was a typewriter that could have produced the memo
Can you name that typewriter?
My understanding of the issue, after reading a lot on both sides, is that the forged memo contains both a superscript "th" and proportional spacing. The two IBM typewriters that were constantly batted about as possiblities were (IIRC) the Selectric and the Executive. The Selectric could do "th" with a removable type ball, but it could only do monospaced typing. The Executive could do proportional spacing, but it had a fixed set of characters, of which the superscripted "th" isn't one of them. So I think the real issue is that you need to find a typewriter that can do BOTH, not point out the obvious fact that there were typewriters at the time that could do one but not the other.
The other more pressing issue is the fact that typing up the same memo with MS Word's defaults gives a memo with unbelievably similar spacing and font...
Uh yeah, if you were programming in C++ 10 years ago maybe. There's really is no excuse for buffer overruns in modern C++ code except inept programmers.
Has something changed in the last ten years that I'm not aware of? C++ now does automatic bounds checking?
Well, you know what they say about individual experiences...
I have four machines, two with XP and one with 2000. All of them allow for the power button to turn off the computer. I would venture to say that it IS a standard feature given that I can reproduce the behavior on multiple machines without ever changing an option that affects the behavior of the power button. Perhaps other people can confirm this, but I'm afraid you're wrong about it not being a standard feature.
Not true. In Windows, as long as you have a computer running on an ATX motherboard (that should be everyone by now, I would hope), hitting the power button causes Windows to initiate its normal shutdown procedure, as if you had selected it from the Start menu.
Isn't it funny how when Google's (now defunct) zeitgeist showed really high IE percentages and pretty low Mozilla/Firefox percentages that the Slashdot crowd made excuses that amounted to "well, Mozilla's share is so low because everyone is changing their user agent to IE!"
Yet when a site with a decidedly less mainstream audience than Google shows Mozilla or Firefox having a reasonably large percentage the same Slashdot crowd is ready to embrace these findings as evidence that Mozilla/Firefox is conquering the world. Funny.
OK, sure, but I'm guessing that the original author hasn't experienced any mysterious reboots either. And, BTW, if he happens to be sitting at his computer when it "bluescreens" (and the odds are high of THAT happening, right Linux zealots?) he WOULD actually see a blue screen before the reboot occurs.
Guys, get over it. Find some new material. Blue screens are nowhere near as common as they were six or more years ago, which is where you guys are permanently stuck with regard to your knowledge of Windows. Windows 2000 and XP rarely bluescreen, and if they do it's related to a hardware/driver issue.
Personally I can count the number of bluescreens I've had in the last two or three years on one hand.
Again, someone who CHOOSES that distribution already KNOWS the limitations and has CHOSEN it for some reason.
And what about the people who DON'T choose their distribution for any particular reason? Let's say they bought one of those Wal-Mart PCs? Did they know about the limitations? Let's say I want to try Linux, so I download some random distribution, get used to it, and prefer it over wasting time getting adjusted to another one? Down the road I find that the package choices are somewhat limited -- let's call this distribution, oh, I don't know, Slackware: a major distribution with limited package choices compared to other major distributions. So tell me again, what's my choice? Blow everything out so I can enjoy simple package installations or live with it and compile everything from source? Some choice.
Those are two SPECIFIC, highly possibly cases. They are not negligible.
Simply put, why should the additional functionality of your hypothetical distribution be REQUIRED of all distributions in the perfect world you claim needs to exist?
Because it would give Linux a little bit of consistency and make installing software easier? Look, I'm not saying that EVERY SINGLE piece of software must run on EVERY SINGLE distribution, but with enough standard behavior between distributions, Linux as a whole should at least be able to achieve the same level of binary compatibility that the various Windows operating systems have today.
I don't get how Open Source zealots can on the one hand demand the world adhere to standards and on the other hand demand that distributions each have their own incompatible standards. It boggles the mind.
If you can't see that, you're an idiot. That was why I pointed out all the things needed to achieve your fantasy. The Central Authority for naming all files, all versions, all packages, all the contents of packages, and all the behaviours of the installer.
