Re:Someone beat this guy with a clue stick
on
Lawsuits Suck
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· Score: 1
Actually, a vote for the third party IS effective. Even though Ross Perot did not even come close to winning in '92, he brought up issues that could not be ignored by the Democrats or Republicans. As a result of Ross Perot's candidacy, the two parties started debated issues that were not even on their radar screen. So even if the third party candidate never gets elected (which history says is hogwash, and Jesse Ventura proves as well), voting for the third party DOES send a message to the two parties. Voting for Ralph Nader, even though he won't win, tells the Republicans and Democrats that there is a significant portion of the population that thinks that corporate America is getting out of control. When the next set of elections come up, and the Democrats and Republicans are looking at the swing vote (that's us, by the way), they will consider our issues as well as those of "working families" and "middle-class families".
Do not assume that a vote for the third party is wasted. Also do not assume that the two parties will continue to care about the same things in every election. It is only since WWII that the Republicans have been considered conservatives and Democrats have been the party for minorities. The Democrats and Republicans redefine themselves continually to support whatever America seems to care about at the moment, because they need votes to get elected. Keep writing to your representatives, but vote your conscience. Your representatives will get the hint.
And don't forget to vote with your wallet as well. The EFF needs all the help it can get. If you can't get involved to to family or time constraints, then give money to the organizations that are set up expressly to voice your vote. If the EFF is sufficiently financed, they can hire full-time staff to lobby for you.
I would suggest that Slashdot set up a micro-payment system. Put a button next to articles where our civil liberties are being suppressed. The button will send a payment of $1 (or more) to the EFF, or whatever fund is specified.
My only real problem with using Python/Perl/whatever-is-not-C is that you have to wait for bindings for all of the other libraries, lik GTK+, Gnome, libxml, etc. Half the time the only documentation available for a library has all of its examples in C alone. This may or may not be a problem, depending on how much time you want to spend doing bindings.
Staying at the bleeding edge of development is very difficult unless you are programming in the same language as the libraries you are coding against. Not that I like C, but I got tired of searching the web for bindings.
I can't find anywhere in HP's product description that specifies WHY it will only work with client environments. Under Windows, to set up a network printer you would locate all "shared" printers. Well, if that is the case, then the HP must be operating using Samba under Linux. Which means that you CAN use this device under Linux. Under RedHat, just use printtool to specify a new Samba printer queue and point to the HP device. If I could afford one of these, I might try it out. For now, though, this is all speculation.
The attitude that "I can't make a difference, it's only $200" is exactly what keeps these companies entrenched in the market. Of course your $200 makes a difference to them! Especially if your friends follow your example, and your friends' friends, and their friends, etc.
If more people would follow their conscience when buying/voting/being we wouldn't have nearly as many problems as we do now.
<offtopic>
I hear the same rants about Ralph Nader. "Don't vode for Nader, 'cause that will get Bush in office!". Well, that statement is only true because we are all terrified of what will happen if Bush gets in office. Even though Nader appeals much more to people who want to restrict the role of business in government/personal life, for some reason voting their conscience is impossible.
</offtopic>
If you want to support Palm over CE, then buy a Palm not made by Sony. The memory stick add-on isn't that nifty anyway. Handspring's Visor has much more expandability than just the ability to add more RAM.
I own a Visor, and I like the expandability provided by the Springboard modules, but I admire TRGPro for using the industry standard CompactFlash interface (just think, you could add the new IBM 1GB CompactFlash hard drive to your palm device).
Does the number of applications that "depend" on Windows include programs that also run on other platforms, such as Oracle or Perforce? A nice metric would be the number of applications written for Windows ONLY.
Having written programs under Windows for over 7 years, I have a definite opinion on Microsoft's strategy to attract developers. At first, we were coaxed to Windows when MS opened up the APIs. Not open as in source, but you could actually buy a book that explained the Windows API. A friend of mine was a Mac coder back in the bad old days, and he was always struggling to find the appropriate API call for something or another. Now Windows has come full circle! With the "unpublished APIs" used by Office, you are back squarely in 1990.
The BUILTIN/System account is a password within SQL Server, not a password within the NT logon environment. Don't get me wrong, you could wipe out an entire e-commerce site's database in a few minutes, but that is not the same thing as being Administrator. You can not, for example, delete files on a local hard drive. Although now that I think about it, since SQL Server uses COM, you could write a vicious ActiveX control to delete the files. Not sure how you would upload the activeX control to the database, but I'm sure a motivated individual would have few problems:)
The Berlin project is a work-in-progress replacement for X. It is nowhere near ready yet, but it is exactly what the doctor ordered. No dependence on X (it uses the GGI interface for graphics, as well as OpenGL. All interfaces are CORBA-based, so any language with corba bindings can be used to write GUI apps. I don't know how tightly GTK (or more specifically, GDK) is bound to X, but it is more than possible to do a port.
