In fact, yes... it does apply to everything else in the known universe that a man could occupy his time with.
There *ARE* significant world problems around today which don't get solved because of passive, spectator, 'entertainment-centric' societies which refuse to take responsibility for such things...
Its something the Romans taught us. Or, some of us. Kind of.
What I find myself losing interest in is passive entertainment such as TV and movies.
Well, I can relate to this also, actually. It is passive entertainment which irks me...
Maybe its just that video games feel more and more passive these days? There isn't a video game around which *doesn't* have a fundamental premise of "this is a rat, here is its cage" as its design tenet... I don't think you can get more passive than rat+cage...
How'm I supposed to search for "lin---s" in google, for example? Please don't break out the meta-escape, its already past time for a headache remedy on this Lindows name issue...
A better name would've been "Lintel", but okay, I guess the Dutch Govt' wouldn't have seen the humor in that name-switch, eh?;)
Computers are underutilized. There is no such thing as 'niche computing use'. There is just 'using a computer', and 'not using it', for some specific task, infinitely definable...
Less than %2 of all the people who could use a computer in their lives in some way (productively, I mean), actually do.
There isn't really 'such a thing' as a "niche" computer market. I'm serious. There is 'general purpose computing' and there is 'dedicated focus computing' (embedded/etc.), and either model can be applied to any other science in the world to good effect.
This idea of 'niche markets' is a Western notion, predominantly derived from 'marketing' and has nothing at all whatsoever to do with the actual facts of the technology, which factually has no bounds for application.
A computer can be adapted and bent to any and all application; therefore there isn't a 'niche' for its application in any sense other than a Madison Avenue Spin^H^H^H^HMarketing Merchants arbitrary lines on a board. In fact, niches are arbitrary.
The computing industry is still growing, essentially, at the same rate it always has. Computers are radically applicable to so many spheres of life that in fact the problem is not "if", or "how" to use computers, its "when" and "where". Pick a human endeavour: somehow, it can benefit from having a computer applied to it.
That said, its my belief that the majority of computer systems in the world are still radically underutilized... Desktop Computing is an utter waste of computing power, yet nevertheless, it is an application of computer science technologies which still bears fruit for modern commerce and industry above and beyond what was previously possible only a few years earlier...
This isn't going to change. As more and more 'niche markets' get discovered and 'covered', it will become pretty clear that really... there isn't such a thing as a 'niche' in the technological sense. Only in the sense of 'control over it from afar', which is all a Madison Ave type cares about...
right, exactly. almost completely a total waste of time, but fun nevertheless, and you never know... you may actually have done something for me, unwittingly...
There's no other reason. Your list could've stopped at perl, and it would still be a reason.
Its good to have diversity in your language choices, because different languages have different strengths and weaknesses, and having a good command of more than one can often make you much better, individually.
There's no reason not to continue adding scripting languages to operating systems... strong language evolution is best served by having a massive genepool.
Or at least, so the theory goes. Of course there's the "pro at all, master of none" aspect to consider as well, but you never know... REXX may one day compete with CPAN, you never know...;)
-Life should have an element of fun and joy lest it be drab and strictly utilitarian
Fun and Joy don't always just come from doing something with is 'only fun and joyful and not much else'... its quite possible to derive fun and joy from activities which are not only good for you, but which are also good for your fellow man, as well...
Important things are often fun.
To think otherwise is perhaps a little... naive... ?
Doing anything at all is wanking. Everyone dies in the end and all works fade away.
All the more reason to wipe your save-game states and write an opus instead. Maybe someone will read them...
Humans are a lot more fun than video games. When you do something in 20 minutes of your life for a human being, whatever it is, its far more rewarding than when you do something to a rambuffer designed to keep you interested for hours and hours on end with little or no social interaction whatsoever...
My solution to the "don't like video games any more" problem is "get over it, go outside and enjoy the sunshine with my friends instead". Really, this is a pretty nice alternative to yet... another... droll... death match... where I will... or will not... be... a... 'winner'... of something... with no... substance... whatsoever...
When Sol dies in 20 billion years, what could you possibly have done in your life that will matter then?
