I just wanted to go on record as saying that TeX does in fact rule and emacs is all you need. Actually, any text editor will do; I started out in joe.
You complain about how complicated TeX is, but I don't think you really know what you are talking about. In fact, if all you want to do is type a letter or paper, just type the text in your favorite editor. Leave an empty line between each paragraph. Then, at the end type "\tex". Then, save your file as foo.tex and run "pdftex foo.tex". Now you have foo.pdf, which looks beautiful (as all TeX does).
For more complicated things, LaTeX isn't difficult to learn. Need a footnote? Try \footnote. Need something italics? Try \emph. Need an ordered list? Try \begin{enumerate}. Need a title page? Try \maketitlepage. I think you get the idea.
And if you're typing ANY equations or math, you absolutely must you TeX. Any other tool is a joke compared to TeX's ability to crank out formulas. Once you learn how it works (5 minutes, tops, for the math part), it is much faster and easier then Word or any graphical device (short of some kind of hand-writing recognition) could ever be.
I think that sometimes people are just afraid to learn something new or can't see what they can do. For an idea, head on over to http://html2latex.sourceforge.net. I wrote a little program (shamless plug; also in the sig!) that will convert HTML to LaTeX. So, if you know how something works in HTML, and want to see it in LaTeX, I figure this is a pretty good way.
You know, I've personally always been worried about the prospect of easily-added icons and menu links. I really hate it when I install a Windows application on my computer and it puts a special menu in the start menu just for the company that made the application, and several links on the desktop, and several on the desktop, and (for Windows 98) some on that little task bar thing, and maybe one in the Windows doc station (whatever it's called).
The point is, when I ever I install *anything* in Windows, it goes and throws crap all over the place. I think if we provide a standard method to add shortcuts and menu options, we better also:
1) Make sure everything is much better organized. 2) Provide the user the option of saying, "do not add squat unless I explicitly tell you to" or maybe "ask me, and keep the default to no" or "give a link to the program, but not to all that uninstall and readme crap, because there are other places for that."
I just don't want Linux to be in the same crappy position with regard to installers as Windows is. I once saw how BeOS does installations, and I thought that was an excellent idea. It sort of gave you a check list of all the things that it could install, and you picked which ones.
I believe your example could be written much more clearly. This:
s|<(?!$okay_tags).*?>||gi;
should do the same thing, and is more readable. You can make any language obfuscated, especially when the language is flexible.
I mean, honestly, can you think of a faster way to "zap all html tags not in the list of ok tags"? It may be a little hard to read when you are done, but if you put a comment next to it saying what it does, it's not hard to understand.
I finished up the review thinking to myself "wow, this is quite a fast card, and from ATI no less". Then, all of the sudden, on the last page listed under "pros" I see that video capture is supported!
It has on the fly MPEG2 compression of video-in. That's simply amazing; what's more amazing is that no one is talking about it. This is feature I've been looking for in a high-quality video card.
The big question is, however, will there be Linux support for this? I know there isn't really any video-editing software for Linux. But, with a cool card like this, people might get interested in it.
If this feature had Linux support and if the priced dropped a bit (boy, $399 is pricey), I would certainly buy one.
While I was reading all of his ideas, I was particularly interested at the idea of dynamically generated folders, and reminded me a lot about the VFolder technology being used in the new GNOME PIM (what is it called? Magellan?). Anyway, I was excited about the idea of applying this technology to the common directory structure.
Then, I visited the "Mirror Worlds" webpage he linked to (I don't see what's so "transparent" about it, does anybody else?). It says they have a patent on this whole thing!! How will this effect GNOME and VFolders?
First, I'm assuming you want to transfer profiles between roughly equivevalent (sp?) platforms; you aren't going to open up you're GNOME desktop without GNOME. I'm also assuming you already have an account; you can't do anything without an account. I'm also assuming you have a connection between the two; if you can't transmit data, how could you transmit a profile? If all of these requirements are met, then there is one really easy way to get your "profile" from one computer to the other:
ftp
Actually, if you can you should scp, you should always use scp. Nevertheless, if you want your GNOME profile,.gnome*, if you want KDE,.kde*, etc. You should also copy over your.xinitrc or.xsession (depending on what init level you use).
I just finished reading all 5 or 6 pages of information that microsoft provides about.NET (do you have to say "dot net"?), and I have two observations:
That was the most tightly packed set of buzzwords I have ever scene in my life. Did anybody count how many times the words revolution, enable, adavanced, rich, service, and experience were used?