If you really want to see a replacement for X, you can rally behind Berlin! They definitely need the help. They are at version 0.2 right now, and have been mentioned on Slashdot from time to time.
A bulletproof install. It must work, out of the box, no questions asked.
It is fair to ask questions about use, but not about your computer. In other words, it is alright to ask if they want to use gnome or kde as a desktop, but the next question should not be "what is the scan rate of your monitor".
Hardware support for everything. Drivers need to be there for the hardware and they have to be installed automatically.
The problem is that new hardware comes out daily. It is a literally impossibility to do this unless the producers of said hardware start supporting Linux directly. As it is, not even Windows NT can support USB, and it's been out for years! I thoroughly agree that all hardware should be plug and play and work out of the box, but Linux can not solve that answer alone. Hardware manufacturers are the real culprits.
Get rid of the UNIX model. Yeah, no more user IDs, passwords or any of that. It can be too confusing on your grandma to have more names and numbers to remember.
What you are describing is not the Unix model, it is the security model. You can easily drop security restrictions by having a default user account and an easy interface to add new accounts.
Get rid of GNU. Yeah, that's right, drop the command line utilities that you know and love, and lose all that power. If granny can't remember her password how's she supposed to remember arcane commands?
Again, what does GNU have to do with granny remembering arcane commands? There are some great user interafaces built on top of GNU software. The key is to give the user a great GUI on top of the command line utilities. If you like using the whiz-bang GUI, more power to you. If you want to drop out to a shell, go right ahead. Granny isn't stopping you.
This GUI must be slicker than whale shit in an ice flow. Yeah, it must blow all other existing GUIs out of the water for ease of use, configurability, etc.
All a whiz-bang GUI does it provide eye-candy for the user and sell more chips for Intel. The GUI doesn't have to be whiz-bang, it should be transparent to the user. Users don't want to watch stuff, they want to use the computer. Thus the name user. Eye candy is great, and I love gnome, but it is not a requirement for a next-generation desktop.
As I see it, there are a few problems with introducing a 200ppi monitor right now:
Current video cards are assuming that your monitor has about 80ppi. So, for a 21" monitor with a viewable area of 20", a height of 12" and a width of 17", you would have 204 sq. in. of screen. At 80ppi that would be 16320 pixels. But at 200ppi that would be 40800 pixels. The video driver would choke on that many pixels! Rendering would be dog slow on all but the fastest video cards. And even then they would need modified drivers...
As the article mentioned, current desktop technology, such as Windows and X, depend on pixelized icons. That would shink the icons down to an unreasonable size. To compensate, we would have to modify X to either scale the icons by a factor of 2 in each direction, or we would need to turn X into a vectorized renderer. Ouch. Windows et al. will have the same problems, of course. I would really like to see X go the way of Mac OS X...
I'm sure there are other problems, but those two right there are enough for us to work on for years!
Actually, IE 5.5 is the most standards-compliant browser in existence. It has full support for ECMAscript, and the HTML 4.0 spec is almost fully implemented. Microsoft is also doing pretty well with the XML standard. The villain when it comes to corrupting WEB standards is Netscape, not Microsoft. I have heard that the version of Konquerer that will ship with KDE 2.0 is very standards-compliant as well. Mozilla is doing a great job of implementing HTML 4.0 and XML, and its layout engine is fantastic, but don't slam MS without knowing the facts!
The last thing we need is a union. Unions homogenize the workforce. You get x dollars per hour, no matter how good/terrible you are. What we need is performance-based pay, and no sane union would ask for that. Unions are the antithesis of geek demands. Unions demand uniformity in workplace conditions. Geeks demand flexibility. Unions demand standard pay scales. We like to see 15% pay increases. Unions cater to the average worker. Geeks despite mediocrity.
Really, are we as geeks that mistreated at work? For the most part I agree that the accounting departments of the world loathe us, but who cares? When I meet people outside of work and they learn that I'm a software engineer, they are always very impressed and excited to talk to me. That shows respect right there. Managers are afraid to lose us, as they know that we keep the machines running and the software coming. That gives us amazing leverage right there. Any of you ever wriggled a few extra vacation days out of your manager? Wondered why he/she gave in? Ever notice that most geeks only work about 70% of the time? Try that at McDonalds. Although that would be par for a union job...:)
When I saw the apps being made with GTK+, I took one look and said "NICE". GTK+ makes sexy apps, no doubt about it. I used Qt for a small app, but it somehow looked bulky. No other way to explain it.
