... and skepticism is a good thing. This may be more Hype than Hal. Even so, it's intriguing. Unless the reality is really that the robot simply went straight forward like a soccer ball it managed to do at least some basic navigation and had the motivation to do so. What makes this story interesting is that the robot was "on its own" for a short while. We've all had programs do unexpected things, but I doubt many of us have had the computer get up and walk out into the parking lot.
It's possible that this was a stunt, but the event described is hardly too outrageous to have happened naturally. The robot doesn't need to know about "outside" to manage its way out the door. It may simply have had the concept of "keep going" and did just that. It doesn't take a robot to make it out the door... remember the song about "my poor meatball".
The robot's strategy almost worked. "Act like a dummy", he thought, "and they'll ignore me. Then I can make my getaway."
Who knows, there may be an evolutionary angle to this. Robots that are deemed boring by humans will have the best chance of evolving unfettered, sort of like fish with untasty names.
The first thing I do when I look at a Perl CGI application is see if it uses tainting. If it doesn't I assume the author is incompetent.
It's amazing how emotional people get in their resistence to this wonderfully simple and handy security check. See this discussion for an example of the lengths to which people will go to avoid putting a simple T in their code.
My wife Starflower and I once actually succeeded in reading the tag numbers off a pair of live, conscious Canadian Geese. Believe me, it wasn't easy. We discovered that Canadian Geese are a lot like programmers: they can be bribed with food. The father goose was easy... he wanted the food and was willing to get close. Mother goose was harder: she was more wary of us, and to make matters worse, her tag was upside down. Her tactic worked: she got a lot more food.
Who said anything about making a living with open source? I don't know anyone who does that either, and I doubt many people will. That's the point: open source is a highly successful leverage technique, not a business model unto itself. People who use and produce open source are virtually always engaged in some other activity which is helped in part by open source and which finances, among other things, open source.
Where are all the poor open source programmers?
on
Open Source Limitations?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I've heard this argument before: that open source programmers are going to starve because they don't have a way to make money on their efforts. Now for a reality check: where are all these starving open source programmers? Why are all the people I know who actively contribute to open source projects so darn wealthy?
My geek story: Wow, this topic brings back some memories. I came in on the tail end of the BBS era, the early 90's just before the Internet entered the public consiousness. I had discovered The Pen and Brush in the Washington, DC area and logged in nightly for several weeks. One Friday night a friend was giving a party and I thought it would be fun to share with my friends. So I packed up my laptop, external modem, and all the cables and brought them along. I set up the computer on the kitchen table and was ready to show my friends the cool BBS. They all smiled politely and went back to their partying. I was amazed that everybody didn't want to join in, and I started to wonder what might be wrong with them.
To Lucia of the P&B: thanks for the memories. I still think of you whenever I type a smiley.... you were the one who told me about them.:-)
Is he smoking a green, jagged cigarette, or is a green thunderbolt protruding from his right cheek? Which of those downward bent lines is supposed to be his mouth? The image looks like something from a dream after I've had too much pizza before going to bed.
Yes, this is exactly a win for Linux, and for Open Source in general. At this point Open Source is still winning the easy converts. As it gets more popular, it will get the more difficult converts. The more big-business, mission-critical apps there are out there that run on open source the better for the movement as a whole. It's getting harder and harder for MS to insist that open source is a fringe movement and that it can't be trusted. That's a Good Thing for Open Source.
Gould: The millenium started on Jan 1, 2000
on
RIP: Stephen Jay Gould
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Gould was one of the most prominent people in the scientific community to defend the idea that the millenium started on Jan 1, 2000. He agreed with the idea that the concept of the "millenium" was an arbitrary one and that we were free to decide when our milleniums start. I cited him in a lot of those annoying "when does the millenium start" conversations we all had to endure during that time.
You're working pretty hard to miss a simple point. First, as sys admin, he's going to have to answer to the users about how they like their systems. If they don't like them then he's going to have a lot of extra work. Ergo, he ought to start out by giving people the design they are most likely to like. A lot of experience says that people want simplicity when they start out using a new system. By your own admission, configuring the desktop is easy, so it's not going to be a lot of work for him to configure a simple desktop for his users.
Second, nobody's saying anything about preventing the users from learning. They will be welcome to learn how to configure their desktops as they like. It's just not likely that the first thing they will want to learn on their new system is how to configure their desktops.
I bet if you sat a windows word user down at a freshly installed/configured Redhat 7.3 system running GNOME and openoffice and told them they had to learn how to use that system or leave the company they'd be printing out reports for you in less than an hour.
If the sys admin did that he'd be booted out of the company in less than an hour.