I knew more about what it actually is from reading the Slashdot summary! Where did that information come from? I found nothing of the sort at the.NET hompage.
I'm especially confused about the idea about "authoring" the webpages that you would normally just read. Methinks that would make some web admins a bit upset. Also, how am I to read all of my work on another computer if I'm offline?.NET claims that I should be able to do that.
These are questions that might be answered if we were given any sort of information. Assuming that the more vapor an idea is, the less information there is a available about it, I'd have to say this is pretty darn vapor.
So does anyone have any idea how any of this will work?
I've always considered that to be one of the reasons to have skins. Putting the entire UI in XML files and GIFs allows anyone that can learn XML (which isn't too rough, especially if you know HTML), such as an artist or a UI designer, to change the look of mozilla, rather than the developers doing it.
I just thought this comment was right up my alley. You see, I did something that I thought I found absolutely wonderful. I did the following with my key bindings in Sawmill:
Change the xmodmap file to recognize the "windows" button on the keyboard. Some distros, such as Mandrake, do this for you.
Changed the binding for "move to next virtual desktop" to win-right, and "move to previous virtual desktop to win-left. That way, I hold down the button, and can move left or right through virtual desktops. Plus, since Sawmill can dynamically expand the number of desktops you have, you never run out!
I made it even better by making win-l be the same as win-right and win-j the same as win-left. That way, when I am typing I never have to remove my fingers from their "home position" to move around desktops.
Believe me, this setup is really fast, and you can't get used to anything else. I love Sawmill, er, Sawfish.
That's great. You just listed 1 operating system with 3 different names.
, Win2000
Ah yes, Windows 2000. It's got an enormous market share. It's so different that Windows 95 that you would absolutely nood DirectX to be portable. Can't use OpenGL or your own engine.
, Windows CE (Personal/Palm PC's),
What? Do you honestly expect someone to run Unreal on a "Pocket PC"? Are you crazy?
DreamCast
Nobody uses DirectX on the Dreamcast. The performance is just terrible. And from your very own comment, it appears that it also costs more.
and the soon to be released X-Box.
The X-Box is a PC. Just because Microsoft is trying to convince you otherwise means nothing. If you write it for the PC, it'll run on the X-Box, with or without DirectX.
So, it seems while you tried to list 7 platforms, you really listed 3 that are so similar that you don't need DirectX to be portable.
Yes. That is completely different. Take an idea already done for years, move its computation to the server, and Whammo! instant patent.
Actually, what disturbs me more are the list of other patents at the linked page. Things such as "automatic update of software". Does anybody else think all of these are a little broad and obvious?
Listen, just because a business has a responsibility to make money does NOT mean that it has a responsibility to screw everyone in sight, break the law, hire teams of lawyers to bend the law, sue everyone, and generally do things that you would consider wrong of regular people.
When you hear something that you consider terrible (such as suing people for ridiculous patents), you can't just say to yourself "well, they're a business, they're just trying to make money". Someone (I'm not sure who) said it best with "The very fact that you're out to make a profit does not alleviate you from responsibility". In other words, businesses shouldn't be allowed to get away with this kind of stuff just because that's what they're there for.
Have you ever read The Grapes of Wrath? We're creating a monster in our mega-corporations just the same way that banks were created in the book, and we let it happen because we make excusess like the one you made. But enough of my thoughts.
In Time Warner's comment, it has the following phrase:
digitization makes it possible to reproduce copyrighted works in unlimited quantities with no degradation of quality and to transmit copyrighted works all over the world - all very quickly and at trivial expense.
If you read that isolated, you should think "yeah, you thought the printing press was a great step forward. No siree, this digitization thing is going to really push the world forward. But no, Time Warner is claiming this is a Bad Thing because
It also poses grave dangers to... all the businesses... whose livelihoods depend on copyright protection.
Well, if the businesses will be threatened, surely we can't have it. I imagine even if the world invented replicators (like in Star Trek), businesses would still want to screw us over.
I just wanted to say that this was a wonderful. I found it very informative and very very funny. It had the best short description of what Kerberos is that I have ever scene. I also like what he was mentioning about VFS. So, here's my comment:
It appears that VFS will allow Samba to mount a database and give transparent usage of that database to a regular Windows/Samba client. I thought it would be cool to brainstorm different things that you could do with this option. It sounds so cool, but I don't know why. Anybody have any ideas?
No, the original person was right. In case you hadn't noticed, he was using binary numbers (or did you not read his entire post?). 1 divided by 2 is indeed.1 in binary. You can't have.5 because there are no 5's in binary notation.
