Every one of those shots are blatant rip offs of Apple. My god when will OSS developers grow a pair and go out on a limb to try something new?
Sure. From the User perspective, looking at screenshots, it probably looks that way.
You're giving Apple too much credit. The news here is not 'Oooh.. now we can look more like OS X', the news here is 'Now we have proper support for the things OS X supports'.
There is a difference here, because what 'the things OS X supports' are, by which I mean the 2D rendering API, is not a thing developed by Apple alone. Firstly, Apple's Quartz uses the PDF rendering model, which was created by Adobe, and PDF was in turn based on PostScript.
That this is a good way to do 2D graphics is a no-brainer. Postscript was invented in the early 80's. The Mac later supported it's own kind of device-independent images (QuickDraw, and PICT files). Windows had Metafiles, and GEM (if anyone here used the DOS or Atari version) had it too.
Given the success of Postscript and PDF, it's pretty natural to support the things they do. But Adobe (creators of PS and PDF), shouldn't get all credit either. They just implemented stuff developed by others, like Porter/Duff compositing. (Another early 80's innovation)
So basically, none of this stuff is actually new. It has simply come of age. Apple has been in the forefront, and that is tribute to them. But if you think that this is all Apple's ideas.. You are wrong.
A lot of the G* items don't stand for "Gnome", but a good number for "GTK" or "GNU"
At least that means the KDE guys the benifit of consistency.. A GTK application IS a Gnome application. You don't see very many KDE apps with "Q" for Qt though.
It is apparant that you don't have any idea what I am talking about and have not recently filed for a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
No. I don't. You have not provided any links to any relevant legislature showing how this is a law, or how it violates your constitutional rights.
Please explain this.
The site you referred to states the following: PAIR is intended to run under existing technology and adhere to policies, procedures and guidelines issued by USPTO. USPTO policy currently requires a web browser compatibility at, or above, Netscape Navigator version 6.0 or Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1. USPTO does not endorse these products, however, these are the products that have been tested so far.
I see no IE requirement there.
However, it does require Windows: PAIR is intended to run under existing technology and adhere to policies, procedures and guidelines issued by USPTO. For PAIR, USPTO policy currently requires a computer platform compatibility at, or above, Windows 98, 2000, NT, or XP. USPTO does not endorse these products, however, these are the products that have been tested so far.
Yet, it clearly states that the USPTO does not endorse these products, which you alledge.
How did this blatant, loud, nonsense get modded up? Since this is Slashdot, any rant against the USPTO must be true?
But very few are aware that U.S. Patent Office is violating our constitutional right by promulgating and enforcing a Microsoft-IE-only policy.
I certainly am unaware of that. Which constitutional right? Can you point to me where in the US Constitution it says that you have a right to recive patent documents on-line in whatever format you wish?
[bla, bla, indignation..] The United States Patent Office, without much notice, now requires that, in order to download those references, you must register with the Patent Office, then the Patent Office will install a program ON YOUR MACHINE WHICH MUST BE RUNNING MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER UNDER MICROSOFT WINDOWS to allow you to communicate with the Patent Office before you can download those prior art patents that our government must furnish you as a matter of our constitution right and as part of the filing fees paid to the Patent Office.
This is all bullshit. Please point me to where the USPTO requires you to run IE. And even if IE was required telephone, mail or fax ordering is clearly available.
Thus, basically it has boiled down to this stupid law: if you want to receive a patent, you are now REQUIRED BY LAW to have a machine with Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer in your office.
Pure bullshit. What law? Which US Federal Code? The policy of a government office isn't a law. Not that I can find any such policy either.
In other words, in order to exercise your constitutional rights, you must have a machine that runs Microsoft Windows and you must set Microsoft Internet Explorer as your default browser.
Again no hint as to which constitutional rights you are talking about. Or what policy.
The United States Patent and Trademark can implement and insist such a stupid policy because it doesn't have to compete. But what about those 4000+ patent attorneys? How come all of them are so quiet? Are all of them idiots?
(*Assuming that since electrons tunnel, that it is a 'very real possibility' that deuterium can although it's 3600 times heavier and the dependence is inverse-exponential is quite ignorant.)