We already have multiple repositories, correct? All I think is necessary is that the packages use the same package format and that the packages install files in a location that is consistent across the majority of distributions (this would be achieved through a standard filesystem hierarchy). There's no need for ONE central repository, just pick packages off of any repository serving compatible packages -- this could be Debian's repository, Redhat's, Mandrake's, etc. Sure, the kernel-level stuff might be an issue, but a large amount of software isn't going to be affected by that.
I'm not saying that every distribution should use the exact same packages but that any particular package should be able to install a piece of software and have it run, for the most part, on any compatible distribution. There's a big difference there.
What's so improbable about all that? I think you're trying to make the situation sound utterly impossible just to defend the hopelessly fragmented nature of Linux.
What sets this film apart from others is that every scene was shot against a blue screen.
And you can tell. Up until now, I didn't know it was entirely shot in front of a blue screen, but every time I saw the commercial the thing that struck me was just how obvious the blue screen effect is. I just can't get over how awful (visually) this film looks, based on the trailer.
So? The people who would choose that kind of distribution KNOW what they are getting and they've chosen it for a REASON.
Unless of course you're a grandma or a friend of some Linux guy who foisted his preferred distribution upon you because he knows what's best for your computer...
Seriously, name one non-niche distribution that would not be able to run apt.
Oh, I'm sure apt is portable enough to run on anything. You're just forgetting that a repository is also necessary, which only exists for the major distributions.
It's called a "defacto standard". The LSB has tried to force rules such as that onto everyone and they've failed miserably.
Because Linux zealots seem to believe that a little bit of distribution consistency is the worst possible thing that could happen...
But that's already working TODAY. As long as you stay with a particular distribution.
So in other words, your standard works as long as you confine yourself to a single platform? Some standard.
False. There are plenty of Linux systems without those tools, and even without command lines at all.
Learn to read. "Standard" was in quotes, implying that it's not hard and fast, but you're more likely to encounter this standard than not.
You keep asking for "Linux" to have features needed only on interactive desktops
Like a consistent set of tools and binary compatibility? How could I have thought that might be useful...
Sorry, you don't even know what "LOW level" means.
All tyres should be 41 cm radius. That's just a basic, low-level issue that SHOULD be addressed so vehicles can be compatible on a LOW level. They would still be free to be unique.
No, my example is more like "all tire rims should use the same type of nuts to secure them to the axle so tire rims can work on any vehicle." The rims could still have unique appearances and the tires surrounding them could be unique as well.
So what would YOU prefer? A completely different standard for securing tires to your car that varies from model to model or something a little standardized?
2)Your FreeBSD experience doesn't really count either, as it's not Linux...but on the other hand, is there really anything that ports isn't giving you?
Ports is wonderful. What's even better is the fact that there's "one" FreeBSD, meaning package installation and system administration tasks can be done in generally a single, consistent manner. Linux doesn't give me that. It's always something like "well, if you want to do that, in Redhat you can do X, in Gentoo do Y, in Debian do Z. Any other distribution and it's up to you to figure out how to do it." I don't like that.
3)Are you actually claiming that Red Hat Advanced Server and SuSE 9.1 lack packages for things you need? Or that you have actually experienced serious dependency problems on them? Because I'm not buying that.
No, I'm claiming that they aren't compatible with one another on a package level. If I can find a package for one but not the other, I'm supposed to do what exactly? That's right, fall back to compiling millions of dependencies by hand. Now on the other hand, IF we had what I want, which is package compatibility, finding a "Redhat" package would be good enough for the "SuSE" machine. THAT is what I want.
What I want is distribution-neutrality with regards to packages. I would love to be able to have ONE set of packages, for the the software I need (in addition to the base system) sitting somewhere and NO MATTER WHAT Linux I install, I can install those packages without resorting to distribution-specific packages. That way I'd know that all my machines are running the same exact versions of the software I want them to run. Additionally, I wouldn't have to worry about using a distribution that doesn't have a massive repository.
All I'm saying is if you actually do run Linux, and you are having these kind of problems, you are really doing something bad wrong. I take care of a bunch of machines on several distributions, I know lots of people who do the same, and neither dependencies nor distribution incompatibilities are live problems. We just don't see them.
Because you're always using "well-supported" distributions.
In other words simply setup a paradigm where naive debian users get software from Debian and naive Mandrake users get software from Mandrake.
Because that doesn't help me if I happen to be running some other distribution that isn't fortunate enough to have a large user base (and subsequently, large package base)?
