I don't have a reference handy but there was a study of total caloric output (aka exercise) for users of electric bikes vs. traditional bikes. The average energy output per week was higher for the electric bike population. This counter-intuitive result was because the bike was used for more trips. Every rider is going to choose bike vs. car based primarily on a personal time/effort/distance judgement. An electric assist bike ends up getting chosen for a far higher percentage of these trips than a traditional bike. The end result is that electric bike riders burn more calories over a given period of time than traditional bike riders simply because they are going to be riding more often.
Except he has actually captured the one thing a demo can't. The emotional aspect of becoming a part of a game. Why do you need a reviewer to explain the graphics, the controls, the endlessly pedantic list of details that would be answered with a ten minute download and 2 minutes of gameplay? This is like asking someone to describe a picture when they could just print the damn thing. I want to know the things you can only know after tens of hours of obsessive and total devotion to a gameworld. I want to know how it is going to feel. I want a small hint at who I will be in this game. I want to know what it will mean to me.
#1 - Digital audio : Sonar, Reaktor, Acid etc.
Linux is at least ten years behind
on supporting this kind of thing.
#2 - Movies! Movies! I don't need a tivo,
I just download TV shows off kazaa. The
codecs are automagically installed.
Porn etc. goes here! P2P is maximized
under this OS.
#3 - Unreal tournament
And no it does not work with my particular
Matrox card under on my particular linux
distro. I worked on this for two hours and
gave up because I can dual boot every
friday for the next year and it would
still use less of my time than
getting the damn card to work with this
one program.
#4 - Warcraft 3
God I love the Gladiator MOD
#5 - Stability
Sorry but the DESKTOP
applications are much more stable in the
windows world. Nearly every X app I have
ever used has crashed on me for no
discernable reason. Why? I don't know.
Why does Nautilus crash 2/3 of the way
through a large copy on a samba share?
I can mount the thing with smbmount and
copy it with the command line and everything
works great. Use Nautilus, it get to 90% and
it crashes every time.
People have got to finally admit that good
bug free GUI coding is just as hard if not
harder than service programming.
#6 - Configuration
Ok, one can do anything with linux in
theory. But, there are very few standards
for many important things in the OS. Linux
lets you get at everything by exposing its
entire internal state to the
scripting environment. This means anyone
can open up Vi and do some amazing stuff.
You customize it for the most part by
issuing a command into the system with a
script and you have now customized your
system. So if install a new app and want
to add it to the path for some reason. I
just crack open a file and do it. Of course
I can't be certain which file will be
called when and under what circumstances.
I'll clarify this problem. We have a very expensive server app that installs around 200 megs of data. It is Java so we support both linux and windows (and solaris). Part of the install has to set the OUR_MAGIC environment variable. On windows, there is a library that abstracts this out for you supplied by the OS. I know that our installation will work FOREVER because this abstraction is maintained by the vendor. On linux the environment variable is shoved into.bashrc but this will only work under certain limited conditions and will probably break the second anyone changes their boot process or upgrades their distribution. Will the value be set in X or only at the command line? Was it set for one user or for everyone? If they use a different shell. What happens? Why the hell should my java app care if you run bash or csh?
The concept of an environment variable is universal to most operating systems yet linux continues to force us to reverse engineer this particular systems implementation of this universal concept. For the user this is fantastic because they can tweak like a mad monkey. For the programmer you can never ever be sure your product will actually run after an install.
Windows more cleanly separates configuration and implementation. In windows you tell the system what you want to do and the system figures out how. On linux you tell the system what to do and it has no idea why or what was occomplished.
If you are willing to actually write a program that uses the APIs, windows is nearly as customizable as linux and your mods won't break with every little system upgrade.
I find it amazing that a community that vilifies microsoft for scripting in emails, movie files and the like uses the same mechanism for linking the various parts of its OS together. Yes it is harder to describe what you want rather than how to do it but it is worth the effort. Stop being so damn lazy.
#7 - Office
I have pushed for Open Office in my office
for years. It is not going to happen. When
you import and export every single time you
edit the file. Wierd stuff starts to happen.