Unless you take big vacations, if you're not completely getting away from work, ever, then you're going to wind up with a clinical depression sooner or later.
I don't really think so.. See, I can't exactly see the evolutionary advantage in being able perform lots of work tasks at the same time. There isn't such a strong link between work performance and survival anymore.
Now.. a mutation enabling you to work, talk on the phone, and have sex at the same time, that would be an evolutionary advantage!
But I'll agree it'd be nice knowing these stress problems were only temporary.. solving themselves in a million years or so.
Basically, I'd like to see a good and definitive API for vector graphics. This is something still very lacking.
Preferably, the API would handle: * High-quality printing * Export to PS,SVG,PDF * Bitmap rendering (for on-screen drawing) * Support transparency * Be well integrated with the font API:s.
Basically, a unification of all 2d graphics things into one single device-independent API.
Apple already has something similar to this in Quartz.
Supposedly, Cairo is supposed to do this, but given that there is no real documentation or roadmap for it, it's hard to say how, when or if it will ever get there.
Okay, besides throwing out fallacies, can you make a reasonable argument that we are at the limit of our knowledge?
No, and I wouldn't either. But saying that one thing is impossible does not mean you need to know everything. Some things are known with greater certainty than others.
We know for instance that the earth currently isn't a flat disc. That's hardly something which is going to change, no matter how many scientific paradigm shifts come and go.
So my point is: To the degree anything can be known*, some things are so well-known that they are certain. And that applies just as well to possiblities as to impossibilities.
*Sure, you can deny that anything can be known at all, but then you're back in the swamp of philosophical scepticism. Which doesn't lead anywhere, because you can't build any knowledge or descern any thruths from it. It is also dishonest because people do not act as if nothing were certain. (The why-are-you-talking-to-me-if-you're-not-sure-I'm-h ere-argument.)
Saying "nothing is impossible" is in itself a logical fallacy of the exact same type as the scepticist "nothing is certain", and like it, it doesn't lead to any knowledge.
This is why we publish results, and have peer review.
Crackpots reviewing crackpots then. That's productive. Can you name any real scientific journals, in the field of nuclear physics, which have accepted papers on cold fusion?
We are in the infancy of this branch of science
Not really. Alchemy has been around for centuries. It's just not science.
Worst cast scenario: it doesn't work period. We have at least investigated another possiblity.
Science is not done through 'looking for things' just because you want them to be there. You need a reason to go looking for them.
If you don't have that, you are crossing the line straight into Bad Science. If you look hard enough for anything, you will invariably find it. The problem is, that doesn't mean it's actually there. It means you're fooling yourself.
The original cold fusion experiments could not be reproduced as they had been reported. End of story. If you have a genuine phenomenon, then that is causes for investigation. If you have a theoretical justification, that is cause for investigation. But just going off and trying to make it work for no other reason than that you want it to; That's not science.
Will anything major pop out of this research? Maybe, maybe not. But we are learning.
Obviously not.
At the very least, this should train another generation of people to not buy into hype one way or another.
If you don't buy the hype about cold fusion, why would you even think it's possible?
Yeah. Physically impossible. It would be cool if you could just, oh, 'tunnel' through the barrier or something, but that would be absurd...
Yes, it would. For the nuclear Strong Force to come into play, you have to get within 1E-15 m of the atomic nucleus.
The barrier is of course, inversely proportional to the distance. It's a huge barrier. What makes tunnelling especially bad is that it's exponentially dependent on the mass, potential, and distance involved.
Let's see.. Distance: Quite large. The Coulomb repulsion reaches very high forces far before you get anywhere near the nucleus. Potential: Very high, see above. Mass: Huge. Electrons tunnel a lot. A proton, with 1800 times the mass, does not. There are observed instances of proton tunneling, but not over a coulomb barrier.
This is absurd, both in theory and from available *reproducable* experiments.
IBM has historically been a friend of open hardware standards?
If they're trying to make that point.. well, it's just historical revisionism.
Yes, ISA was open. That's why IBM tried to push the MicroChannel bus architecture.