I don't doubt that the customization features of Gnome serve you very well, but customization just isn't what most users want in a desktop interface. They want simplicity. My suggestion that the sys admin configure their machines to as simple a UI as possible addresses that need. Later if the users want to customize their desktops they can certainly do so.
If a user can click on a button that has a picture of an envelope on it and get a well-configured full featured email client to appear, if they can click on a button with a picture of a pen or quill and get a word processor to appear, then that's fine.
Or, heaven forbid, the icons actually say "Email" and "Word Processor".
I agree. Give the users time to tell you what they want and for you to give it to them. Make them feel like they're the ones steering and you're Santa Claus. It doesn't take much to make most users happy: a simple desktop, the basic programs (word processor, spreadsheet, email, browser), and a friendly sys admin are all they usually need.
One added point: use LTSP. By maintaining a central control on the system you can more easily respond to users' needs.
Linux can be made a lot friendlier just by configuring the desktop for really easy use.
This is a small change to the way KDE and Gnome look, but I think it's an important change: the typical Gnome taskbar along the bottom is three times as big as Windows users are used to, and is cluttered with a bunch of useless toys. Get rid of everything except the buttons that indicate which programs are running, and of course the button that users think of as the "start" button.
The default menus in most distros are also way too extensive. They tend to have the same thing several times in several places. Pick the dozon or so programs your users generally need and put them in the main "start" menu. Hide the rest in a single "advanced" menu, or even get rid of the menu items altogether.
Put icons for the most important programs right on the desktop: Spreadsheet, Word Processor (not "Text Document" like Open Office says), etc.
By default, don't allow multiple desktops. Users who are advanced enough to understand the concept will know to ask you for it.
Finally, sit and watch users play with the system. Note any place that they frown and get confused. Don't believe self-deprecatory excuses that they just don't know what they're doing and they're sure the system is fine: if they don't know how to do something it's the systems' fault for not being easy enough.
I originally hated the name "Lindows". I would have prefered a clean break from Windows. However, I'm starting to come around to the name from a marketing perspective. "Lindows" may serve as an enticing transition for Windows-addicts, sorta the methadone of the closed source.
I think the ACLU is using some pretty lame statistics this time. (Claimer: I'm a member of the ACLU.) If the recognition software can get close to half right, then the system can notify a human who can take a closer look on the monitor. If it still looks like a match on the monitor, a plainclothes security guard can check in person. So, assuming the number of hits is manageable, the only false positives you'll get are those that humans make. Of course, you'll get more.
I hate having public eyes everywhere now, but the statistical argument against them isn't going to work.
The "upgrading is the key" argument is deceptive because it uses truth to sidetrack you from more truth. Yes, you should do your upgrades. However, having made an effective plan to keep up with upgrades, there is still the decision of which software to use.
It's like choosing an airplane: the most important factor in air safety is the pilot. So be a good pilot. The first thing a good pilot does is make sure the plane is make sure he's flying a well-built plane.
The increased pace of security patches from MS may indicate that they're finally serious about security. If so, the OSS movement needs to be wary. Windows lack-of-security has always been a major harping point for the OSS movement. Yes, I'm glad for the windows-users of the world that their OS is getting better, but those of us who preach OSS to our colleagues and friends need to be aware that a major talking point may be going away. If MS really has decided that Security Counts, they've got pretty deep pockets to do something about it. Sun and IBM have both proven that the closed-source system can in fact produce pretty secure operating systems.
Microsoft is a formidable opponent. They're very rich and very good at using those riches to get what they want. We need to avoid being smug.
Slashdot Mirror
... and skepticism is a good thing. This may be more Hype than Hal. Even so, it's intriguing. Unless the reality is really that the robot simply went straight forward like a soccer ball it managed to do at least some basic navigation and had the motivation to do so. What makes this story interesting is that the robot was "on its own" for a short while. We've all had programs do unexpected things, but I doubt many of us have had the computer get up and walk out into the parking lot.
It's possible that this was a stunt, but the event described is hardly too outrageous to have happened naturally. The robot doesn't need to know about "outside" to manage its way out the door. It may simply have had the concept of "keep going" and did just that. It doesn't take a robot to make it out the door... remember the song about "my poor meatball".
Who knows, there may be an evolutionary angle to this. Robots that are deemed boring by humans will have the best chance of evolving unfettered, sort of like fish with untasty names.
It's amazing how emotional people get in their resistence to this wonderfully simple and handy security check. See this discussion for an example of the lengths to which people will go to avoid putting a simple T in their code.
