"rm -r" works on empty directories; "rmdir" is mostly superfluous. (If you don't want "rm -r" to remove nonempty directories, I suppose "rmdir" is a better choice, but that's not what you specified and it hasn't come up for me.)
Often times, GNOME applications will lock up without any apparent reason. They just stop redrawing, so you end up with a window displaying the content of any other windows that are placed over it.
It does? Which distro, which GNOME version, and which app? I haven't heard of this; if I can reproduce it, I'll try to file some useful bug reports.
Wake me up when my vector desktop arrives.
on
GUIs Get a Makeover
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· Score: 1
Let me know when my scalable fully-vectorized desktop arrives, so that when I score a 300dpi monitor, the only change will be that everything looks a bit sharper.
Unix has a much worse, non-standard way of providing parameters to programs and getting help about their parameters, and a lackluster hodge-podge of shells and scripting languages, which are some of the worst text based user interfaces in common use.
Wait, when did command --help stop being standard? There are POSIX standards and GNU extensions to them. Are you complaining that third-party utilities don't follow the POSIX or GNU extensions? Which ones, and whose fault is that?
That's right, the syntax of a scripting (or programming) language IS a user interface. Unfortunately many language designers (i.e. PHP, Perl) have no concept of user interface design, and make many foolish usability mistakes that a competent graphical user interface designer should never make.
Sweet merciful Zeus, no. Programming languages (and the UNIX command line) are optimized for people who use it a lot. It's a tradeoff between a steep learning curve and maximal utility once it's been mastered, and a shallow learning curve and a low ceiling on the power that even an adept user can exercise. This is why we have "rm" instead of "delete" and "file" instead of "identifyFileFormat" or some such braindamage.
The UNIX command line has a relatively steep learning curve, though there are ways to help with that. (Tab-completion of long arguments, for instance, helps.) But it's not for the casual user. It's designed to let people who will be spending plenty of time working on these systems do their work as efficiently and powerfully as possible.
None of this means that the GUI doesn't have its place. Nutbars in the above thread aside, graphics editing is an obvious GUI task. But doing nontrivial system administration becomes a bitch to do without a powerful command line.
And what distro ships with csh as its default? Who doesn't use bash?
How many chunks does the arrangement of keys on a QWERTY keyboard take up? How many chunks does remembering that the left mouse button is action and the right one is alternate?
I'd be interested in seeing those scientific usability studies you mentioned, as I'd like to to find out why I don't seem to have the problem with GUIs that you describe. (Remembering that "ls" lists files or "rm" deletes them is about as basic as remembering the above "chunks" for me.) Maybe I'm just special.
GIMP has a pretty good separation between the interface and the backing engine. Because of this, you can get something like GIMPShop, which is a Photoshop-style interface atop GIMP's engine. So if you really hate the GIMP's interface, don't use it. Sheesh.
Also, when you say that Photoshop has scripting, do you mean that you can use a full-featured scripting language like Perl to execute Photoshop commands, possibly without even opening the GUI? Or is it an attempt to make a scripting language without requiring the user to type, by recording actions and making the user drag them around? I only saw it once, but it looked like the latter. I could, of course, be wrong.
I still wish GIMP had the "Cutout" plugin that Photoshop has had for years and years. I loved that thing, and "Posterize" just looks like junk in comparison.
First a huge raft of problems in gzip, now this. Thank you, Google. But you have to wonder--is there a point at which fewer security issues will be found in system software? I mean, it's gzip! It's not like it's some new whizbang technology; this has been around for more than ten years. The real question to be asked is why we're still finding these problems now.
Those 256-color GIFs, heavily dithered though they might be, are still viewable with current machines. Remember.dl animations? Ah, back when we thought those were the shit...
Ah, I remember cDc. I got suspended from school for printing "Desert Road Dick Disaster" in the school library and making the mistake of giving it to an acquaintance of mine, who then got caught and got me suspended. I emailed Deth Veggie about it, and he suggested I buy some cDc stickers and put them on my backpack. I wish I'd kept that email.
Remember the Japanese automakers kicking our asses in the 1980s? None of this is new. And we're acting all surprised again. I saw this coming, and I wasn't even walking upright back then.
Well, I can tell the difference between "Brazil isn't Saudi Arabia's bitch because they planned ahead" and "Brazil is a model nation in all possible ways which we should try to be like in all respects", and you, apparently, can't.