I know that this is joyful time for everyone, with Xfree86 being out, but I want to make comment other than "Yay! Quake 3 will on my new GeForce now!" I have a serious question. Although most of the attention for the 4.0 release has been focused on the 3d (which is a valid issue), I would like to know the state of 2-d transperancy.
Does Xfree86 4 have support 2-d transperancy? Is such support necessary for pulling transperancy in X? One of the things I like about Mac OS X is that it can do slick things with tranparent windows and menus and such. I'd like to some wicked cool enlightenment theme with such trasperancies all over. Even more, I would like it to have some hardware support so that it will be fast.
So, does 4.0 do this? Does anyone even care? Or is this really in the domain of toolkits to handle?
Why on earth to people submit things such as ".consumers" and ".unions" rather than ".consumer" and ".union". The extra "s" on the end is a complete waste of time typing. Is there really going to be a difference between ".union" and ".unions"? No. Think of how many people will type on extra "s" and how many times they will type it in their lifetime. It's ridiculous. Get rid of the plurals, people!
Here's all of the pertinant (sp?) information mirrored by me. I ripped out all of the useless images and javascript, so just the docs are there. If you want to mirror me, just do this:
Slashdot Mirror
Is that 2 GB limit a 32-bit limitation or is that limitation also present on 64-bit machines?
What the heck is a Nintendo Star Cube?
You complain about how complicated TeX is, but I don't think you really know what you are talking about. In fact, if all you want to do is type a letter or paper, just type the text in your favorite editor. Leave an empty line between each paragraph. Then, at the end type "\tex". Then, save your file as foo.tex and run "pdftex foo.tex". Now you have foo.pdf, which looks beautiful (as all TeX does).
For more complicated things, LaTeX isn't difficult to learn. Need a footnote? Try \footnote. Need something italics? Try \emph. Need an ordered list? Try \begin{enumerate}. Need a title page? Try \maketitlepage. I think you get the idea.
And if you're typing ANY equations or math, you absolutely must you TeX. Any other tool is a joke compared to TeX's ability to crank out formulas. Once you learn how it works (5 minutes, tops, for the math part), it is much faster and easier then Word or any graphical device (short of some kind of hand-writing recognition) could ever be.
I think that sometimes people are just afraid to learn something new or can't see what they can do. For an idea, head on over to http://html2latex.sourceforge.net. I wrote a little program (shamless plug; also in the sig!) that will convert HTML to LaTeX. So, if you know how something works in HTML, and want to see it in LaTeX, I figure this is a pretty good way.
print while <>;
You know, I've personally always been worried about the prospect of easily-added icons and menu links. I really hate it when I install a Windows application on my computer and it puts a special menu in the start menu just for the company that made the application, and several links on the desktop, and several on the desktop, and (for Windows 98) some on that little task bar thing, and maybe one in the Windows doc station (whatever it's called).
The point is, when I ever I install *anything* in Windows, it goes and throws crap all over the place. I think if we provide a standard method to add shortcuts and menu options, we better also:
1) Make sure everything is much better organized.
2) Provide the user the option of saying, "do not add squat unless I explicitly tell you to" or maybe "ask me, and keep the default to no" or "give a link to the program, but not to all that uninstall and readme crap, because there are other places for that."
I just don't want Linux to be in the same crappy position with regard to installers as Windows is. I once saw how BeOS does installations, and I thought that was an excellent idea. It sort of gave you a check list of all the things that it could install, and you picked which ones.
I believe your example could be written much more clearly. This:
s|<(?!$okay_tags).*?>||gi;
should do the same thing, and is more readable. You can make any language obfuscated, especially when the language is flexible.
I mean, honestly, can you think of a faster way to "zap all html tags not in the list of ok tags"? It may be a little hard to read when you are done, but if you put a comment next to it saying what it does, it's not hard to understand.
It has on the fly MPEG2 compression of video-in. That's simply amazing; what's more amazing is that no one is talking about it. This is feature I've been looking for in a high-quality video card.
The big question is, however, will there be Linux support for this? I know there isn't really any video-editing software for Linux. But, with a cool card like this, people might get interested in it.
If this feature had Linux support and if the priced dropped a bit (boy, $399 is pricey), I would certainly buy one.
While I was reading all of his ideas, I was particularly interested at the idea of dynamically generated folders, and reminded me a lot about the VFolder technology being used in the new GNOME PIM (what is it called? Magellan?). Anyway, I was excited about the idea of applying this technology to the common directory structure.
Then, I visited the "Mirror Worlds" webpage he linked to (I don't see what's so "transparent" about it, does anybody else?). It says they have a patent on this whole thing!! How will this effect GNOME and VFolders?
