are holding it together won't last for long. Time will tell, especially as we watch Apple release versions.
...but from a design point of view, OSX is an anathema. This article just makes it clearer: OSX is, not a port of MacOS or an enhancement of Unix, but a bloody (and fatal?) collision between the two, where both lost what clarity and integrity they had by attrition to the other.
What? Have you actually *used* it? How about this explanation instead: they've managed to create one unified operating system that keeps some very diverse users happy. If you're an end-user technophobe, what you see is a very nice, clean, end-user system, far nicer than Windows, and without the 10 years of cruft that OS9 had accumulated. On the other hand, if you understand computing, you have a complete Unix-ish system, again, without a lot of the cruft that other Unix systems have accumulated. The Apple engineers deserve major kudos for keeping the "collision" under control as well as they did... they of course have backward compatibility to deal with, too.
Yes, the file copy stuff is a little ridiculous, but geez, the complaints on that level are pretty few, considering how much elegant functionality there is in there otherwise.
And from the other viewport...
/. in months... these ought to be 5s.
Hello moderators! This post and its parent are the most intelligent things I've read on
"What movies would you want to see...
Gee, seemed just last week that everybody here hated the MPAA, and weren't going to any more movies.
Either Slashdot's audience is significantly fragmented, or there's an awful lot of fickleness going on around here...
1. Profit
2. Buy legislation
3. Get bad press with a minority
4. Characterize minority as criminals
5. Higher profits
No, their business plan is about control. All of these other things are just tactic in order to gain and retain control.
Especially the old Apples and HPs... I know of lots of old Apple Laserwriter IIs that have been in constant office use for, well, what is it, 10 years now. Lots of metal parts -- they weigh a ton, too. If you keep them clean, they just go forever. The only trouble with these old tanks is that they're slow... newer laser printers may be faster (way more onboard memory, ethernet) but I wonder about the quality of the construction, plastic parts, etc.
It's worked before...
Yes, I believe the great hacker Josef Stalin invented this technique.
I think Wittgenstein's notion of 'language games' suggests that this is pretty much all there is to it anyway. But we're so insecure about labelling anything that isn't human 'language' or 'learned' or 'intelligence'. So research like this looks like a big deal, instead of just the regular everyday way the world works.
Especially since all this bacteria on your workstation is probably your own -- as in, continuous with the bacteria that you already carry around with you. So big deal.
Now, that might point to an interesting distinction between "personal" computers and shared workstations, although I'll bet that personal computers are way dirtier, just by virtue of the fact that it's personal. On the other hand, those machines in university labs are probably pretty scungy.
When I saw this headline, I immediately assumed it was part of the apple.slashdot.org section...
> In your position, I'd prefer to get away from Frame's proprietary format once
> and for all. Yes, I know, I just said that foolproof filters don't exist. But if
> you're willing to invest the effort (a lot of effort, I'm afraid) you can use advanced
> tools to do a one-time conversion.
>
> The leading tool for this is Webworks Publisher [webworks.com]. A limited version,
> which might be adequate for this task, is provided with FrameMaker 6.0. Pick
> a convenient XML schema...
This isn't a bad idea, but it ignores an obvious route: get a copy of FrameMaker+SGML, do your document conversion to SGML inside FrameMaker, then export everything out to SGML (which, from there, is a trivial conversion to XML, if you want to end up there). Frame's SGML tools, and especially its automatic-structuring tools, are really quite decent.
Jeez, it's not like you can just turn it on and off... doesn't anyone else find that their productivity/alertness/smartness starts to fade gradually when you reach the end of a long day? What good is staying up for 24 hours if you spend the last half of that making stupid mistakes?
The point of keeping yourself well-slept is to be at peak form when you're awake.
Invest in a good mattress and a duvet -- maybe sleep will start looking like a more appealling activity! And you'll be better for it the next day.
> The Third World's poverty is not because of
> capitalism but despite it.
How can you just throw a statement out there like that completely unexamined? Just have a look at all the consumer goods that wallpaper your life and ask yourself where they're made. Next, ask yourself why they're not made here at home. It is entirely in the interests of a consumer society to have/maintain another region that is decidedly in a different economic boat.