I don't know much about encryption and am curious to know why we don't just choose some arbitrarily high key-length like 500 bits. What is the rational for slowly increasing key size every year? Is there some kind of computational limitation that makes longer lengths undesirable?
Boycotting the RIAA is functionally identical to commiting suicide as a method of "fighting" them. The effect on their bottom line is the same. The boycott of an entity with no competition is meaningless. Unless you can put your money into a visible and viable competitor with different business practices, the boycott will not be noticed and will simply be more ammo for the argument that sharing is stealing sales. Since no such competitor exists we need more aggressive and drastic measures such as direct political opposition via donations and civil disobedience at the individual level.
Another way you can help fight the DMCA is to attend the "Free Dmitry Sklyarov March" on the Federal Building in San Francisco on Thursday, 30 August 2001.
How many geeks are left in San Francisco during burning man weekend?
If governments charge an arbitrary tax on each system based on its ability to duplicate copyrighted works you may find a near future where linux is no longer free because it has been taxed to death. Meanwhile, a media secured system like Win2003 may not be. You may find yourself with two choices, a windows system that is completely media secure running on identity checking hard drives, network cards and the like which has no taxes or, a 'free' linux system with simple hardware and hundreds of dollars worth of taxes going straight to the corporations you are trying to avoid. In the end, it is the same as always, the only ones with any freedom are the ones with enough money to pay for it.
How about a memory mapped file system that incorporates the ip address space? Hmmm.. perhaps we need to jump straight to 256 bit busses.
Re:Why win98's GUI sucks-- Too many clicks needed
on
The ROX Desktop
·
· Score: 1
This is simply not true. I rarely use the mouse for most operations under windows. Anything in the start menu is "clickable" with keyboard. I swap from app to app with alt-tab. Use alt for the menus. TAB for changing focus within an app. The file manager is completely keyboard usable and works sooth and fast. Hit WIN-E and the explorer pops up. Move to the directory you want, expand it with the space bar. Hit tab, select your file. Hit ctrl-c. Hit backspace to go up a directory, etc.
Most of my X based linux apps don't even let me use the menus without the mouse. Trying to pretend that X is less mouse dependent because you can run non-x applications that don't use the mouse is a poor argument.
I don't think I have used a mouse for file operations under windows for months and this is in a pure GUI environment. I am constantly frustrated by the lack of standards for how to control X applications from a keyboard, efficiently and quickly.
My company informs me that the Postal Service is in the process of implementing an e-mail address system for every location in the country. I can e-mail your physical address and the Post Office will print the letter and deliver it to your door. Sort of like a telegram. The printing facilities are supposedly very good. Email yourself a massive pdf and it will be delivered the next day. Byebye kinkos.
PS. I work in the IT section of a large printing company that actually considers this step as direct competition. Print on demand sort of thing.
I had my first complete breakdown at age 22 while programming for Mindscape/Software Toolworks. It taught me that nothing in life is worth that kind of misery. I have no fear of demanding a work place that I can stay sane in because getting fired is nothing compared to letting your life be destroyed. Today I am 28 and I skateboard an hour a day and kickbox three times a week. I am healthy and modestly happy and would rather go to jail than be that miserable again. NOTHING is worth it. Not love, money, success, or pride. Use all your efforts to discover what makes you happy and make sure you do that thing. Oh yah, and give up caffeine. I was up to four pots a day when the end came.
The main reason I dislike MP3 is that all the encoding algorithms are covered by aggressively enforced patents. Anyone can write a decoder but you have to license an encoder from the patent holders (Frauenhofer). This severely limits the format's usefullness as a general purpose sound format. WAV/AU files may suck up space but at least I can manipulate and export them without violating somebody's patent or paying a license fee. MP3 is good for players but little else and should be replaced by a standard with a better license.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have a reference handy but there was a study of total caloric output (aka exercise) for users of electric bikes vs. traditional bikes. The average energy output per week was higher for the electric bike population. This counter-intuitive result was because the bike was used for more trips. Every rider is going to choose bike vs. car based primarily on a personal time/effort/distance judgement. An electric assist bike ends up getting chosen for a far higher percentage of these trips than a traditional bike. The end result is that electric bike riders burn more calories over a given period of time than traditional bike riders simply because they are going to be riding more often.