1) Years ago tapes cost, what, $4 to produce? Now CDs cost, what, $1 to produce?
2) CDs are not non-degradable. After 10-15 years, they will degrade. After usage, they will get scratched and skip.
3) In a competitive market, quality will go up or price will go down, or maybe both. But quality won't go up and price go up.
Oops, I've never done that before. Thanks for responding resonably, though.
ftp
Actually, if you can you should scp, you should always use scp. Nevertheless, if you want your GNOME profile, .gnome*, if you want KDE, .kde*, etc. You should also copy over your .xinitrc or .xsession (depending on what init level you use).
That's it.
- That was the most tightly packed set of buzzwords I have ever scene in my life. Did anybody count how many times the words revolution, enable, adavanced, rich, service, and experience were used?
- I knew more about what it actually is from reading the Slashdot summary! Where did that information come from? I found nothing of the sort at the
.NET hompage.
I'm especially confused about the idea about "authoring" the webpages that you would normally just read. Methinks that would make some web admins a bit upset. Also, how am I to read all of my work on another computer if I'm offline?These are questions that might be answered if we were given any sort of information. Assuming that the more vapor an idea is, the less information there is a available about it, I'd have to say this is pretty darn vapor.
So does anyone have any idea how any of this will work?
I've always considered that to be one of the reasons to have skins. Putting the entire UI in XML files and GIFs allows anyone that can learn XML (which isn't too rough, especially if you know HTML), such as an artist or a UI designer, to change the look of mozilla, rather than the developers doing it.
- Change the xmodmap file to recognize the "windows" button on the keyboard. Some distros, such as Mandrake, do this for you.
- Changed the binding for "move to next virtual desktop" to win-right, and "move to previous virtual desktop to win-left. That way, I hold down the button, and can move left or right through virtual desktops. Plus, since Sawmill can dynamically expand the number of desktops you have, you never run out!
- I made it even better by making win-l be the same as win-right and win-j the same as win-left. That way, when I am typing I never have to remove my fingers from their "home position" to move around desktops.
Believe me, this setup is really fast, and you can't get used to anything else. I love Sawmill, er, Sawfish.So, it seems while you tried to list 7 platforms, you really listed 3 that are so similar that you don't need DirectX to be portable.
Actually, what disturbs me more are the list of other patents at the linked page. Things such as "automatic update of software". Does anybody else think all of these are a little broad and obvious?
Do you want to know how I made these files from HTML? Well, take a look at html2latex.
When you hear something that you consider terrible (such as suing people for ridiculous patents), you can't just say to yourself "well, they're a business, they're just trying to make money". Someone (I'm not sure who) said it best with "The very fact that you're out to make a profit does not alleviate you from responsibility". In other words, businesses shouldn't be allowed to get away with this kind of stuff just because that's what they're there for.
Have you ever read The Grapes of Wrath? We're creating a monster in our mega-corporations just the same way that banks were created in the book, and we let it happen because we make excusess like the one you made. But enough of my thoughts.
It appears that VFS will allow Samba to mount a database and give transparent usage of that database to a regular Windows/Samba client. I thought it would be cool to brainstorm different things that you could do with this option. It sounds so cool, but I don't know why. Anybody have any ideas?
What could you do with VFS and Samba?
No, the original person was right. In case you hadn't noticed, he was using binary numbers (or did you not read his entire post?). 1 divided by 2 is indeed .1 in binary. You can't have .5 because there are no 5's in binary notation.
Does Xfree86 4 have support 2-d transperancy? Is such support necessary for pulling transperancy in X? One of the things I like about Mac OS X is that it can do slick things with tranparent windows and menus and such. I'd like to some wicked cool enlightenment theme with such trasperancies all over. Even more, I would like it to have some hardware support so that it will be fast.
So, does 4.0 do this? Does anyone even care? Or is this really in the domain of toolkits to handle?
Why on earth to people submit things such as ".consumers" and ".unions" rather than ".consumer" and ".union". The extra "s" on the end is a complete waste of time typing. Is there really going to be a difference between ".union" and ".unions"? No. Think of how many people will type on extra "s" and how many times they will type it in their lifetime. It's ridiculous. Get rid of the plurals, people!
Method and apparatus for managing subscriptions to distribution lists
So, did this guy try (and succed) in patenting the mailing list?
And there's this one too:
Method and apparatus for receiving electronic mail
Apparently, he's also patented email, or at lest the act of recieving email. I'm starting to lose a lot of respect for him.