To pretend that these experiments apply to humanity in general rather than the author's own language/script choice is silly.
You know what is also silly? To pretend that this was the conclusion, although clearly the paper nowhere stated that it had found the grand unified theory of how people read. Here's a hint: when the paper talks about reading, it is obviously talking about reading English.
Yes, the paper would be even more interesting if it included studies of other scripts, and the failure to acknowledge the existence of other scripts should be criticised. But the rest of your criticism is unfounded.
In Denmark, "internet" is supposed to be spelled with a small "i" and has been so for some time now (since 1999, I think). The proof is here.
Lots of people I meet in the Department of Computer Science don't know this so I've been miscorrected on several occasions. Even once at an exam where the external examiner gave us a knee-jerk reaction like the ones found in most comments here. Of course, I then pointed out that his reaction was outdated and did not correspond to the official Danish spelling. Luckily, it didn't seem to have any influence on the grades.:-)
There are lots of redundant, silly posts here. The Danish authorities had good reasons for not capitalising the internet - as opposed to most people here, they are actually language expert (natural language, that is) who have studied these issues for years at a university. I think the primary reason was that the internet is becoming much like the telephone network or the road network, which you don't capitalise either. Yes, I know about Tanenbaum's explanation, but Tanenbaum is a computer scientist, not a linguist.
Epiphany (the GNOME browser) has had that since, well, a long time ago. It also scraps the idea of folders and use a flat database with keywords instead. Give it try, it is nice and clean.
Obviously, you've never ever used a numerics library. Operator overloading does wonders for the readability. Really. Refusing operator overloading because the mechanism can be misused is like refusing to use electric devices because electricity can kill you. The mechanism has been used (and misused like the horrible iostreams) with great success in lots of C++ libraries.
In practice, the theoretical arguments against operator overloading are unconvincing.
Obviously, this guy needs some kind of treatment by professionals. It is a good thing the black box could help nail him.
But I really fail to see how this is interesting on Slashdot. This is obviously not a privacy issue. The black box records information about the last five seconds before a collision. That's hardly a privacy concern.
You've just described how GConf and thus GNOME applications work! The application programmer makes a.schemas file that describes the various configuration values with both short and long descriptions.
You can then edit the configuration with a command-line or graphical tool. Gconf Editor works almost exactly the same way as you described the "advanced options". And the changes are applied instantly because of the built-in notification framework.
B) Harder to parse & hence less efficient that a binary format
How is downloading and calling the parse() method of any of several dozen free XML parsers "harder" than having to write and debug your own custom portable parser for a binary format? [...]
It seriously sounds like you haven't been implementing a Jabber client yourself. On paper, it seems easy, but the problem is that most parsers are not geared towards XML streams (as opposed to complete XML documents). Which basically means you have to start from scratch with a SAX parser and use a giant state machine, or roll your parser.
It is much more painful than one would expect.
Of course, the benefit of XML is its extensibility.
I think you can safely say not much has happened since then regarding portable computers. Well, nowadays, laptops are rarely equipped with two floppy drives, laptop screens have grown a little and are unlikely to be CRT. And the colours of the case are usually not that ugly, but hey it was the eighties!
All in all, I think anyone here who uses a laptop to hack on would soon feel comfortable with that old beast. Given a decent supply of floppies, of course.
We can't even predict the weather over a given chunk of territory with scientifically reproducable accuracy, yet one is to believe that we can say that the Earth's average temperature will rise x number of degrees by 2100?
This is non-sensical. You probably can't predict either whether Linus Torvalds will be hit by a bus next week, but still you can predict quite accurately how many people will get hit by a bus next year.
It should be noted that the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation published its own response to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty:
I don't think you are from Denmark or you would understand that this is just politics. The current Danish government sacked a lot of the various committees, especially in the ministry for environmental issues. But despite the campaign against "the reign of the experts", they then hired Bjorn Lomborg to lead a new committee.
So now they have to protect him at all cost. This is just politics.
I read about the DVD players from KiSS in a Danish computer magazine (KiSS is a Danish company) a couple of months ago. Apparently, they knew that their previous players sucked very badly and decided to completely redo everything for this generation of players.
It seems their new design is much better. I've only seen positive reviews so far (not that I have seen that many, though).
my desktop looks cluttered and Kalling Keverything Kfoo.Kbar Ketc Kgives Kme Kthe Kshits...
You don't seem so tired of flame wars at all...
Did you notice the smiley you removed from the OP's statement? It is generally supposed to mean, "don't take this too seriously". In fact, it might even signify a joke.:-)
Perhaps because most distribution already include all the software any ordinary user would ever want (except 3D games, of course)?