That's a very good question, one which serves as a grand motivation on a daily basis...
heh heh... well, lets see, if half of the computing power that is consumed by the sum total of all Half-Life 2 sessions on any given Saturday were available to 5% of the researchers involved in cancer treatments, I'm pretty sure that there would be major leaps and bounds in the process of 'curing' cancer...
... and what exactly is wrong with making that conclusion?
Many great and wonderful people have started their rise from mediocrity with just such a revelation and not only done wonderful things for their fellow man as a result of it, but gained personal satisfaction and accomplishment far and above what any 'diablo2' or 'half-life' session can deliver in a few hours...
These sorts of things should be encouraged, not written off into the infinite void with generalities... The world needs fewer spectators and more activists!
I know that goes against the "American Way of Life" mantra, but hey... the U.S. ain't no model society when it comes to producing non-fat, non-lazy, productive, helpful, humanity-aware individuals capable of forming together and doing big and wonderful things in the world... it is pretty good at showing boobies at the SuperBowl for millions of passive entertainees, though...
I used to be an avid gamer, but since I 'grew up' (left the 20's, so to speak) I've found that its just not worth it.
All that harping about how much time I was wasting in front of a computer, essentially producing nothing of any value whatsoever, has sort of accumulated, and now the utter waste of life that video gaming actually is has hit me.
Whatever, if you're having fun, you're having fun... but it doesn't take long until you start to realize that using a computer for video games is little more than wanking. And, everyone knows that the energy you use for that is usually better spent elsewhere...;)
Just get over it, is my advice. You don't have to be a gamer to enjoy life. You can enjoy life without getting involved in any 'virtual realities', and if you're feeling that, then go with it... your life will get better as a result of not playing video games as a habit...
The uses for this software are astounding. It is, essentially, a breed of software designed to recognize and manipulate social class systems.
Imagine a system which tells you, easily enough, who the 'most popular person for subject ___Y___' is, in your neighborhood? Target a campaign of computer-buying to only -3- folks in an area, and end up blanketing the entire region with tuber-like memes...
PR agencies could use this data to identify the core 'gossip leaders', the ones who have massive impact on multiple peers, and then they could target only those people with their campaigns... imagine that... a means of actually targetting campaigns and capers directly to the primary delivery mechanisms of word of mouth among a large group. This software can give you that.
There are numerous religious theories, also, on the strengths of individuals and groups and the effect that these social connections have on a movement... put this in the hands of the right (wrong?) people, and we could see social revolutions targetted and executed with such blinding accuracy and predictability that most of us simply won't know what hit us...
This is the danger zone. The moment we start using computers to do qualitative analysis of social dynamics, and then using the data for commercial/religious/nefarious purposes, well... maybe its time to unplug.
An OS is responsible for one machine or one group of machines
No, sorry, but an OS is responsible for the interaction between a human and a machine, and nothing else.
If a humans' interaction with the machine requires that that machine be 'integral' with other machines, then this is the job of the Operating System... this is why the TCP/IP stack is an OS stack, and not a userland stack, for example, or why the file i/o routines are OS-provided, not userland...
The reason it is so difficult to integrate Microsoft operating systems with other OS's (and not the other way around) is because Microsoft don't produce an 'operating system', they produce an 'operating system + suite...', and more often than not they confuse the line between their suite and their OS in a way which makes it very unpalatable for other OS vendors to follow... even though, in fact, some of them do actually confront this obfuscation and address it (case in point: the Samba team).
If Microsoft really cared about integration, it wouldn't be an issue. They would use open specs, and open protocols for everything (not just the 2% of their system services demanded by the market...) But the problem is, they -know that integration is a key point for an operating system- and thats why they blur the lines between what is an 'integration model' and what is an 'application model'.
It is next to impossible to sync a users' home dirs on a Windows box and a Unix box, on Windows. Its totally possible to do it the other way around, sync'ing 'from unix'... the reason for this, is that integration has been designed out of Microsofts operating system model.
"Integration", to Microsoft, means "Embraced, Extended".
Microsoft have held back the industry. They have not pushed it forward.
We could've had cheap, ubiquitous computing a loooooong time ago. MSX would've given it to us.
Who stopped that? Microsoft.