With a model like that, you're effectively reducing the set of distributions capable of "easy software installation" dramatically.
Re-read what I said. I never implied that this would occur at the kernel level. If distributions followed certain guidelines, it would increase the likliehood of packages being compatible across distributions.
And to make you happy everything would have to be exactly the same so you'd have the same distribution with different names, what is the point of that?
That's not true at all. I listed an example of a distribution-wide "standard" in another post: the availability of basic command line tools like cd, ls, grep, cat, more, etc. You take these for granted, right? Now imagine how much fun it would be if sitting down in front of a new Linux machine might mean that such basic tools either aren't available in total or have weird, distribution-specific names, like ffls, catx, more_21, etc. It would be a compatibility and sanity nightmare.
However, it's not like that. Basically any distribution big or small includes the same subset of basic commandline tools, and they're all named the same. This helps compatibility and interoperability, doesn't it? Does the informal "standard" hinder distribution X's ability to be "unique"? No. Likewise, would a standard regarding filesystem hierarchies make distribution Y any less able to be the "newbie-friendly distribution" or distribution Z the "hacker's distribution"? No. These are just basic, low-level issues that SHOULD be addressed so distributions can be compatible on a LOW level. They would still be free to be unique.
Slashdot Mirror
was a typewriter that could have produced the memo
Can you name that typewriter?
My understanding of the issue, after reading a lot on both sides, is that the forged memo contains both a superscript "th" and proportional spacing. The two IBM typewriters that were constantly batted about as possiblities were (IIRC) the Selectric and the Executive. The Selectric could do "th" with a removable type ball, but it could only do monospaced typing. The Executive could do proportional spacing, but it had a fixed set of characters, of which the superscripted "th" isn't one of them. So I think the real issue is that you need to find a typewriter that can do BOTH, not point out the obvious fact that there were typewriters at the time that could do one but not the other.
The other more pressing issue is the fact that typing up the same memo with MS Word's defaults gives a memo with unbelievably similar spacing and font...
What will be the next great improvement in search technology?
Put another way, "Would you care to give away your million dollar idea for free? If so, please write it down."
And people say Linux is sooo hard.
Well, it is for people who aren't versed in the magical incantations that allow one to stream video using a 3 line Bash script.
Or you don't feel like using heavyweight STL containers.
No one has done this yet. Someone will, and they'll be famous.
Famous for writing the world's slowest virtual machine, yes.
Uh yeah, if you were programming in C++ 10 years ago maybe. There's really is no excuse for buffer overruns in modern C++ code except inept programmers.
Has something changed in the last ten years that I'm not aware of? C++ now does automatic bounds checking?
Well, you know what they say about individual experiences...
I have four machines, two with XP and one with 2000. All of them allow for the power button to turn off the computer. I would venture to say that it IS a standard feature given that I can reproduce the behavior on multiple machines without ever changing an option that affects the behavior of the power button. Perhaps other people can confirm this, but I'm afraid you're wrong about it not being a standard feature.
Do you have APM support enabled in your BIOS?
I don't really think that has anything to do with what I was commenting on.
On Slashdot, the logic applied to stories about browser usage go like this:
"[Major website] shows that Mozilla is 1% of the browser market." --> "That can't be right! It's because everyone is changing their user agents!"
"[Niche website] shows that Mozilla is 20% of the browser market." --> "Damn right! Next year more people will be using Mozilla than IE!"
I bet they do. I was never contesting that. I was just taking issue with the claim that you shouldn't "just hit the power button" in Windows.
since at least RedHat 9
Wow, it took them that long to make it work?
Not true. In Windows, as long as you have a computer running on an ATX motherboard (that should be everyone by now, I would hope), hitting the power button causes Windows to initiate its normal shutdown procedure, as if you had selected it from the Start menu.
Isn't it funny how when Google's (now defunct) zeitgeist showed really high IE percentages and pretty low Mozilla/Firefox percentages that the Slashdot crowd made excuses that amounted to "well, Mozilla's share is so low because everyone is changing their user agent to IE!"
Yet when a site with a decidedly less mainstream audience than Google shows Mozilla or Firefox having a reasonably large percentage the same Slashdot crowd is ready to embrace these findings as evidence that Mozilla/Firefox is conquering the world. Funny.