Maybe the post that got modded down was modded down because it was wrong. Clinton was never convicted of perjury. He was held in contempt of court, which is a civil charge, not criminal. So fantasies of chucking Clinton in Leavenworth for five years will have to stay fantasies, alas.
I saw, it must have been a few years ago, a debate about fuel economy in the Senate, on C-SPAN. I came in about halfway through, seeing a statement being given by Dick Durbin. He spoke eloquently and forcefully about the need to raise fuel economy standards, and the fact that we can do so. He talked about how CAFE standards were raised at the last oil crisis, and American ingenuity was up to the task---and how we can do it again, if only we had the will. Then the Republican senator from I-don't-know-where came up and mumbled some weasel words which said "But it's too haaard!" without actually saying it, looking at his shoes like a cheap Ayn Rand villain. And Durbin's amendment was voted down, and I turned off the television, feeling dirty about myself.
The 9/11 commission reported that the Sudan offer wasn't credible. And as for what he could do without a Gitmo, perhaps put him on trial? I know it's old school, but it sometimes actually works.
It's like... foreign oil is an abusive boyfriend. And we're its bitch. So back in the 1970s, there was that oil crisis, a big fight. And we went over to our sister's place, and she was all, "honey, you don't need him", and we cried on her shoulder a lot and said we didn't need him; were going to start a new life without him.
But the foreign oil bought us flowers, and said it was sorry, and it was morning in America. And now we're back in the same boat we were thirty years ago, and we're acting like no one could have possibly seen this coming.
You know, Brazil is energy-independent. They followed through on what Carter promised but was voted out before he could deliver on, and the program was plagued by various problems for decades on end... but as of a few years ago, it works. We could have had that. But we didn't.
And I still don't see what was horrible about that speech. Could someone point out to me why that speech cost him the Presidency?
Of course, you're a real fool when the independent commission already came out and had documentation of opportunity after opportunity where bin Laden was offered up to the US Government, but Clinton just wanted it to go away.
He did? Is this about that guy from the Sudan who offered bin Laden to the US in 1996, which turned out not to be credible?
'Cause that 9/11 commission report states "[F]ormer Sudanese officials claim that Sudan offered to expel Bin Ladin to the United States." Which looks pretty definite. Except it continues, "Clinton administration officials deny ever receiving such an offer. We have not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim."
But you refer to "opportunity after opportunity", so you must be talking about something else, right? It's just that the Sudan claim is the one that I see over and over again. Perhaps you could help me wade through all this "extensive documentation".
I am willing to do whatever it takes to keep me and my family safe. I have nothing to hide. So I am not worried.
Fine, but you don't get to volunteer me. Go ahead and live in a glass house if you think it'll make you safer, but don't you dare give away my delicious civil liberties because it gives you a warm fuzzy to do so.
The sad thing is that this does not have, and never has had, anything to do with keeping citizens safe. This is all about (a) being able to wiretap DNC headquarters, and (b) asserting that the President is actually a king. There's no other legitimate reason for all of this.
Oh, I agree that science shouldn't dictate public policy. My favorite historical example is the moon landing. Kennedy asked his science advisor if they could justify the Apollo program on scientific grounds, and he said it wasn't a cost-effective way of conducting science, and that it wouldn't be particularly scientifically meaningful. Kennedy went ahead with the Apollo program, but he didn't try to use science as a figleaf for it.
As for the generalized special-interests problem; yes, it's a problem, but this was specifically about a noise machine constructed to destroy the public's faith in one of the basic institutions of Western civilization. So I don't think they're exactly the moral equivalent of the ACLU.
The President claimed that they weren't wiretapping without a warrant, because that would be illegal. He was lying. The media revealed that he was lying. Cue kvetching and moaning about how the media are helping the terrorists. (Apparently embarassing the President helps the terrorists.) Cue accusations of treason against the media. (Ignoring the fact that it's invalid to classify things to hide them because they're illegal.) The Administration claimed that it had the authority either because (a) Congress had made the President into a King when they authorized overseas military action, or (b) the President is a King Just Because.
In reaction to these claims, Congress tries to retroactively legalize the President's actions, and pretend that he hasn't excercised kingly powers, and that they haven't scrambled over themselves to rubber-stamp said powers.