...and has been for at least 20-30 minutes. I guess they didn't expect anyone to actually check out the site.
Perhaps you have figured out why the whole crew seemed so obsessed with 20th century music and literature. It was the only material out of copyright.
Except he has actually captured the one thing a demo can't. The emotional aspect of becoming a part of a game. Why do you need a reviewer to explain the graphics, the controls, the endlessly pedantic list of details that would be answered with a ten minute download and 2 minutes of gameplay? This is like asking someone to describe a picture when they could just print the damn thing. I want to know the things you can only know after tens of hours of obsessive and total devotion to a gameworld. I want to know how it is going to feel. I want a small hint at who I will be in this game. I want to know what it will mean to me.
#1 - Digital audio : Sonar, Reaktor, Acid etc.
.bashrc but this will only work under certain limited conditions and will probably break the second anyone changes their boot process or upgrades their distribution. Will the value be set in X or only at the command line? Was it set for one user or for everyone? If they use a different shell. What happens? Why the hell should my java app care if you run bash or csh?
Linux is at least ten years behind
on supporting this kind of thing.
#2 - Movies! Movies! I don't need a tivo,
I just download TV shows off kazaa. The
codecs are automagically installed.
Porn etc. goes here! P2P is maximized
under this OS.
#3 - Unreal tournament
And no it does not work with my particular
Matrox card under on my particular linux
distro. I worked on this for two hours and
gave up because I can dual boot every
friday for the next year and it would
still use less of my time than
getting the damn card to work with this
one program.
#4 - Warcraft 3
God I love the Gladiator MOD
#5 - Stability
Sorry but the DESKTOP
applications are much more stable in the
windows world. Nearly every X app I have
ever used has crashed on me for no
discernable reason. Why? I don't know.
Why does Nautilus crash 2/3 of the way
through a large copy on a samba share?
I can mount the thing with smbmount and
copy it with the command line and everything
works great. Use Nautilus, it get to 90% and
it crashes every time.
People have got to finally admit that good
bug free GUI coding is just as hard if not
harder than service programming.
#6 - Configuration
Ok, one can do anything with linux in
theory. But, there are very few standards
for many important things in the OS. Linux
lets you get at everything by exposing its
entire internal state to the
scripting environment. This means anyone
can open up Vi and do some amazing stuff.
You customize it for the most part by
issuing a command into the system with a
script and you have now customized your
system. So if install a new app and want
to add it to the path for some reason. I
just crack open a file and do it. Of course
I can't be certain which file will be
called when and under what circumstances.
I'll clarify this problem. We have a very expensive server app that installs around 200 megs of data. It is Java so we support both linux and windows (and solaris). Part of the install has
to set the OUR_MAGIC environment variable. On windows, there is a library that abstracts this out for you supplied by the OS. I know that our installation will work FOREVER because this abstraction is maintained by the vendor. On linux the environment variable is shoved into
The concept of an environment variable is universal to most operating systems yet linux continues to force us to reverse engineer this particular systems implementation of this universal concept. For the user this is fantastic because they can tweak like a mad monkey. For the programmer you can never ever be sure your product will actually run after an install.
Windows more cleanly separates configuration and implementation. In windows you tell the system what you want to do and the system figures out how. On linux you tell the system what to do and it has no idea why or what was occomplished.
If you are willing to actually write a program that uses the APIs, windows is nearly as customizable as linux and your mods won't break with every little system upgrade.
I find it amazing that a community that vilifies microsoft for scripting in emails, movie files and the like uses the same mechanism for linking the various parts of its OS together. Yes it is harder to describe what you want rather than how to do it but it is worth the effort. Stop being so damn lazy.