As for mainframes.. IBM invented what we now call FUD to battle Honeywell and Amdahl and the like.
And I'd like to see someone try and build a mainframe clone today. IBM has some seriously secret stuff in those boxes. My father is a mainframe veteran, and he knows some of this stuff. He can't say what, though, because he's under an NDA.
So if you're trying to float the idea that IBM builds hardware to open specifications and always has.. you're just wrong.
Sweden's population density is far more uniform than the US's.
You guess wrong.
Sweden has some dense areas (around Stockholm for instance), although never as dense as the 'megacities' of the US east of course. And some extremely empty areas as well.
In fact, most of Sweden is pretty empty. look here
Note that a significant part of the country is white. The white areas have less than 1 person per square kilometer, which is less than 0.38 persons per square mile.
How did this piece of misinformation get modded "insightful". It's plain wrong.
Sweden for instance, has had some government subsidizing of broadband. Sweden has no government monopoly on broadband services. (the old government-monopoly on telecom was deregulated 10 years ago)
This isn't anything unusual either. Governments often subsidize private industry in sectors which are considered strategically important for the country. (Can you say "military-industrial complex?")
Does this mean that the temperature differential created on the carbon nanotube wire that causes the current to flow won't ever reach equilibrium? Doesn't this seem too good to be true? Just keep blowing gas over the wire, and you'll have limitless energy.
No.. see, they're referring to something different here. That without any gas flow or anything, there can be a temperature difference on a nanotube which doesn't reach equillibrium. Now that is something which is remarkable, because it seems to violate the laws of thermodynamics. But it's not the case, of course. It's just an indication that nonotubes behave in strange non-classical ways.
This particular temperature doesn't create any current. The current comes from the system equillibrating, which this particular system doesn't. (even though there is an apparent temperature difference)
Now, if you blow gas over the nanotube, then you're creating an different, bigger, temperature gradient, one which does equillibrate. (only possibly not to zero, as one would normally expect)
It doesn't really matter that all the code samples came from Linux.
Any sufficiently large book can be turned into a verbatim copy of any other book. If you do that and present it to the court, under oath, as evidence of copyright infringement..
I have a hard time seeing how that would not be falsification of evidence or false testimony.
It's not about selling GPL software, it's about distributing GPL software under terms which are NOT in accordance with the GPL. For example, as far as I can tell from reading here, the Windows version source is not made available to anyone.
That is a violation of the GPL. And that would require the permission of all contributing authors, since they submitted their copyrighted work under the GPL license.
(Just in the same way as anyone else distributing GPL:ed software may not distribute it under any other terms than those of the GPL. It doesn't matter if you wrote 0% or 99% of it, as long as you are not the sole copyright owner, you will need license from those who are.)
I always though that the "proper" way to do this is to make people to bet for/against the event, odds are calculated as the ratio of $$ in those two pots. Then bookie loses nothing (and always gets his fee from both winners and losers).
Yes. That's how it's Usually Done.
It doesn't quite work for things over 100:1 odds, now does it, though? People simply don't take a long bet of $100 for a $1 payoff, no matter how certain.
So, yes, in these cases the odds are fixed numbers. Unless of course, they do get a bunch of people betting the other way.
Slashdot Mirror
Every one of those shots are blatant rip offs of Apple. My god when will OSS developers grow a pair and go out on a limb to try something new?
Sure. From the User perspective, looking at screenshots, it probably looks that way.
You're giving Apple too much credit. The news here is not 'Oooh.. now we can look more like OS X', the news here is 'Now we have proper support for the things OS X supports'.
There is a difference here, because what 'the things OS X supports' are, by which I mean the 2D rendering API, is not a thing developed by Apple alone. Firstly, Apple's Quartz uses the PDF rendering model, which was created by Adobe, and PDF was in turn based on PostScript.
That this is a good way to do 2D graphics is a no-brainer. Postscript was invented in the early 80's. The Mac later supported it's own kind of device-independent images (QuickDraw, and PICT files). Windows had Metafiles, and GEM (if anyone here used the DOS or Atari version) had it too.
