True, it becomes easier to track people down and harrass them, but it this also applies to the harrassers themselves. I'm not sure it will make the problem worse. Maybe the opposite will happen, and social control will increase, just as we thought the electronic world was offering escape from it.
What's this hangup you Americans have about 'the bad government'?
That's not the point! America is a good neighbour to most countries, but i still don't want to buy a phone or a TV set with built-in capability for my neighbour to watch my steps, even if I do trust him.
And if the most popular brand of phone or TV comes equipped with such a device, as a government I should be concerned.
If this whole thing is about PIII-s having unique serial numbers, I agree with you: IPv6 and several other technical facilities have those, and they allow anyone, not just the CIA, to acquire a pretty good idea of what you're doing. This is no good reason to act against the PIII. But if a special agreement is involved, e.g. Intel keeping information about the whereabouts of their processors and sharing it with American intelligence agencies, or special firmware designed to help them in some way, then I think there's a good reason to have an import ban on these things.
If they are well informed, they might. The problem is, few people are, and if many of those who are don't care, their personal assessment may differ from what's best for the "common good".
I think the EU has become a little more apprehensive since it was discovered that the version of Lotus Notes used for official communication within the Swedish governm,ent was designed to be tapped by American intelligence agencies (not the domestic agencies, mind you).
If you think this is nonsense, so is the Microsoft lawsuit, and every other lwasuit carried in the name of a common or public cause. Or regulations of any kind. Why have the government check the conditions in restaurants, we can all pretty well decide for ourselves where we want to eat, right? All we need to do is inspect the kitchen ourselves, if we care enough about our health, right?
I'm happy to have the government sort out certain things for me, and infiltration by a foreign intelligence agency is one of the thiungs governments should be rightly concerned about.
Singh's book, and the BBC TV documentary (which is a 'must see'), are attempts to convey to the layman the fascination of mathematics. I have a feeling that they both do a superb job.
Mathematical detail would only serve to confuse and deter the intended reader.
This is not about the word 'more' but about a technique to use fvwm-style or Xfree86-style virtual window management, but with visible bars to indicate the function. A definite improvement over the fvwm and X feature as far as I'm concerned.
Finally, someone who puts to words what I've been thinking all along.
Whether or not putting a browser in the OS is a good idea is not something for a judge to decide.
If Microsoft don't compete in a legal way, that's fine, but it's nobody's business but their own to decide what their software looks like. Don't we all agree that software patents are a bad idea? For what reason was it a bad idea, again?
" when you see a statement in C or Java, you can figure out what it means and it can only mean one thing. Not like Perl... *shudder* Personally I think Perl should be considered a "non-rewriteable" language"
1) you are reversing an implication here: if one thing can be expressed in 10 different ways, it doesn't mean that 1 statement can mean 10 different things. so i wonder how you arrive at your statement that in Perl the same piece of code can mean different things; I generally find Perl code clearer than C code 2) aren't you confusing conciseness with unreadability? no wonder 3 lines of Perl are harder to understand than 3 lines of C: they typically do more work than 30 lines of C 3) everyone has to get used to different coding styles, even in C; Perl's many ways to express the same meaning make it more difficult to understand a person's coding style, but it isn't all that hard in the end;
Anybody home in there? The original guide for girls on how to avoid geeks article that was posted a few days ago was already way over the top, but I was pretty amused this attempt to outdo it
Even if you missed the original article, you must be pretty dense not to recognise this thing as satire. This is in the humor section. H-u-m-o-r. Think about it.
You echo my thoughts exactly. (Or perhaps I should say, mine echo yours.)
The article raises a couple of points that aren't new but worth addressing.
First, Unix is fragmented. This is definitely true: every Unix system is a toolbox of utilities and components; competing tools are often installed together on the same system. Most every tool or utility has to face the consequences of being compatible with a couple of different methods for doing the same thing. Even if the end users don't always notice, it is a serious concern for the sysadmins, distributors, and developers.
Second, fragmentation is due to commercialisation. This is a highly questionable statement. Commecrial ventures have an active interest in protecting their unique added value, and some added software can be part of that. But on the other hand, they have an interest in building a well integrated system that appeals to a wide range of users. Therefore, with commercialization you see many incompatibilities between vendors, but once you go with one, a well integrated environment; in a free software environment it's a jungle of competing developments that all try to be compatible with whetever the authors happen to be familiar with. To me, a Linux system, looks more fragmented than a commercial Unix system.