That's why installing GNU/Linux is so nice. When you're done, you've basically got everything. (Then there is the added week or so for tweaking settings, but whatever...)
Check your facts before you post nonsense to Slashdot! I always do!
What? Post nonsense?:-)
Re:You cannot deny GCC is the heart of free softwa
on
The Stallman Factor
·
· Score: 1
It is not really just a fight about credit. It's about making sure that people outside the community and people entering the community know the spirit in which Linux and other free software is made. It's about spreading the word and getting more free software and more freedom.
Have you ever followed the discussion on comp.lang.c++.moderated or comp.std.c++? You'd know you are wrong in implying the comittee is biased towards "easy solutions", if you did. Most of these people spend lots of time writing articles on how to use the language most effectively.
Now that gnome has some real goals and has long discarded the "replacement of the evil KDE desktop" goal, it is probably a good time to let the developers continue with developement and not have things imposed on them by a bunch of uninvolved people that consider the project for a few hours each year.
Funny you should say that. Do you have any idea of what the Board is supposed to be doing, or are you just one of the "uninvolved people that consider the project for a few hours each year"?
The Board isn't ordering anyone or trying to decide on technical issues - most of the messages they send out specifically say that.
Re:A great example of an RMS witch-hunt
on
Five Years of KDE
·
· Score: 1
KDE = Konqueror
GNOME = Mozilla
KDE = results
GNOME = vapourware
You forgot one:
YOU = troll
I can't believe this was moderated so high. Please, people, when you read a comment that begins with this is not a flame, not a troll, just the sad truth, doesn't it turn on an alarm somewhere inside you?
It is a shame that there is so much duplication of effort going on in the two projects. But it is also a fact, and it is not going to change radically. So instead of bitching about [insert name of desktop you don't use], why don't you take this 5 year anniversary as an opportunity to spend some time thinking about how beautiful a world it is that we can choose between several cool, free desktop environments? Yay!
A "resolution-independent display" huh? Where can I get one? I haven't seen a vector display for years, and I've never seen one that can handle Bezier curves or anything like that. The only displays I can find need everything expressed in pixels.
I believe Berlin is delivering the resolution-independent display - it doesn't need everything expressed in pixels.
Of course, you also need some hardware to run the thing, i.e. a monitor. Which might have a resolution of 100 ppi (I think this is approximately what ordinary screens deliver now a days) or 200ppi (they exist) or even more in the future.
That's when resolution-independence is nice - you still get the same size, just better quality. I'm sure non-resolution-independence will become a real problem in the future with better hardware. As it is now, it's already a nuisance. On my 19" monitor, I don't go to 1600x1200 because the widgets simply get too small.
Slashdot Mirror
To pretend that these experiments apply to humanity in general rather than the author's own language/script choice is silly.
You know what is also silly? To pretend that this was the conclusion, although clearly the paper nowhere stated that it had found the grand unified theory of how people read. Here's a hint: when the paper talks about reading, it is obviously talking about reading English.
Yes, the paper would be even more interesting if it included studies of other scripts, and the failure to acknowledge the existence of other scripts should be criticised. But the rest of your criticism is unfounded.
In Denmark, "internet" is supposed to be spelled with a small "i" and has been so for some time now (since 1999, I think). The proof is here.
:-)
Lots of people I meet in the Department of Computer Science don't know this so I've been miscorrected on several occasions. Even once at an exam where the external examiner gave us a knee-jerk reaction like the ones found in most comments here. Of course, I then pointed out that his reaction was outdated and did not correspond to the official Danish spelling. Luckily, it didn't seem to have any influence on the grades.
There are lots of redundant, silly posts here. The Danish authorities had good reasons for not capitalising the internet - as opposed to most people here, they are actually language expert (natural language, that is) who have studied these issues for years at a university. I think the primary reason was that the internet is becoming much like the telephone network or the road network, which you don't capitalise either. Yes, I know about Tanenbaum's explanation, but Tanenbaum is a computer scientist, not a linguist.
Epiphany (the GNOME browser) has had that since, well, a long time ago. It also scraps the idea of folders and use a flat database with keywords instead. Give it try, it is nice and clean.
Obviously, you've never ever used a numerics library. Operator overloading does wonders for the readability. Really. Refusing operator overloading because the mechanism can be misused is like refusing to use electric devices because electricity can kill you. The mechanism has been used (and misused like the horrible iostreams) with great success in lots of C++ libraries.
In practice, the theoretical arguments against operator overloading are unconvincing.
Obviously, this guy needs some kind of treatment by professionals. It is a good thing the black box could help nail him.
But I really fail to see how this is interesting on Slashdot. This is obviously not a privacy issue. The black box records information about the last five seconds before a collision. That's hardly a privacy concern.