Given the success of Postscript and PDF, it's pretty natural to support the things they do. But Adobe (creators of PS and PDF), shouldn't get all credit either. They just implemented stuff developed by others, like Porter/Duff compositing.
(Another early 80's innovation)
So basically, none of this stuff is actually new. It has simply come of age. Apple has been in the forefront, and that is tribute to them. But if you think that this is all Apple's ideas.. You are wrong.
A lot of the G* items don't stand for "Gnome", but a good number for "GTK" or "GNU"
At least that means the KDE guys the benifit of consistency.. A GTK application IS a Gnome application. You don't see very many KDE apps with "Q" for Qt though.
It is apparant that you don't have any idea what I am talking about and have not recently filed for a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
No. I don't. You have not provided any links to any relevant legislature showing how this is a law, or how it violates your constitutional rights.
Please explain this.
The site you referred to states the following:
PAIR is intended to run under existing technology and adhere to policies, procedures and guidelines issued by USPTO. USPTO policy currently requires a web browser compatibility at, or above, Netscape Navigator version 6.0 or Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1. USPTO does not endorse these products, however, these are the products that have been tested so far.
I see no IE requirement there.
However, it does require Windows:
PAIR is intended to run under existing technology and adhere to policies, procedures and guidelines issued by USPTO. For PAIR, USPTO policy currently requires a computer platform compatibility at, or above, Windows 98, 2000, NT, or XP. USPTO does not endorse these products, however, these are the products that have been tested so far.
Yet, it clearly states that the USPTO does not endorse these products, which you alledge.
How did this blatant, loud, nonsense get modded up? Since this is Slashdot, any rant against the USPTO must be true?
But very few are aware that U.S. Patent Office is violating our constitutional right by promulgating and enforcing a Microsoft-IE-only policy.
I certainly am unaware of that. Which constitutional right? Can you point to me where in the US Constitution it says that you have a right to recive patent documents on-line in whatever format you wish?
[bla, bla, indignation..] The United States Patent Office, without much notice, now requires that, in order to download those references, you must register with the Patent Office, then the Patent Office will install a program ON YOUR MACHINE WHICH MUST BE RUNNING MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER UNDER MICROSOFT WINDOWS to allow you to communicate with the Patent Office before you can download those prior art patents that our government must furnish you as a matter of our constitution right and as part of the filing fees paid to the Patent Office.
This is all bullshit. Please point me to where the USPTO requires you to run IE. And even if IE was required telephone, mail or fax ordering is clearly available.
Thus, basically it has boiled down to this stupid law: if you want to receive a patent, you are now REQUIRED BY LAW to have a machine with Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer in your office.
Pure bullshit. What law? Which US Federal Code? The policy of a government office isn't a law. Not that I can find any such policy either.
In other words, in order to exercise your constitutional rights, you must have a machine that runs Microsoft Windows and you must set Microsoft Internet Explorer as your default browser.
Again no hint as to which constitutional rights you are talking about. Or what policy.
The United States Patent and Trademark can implement and insist such a stupid policy because it doesn't have to compete. But what about those 4000+ patent attorneys? How come all of them are so quiet? Are all of them idiots?
Or, just perhaps, this policy doesn't EXIST?
Although you obviously don't really know what you're talking about*.
I have a longer response for you: here.
Enlighten yourself.
(*Assuming that since electrons tunnel, that it is a 'very real possibility' that deuterium can although it's 3600 times heavier and the dependence is inverse-exponential is quite ignorant.)
How can you accurately simulate the computer that is simulating the entire universe?
How can you draw an accurate world map? It wouldn't fit on the planet?!
The (obvious) answer is: Abstraction, my friend.
You know, that's not healthy.
Unless you take big vacations, if you're not completely getting away from work, ever, then you're going to wind up with a clinical depression sooner or later.
Either that or karoshi.
Yes. Although MIT kerberos is the most used one. (on *ix platforms.)
Another one is Heimdal.
And of course, the Microsoft-tweaked Windows 2000 Kerberos.