There isn't a single 'innovation' from Microsoft which wasn't thought of 10 years earlier in some other camp. Show me one single Microsoft innovation to have come out of their so-called R&D labs, which we couldn't have engineered/designed/implemented 10 years earlier... there just isn't one... and no, I'm not trolling, I honestly can't think of a single MS 'invention' which wasn't already feasible in the context of the rest of the industry.
different operating systems, which would make integrating computer systems and networks virtually impossible.
This is such utter bollocks I can't even handle it.
The reason integration is difficult is because it is made difficult by those who do it.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with 'operating systems'. It seems to me that 'operating systems' don't mean what they used to mean... in the good ol' days, an "OS" was all you needed in order to get some basic work and programming done on some hardware.
Nowadays, it seems that an "OS" == "all the crap I think I'm gonna need one day, bundled into a single directory structure".
If the OS is doing its job then integration is not impossible, it is 100% feasible and easy.
An OS which doesn't do its job, doesn't allow integration. Its very telling to me that Microsoft choose to redefine the task of an OS rather than actually make their OS do the job its supposed to do.
Integration between OS's is supposed to be easy. That is what an OS is all about, after all. Maybe someone should tell that to the 'gurus' from Redmond that mouth off about operating systems all day long...
Slashdot Mirror
Then stop using them. They'll go away.
...
Looking for new and interesting music?
The AMPFEA.ORG Files Repository contains a signficant daily portion of new music which has been released on the 'net by independent artists.
The new-music mailing list is a handy, moderated list for new music announcements from fresh artists around the glob.
Go here if you've got music of your own online that you want to announce to the new-music list
You don't *NEED* record companies any more, in order to find good music. You only need them to make you feel good about belonging to a society...
You will die, probably within the next seventy years, and anything you "accomplished" was for naught.
... so who am I to truly say if you are right or not ...
I beg to differ. But then, I am yet to have a son or daughter
In fact, yes... it does apply to everything else in the known universe that a man could occupy his time with.
...
There *ARE* significant world problems around today which don't get solved because of passive, spectator, 'entertainment-centric' societies which refuse to take responsibility for such things
Its something the Romans taught us. Or, some of us. Kind of.
Actually a 'lintel' is the bit around the window which keeps it from blowing away in the wind ...
;)
I think its a highly appropriate name, myself. I might have to go start a "Lintel" project on freshmeat, quick!
What I find myself losing interest in is passive entertainment such as TV and movies.
... I don't think you can get more passive than rat+cage...
Well, I can relate to this also, actually. It is passive entertainment which irks me...
Maybe its just that video games feel more and more passive these days? There isn't a video game around which *doesn't* have a fundamental premise of "this is a rat, here is its cage" as its design tenet
As long as it is done in your spare time ...
Sheesh? Who alive on this planet today has any spare time?
How'm I supposed to search for "lin---s" in google, for example? Please don't break out the meta-escape, its already past time for a headache remedy on this Lindows name issue ...
;)
A better name would've been "Lintel", but okay, I guess the Dutch Govt' wouldn't have seen the humor in that name-switch, eh?
Computers are underutilized. There is no such thing as 'niche computing use'. There is just 'using a computer', and 'not using it', for some specific task, infinitely definable ...
... Desktop Computing is an utter waste of computing power, yet nevertheless, it is an application of computer science technologies which still bears fruit for modern commerce and industry above and beyond what was previously possible only a few years earlier ...
... there isn't such a thing as a 'niche' in the technological sense. Only in the sense of 'control over it from afar', which is all a Madison Ave type cares about ...
Less than %2 of all the people who could use a computer in their lives in some way (productively, I mean), actually do.
There isn't really 'such a thing' as a "niche" computer market. I'm serious. There is 'general purpose computing' and there is 'dedicated focus computing' (embedded/etc.), and either model can be applied to any other science in the world to good effect.
This idea of 'niche markets' is a Western notion, predominantly derived from 'marketing' and has nothing at all whatsoever to do with the actual facts of the technology, which factually has no bounds for application.
A computer can be adapted and bent to any and all application; therefore there isn't a 'niche' for its application in any sense other than a Madison Avenue Spin^H^H^H^HMarketing Merchants arbitrary lines on a board. In fact, niches are arbitrary.