#7 - Office
I have pushed for Open Office in my office
for years. It is not going to happen. When
you import and export every single time you
edit the file. Wierd stuff starts to happen.
PS. I hate office so damn much.
I don't know much about encryption and am curious to know why we don't just choose some arbitrarily high key-length like 500 bits. What is the rational for slowly increasing key size every year? Is there some kind of computational limitation that makes longer lengths undesirable?
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG
Boycotting the RIAA is functionally identical to commiting suicide as a method of "fighting" them. The effect on their bottom line is the same. The boycott of an entity with no competition is meaningless. Unless you can put your money into a visible and viable competitor with different business practices, the boycott will not be noticed and will simply be more ammo for the argument that sharing is stealing sales. Since no such competitor exists we need more aggressive and drastic measures such as direct political opposition via donations and civil disobedience at the individual level.
Another way you can help fight the DMCA is to attend the "Free Dmitry Sklyarov March" on the Federal Building in San Francisco on Thursday, 30 August 2001.
How many geeks are left in San Francisco during burning man weekend?
If governments charge an arbitrary tax on each system based on its ability to duplicate copyrighted works you may find a near future where linux is no longer free because it has been taxed to death. Meanwhile, a media secured system like Win2003 may not be. You may find yourself with two choices, a windows system that is completely media secure running on identity checking hard drives, network cards and the like which has no taxes or, a 'free' linux system with simple hardware and hundreds of dollars worth of taxes going straight to the corporations you are trying to avoid. In the end, it is the same as always, the only ones with any freedom are the ones with enough money to pay for it.
A 3d 'tribute' to scorched earth was made a few years ago called 'Blast Doors'. It has network play as well. Only runs on directX.
check it out
http://www.fiends.com/Blast.stm
How about a memory mapped file system that incorporates the ip address space? Hmmm.. perhaps we need to jump straight to 256 bit busses.
This is simply not true. I rarely use the mouse for most operations under windows. Anything in the start menu is "clickable" with keyboard. I swap from app to app with alt-tab. Use alt for the menus. TAB for changing focus within an app. The file manager is completely keyboard usable and works sooth and fast. Hit WIN-E and the explorer pops up. Move to the directory you want, expand it with the space bar. Hit tab, select your file. Hit ctrl-c. Hit backspace to go up a directory, etc.
Most of my X based linux apps don't even let me use the menus without the mouse. Trying to pretend that X is less mouse dependent because you can run non-x applications that don't use the mouse is a poor argument.
I don't think I have used a mouse for file operations under windows for months and this is in a pure GUI environment. I am constantly frustrated by the lack of standards for how to control X applications from a keyboard, efficiently and quickly.
My company informs me that the Postal Service is in the process of implementing an e-mail address system for every location in the country. I can e-mail your physical address and the Post Office will print the letter and deliver it to your door. Sort of like a telegram. The printing facilities are supposedly very good. Email yourself a massive pdf and it will be delivered the next day. Byebye kinkos.
PS. I work in the IT section of a large printing company that actually considers this step as direct competition. Print on demand sort of thing.
-- All my friends are high or naked.
I had my first complete breakdown at age 22 while programming for Mindscape/Software Toolworks. It taught me that nothing in life is worth that kind of misery. I have no fear of demanding a work place that I can stay sane in because getting fired is nothing compared to letting your life be destroyed. Today I am 28 and I skateboard an hour a day and kickbox three times a week. I am healthy and modestly happy and would rather go to jail than be that miserable again. NOTHING is worth it. Not love, money, success, or pride. Use all your efforts to discover what makes you happy and make sure you do that thing. Oh yah, and give up caffeine. I was up to four pots a day when the end came.
Heehee!
The main reason I dislike MP3 is that all the encoding algorithms are covered by aggressively enforced patents. Anyone can write a decoder but you have to license an encoder from the patent holders (Frauenhofer). This severely limits the format's usefullness as a general purpose sound format. WAV/AU files may suck up space but at least I can manipulate and export them without violating somebody's patent or paying a license fee. MP3 is good for players but little else and should be replaced by a standard with a better license.