I don't really think so.. See, I can't exactly see the evolutionary advantage in being able perform lots of work tasks at the same time. There isn't such a strong link between work performance and survival anymore.
Now.. a mutation enabling you to work, talk on the phone, and have sex at the same time, that would be an evolutionary advantage!
But I'll agree it'd be nice knowing these stress problems were only temporary.. solving themselves in a million years or so.
There's a lot to be done in the field of API:s.
Basically, I'd like to see a good and definitive API for vector graphics. This is something still very lacking.
Preferably, the API would handle:
* High-quality printing
* Export to PS,SVG,PDF
* Bitmap rendering (for on-screen drawing)
* Support transparency
* Be well integrated with the font API:s.
Basically, a unification of all 2d graphics things into one single device-independent API.
Apple already has something similar to this in Quartz.
Supposedly, Cairo is supposed to do this, but given that there is no real documentation or roadmap for it, it's hard to say how, when or if it will ever get there.
Okay, besides throwing out fallacies, can you make a reasonable argument that we are at the limit of our knowledge?
h ere-argument.)
No, and I wouldn't either. But saying that one thing is impossible does not mean you need to know everything. Some things are known with greater certainty than others.
We know for instance that the earth currently isn't a flat disc. That's hardly something which is going to change, no matter how many scientific paradigm shifts come and go.
So my point is: To the degree anything can be known*, some things are so well-known that they are certain. And that applies just as well to possiblities as to impossibilities.
*Sure, you can deny that anything can be known at all, but then you're back in the swamp of philosophical scepticism. Which doesn't lead anywhere, because you can't build any knowledge or descern any thruths from it. It is also dishonest because people do not act as if nothing were certain. (The why-are-you-talking-to-me-if-you're-not-sure-I'm-
Saying "nothing is impossible" is in itself a logical fallacy of the exact same type as the scepticist "nothing is certain", and like it, it doesn't lead to any knowledge.
This is why we publish results, and have peer review.
Crackpots reviewing crackpots then. That's productive. Can you name any real scientific journals, in the field of nuclear physics, which have accepted papers on cold fusion?
We are in the infancy of this branch of science
Not really. Alchemy has been around for centuries. It's just not science.
Worst cast scenario: it doesn't work period. We have at least investigated another possiblity.
Science is not done through 'looking for things' just because you want them to be there. You need a reason to go looking for them.
If you don't have that, you are crossing the line straight into Bad Science. If you look hard enough for anything, you will invariably find it. The problem is, that doesn't mean it's actually there. It means you're fooling yourself.
The original cold fusion experiments could not be reproduced as they had been reported. End of story. If you have a genuine phenomenon, then that is causes for investigation. If you have a theoretical justification, that is cause for investigation. But just going off and trying to make it work for no other reason than that you want it to; That's not science.
Will anything major pop out of this research? Maybe, maybe not. But we are learning.
Obviously not.
At the very least, this should train another generation of people to not buy into hype one way or another.
If you don't buy the hype about cold fusion, why would you even think it's possible?
Just as an example: Proton tunnelling has been observed over 0.5 Å with a 2E-23 J barrier. (as a contribting effect in hydroxyl group proton exchange)
It takes 100,000,000 times that energy to get a proton just within 1E-13 m of another proton.
Now consider that the tunneling rate is exponentially dependent on the barrier. Uh-huh.
Yeah. Physically impossible. It would be cool if you could just, oh, 'tunnel' through the barrier or something, but that would be absurd...
Yes, it would.
For the nuclear Strong Force to come into play, you have to get within 1E-15 m of the atomic nucleus.
The barrier is of course, inversely proportional to the distance. It's a huge barrier. What makes tunnelling especially bad is that it's exponentially dependent on the mass, potential, and distance involved.
Let's see..
Distance: Quite large. The Coulomb repulsion reaches very high forces far before you get anywhere near the nucleus.
Potential: Very high, see above.
Mass: Huge. Electrons tunnel a lot. A proton, with 1800 times the mass, does not. There are observed instances of proton tunneling, but not over a coulomb barrier.
This is absurd, both in theory and from available *reproducable* experiments.
Nothing is impossible.