The computing industry is still growing, essentially, at the same rate it always has. Computers are radically applicable to so many spheres of life that in fact the problem is not "if", or "how" to use computers, its "when" and "where". Pick a human endeavour: somehow, it can benefit from having a computer applied to it.
That said, its my belief that the majority of computer systems in the world are still radically underutilized
This isn't going to change. As more and more 'niche markets' get discovered and 'covered', it will become pretty clear that really
right, exactly. almost completely a total waste of time, but fun nevertheless, and you never know ... you may actually have done something for me, unwittingly ...
... uh oh.
heh heh
Language Diversity.
... strong language evolution is best served by having a massive genepool.
... REXX may one day compete with CPAN, you never know ... ;)
There's no other reason. Your list could've stopped at perl, and it would still be a reason.
Its good to have diversity in your language choices, because different languages have different strengths and weaknesses, and having a good command of more than one can often make you much better, individually.
There's no reason not to continue adding scripting languages to operating systems
Or at least, so the theory goes. Of course there's the "pro at all, master of none" aspect to consider as well, but you never know
I don't deny that such a suspicion has driven many, many worthwhile endeavours ...
I don't disagree with your points. However:
... its quite possible to derive fun and joy from activities which are not only good for you, but which are also good for your fellow man, as well...
... naive ... ?
-Life should have an element of fun and joy lest it be drab and strictly utilitarian
Fun and Joy don't always just come from doing something with is 'only fun and joyful and not much else'
Important things are often fun.
To think otherwise is perhaps a little
Doing anything at all is wanking. Everyone dies in the end and all works fade away.
...
... another ... droll ... death match ... where I will ... or will not ... be ... a ... 'winner' ... of something ... with no ... substance ... whatsoever ...
...
All the more reason to wipe your save-game states and write an opus instead. Maybe someone will read them...
Humans are a lot more fun than video games. When you do something in 20 minutes of your life for a human being, whatever it is, its far more rewarding than when you do something to a rambuffer designed to keep you interested for hours and hours on end with little or no social interaction whatsoever
My solution to the "don't like video games any more" problem is "get over it, go outside and enjoy the sunshine with my friends instead". Really, this is a pretty nice alternative to yet
When Sol dies in 20 billion years, what could you possibly have done in your life that will matter then?
That's a very good question, one which serves as a grand motivation on a daily basis
heh heh ... well, lets see, if half of the computing power that is consumed by the sum total of all Half-Life 2 sessions on any given Saturday were available to 5% of the researchers involved in cancer treatments, I'm pretty sure that there would be major leaps and bounds in the process of 'curing' cancer ...
... and what exactly is wrong with making that conclusion?
... The world needs fewer spectators and more activists!
... the U.S. ain't no model society when it comes to producing non-fat, non-lazy, productive, helpful, humanity-aware individuals capable of forming together and doing big and wonderful things in the world ... it is pretty good at showing boobies at the SuperBowl for millions of passive entertainees, though ...
Many great and wonderful people have started their rise from mediocrity with just such a revelation and not only done wonderful things for their fellow man as a result of it, but gained personal satisfaction and accomplishment far and above what any 'diablo2' or 'half-life' session can deliver in a few hours...
These sorts of things should be encouraged, not written off into the infinite void with generalities
I know that goes against the "American Way of Life" mantra, but hey
I used to be an avid gamer, but since I 'grew up' (left the 20's, so to speak) I've found that its just not worth it.
... ;)
... your life will get better as a result of not playing video games as a habit ...
All that harping about how much time I was wasting in front of a computer, essentially producing nothing of any value whatsoever, has sort of accumulated, and now the utter waste of life that video gaming actually is has hit me.
Whatever, if you're having fun, you're having fun... but it doesn't take long until you start to realize that using a computer for video games is little more than wanking. And, everyone knows that the energy you use for that is usually better spent elsewhere
Just get over it, is my advice. You don't have to be a gamer to enjoy life. You can enjoy life without getting involved in any 'virtual realities', and if you're feeling that, then go with it
ahhh I dunno. You could do the analysis on a data collection. But you still gotta get the data.
Uh, hello. Tribes.Net Or-freakin'-Kut.org
This is getting the data. It is happening...
The uses for this software are astounding. It is, essentially, a breed of software designed to recognize and manipulate social class systems.