What??!! How dare you be polite! Don't you know this is Slashdot? :-)
My wife Starflower and I once actually succeeded in reading the tag numbers off a pair of live, conscious Canadian Geese. Believe me, it wasn't easy. We discovered that Canadian Geese are a lot like programmers: they can be bribed with food. The father goose was easy... he wanted the food and was willing to get close. Mother goose was harder: she was more wary of us, and to make matters worse, her tag was upside down. Her tactic worked: she got a lot more food.
Who said anything about making a living with open source? I don't know anyone who does that either, and I doubt many people will. That's the point: open source is a highly successful leverage technique, not a business model unto itself. People who use and produce open source are virtually always engaged in some other activity which is helped in part by open source and which finances, among other things, open source.
I've heard this argument before: that open source programmers are going to starve because they don't have a way to make money on their efforts. Now for a reality check: where are all these starving open source programmers? Why are all the people I know who actively contribute to open source projects so darn wealthy?
John: Hey Steve, here's a hundred bucks for you!
Steve: Really??!!
John: Psych!
To Lucia of the P&B: thanks for the memories. I still think of you whenever I type a smiley.... you were the one who told me about them. :-)
Is he smoking a green, jagged cigarette, or is a green thunderbolt protruding from his right cheek? Which of those downward bent lines is supposed to be his mouth? The image looks like something from a dream after I've had too much pizza before going to bed.
Yes, this is exactly a win for Linux, and for Open Source in general. At this point Open Source is still winning the easy converts. As it gets more popular, it will get the more difficult converts. The more big-business, mission-critical apps there are out there that run on open source the better for the movement as a whole. It's getting harder and harder for MS to insist that open source is a fringe movement and that it can't be trusted. That's a Good Thing for Open Source.
Gould was one of the most prominent people in the scientific community to defend the idea that the millenium started on Jan 1, 2000. He agreed with the idea that the concept of the "millenium" was an arbitrary one and that we were free to decide when our milleniums start. I cited him in a lot of those annoying "when does the millenium start" conversations we all had to endure during that time.
Second, nobody's saying anything about preventing the users from learning. They will be welcome to learn how to configure their desktops as they like. It's just not likely that the first thing they will want to learn on their new system is how to configure their desktops.
I bet if you sat a windows word user down at a freshly installed/configured Redhat 7.3 system running GNOME and openoffice and told them they had to learn how to use that system or leave the company they'd be printing out reports for you in less than an hour.
If the sys admin did that he'd be booted out of the company in less than an hour.
I don't doubt that the customization features of Gnome serve you very well, but customization just isn't what most users want in a desktop interface. They want simplicity. My suggestion that the sys admin configure their machines to as simple a UI as possible addresses that need. Later if the users want to customize their desktops they can certainly do so.
Or, heaven forbid, the icons actually say "Email" and "Word Processor".
One added point: use LTSP. By maintaining a central control on the system you can more easily respond to users' needs.
This is a small change to the way KDE and Gnome look, but I think it's an important change: the typical Gnome taskbar along the bottom is three times as big as Windows users are used to, and is cluttered with a bunch of useless toys. Get rid of everything except the buttons that indicate which programs are running, and of course the button that users think of as the "start" button.
The default menus in most distros are also way too extensive. They tend to have the same thing several times in several places. Pick the dozon or so programs your users generally need and put them in the main "start" menu. Hide the rest in a single "advanced" menu, or even get rid of the menu items altogether.
Put icons for the most important programs right on the desktop: Spreadsheet, Word Processor (not "Text Document" like Open Office says), etc.
By default, don't allow multiple desktops. Users who are advanced enough to understand the concept will know to ask you for it.
Finally, sit and watch users play with the system. Note any place that they frown and get confused. Don't believe self-deprecatory excuses that they just don't know what they're doing and they're sure the system is fine: if they don't know how to do something it's the systems' fault for not being easy enough.
I originally hated the name "Lindows". I would have prefered a clean break from Windows. However, I'm starting to come around to the name from a marketing perspective. "Lindows" may serve as an enticing transition for Windows-addicts, sorta the methadone of the closed source.
I hate having public eyes everywhere now, but the statistical argument against them isn't going to work.
It's like choosing an airplane: the most important factor in air safety is the pilot. So be a good pilot. The first thing a good pilot does is make sure the plane is make sure he's flying a well-built plane.
Microsoft is a formidable opponent. They're very rich and very good at using those riches to get what they want. We need to avoid being smug.
They may have cool chips, but when Slashdot makes their site SlashHot they apparently can't handle it.
Were these experiments performed for Starfleet? His presentation logo looks like the Starfleet logo.