Did you notice the second part of the question? The part about ``less code''?
Especially since we're talking about running in a mainframe/server environment, where you'd use a stripped down, GUI-less version of NT...
Oh, wait. You can't.
Other Unices may have better design than Linux (I know very little here, so I can't give any real examples), but NT is *not* a paragon of lightweight design.
or somesuch? Hell, it's not like the publishers get kickbacks from the library for every person who rents their books. And better yet, they'd have no reason to worry about everyone pirating a copy---there'd be no reason to, when you could just fetch it from the local (or not so local) library.
Ah, bliss. Probably never happen, but it would be *very* cool if it did.
The motherboard manuals that come in the box are frequently available (I know Abit does this) online in spiffy full-color PDF versions... I know, motherboards aren't cars, but it's a start.
I swear, making a PS/PDF interpreter for an eBook reader would instantly make available a gargantual pre-existing library. So why don't they do it?
They're all useless bloody morons! Ah yes, *that* was the reason.
Now, if only they were written in an easy-to-use, consistent, archiveable, open typesetting format like, oh, I don't know, could it be... TeX?
Seriously, they should set up some simple macros and produce documents in TeX format. Or maybe LaTeX, since there are exporters to make plain crApSCII text out of sweet, sweet LaTeX.
If everyone published in PostScript, or even PDF, or just opened the reader so that different interpreters could be loaded onto the same platform, there wouldn't be this problem.
This is from an email I wrote to a friend of mine who requested some references after I gave him the RenderMan Interface Specification 3.1, avaiable at pixar.com.)
You asked me where other free references etc could be
found online.
Hogan Books has a pretty nice list:
ftp://hoganbooks.com/weball.zip
`Numerical Recipes in C/F77/F90'. I think it may be
included above.
http://www.ulib.org/webRoot/Books/Numerical_Reci pe s/
Mostly science books, but has `A Simplified
Introduction to LaTeX'.
http://samizdat.mines.edu/
Of course, the Linux Documentation Project has its
HOWTOs and mini-HOWTOs and Guides in.ps or.pdf or
sometimes.dvi format:
Heh. Actually, I was talking more about my jujutsu (he spells it that way) instructor. He's this little tubby Greek guy.
Eh, I'm not too crazy about most Eastern culture. Too little individuality, which sort of goes along with tradition and respect and so on.
People think of `Sensei' as meaning `teacher', but it literally means `born before'. Luckily, `born' is interpreted to mean `started doing X'.
And I have really no idea how to feel about my elders, my father especially. He spent ten years in college, and is relatively esteemed in his profession, but frequently seems incapable of expending the mental effort to avoid asking brain-numbingly stupid questions sometimes.
Yes, ``Kitten'' was phenomenal. Even if the `crotch' gag got a little old. I still vote for the whole K'Z'K/Stormbreaker arc as ``best... episode(s)... ever!'' 'Cause they were. I didn't know you could do that with online comics, but Pete Abrams did it. A story arc of depth and complexity to rival the graphic novel. With lots of slapstick.
But I beg to differ on your other point---even when Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes were bad, they were still good. Sluggy is just... dull right now.
I suppose I was just spoiled because I really, really enjoyed the long, involved story arcs, and this seems like it's lowering itself from `Non Sequitur' to `Garfield'.
And not all long arc are good... GPF had some inklings of that floating around ("... the GAMESTER!"), but the creator just does much better with short, punchline-y strips.
And, of course, THL/SexyLosers has *no* plot, unless you count running gags as plot.
Perhaps Sluggy is being ignored because it sucks right now.
No, seriously. The whole `Stormbreaker Saga' was incredibly good. I read three years of the strip in two afternoons. But lately, Pete Abrams has taken to wholesale quoting of pop culture with a small dash of funny on the top.
For Sluggy's sake, Pete, LOBO hasn't been cool for almost ten fscking years!
Plus, Pete's not on Keenspot. Not they didn't mention BBoCS or SexyLosers (formerly THL) either.
I think it's all part of the Anti-McCloud-Keenspot-industrial complex. Yeah.
Yeah, but only an insignificant number of them will take up that opportunity. Those who want to learn, can, but almost none of the will. Which is really sad---imagine a nation of people that well-educated, that well-rounded. The promise of the internet, betrayed by lazy-ass, Jenna Jameson-leering at human nature. Bitch bitch moan...