So it's not impossible that that cliché is wrong, then.
If you think the limit of our knowledge is already in textbooks, you have quite a rude awakening coming.
Straw man.
IBM has historically been a friend of open hardware standards?
If they're trying to make that point.. well, it's just historical revisionism.
Yes, ISA was open. That's why IBM tried to push the MicroChannel bus architecture.
As for mainframes.. IBM invented what we now call FUD to battle Honeywell and Amdahl and the like.
And I'd like to see someone try and build a mainframe clone today. IBM has some seriously secret stuff in those boxes. My father is a mainframe veteran, and he knows some of this stuff. He can't say what, though, because he's under an NDA.
So if you're trying to float the idea that IBM builds hardware to open specifications and always has.. you're just wrong.
Sweden's population density is far more uniform than the US's.
You guess wrong.
Sweden has some dense areas (around Stockholm for instance), although never as dense as the 'megacities' of the US east of course. And some extremely empty areas as well.
In fact, most of Sweden is pretty empty. look here
Note that a significant part of the country is white. The white areas have less than 1 person per square kilometer, which is less than 0.38 persons per square mile.
So what were you saying?
How did this piece of misinformation get modded "insightful". It's plain wrong.
Sweden for instance, has had some government subsidizing of broadband. Sweden has no government monopoly on broadband services.
(the old government-monopoly on telecom was deregulated 10 years ago)
This isn't anything unusual either. Governments often subsidize private industry in sectors which are considered strategically important for the country.
(Can you say "military-industrial complex?")
Does this mean that the temperature differential created on the carbon nanotube wire that causes the current to flow won't ever reach equilibrium? Doesn't this seem too good to be true? Just keep blowing gas over the wire, and you'll have limitless energy.
No.. see, they're referring to something different here. That without any gas flow or anything, there can be a temperature difference on a nanotube which doesn't reach equillibrium. Now that is something which is remarkable, because it seems to violate the laws of thermodynamics. But it's not the case, of course. It's just an indication that nonotubes behave in strange non-classical ways.
This particular temperature doesn't create any current. The current comes from the system equillibrating, which this particular system doesn't. (even though there is an apparent temperature difference)
Now, if you blow gas over the nanotube, then you're creating an different, bigger, temperature gradient, one which does equillibrate.
(only possibly not to zero, as one would normally expect)
Clearer?
It doesn't really matter that all the code samples came from Linux.
Any sufficiently large book can be turned into a verbatim copy of any other book. If you do that and present it to the court, under oath, as evidence of copyright infringement..
I have a hard time seeing how that would not be falsification of evidence or false testimony.
No text.. and here I go totally offtopic?
Are you the same MenTaLguY as the Inkscape/Sodipodi guy?
It's a nice piece of software. My regards.
"Freedom can only be found down the barrel of a shotgun......."
Mao-Tse-Tung
I had no idea he was an NRA member.
That's irrelevant.
It's not about selling GPL software, it's about distributing GPL software under terms which are NOT in accordance with the GPL. For example, as far as I can tell from reading here, the Windows version source is not made available to anyone.
That is a violation of the GPL. And that would require the permission of all contributing authors, since they submitted their copyrighted work under the GPL license.
(Just in the same way as anyone else distributing GPL:ed software may not distribute it under any other terms than those of the GPL. It doesn't matter if you wrote 0% or 99% of it, as long as you are not the sole copyright owner, you will need license from those who are.)
I always though that the "proper" way to do this is to make people to bet for/against the event, odds are calculated as the ratio of $$ in those two pots. Then bookie loses nothing (and always gets his fee from both winners and losers).
Yes. That's how it's Usually Done.
It doesn't quite work for things over 100:1 odds, now does it, though? People simply don't take a long bet of $100 for a $1 payoff, no matter how certain.
So, yes, in these cases the odds are fixed numbers. Unless of course, they do get a bunch of people betting the other way.
Odds on the bookie being contactable in 6 years to pay out on all the bets he lost: 1,000,000:1
Hmm.. that'd be a 1/500 chance for each Ladbrokes 2000 betting shops in the UK then..