The retirement age is going to have to be moved up.
So that's the solution? Keep moving the retirement age closer and closer to the average life expectancy age? Work until you die, eh?
None of these privatization schemes offers any suggestions about what to do when the next Enron happens and people lose their retirement savings.
Likewise, you aren't offering any suggestions about what to do when Social Security collapses under its own weight in the near future...
Now what happens instead is an automatic reboot.
OK, sure, but I'm guessing that the original author hasn't experienced any mysterious reboots either. And, BTW, if he happens to be sitting at his computer when it "bluescreens" (and the odds are high of THAT happening, right Linux zealots?) he WOULD actually see a blue screen before the reboot occurs.
Guys, get over it. Find some new material. Blue screens are nowhere near as common as they were six or more years ago, which is where you guys are permanently stuck with regard to your knowledge of Windows. Windows 2000 and XP rarely bluescreen, and if they do it's related to a hardware/driver issue.
Personally I can count the number of bluescreens I've had in the last two or three years on one hand.
Why would you want to port a rendering engine that is not standards complient?
You DO realize that Mozilla isn't completely standards-compliant either, right?
Again, someone who CHOOSES that distribution already KNOWS the limitations and has CHOSEN it for some reason.
And what about the people who DON'T choose their distribution for any particular reason? Let's say they bought one of those Wal-Mart PCs? Did they know about the limitations? Let's say I want to try Linux, so I download some random distribution, get used to it, and prefer it over wasting time getting adjusted to another one? Down the road I find that the package choices are somewhat limited -- let's call this distribution, oh, I don't know, Slackware: a major distribution with limited package choices compared to other major distributions. So tell me again, what's my choice? Blow everything out so I can enjoy simple package installations or live with it and compile everything from source? Some choice.
Those are two SPECIFIC, highly possibly cases. They are not negligible.
Simply put, why should the additional functionality of your hypothetical distribution be REQUIRED of all distributions in the perfect world you claim needs to exist?
Because it would give Linux a little bit of consistency and make installing software easier? Look, I'm not saying that EVERY SINGLE piece of software must run on EVERY SINGLE distribution, but with enough standard behavior between distributions, Linux as a whole should at least be able to achieve the same level of binary compatibility that the various Windows operating systems have today.
I don't get how Open Source zealots can on the one hand demand the world adhere to standards and on the other hand demand that distributions each have their own incompatible standards. It boggles the mind.
If you can't see that, you're an idiot. That was why I pointed out all the things needed to achieve your fantasy. The Central Authority for naming all files, all versions, all packages, all the contents of packages, and all the behaviours of the installer.
We already have multiple repositories, correct? All I think is necessary is that the packages use the same package format and that the packages install files in a location that is consistent across the majority of distributions (this would be achieved through a standard filesystem hierarchy). There's no need for ONE central repository, just pick packages off of any repository serving compatible packages -- this could be Debian's repository, Redhat's, Mandrake's, etc. Sure, the kernel-level stuff might be an issue, but a large amount of software isn't going to be affected by that.
I'm not saying that every distribution should use the exact same packages but that any particular package should be able to install a piece of software and have it run, for the most part, on any compatible distribution. There's a big difference there.
What's so improbable about all that? I think you're trying to make the situation sound utterly impossible just to defend the hopelessly fragmented nature of Linux.
What sets this film apart from others is that every scene was shot against a blue screen.
And you can tell. Up until now, I didn't know it was entirely shot in front of a blue screen, but every time I saw the commercial the thing that struck me was just how obvious the blue screen effect is. I just can't get over how awful (visually) this film looks, based on the trailer.
So? The people who would choose that kind of distribution KNOW what they are getting and they've chosen it for a REASON.
Unless of course you're a grandma or a friend of some Linux guy who foisted his preferred distribution upon you because he knows what's best for your computer...
Seriously, name one non-niche distribution that would not be able to run apt.
Oh, I'm sure apt is portable enough to run on anything. You're just forgetting that a repository is also necessary, which only exists for the major distributions.
It's called a "defacto standard". The LSB has tried to force rules such as that onto everyone and they've failed miserably.
Because Linux zealots seem to believe that a little bit of distribution consistency is the worst possible thing that could happen...