... imagine that ... a means of actually targetting campaigns and capers directly to the primary delivery mechanisms of word of mouth among a large group. This software can give you that.
... put this in the hands of the right (wrong?) people, and we could see social revolutions targetted and executed with such blinding accuracy and predictability that most of us simply won't know what hit us ...
... maybe its time to unplug.
Imagine a system which tells you, easily enough, who the 'most popular person for subject ___Y___' is, in your neighborhood? Target a campaign of computer-buying to only -3- folks in an area, and end up blanketing the entire region with tuber-like memes...
PR agencies could use this data to identify the core 'gossip leaders', the ones who have massive impact on multiple peers, and then they could target only those people with their campaigns
There are numerous religious theories, also, on the strengths of individuals and groups and the effect that these social connections have on a movement
This is the danger zone. The moment we start using computers to do qualitative analysis of social dynamics, and then using the data for commercial/religious/nefarious purposes, well
Dude, but what good is that if all they are is microbial extremophiles?
...
... 'extremophile' ... heh heh ... yeah ...
I'd at least want a normal-sized extremophile blonde Europan
heh heh
Microsoft is an 'also-ran' in the XML game. XML is not Microsofts innovation - they're only using it.
"derivative" != "innovative"
An OS is responsible for one machine or one group of machines
... this is why the TCP/IP stack is an OS stack, and not a userland stack, for example, or why the file i/o routines are OS-provided, not userland ...
...', and more often than not they confuse the line between their suite and their OS in a way which makes it very unpalatable for other OS vendors to follow... even though, in fact, some of them do actually confront this obfuscation and address it (case in point: the Samba team).
... the reason for this, is that integration has been designed out of Microsofts operating system model.
No, sorry, but an OS is responsible for the interaction between a human and a machine, and nothing else.
If a humans' interaction with the machine requires that that machine be 'integral' with other machines, then this is the job of the Operating System
The reason it is so difficult to integrate Microsoft operating systems with other OS's (and not the other way around) is because Microsoft don't produce an 'operating system', they produce an 'operating system + suite
If Microsoft really cared about integration, it wouldn't be an issue. They would use open specs, and open protocols for everything (not just the 2% of their system services demanded by the market...) But the problem is, they -know that integration is a key point for an operating system- and thats why they blur the lines between what is an 'integration model' and what is an 'application model'.
It is next to impossible to sync a users' home dirs on a Windows box and a Unix box, on Windows. Its totally possible to do it the other way around, sync'ing 'from unix'
"Integration", to Microsoft, means "Embraced, Extended".
I think its rubbish, personally.
... there just isn't one ... and no, I'm not trolling, I honestly can't think of a single MS 'invention' which wasn't already feasible in the context of the rest of the industry.
...
Microsoft have held back the industry. They have not pushed it forward.
We could've had cheap, ubiquitous computing a loooooong time ago. MSX would've given it to us.
Who stopped that? Microsoft.
There isn't a single 'innovation' from Microsoft which wasn't thought of 10 years earlier in some other camp. Show me one single Microsoft innovation to have come out of their so-called R&D labs, which we couldn't have engineered/designed/implemented 10 years earlier
All MS innovate is theft of others technology
different operating systems, which would make integrating computer systems and networks virtually impossible.
... in the good ol' days, an "OS" was all you needed in order to get some basic work and programming done on some hardware.
...
This is such utter bollocks I can't even handle it.
The reason integration is difficult is because it is made difficult by those who do it.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with 'operating systems'. It seems to me that 'operating systems' don't mean what they used to mean
Nowadays, it seems that an "OS" == "all the crap I think I'm gonna need one day, bundled into a single directory structure".
If the OS is doing its job then integration is not impossible, it is 100% feasible and easy.
An OS which doesn't do its job, doesn't allow integration. Its very telling to me that Microsoft choose to redefine the task of an OS rather than actually make their OS do the job its supposed to do.
Integration between OS's is supposed to be easy. That is what an OS is all about, after all. Maybe someone should tell that to the 'gurus' from Redmond that mouth off about operating systems all day long
so ... where do you download this 'freind in russia' program, and how does it work exactly?
... wake me up when they start putting zerconf in the rovers ...