HOWEVER, even with this book, Glib and GTK+ are about 50% undocumented. What I really needed was a book like this one with about 500 pages of describing all the functions. Better yet, I'd like to see the HTML documentation get finished! The documentation for glib that is downloadable is awful. Most of the links point back to the link that pointed you to the first link. The reference manual is good, but it isn't tarballed!
I have yet to see an authoritative reference in HTML for GTK+. Period.
Sure there are example programs and tutorials, but when I want to do something beyond making an app with a picture button I end up trapsing through GTK+ header files.
Qt's library is fairly well documented (at least I never had to look at a header file).
Oh, and one last thing: better font support is needed! I want to be able to type
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, a vote for the third party IS effective. Even though Ross Perot did not even come close to winning in '92, he brought up issues that could not be ignored by the Democrats or Republicans. As a result of Ross Perot's candidacy, the two parties started debated issues that were not even on their radar screen. So even if the third party candidate never gets elected (which history says is hogwash, and Jesse Ventura proves as well), voting for the third party DOES send a message to the two parties. Voting for Ralph Nader, even though he won't win, tells the Republicans and Democrats that there is a significant portion of the population that thinks that corporate America is getting out of control. When the next set of elections come up, and the Democrats and Republicans are looking at the swing vote (that's us, by the way), they will consider our issues as well as those of "working families" and "middle-class families".
Do not assume that a vote for the third party is wasted. Also do not assume that the two parties will continue to care about the same things in every election. It is only since WWII that the Republicans have been considered conservatives and Democrats have been the party for minorities. The Democrats and Republicans redefine themselves continually to support whatever America seems to care about at the moment, because they need votes to get elected. Keep writing to your representatives, but vote your conscience. Your representatives will get the hint.
And don't forget to vote with your wallet as well. The EFF needs all the help it can get. If you can't get involved to to family or time constraints, then give money to the organizations that are set up expressly to voice your vote. If the EFF is sufficiently financed, they can hire full-time staff to lobby for you.
I would suggest that Slashdot set up a micro-payment system. Put a button next to articles where our civil liberties are being suppressed. The button will send a payment of $1 (or more) to the EFF, or whatever fund is specified.
Just some food for though.
My only real problem with using Python/Perl/whatever-is-not-C is that you have to wait for bindings for all of the other libraries, lik GTK+, Gnome, libxml, etc. Half the time the only documentation available for a library has all of its examples in C alone. This may or may not be a problem, depending on how much time you want to spend doing bindings. Staying at the bleeding edge of development is very difficult unless you are programming in the same language as the libraries you are coding against. Not that I like C, but I got tired of searching the web for bindings.
The attitude that "I can't make a difference, it's only $200" is exactly what keeps these companies entrenched in the market. Of course your $200 makes a difference to them! Especially if your friends follow your example, and your friends' friends, and their friends, etc.
If more people would follow their conscience when buying/voting/being we wouldn't have nearly as many problems as we do now.
<offtopic>
I hear the same rants about Ralph Nader. "Don't vode for Nader, 'cause that will get Bush in office!". Well, that statement is only true because we are all terrified of what will happen if Bush gets in office. Even though Nader appeals much more to people who want to restrict the role of business in government/personal life, for some reason voting their conscience is impossible.
</offtopic>
I own a Visor, and I like the expandability provided by the Springboard modules, but I admire TRGPro for using the industry standard CompactFlash interface (just think, you could add the new IBM 1GB CompactFlash hard drive to your palm device).
Having written programs under Windows for over 7 years, I have a definite opinion on Microsoft's strategy to attract developers. At first, we were coaxed to Windows when MS opened up the APIs. Not open as in source, but you could actually buy a book that explained the Windows API. A friend of mine was a Mac coder back in the bad old days, and he was always struggling to find the appropriate API call for something or another. Now Windows has come full circle! With the "unpublished APIs" used by Office, you are back squarely in 1990.
Gotta love progress.