These are the same kids who asked if they could learn next year's stuff if the curriculum ran out early in math class, instead of playing Jeopardy or Tri-Bond for the last month. Ah, nostalgia...
Exactly! Just because they know something their parents don't, doesn't mean it's useful.
And I can't tell you how infuriating it is every time I hear someone declare themselves l33t simply because they found more Jenna Jameson porn on the SMB network, or kick ass at Half-Life, or anything that doesn't require any significant self-education at all. It's sad; if more people wanted to learn this sort of thing, it's easier than ever, but a lot of folks just don't want to dig deeper into the mystery.
The scary part isn't how many kids become hackers, it's how many don't.
You spend half a dozen hours a day, or a dozen a day in summer, in front of the screen, you learn a thing or two.
Not necessarily so! Lots of computer users don't have the hacker's itch, the uge to twiddle, to frob, to discover. They may just learn the best locations for freeporn (SublimeDirectory for president!!), but they may get even that from someone else.
And they're not getting a tan, either.
Computer use *can* lead to great things, but that's a far cry from saying it *will*.
Exactly! I believe we need to bring back the concept of `senior', and not just as `matinee prices at the evening showing'. There are people who I respect because they have something to teach me---not some automatic prestige that gray hairs and potbellies imbue their owners with.
Yes, age can cause one to give the benefit of the doubt. But I know several adults who are, frankly, useless, irresponsible infants who just happen to be over forty.
Yes, experience is the greatest teacher. But that doesn't mean that everyone older than me has it. And, of course, age says absolutely nothing about raw talent.
Sure, butthe other half of your statement is wrong. You say ``Kids aren't wise!''. This implies ``Adults are!''---which is a blatant falsehood.
Adults can be at least, if not more, petty, arrogant and greedy as any kid. Not to mention that they are almost invariably in a position to do much, much more damage.
Kids may not be as wise as the most wizened sensei, but that doesn't give every adult the right to place themselves on a highty pedestal, point and shout ``Damn whippersnappers!''.
Ehh, not particularly middle-class anymore. My family was never that well off, but my father got into the whole PC thing very early on.
But even that doesn't matter nowadays. Public libraries provide free net access (which absolutely **rules**. And some fools thought that they were going to become irrelevant...) and most schools have labs in them.
Of course, the most cynical among us would say that poor kids can only make a difference the way they always, have, through senseless acts of violence that would make Beat Takeshi cringe.
The *real* problem can be seen if you log on to, say, Bolt.com's message boards. Bleah. Makes Slashdot look like some kind of academic colloquium. They act like... kids! Something Katz would never suspect.
Bah! When I was fifteen, I couldn't take pride in myself because people told me I had an ego problem, so I shut up. I'd shamble up to the front of the auditorium, shyly accept `x' award, and shuffle back down, hoping no one saw me and would think I was being big-headed for doing well at `x'.
Never occured to me that the dozen Mr Steroid contenders didn't mind constantly crowing that they were the greatest. Somehow it must have been less threatening to people.
It's taken me until now to be able to say ``I'm clever, I'm capable, and I don't have to be ashamed of it.'' I feel like some sort of Ayn Rand hero saying that, but it's true. It was always ``Shut up, Drago, no one cares what you have to say.''
I have this odd feeling that some crackhead moderator will mark this as a troll, but it's the unvarnished truth---I had the opposite of an ego problem.
The ADA is horrible! Employers are now paranoid of being sued, because so many things are considered disabilities. And of course, handicapped people are almost never hired, because you can never fire them---you might have done it because they were handicapped; we don't want that.
Sigh.
It's a stupid and broken law, right up there with RICO.
No, really, I'm not kidding. True story. He was really, really uninformed, and yet held strong opinions.
And fission power is a bad idea to start with. They're more expensive than coal because they have to be so redundant and safe (and even then, frequently aren't), and they make nuclear waste. It was a bad idea to construct even one of the monsters.
Fusion power, on the other hand, is a *good* idea. But good luck getting anyone to accept it.
There were at least a dozen trouble tickets that had been open for *over six months* when I arrived. People were *not working* because their machines were `broken'. I had all of these resolved within the first week and a half.
I suppose we all need charts, but we *really* need to have a working network.
And he hasn't come in yet today (10 AM here.) Not very professional.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you notice the second part of the question? The part about ``less code''?
Especially since we're talking about running in a mainframe/server environment, where you'd use a stripped down, GUI-less version of NT...
Oh, wait. You can't.