The funny thing is that Arlen Specter's original plan would have only given a 45-day window in addition to retroactively legalizing the President's decision that the law matters only when he feels like it. Apparently Congress can't fall over themselves fast enough to enable him. I am so writing my Congresscritters on this one.
There are two different discussions here, which overlap. There's the question of what the science says; that is, the result of the scientific process. Philip Morris doesn't affect this. However, the campaign of disinformation affects public opinion and public policy (which is why you see people saying "if they can't predict the weather next week, they sure can't predict the climate in twenty years!").
Philip Morris isn't making legitimate scientific claims. They're being as intentionally obtuse as ID supporters, attempting to subvert and bypass the process by which science informs (but does not dictate) public opinion and public policy. When I speak of winning, I speak of winning the public policy debate. In this case, Philip Morris is cheating.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me know when my scalable fully-vectorized desktop arrives, so that when I score a 300dpi monitor, the only change will be that everything looks a bit sharper.
Sweet merciful Zeus, no. Programming languages (and the UNIX command line) are optimized for people who use it a lot. It's a tradeoff between a steep learning curve and maximal utility once it's been mastered, and a shallow learning curve and a low ceiling on the power that even an adept user can exercise. This is why we have "rm" instead of "delete" and "file" instead of "identifyFileFormat" or some such braindamage.
The UNIX command line has a relatively steep learning curve, though there are ways to help with that. (Tab-completion of long arguments, for instance, helps.) But it's not for the casual user. It's designed to let people who will be spending plenty of time working on these systems do their work as efficiently and powerfully as possible.
None of this means that the GUI doesn't have its place. Nutbars in the above thread aside, graphics editing is an obvious GUI task. But doing nontrivial system administration becomes a bitch to do without a powerful command line.
And what distro ships with csh as its default? Who doesn't use bash?
How many chunks does the arrangement of keys on a QWERTY keyboard take up? How many chunks does remembering that the left mouse button is action and the right one is alternate?
I'd be interested in seeing those scientific usability studies you mentioned, as I'd like to to find out why I don't seem to have the problem with GUIs that you describe. (Remembering that "ls" lists files or "rm" deletes them is about as basic as remembering the above "chunks" for me.) Maybe I'm just special.
GIMP has a pretty good separation between the interface and the backing engine. Because of this, you can get something like GIMPShop, which is a Photoshop-style interface atop GIMP's engine. So if you really hate the GIMP's interface, don't use it. Sheesh.
Also, when you say that Photoshop has scripting, do you mean that you can use a full-featured scripting language like Perl to execute Photoshop commands, possibly without even opening the GUI? Or is it an attempt to make a scripting language without requiring the user to type, by recording actions and making the user drag them around? I only saw it once, but it looked like the latter. I could, of course, be wrong.
I still wish GIMP had the "Cutout" plugin that Photoshop has had for years and years. I loved that thing, and "Posterize" just looks like junk in comparison.
First a huge raft of problems in gzip, now this. Thank you, Google. But you have to wonder--is there a point at which fewer security issues will be found in system software? I mean, it's gzip! It's not like it's some new whizbang technology; this has been around for more than ten years. The real question to be asked is why we're still finding these problems now.
Those 256-color GIFs, heavily dithered though they might be, are still viewable with current machines. Remember .dl animations? Ah, back when we thought those were the shit...
Ah, I remember cDc. I got suspended from school for printing "Desert Road Dick Disaster" in the school library and making the mistake of giving it to an acquaintance of mine, who then got caught and got me suspended. I emailed Deth Veggie about it, and he suggested I buy some cDc stickers and put them on my backpack. I wish I'd kept that email.
Remember the Japanese automakers kicking our asses in the 1980s? None of this is new. And we're acting all surprised again. I saw this coming, and I wasn't even walking upright back then.
Well, I can tell the difference between "Brazil isn't Saudi Arabia's bitch because they planned ahead" and "Brazil is a model nation in all possible ways which we should try to be like in all respects", and you, apparently, can't.
FWEEET! Red flag, non sequitur. Twenty yard penalty, still first down!
Maybe the post that got modded down was modded down because it was wrong. Clinton was never convicted of perjury. He was held in contempt of court, which is a civil charge, not criminal. So fantasies of chucking Clinton in Leavenworth for five years will have to stay fantasies, alas.