In [the first book I read about computers], it was explained that computer translation couldn't work, how US government had done massive funding with almost zero results and had abandoned the idea. It also explained the 'universal intermediate language' idea, and how it didn't help much: in order to interpret language you have to know the world, and computers don't. This book was written in the early 70s.
Later, I heard that even for programming languages, the attempts to use a universal language for translation were considered a misguided approach from the 60s. I also heard that someone was trying to create a gigantic thesausus (Cyc) to overcome the world knowledge problem, and how futile this was. And, of course, I learnt about initiatives that blandly ignored received wisdom and started out as if the idea of computer translation had never been tried before.
In the computer industry, swift and successful projects are a failure to everyone concerned, except the customer. That's why people work on computer translation.
Considering all this, I'm surprised at how well Babelfish does. Its English/German translation is very good: it produces comprehensible sentences. Compare this to www.tranexp.com, which I sometimes visit for a good laugh, and you'll see how easy it is to go wrong.
In [the first book I read about computers], it was explained that computer translation couldn't work, how US government had done massive funding with almost zero results and had abandoned the idea. It also explained the 'universal intermediate language' idea, and how it didn't help much: in order to interpret language you have to know the world, and computers don't. This book was written in the early 70s.
Later, I heard that even for programming languages, the attempts to use a universal language for translation were considered a misguided approach from the 60s. I also heard that someone was trying to create a gigantic thesausus (Cyc) to overcome the world knowledge problem, and how futile this was. And, of course, I learnt about initiatives that blandly ignored received wisdom and started out as if the idea of computer translation had never been tried before.
In the computer industry, swift and successful projects are a failure to everyone concerned, except the customer. That's why people work on computer translation.
Considering all this, I'm surprised at how well Babelfish does. Its English/German translation is very good: it produces comprehensible sentences Compare this to www.tranexp.com, which I sometimes visit for a good laugh, and you'll see how easy it is to go wrong.
In [the first book I read about computers], it was explained that computer translation couldn't work, how US government had done massive funding with almost zero results and had abandoned the idea. It also explained the 'universal intermediate language' idea, and how it didn't help much: in order to interpret language you have to know the world, and computers don't. This book was written in the early 70s.
Later, I heard that even for programming languages, the attempts to use a universal language for translation were considered a misguided approach from the 60s. I also heard that someone was trying to create a gigantic thesausus (Cyc) to overcome the world knowledge problem, and how futile this was. And, of course, I learnt about initiatives that blandly ignored received wisdom and started out as if the idea of computer translation had never been tried before.
In the computer industry, swift and successful projects are a failure to everyone concerned, except the customer. That's why people work computer translation.
Considering all this, I'm surprised at how well Babelfish does. Its English/German translation is very good: it produces comprehensible sentences Compare this to www.tranexp.com, which I sometimes visit for a good laugh, and you'll see how easy it is to go wrong.
"Millions of people are working their asses off all around the Third World, but are getting paid 1-10% of what they would be paid if they were sitting in a factory in the First World." 100-\infty% is a better estimate. The factory wouldn't be here and the prospective employees, lacking the money for the overseas trip, would need to find employment in the local economy. How is this relevant to Linux? Can local communities in 3rd world countries benefit from Linux because it makes computing power and network connectivity more affordable? Could Unix prompts have any long-term effects on the local economy? (I'm only half joking.)
I could not agree more. Why not create/.. and put all the nontechnical stuff there? I visit/. for technical news. Company mergers, personal feuds and marketing hype get plenty of coverage elsewhere.
"It's really not that hard", once you've invested a couple of months of your time in getting to know Unix and some of the particulars of installing and using Linux.
For 'the average computer user'. this process will take less time with MS Windows, if only because the people they know that can help them with their problems are more likely to be able to help them with MS Windows issues than with Linux ones. If it took months to recover from Windows crashes, it would be a different story.
If the numbers are incorrect, the only thing that's going to convince me is an actual reproduction of the test, second best is technical information, which is what some posters are providing.
Your own contribution ("I've never read a bigger pack of lies") doesn't tell me anything useful and only takes away credibility from the criticism posted by others. You are damaging this forum.
Argue the facts, not the circumstance that the report serves Microsoft's interests.
So what? I agree with dria. All this talk of 'the Community', 'our Leaders', 'the Movement' reminds me of bad SF novels and certain political ideas that were popular around 1940.
So what? I agree with dria. All this talk of 'the Community', 'our Leaders', 'the Movement' reminds me of bad SF novels and certain political ideals that were popular around 1940.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes there are. Maybe not in your country, but in mine.
But can they be effective?