Other Unices may have better design than Linux (I know very little here, so I can't give any real examples), but NT is *not* a paragon of lightweight design.
IHBT, piss off.
-grendel drago
I suppose people like you won't be satisfied until we have little blank paperbacks that words swim onto in electronic perfection...
Then again, I'd be really, really happy with that.
-grendel drago
Bingo! The library.
. ps
What if getting an e-book was as easy as going to the library and plugging in your Universal E-paperback? Or better yet, going to
book://local.lib/By_Author/M/Melville/Moby_Dick
or somesuch? Hell, it's not like the publishers get kickbacks from the library for every person who rents their books. And better yet, they'd have no reason to worry about everyone pirating a copy---there'd be no reason to, when you could just fetch it from the local (or not so local) library.
Ah, bliss. Probably never happen, but it would be *very* cool if it did.
-grendel drago
Not with publishers, they wouldn't be!
The motherboard manuals that come in the box are frequently available (I know Abit does this) online in spiffy full-color PDF versions... I know, motherboards aren't cars, but it's a start.
I swear, making a PS/PDF interpreter for an eBook reader would instantly make available a gargantual pre-existing library. So why don't they do it?
They're all useless bloody morons! Ah yes, *that* was the reason.
Yeah, too bad they don't look like real books.
Now, if only they were written in an easy-to-use, consistent, archiveable, open typesetting format like, oh, I don't know, could it be... TeX?
Seriously, they should set up some simple macros and produce documents in TeX format. Or maybe LaTeX, since there are exporters to make plain crApSCII text out of sweet, sweet LaTeX.
Ahem. My point: TeX r0x0rz.
-grendel drago
There's a real easy solution to this.
It's called use an open format!
If everyone published in PostScript, or even PDF, or just opened the reader so that different interpreters could be loaded onto the same platform, there wouldn't be this problem.
-grendel drago
Online publishing is only dead if you're a publisher.
-grendel drago
Heh. Actually, I was talking more about my jujutsu (he spells it that way) instructor. He's this little tubby Greek guy.
Eh, I'm not too crazy about most Eastern culture. Too little individuality, which sort of goes along with tradition and respect and so on.
People think of `Sensei' as meaning `teacher', but it literally means `born before'. Luckily, `born' is interpreted to mean `started doing X'.
And I have really no idea how to feel about my elders, my father especially. He spent ten years in college, and is relatively esteemed in his profession, but frequently seems incapable of expending the mental effort to avoid asking brain-numbingly stupid questions sometimes.
Eh, I just don't know.
-grendel drago
Yes, ``Kitten'' was phenomenal. Even if the `crotch' gag got a little old. I still vote for the whole K'Z'K/Stormbreaker arc as ``best... episode(s)... ever!'' 'Cause they were. I didn't know you could do that with online comics, but Pete Abrams did it. A story arc of depth and complexity to rival the graphic novel. With lots of slapstick.
But I beg to differ on your other point---even when Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes were bad, they were still good. Sluggy is just... dull right now.
-grendel drago
I suppose I was just spoiled because I really, really enjoyed the long, involved story arcs, and this seems like it's lowering itself from `Non Sequitur' to `Garfield'.
And not all long arc are good... GPF had some inklings of that floating around ("... the GAMESTER!"), but the creator just does much better with short, punchline-y strips.
And, of course, THL/SexyLosers has *no* plot, unless you count running gags as plot.
-grendel drago
Perhaps Sluggy is being ignored because it sucks right now.
No, seriously. The whole `Stormbreaker Saga' was incredibly good. I read three years of the strip in two afternoons. But lately, Pete Abrams has taken to wholesale quoting of pop culture with a small dash of funny on the top.
For Sluggy's sake, Pete, LOBO hasn't been cool for almost ten fscking years!
Plus, Pete's not on Keenspot. Not they didn't mention BBoCS or SexyLosers (formerly THL) either.
I think it's all part of the Anti-McCloud-Keenspot-industrial complex. Yeah.
-grendel drago
Yeah, but only an insignificant number of them will take up that opportunity. Those who want to learn, can, but almost none of the will. Which is really sad---imagine a nation of people that well-educated, that well-rounded. The promise of the internet, betrayed by lazy-ass, Jenna Jameson-leering at human nature. Bitch bitch moan...
These are the same kids who asked if they could learn next year's stuff if the curriculum ran out early in math class, instead of playing Jeopardy or Tri-Bond for the last month. Ah, nostalgia...