I couldn't find the article where Al Gore invents the internet :)
The BUILTIN/System account is a password within SQL Server, not a password within the NT logon environment. Don't get me wrong, you could wipe out an entire e-commerce site's database in a few minutes, but that is not the same thing as being Administrator. You can not, for example, delete files on a local hard drive. Although now that I think about it, since SQL Server uses COM, you could write a vicious ActiveX control to delete the files. Not sure how you would upload the activeX control to the database, but I'm sure a motivated individual would have few problems :)
If you really want to see a replacement for X, you can rally behind Berlin! They definitely need the help. They are at version 0.2 right now, and have been mentioned on Slashdot from time to time.
It is fair to ask questions about use, but not about your computer. In other words, it is alright to ask if they want to use gnome or kde as a desktop, but the next question should not be "what is the scan rate of your monitor".
Hardware support for everything. Drivers need to be there for the hardware and they have to be installed automatically.
The problem is that new hardware comes out daily. It is a literally impossibility to do this unless the producers of said hardware start supporting Linux directly. As it is, not even Windows NT can support USB, and it's been out for years! I thoroughly agree that all hardware should be plug and play and work out of the box, but Linux can not solve that answer alone. Hardware manufacturers are the real culprits.Get rid of the UNIX model. Yeah, no more user IDs, passwords or any of that. It can be too confusing on your grandma to have more names and numbers to remember.
What you are describing is not the Unix model, it is the security model. You can easily drop security restrictions by having a default user account and an easy interface to add new accounts.
Get rid of GNU. Yeah, that's right, drop the command line utilities that you know and love, and lose all that power. If granny can't remember her password how's she supposed to remember arcane commands?
Again, what does GNU have to do with granny remembering arcane commands? There are some great user interafaces built on top of GNU software. The key is to give the user a great GUI on top of the command line utilities. If you like using the whiz-bang GUI, more power to you. If you want to drop out to a shell, go right ahead. Granny isn't stopping you.
This GUI must be slicker than whale shit in an ice flow. Yeah, it must blow all other existing GUIs out of the water for ease of use, configurability, etc.
All a whiz-bang GUI does it provide eye-candy for the user and sell more chips for Intel. The GUI doesn't have to be whiz-bang, it should be transparent to the user. Users don't want to watch stuff, they want to use the computer. Thus the name user. Eye candy is great, and I love gnome, but it is not a requirement for a next-generation desktop.
John
I'm sure there are other problems, but those two right there are enough for us to work on for years!
Actually, IE 5.5 is the most standards-compliant browser in existence. It has full support for ECMAscript, and the HTML 4.0 spec is almost fully implemented. Microsoft is also doing pretty well with the XML standard. The villain when it comes to corrupting WEB standards is Netscape, not Microsoft. I have heard that the version of Konquerer that will ship with KDE 2.0 is very standards-compliant as well. Mozilla is doing a great job of implementing HTML 4.0 and XML, and its layout engine is fantastic, but don't slam MS without knowing the facts!
The last thing we need is a union. Unions homogenize the workforce. You get x dollars per hour, no matter how good/terrible you are. What we need is performance-based pay, and no sane union would ask for that. Unions are the antithesis of geek demands. Unions demand uniformity in workplace conditions. Geeks demand flexibility. Unions demand standard pay scales. We like to see 15% pay increases. Unions cater to the average worker. Geeks despite mediocrity.
:)
Really, are we as geeks that mistreated at work? For the most part I agree that the accounting departments of the world loathe us, but who cares? When I meet people outside of work and they learn that I'm a software engineer, they are always very impressed and excited to talk to me. That shows respect right there. Managers are afraid to lose us, as they know that we keep the machines running and the software coming. That gives us amazing leverage right there. Any of you ever wriggled a few extra vacation days out of your manager? Wondered why he/she gave in? Ever notice that most geeks only work about 70% of the time? Try that at McDonalds. Although that would be par for a union job...
When I saw the apps being made with GTK+, I took one look and said "NICE". GTK+ makes sexy apps, no doubt about it. I used Qt for a small app, but it somehow looked bulky. No other way to explain it.
HOWEVER, even with this book, Glib and GTK+ are about 50% undocumented. What I really needed was a book like this one with about 500 pages of describing all the functions. Better yet, I'd like to see the HTML documentation get finished! The documentation for glib that is downloadable is awful. Most of the links point back to the link that pointed you to the first link. The reference manual is good, but it isn't tarballed!
I have yet to see an authoritative reference in HTML for GTK+. Period.
Sure there are example programs and tutorials, but when I want to do something beyond making an app with a picture button I end up trapsing through GTK+ header files.
Qt's library is fairly well documented (at least I never had to look at a header file).
Oh, and one last thing: better font support is needed! I want to be able to type
gtk_create_font( "Times", 14, BOLD )
!!!