True, it becomes easier to track people down and harrass them, but it this also applies to the harrassers themselves. I'm not sure it will make the problem worse. Maybe the opposite will happen, and social control will increase, just as we thought the electronic world was offering escape from it.
That's not the point! America is a good neighbour to most countries, but i still don't want to buy a phone or a TV set with built-in capability for my neighbour to watch my steps, even if I do trust him.
And if the most popular brand of phone or TV comes equipped with such a device, as a government I should be concerned.
If this whole thing is about PIII-s having unique serial numbers, I agree with you: IPv6 and several other technical facilities have those, and they allow anyone, not just the CIA, to acquire a pretty good idea of what you're doing. This is no good reason to act against the PIII. But if a special agreement is involved, e.g. Intel keeping information about the whereabouts of their processors and sharing it with American intelligence agencies, or special firmware designed to help them in some way, then I think there's a good reason to have an import ban on these things.
I think the EU has become a little more apprehensive since it was discovered that the version of Lotus Notes used for official communication within the Swedish governm,ent was designed to be tapped by American intelligence agencies (not the domestic agencies, mind you).
If you think this is nonsense, so is the Microsoft lawsuit, and every other lwasuit carried in the name of a common or public cause. Or regulations of any kind. Why have the government check the conditions in restaurants, we can all pretty well decide for ourselves where we want to eat, right? All we need to do is inspect the kitchen ourselves, if we care enough about our health, right?
I'm happy to have the government sort out certain things for me, and infiltration by a foreign intelligence agency is one of the thiungs governments should be rightly concerned about.
I couldn't disagree more.
Singh's book, and the BBC TV documentary (which is a 'must see'), are attempts to convey to the layman the fascination of mathematics. I have a feeling that they both do a superb job.
Mathematical detail would only serve to confuse and deter the intended reader.
As far as I can see, it's about a specific application of a very specific OS feature: SysV Unix shared memory.
This is not about the word 'more' but about a technique
to use fvwm-style or Xfree86-style virtual window management, but with visible bars to indicate the function.
A definite improvement over the fvwm and X feature as far as I'm concerned.
Whether or not putting a browser in the OS is a good idea is not something for a judge to decide.
If Microsoft don't compete in a legal way, that's fine, but it's nobody's business but their own to decide what their software looks like. Don't we all agree that software patents are a bad idea? For what reason was it a bad idea, again?
" when you see a statement in C or Java, you can figure out what it
means and it can only mean one thing. Not like Perl... *shudder*
Personally I think Perl should be considered a "non-rewriteable"
language"
1) you are reversing an implication here: if one thing can be expressed in 10 different ways, it doesn't mean that 1 statement can mean 10 different things.
so i wonder how you arrive at your statement that in Perl the same piece of code can mean different things; I generally find Perl code clearer than C code
2) aren't you confusing conciseness with unreadability? no wonder 3 lines of Perl are harder to understand than 3 lines of C: they typically do more work than 30 lines of C
3) everyone has to get used to different coding styles, even in C; Perl's many ways to express the same meaning make it more difficult to understand a person's coding style, but it isn't all that hard in the end;
Even if you missed the original article, you must be pretty dense not to recognise this thing as satire. This is in the humor section. H-u-m-o-r. Think about it.
The article raises a couple of points that aren't new but worth addressing.
First, Unix is fragmented. This is definitely true: every Unix system is a toolbox of utilities and components; competing tools are often installed together on the same system. Most every tool or utility has to face the consequences of being compatible with a couple of different methods for doing the same thing. Even if the end users don't always notice, it is a serious concern for the sysadmins, distributors, and developers.
Second, fragmentation is due to commercialisation. This is a highly questionable statement. Commecrial ventures have an active interest in protecting their unique added value, and some added software can be part of that. But on the other hand, they have an interest in building a well integrated system that appeals to a wide range of users. Therefore, with commercialization you see many incompatibilities between vendors, but once you go with one, a well integrated environment; in a free software environment it's a jungle of competing developments that all try to be compatible with whetever the authors happen to be familiar with. To me, a Linux system, looks more fragmented than a commercial Unix system.
In [the first book I read about computers], it was explained that computer translation couldn't work, how US government had done massive funding with almost zero results and had abandoned the idea. It also explained the 'universal intermediate language' idea, and how it didn't help much: in order to interpret language you have to know the world, and computers don't. This book was written in the early 70s.