-grendel drago
Exactly! Just because they know something their parents don't, doesn't mean it's useful.
And I can't tell you how infuriating it is every time I hear someone declare themselves l33t simply because they found more Jenna Jameson porn on the SMB network, or kick ass at Half-Life, or anything that doesn't require any significant self-education at all. It's sad; if more people wanted to learn this sort of thing, it's easier than ever, but a lot of folks just don't want to dig deeper into the mystery.
The scary part isn't how many kids become hackers, it's how many don't.
-grendel drago
And they're not getting a tan, either.
Computer use *can* lead to great things, but that's a far cry from saying it *will*.
-grendel drago
Exactly! I believe we need to bring back the concept of `senior', and not just as `matinee prices at the evening showing'. There are people who I respect because they have something to teach me---not some automatic prestige that gray hairs and potbellies imbue their owners with.
Yes, age can cause one to give the benefit of the doubt. But I know several adults who are, frankly, useless, irresponsible infants who just happen to be over forty.
Yes, experience is the greatest teacher. But that doesn't mean that everyone older than me has it. And, of course, age says absolutely nothing about raw talent.
-grendel drago
Sure, butthe other half of your statement is wrong. You say ``Kids aren't wise!''. This implies ``Adults are!''---which is a blatant falsehood.
Adults can be at least, if not more, petty, arrogant and greedy as any kid. Not to mention that they are almost invariably in a position to do much, much more damage.
Kids may not be as wise as the most wizened sensei, but that doesn't give every adult the right to place themselves on a highty pedestal, point and shout ``Damn whippersnappers!''.
-grendel drago
Thought that was relevant here.
-grendel drago
Ehh, not particularly middle-class anymore. My family was never that well off, but my father got into the whole PC thing very early on.
But even that doesn't matter nowadays. Public libraries provide free net access (which absolutely **rules**. And some fools thought that they were going to become irrelevant...) and most schools have labs in them.
Of course, the most cynical among us would say that poor kids can only make a difference the way they always, have, through senseless acts of violence that would make Beat Takeshi cringe.
The *real* problem can be seen if you log on to, say, Bolt.com's message boards. Bleah. Makes Slashdot look like some kind of academic colloquium. They act like... kids! Something Katz would never suspect.
-grendel drago
Bah! When I was fifteen, I couldn't take pride in myself because people told me I had an ego problem, so I shut up. I'd shamble up to the front of the auditorium, shyly accept `x' award, and shuffle back down, hoping no one saw me and would think I was being big-headed for doing well at `x'.
Never occured to me that the dozen Mr Steroid contenders didn't mind constantly crowing that they were the greatest. Somehow it must have been less threatening to people.
It's taken me until now to be able to say ``I'm clever, I'm capable, and I don't have to be ashamed of it.'' I feel like some sort of Ayn Rand hero saying that, but it's true. It was always ``Shut up, Drago, no one cares what you have to say.''
I have this odd feeling that some crackhead moderator will mark this as a troll, but it's the unvarnished truth---I had the opposite of an ego problem.
-grendel drago
Yeah, but it describes them as resourceful, clever and better than everyone else.
Two sides of the same prejudicial coin.
-grendel drago
The ADA is horrible! Employers are now paranoid of being sued, because so many things are considered disabilities. And of course, handicapped people are almost never hired, because you can never fire them---you might have done it because they were handicapped; we don't want that.
Sigh.
It's a stupid and broken law, right up there with RICO.
-grendel drago
Damn it, why isn't there some sort of open standard for these things?
If only we could drop LDP docs onto an portable reader of some sort. Easy, simple, unobfuscated, open.
Is there anything like this? There *should* be.
-grendel drago
No, really, I'm not kidding. True story. He was really, really uninformed, and yet held strong opinions.
And fission power is a bad idea to start with. They're more expensive than coal because they have to be so redundant and safe (and even then, frequently aren't), and they make nuclear waste. It was a bad idea to construct even one of the monsters.
Fusion power, on the other hand, is a *good* idea. But good luck getting anyone to accept it.
-grendel drago
No, not really.
There were at least a dozen trouble tickets that had been open for *over six months* when I arrived. People were *not working* because their machines were `broken'. I had all of these resolved within the first week and a half.
I suppose we all need charts, but we *really* need to have a working network.
And he hasn't come in yet today (10 AM here.) Not very professional.
-grendel drago