But that's already working TODAY. As long as you stay with a particular distribution.
So in other words, your standard works as long as you confine yourself to a single platform? Some standard.
False. There are plenty of Linux systems without those tools, and even without command lines at all.
Learn to read. "Standard" was in quotes, implying that it's not hard and fast, but you're more likely to encounter this standard than not.
You keep asking for "Linux" to have features needed only on interactive desktops
Like a consistent set of tools and binary compatibility? How could I have thought that might be useful...
Sorry, you don't even know what "LOW level" means.
All tyres should be 41 cm radius. That's just a basic, low-level issue that SHOULD be addressed so vehicles can be compatible on a LOW level. They would still be free to be unique.
No, my example is more like "all tire rims should use the same type of nuts to secure them to the axle so tire rims can work on any vehicle." The rims could still have unique appearances and the tires surrounding them could be unique as well.
So what would YOU prefer? A completely different standard for securing tires to your car that varies from model to model or something a little standardized?
That's exactly what I've been saying... try following my thread.
2)Your FreeBSD experience doesn't really count either, as it's not Linux...but on the other hand, is there really anything that ports isn't giving you?
Ports is wonderful. What's even better is the fact that there's "one" FreeBSD, meaning package installation and system administration tasks can be done in generally a single, consistent manner. Linux doesn't give me that. It's always something like "well, if you want to do that, in Redhat you can do X, in Gentoo do Y, in Debian do Z. Any other distribution and it's up to you to figure out how to do it." I don't like that.
3)Are you actually claiming that Red Hat Advanced Server and SuSE 9.1 lack packages for things you need? Or that you have actually experienced serious dependency problems on them? Because I'm not buying that.
No, I'm claiming that they aren't compatible with one another on a package level. If I can find a package for one but not the other, I'm supposed to do what exactly? That's right, fall back to compiling millions of dependencies by hand. Now on the other hand, IF we had what I want, which is package compatibility, finding a "Redhat" package would be good enough for the "SuSE" machine. THAT is what I want.
What I want is distribution-neutrality with regards to packages. I would love to be able to have ONE set of packages, for the the software I need (in addition to the base system) sitting somewhere and NO MATTER WHAT Linux I install, I can install those packages without resorting to distribution-specific packages. That way I'd know that all my machines are running the same exact versions of the software I want them to run. Additionally, I wouldn't have to worry about using a distribution that doesn't have a massive repository.
All I'm saying is if you actually do run Linux, and you are having these kind of problems, you are really doing something bad wrong. I take care of a bunch of machines on several distributions, I know lots of people who do the same, and neither dependencies nor distribution incompatibilities are live problems. We just don't see them.
Because you're always using "well-supported" distributions.
In other words simply setup a paradigm where naive debian users get software from Debian and naive Mandrake users get software from Mandrake.
Because that doesn't help me if I happen to be running some other distribution that isn't fortunate enough to have a large user base (and subsequently, large package base)?
With a model like that, you're effectively reducing the set of distributions capable of "easy software installation" dramatically.
Bravo. Now is this true for any other random distribution? No? My point exactly...
Re-read what I said. I never implied that this would occur at the kernel level. If distributions followed certain guidelines, it would increase the likliehood of packages being compatible across distributions.
And to make you happy everything would have to be exactly the same so you'd have the same distribution with different names, what is the point of that?
That's not true at all. I listed an example of a distribution-wide "standard" in another post: the availability of basic command line tools like cd, ls, grep, cat, more, etc. You take these for granted, right? Now imagine how much fun it would be if sitting down in front of a new Linux machine might mean that such basic tools either aren't available in total or have weird, distribution-specific names, like ffls, catx, more_21, etc. It would be a compatibility and sanity nightmare.
However, it's not like that. Basically any distribution big or small includes the same subset of basic commandline tools, and they're all named the same. This helps compatibility and interoperability, doesn't it? Does the informal "standard" hinder distribution X's ability to be "unique"? No. Likewise, would a standard regarding filesystem hierarchies make distribution Y any less able to be the "newbie-friendly distribution" or distribution Z the "hacker's distribution"? No. These are just basic, low-level issues that SHOULD be addressed so distributions can be compatible on a LOW level. They would still be free to be unique.