Later, I heard that even for programming languages, the attempts to use a universal language for translation were considered a misguided approach from the 60s. I also heard that someone was trying to create a gigantic thesausus (Cyc) to overcome the world knowledge problem, and how futile this was. And, of course, I learnt about initiatives that blandly ignored received wisdom and started out as if the idea of computer translation had never been tried before.
In the computer industry, swift and successful projects are a failure to everyone concerned, except the customer. That's why people work on computer translation.
Considering all this, I'm surprised at how well Babelfish does. Its English/German translation is very good: it produces comprehensible sentences. Compare this to www.tranexp.com, which I sometimes visit for a good laugh, and you'll see how easy it is to go wrong.
In [the first book I read about computers], it was explained that computer translation couldn't work, how US government had done massive funding with almost zero results and had abandoned the idea. It also explained the 'universal intermediate language' idea, and how it didn't help much: in order to interpret language you have to know the world, and computers don't. This book was written in the early 70s.
Later, I heard that even for programming languages, the attempts to use a universal language for translation were considered a misguided approach from the 60s. I also heard that someone was trying to create a gigantic thesausus (Cyc) to overcome the world knowledge problem, and how futile this was. And, of course, I learnt about initiatives that blandly ignored received wisdom and started out as if the idea of computer translation had never been tried before.
In the computer industry, swift and successful projects are a failure to everyone concerned, except the customer. That's why people work on computer translation.
Considering all this, I'm surprised at how well Babelfish does. Its English/German translation is very good: it produces comprehensible sentences Compare this to www.tranexp.com, which I sometimes visit for a good laugh, and you'll see how easy it is to go wrong.
In [the first book I read about computers], it was explained that computer translation couldn't work, how US government had done massive funding with almost zero results and had abandoned the idea. It also explained the 'universal intermediate language' idea, and how it didn't help much: in order to interpret language you have to know the world, and computers don't. This book was written in the early 70s.
Later, I heard that even for programming languages, the attempts to use a universal language for translation were considered a misguided approach from the 60s. I also heard that someone was trying to create a gigantic thesausus (Cyc) to overcome the world knowledge problem, and how futile this was. And, of course, I learnt about initiatives that blandly ignored received wisdom and started out as if the idea of computer translation had never been tried before.
In the computer industry, swift and successful projects are a failure to everyone concerned, except the customer. That's why people work computer translation.
Considering all this, I'm surprised at how well Babelfish does. Its English/German translation is very good: it produces comprehensible sentences Compare this to www.tranexp.com, which I sometimes visit for a good laugh, and you'll see how easy it is to go wrong.
"Millions of people are
working their asses off all around the Third World, but are getting
paid 1-10% of what they would be paid if they were sitting in a
factory in the First World."
100-\infty% is a better estimate. The factory wouldn't be here and the prospective employees, lacking the money for the overseas trip, would need to find employment in the local economy.
How is this relevant to Linux?
Can local communities in 3rd world countries benefit from Linux because it makes computing power and network connectivity more affordable?
Could Unix prompts have any long-term effects on the local economy?
(I'm only half joking.)
I could not agree more. /.. and put all the nontechnical stuff there? /. for technical news. Company mergers, personal feuds and marketing hype get plenty of coverage elsewhere.
Why not create
I visit
well, Solaris separates /sbin (static binaries) /usr/sbin
/usr is a big issue anyway,
/usr
from
I don't think losing
it's probably on the same disk as / so if you lose
/usr, / is likely to go with it
and it's always possible to boot from CD or net
there are other reasons to separate / and
"It's really not that hard", once you've invested
a couple of months of your time in getting to know
Unix and some of the particulars of installing and
using Linux.
For 'the average computer user'. this process will take less
time with MS Windows, if only because the people they
know that can help them with their problems are
more likely to be able to help them with MS Windows
issues than with Linux ones. If it took months to recover from Windows crashes, it would be a different story.
If the numbers are incorrect, the only thing that's
going to convince me is an actual reproduction of the test,
second best is technical information, which is what
some posters are providing.
Your own contribution ("I've never read a bigger pack of lies")
doesn't tell me anything useful and only takes away credibility
from the criticism posted by others. You are damaging this forum.
Argue the facts, not the circumstance that the report serves Microsoft's interests.
So what? I agree with dria. All this talk of
'the Community', 'our Leaders', 'the Movement'
reminds me of bad SF novels and certain political
ideas that were popular around 1940.
Does Godwin's Law apply to slashdot?
So what? I agree with dria. All this talk of
'the Community', 'our Leaders', 'the Movement'
reminds me of bad SF novels and certain political
ideals that were popular around 1940.
Does Godwin's Law apply to slashdot?