I saw, it must have been a few years ago, a debate about fuel economy in the Senate, on C-SPAN. I came in about halfway through, seeing a statement being given by Dick Durbin. He spoke eloquently and forcefully about the need to raise fuel economy standards, and the fact that we can do so. He talked about how CAFE standards were raised at the last oil crisis, and American ingenuity was up to the task---and how we can do it again, if only we had the will. Then the Republican senator from I-don't-know-where came up and mumbled some weasel words which said "But it's too haaard!" without actually saying it, looking at his shoes like a cheap Ayn Rand villain. And Durbin's amendment was voted down, and I turned off the television, feeling dirty about myself.
The 9/11 commission reported that the Sudan offer wasn't credible. And as for what he could do without a Gitmo, perhaps put him on trial? I know it's old school, but it sometimes actually works.
'Course, they'll probably cut it down to:
And that'll be all.
It's like... foreign oil is an abusive boyfriend. And we're its bitch. So back in the 1970s, there was that oil crisis, a big fight. And we went over to our sister's place, and she was all, "honey, you don't need him", and we cried on her shoulder a lot and said we didn't need him; were going to start a new life without him.
But the foreign oil bought us flowers, and said it was sorry, and it was morning in America. And now we're back in the same boat we were thirty years ago, and we're acting like no one could have possibly seen this coming.
You know, Brazil is energy-independent. They followed through on what Carter promised but was voted out before he could deliver on, and the program was plagued by various problems for decades on end... but as of a few years ago, it works. We could have had that. But we didn't.
And I still don't see what was horrible about that speech. Could someone point out to me why that speech cost him the Presidency?
'Cause that 9/11 commission report states "[F]ormer Sudanese officials claim that Sudan offered to expel Bin Ladin to the United States." Which looks pretty definite. Except it continues, "Clinton administration officials deny ever receiving such an offer. We have not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim."
But you refer to "opportunity after opportunity", so you must be talking about something else, right? It's just that the Sudan claim is the one that I see over and over again. Perhaps you could help me wade through all this "extensive documentation".
... what you were going to say there; it looks like your comment got mangled. Care to complete it?
The sad thing is that this does not have, and never has had, anything to do with keeping citizens safe. This is all about (a) being able to wiretap DNC headquarters, and (b) asserting that the President is actually a king. There's no other legitimate reason for all of this.
Oh, I agree that science shouldn't dictate public policy. My favorite historical example is the moon landing. Kennedy asked his science advisor if they could justify the Apollo program on scientific grounds, and he said it wasn't a cost-effective way of conducting science, and that it wouldn't be particularly scientifically meaningful. Kennedy went ahead with the Apollo program, but he didn't try to use science as a figleaf for it.
As for the generalized special-interests problem; yes, it's a problem, but this was specifically about a noise machine constructed to destroy the public's faith in one of the basic institutions of Western civilization. So I don't think they're exactly the moral equivalent of the ACLU.
The President claimed that they weren't wiretapping without a warrant, because that would be illegal. He was lying. The media revealed that he was lying. Cue kvetching and moaning about how the media are helping the terrorists. (Apparently embarassing the President helps the terrorists.) Cue accusations of treason against the media. (Ignoring the fact that it's invalid to classify things to hide them because they're illegal.) The Administration claimed that it had the authority either because (a) Congress had made the President into a King when they authorized overseas military action, or (b) the President is a King Just Because.
In reaction to these claims, Congress tries to retroactively legalize the President's actions, and pretend that he hasn't excercised kingly powers, and that they haven't scrambled over themselves to rubber-stamp said powers.
The funny thing is that Arlen Specter's original plan would have only given a 45-day window in addition to retroactively legalizing the President's decision that the law matters only when he feels like it. Apparently Congress can't fall over themselves fast enough to enable him. I am so writing my Congresscritters on this one.
Thanks, meringuoid. Like the best quotes, it's what I would say if I were way eloquenter than I am.
FISA allowed for 72-hour wiretaps before a warrant was required.
There are two different discussions here, which overlap. There's the question of what the science says; that is, the result of the scientific process. Philip Morris doesn't affect this. However, the campaign of disinformation affects public opinion and public policy (which is why you see people saying "if they can't predict the weather next week, they sure can't predict the climate in twenty years!").
Philip Morris isn't making legitimate scientific claims. They're being as intentionally obtuse as ID supporters, attempting to subvert and bypass the process by which science informs (but does not dictate) public opinion and public policy. When I speak of winning, I speak of winning the public policy debate. In this case, Philip Morris is cheating.