You've just described how GConf and thus GNOME applications work! The application programmer makes a .schemas file that describes the various configuration values with both short and long descriptions.
You can then edit the configuration with a command-line or graphical tool. Gconf Editor works almost exactly the same way as you described the "advanced options". And the changes are applied instantly because of the built-in notification framework.
GConf is really, really hot!
It seriously sounds like you haven't been implementing a Jabber client yourself. On paper, it seems easy, but the problem is that most parsers are not geared towards XML streams (as opposed to complete XML documents). Which basically means you have to start from scratch with a SAX parser and use a giant state machine, or roll your parser.
It is much more painful than one would expect.
Of course, the benefit of XML is its extensibility.
I think you can safely say not much has happened since then regarding portable computers. Well, nowadays, laptops are rarely equipped with two floppy drives, laptop screens have grown a little and are unlikely to be CRT. And the colours of the case are usually not that ugly, but hey it was the eighties!
All in all, I think anyone here who uses a laptop to hack on would soon feel comfortable with that old beast. Given a decent supply of floppies, of course.
This is non-sensical. You probably can't predict either whether Linus Torvalds will be hit by a bus next week, but still you can predict quite accurately how many people will get hit by a bus next year.
I don't think you are from Denmark or you would understand that this is just politics. The current Danish government sacked a lot of the various committees, especially in the ministry for environmental issues. But despite the campaign against "the reign of the experts", they then hired Bjorn Lomborg to lead a new committee.
So now they have to protect him at all cost. This is just politics.
...that we can't even reduce the problem by slimming the file system. Because then it won't be FAT anymore.
Why would you use images? ASCII art is great:
$ banner -w 40 joe@foobar.baz
It is a bit large, though.
I read about the DVD players from KiSS in a Danish computer magazine (KiSS is a Danish company) a couple of months ago. Apparently, they knew that their previous players sucked very badly and decided to completely redo everything for this generation of players.
It seems their new design is much better. I've only seen positive reviews so far (not that I have seen that many, though).
You don't seem so tired of flame wars at all...
Did you notice the smiley you removed from the OP's statement? It is generally supposed to mean, "don't take this too seriously". In fact, it might even signify a joke. :-)
Perhaps because most distribution already include all the software any ordinary user would ever want (except 3D games, of course)?
That's why installing GNU/Linux is so nice. When you're done, you've basically got everything. (Then there is the added week or so for tweaking settings, but whatever...)
Check your facts before you post nonsense to Slashdot! I always do!
What? Post nonsense? :-)
It is not really just a fight about credit. It's about making sure that people outside the community and people entering the community know the spirit in which Linux and other free software is made. It's about spreading the word and getting more free software and more freedom.
Have you ever followed the discussion on comp.lang.c++.moderated or comp.std.c++? You'd know you are wrong in implying the comittee is biased towards "easy solutions", if you did. Most of these people spend lots of time writing articles on how to use the language most effectively.
Now that gnome has some real goals and has long discarded the "replacement of the evil KDE desktop" goal, it is probably a good time to let the developers continue with developement and not have things imposed on them by a bunch of uninvolved people that consider the project for a few hours each year.
Funny you should say that. Do you have any idea of what the Board is supposed to be doing, or are you just one of the "uninvolved people that consider the project for a few hours each year"?
The Board isn't ordering anyone or trying to decide on technical issues - most of the messages they send out specifically say that.
KDE = Konqueror
GNOME = Mozilla
KDE = results
GNOME = vapourware
You forgot one:
YOU = troll
I can't believe this was moderated so high. Please, people, when you read a comment that begins with this is not a flame, not a troll, just the sad truth, doesn't it turn on an alarm somewhere inside you?
It is a shame that there is so much duplication of effort going on in the two projects. But it is also a fact, and it is not going to change radically. So instead of bitching about [insert name of desktop you don't use], why don't you take this 5 year anniversary as an opportunity to spend some time thinking about how beautiful a world it is that we can choose between several cool, free desktop environments? Yay!
A "resolution-independent display" huh? Where can I get one? I haven't seen a vector display for years, and I've never seen one that can handle Bezier curves or anything like that. The only displays I can find need everything expressed in pixels.
I believe Berlin is delivering the resolution-independent display - it doesn't need everything expressed in pixels.
Of course, you also need some hardware to run the thing, i.e. a monitor. Which might have a resolution of 100 ppi (I think this is approximately what ordinary screens deliver now a days) or 200ppi (they exist) or even more in the future.
That's when resolution-independence is nice - you still get the same size, just better quality. I'm sure non-resolution-independence will become a real problem in the future with better hardware. As it is now, it's already a nuisance. On my 19" monitor, I don't go to 1600x1200 because the widgets simply get too small.