> [2] Which seems extraordinarily unlikely, given the "community"'s steadfast resistance to change.
I find it ironic that you should make this claim in a post focused on your observation that there isn't any standardization. If anything, there are too many standards.
The community changes all the time. They simply do not make the specific changes you seem to want them to. Rightly so - it would be hypocritical for communities founded on freedom and openness to embrace the principles of oppression and design by fiat which underlie your suggestions.
Bloat refers to individual systems, not aggregations. If a system has a dozen redundant modules, then any bloat is the administator's fault - he or she did not remove the extra ones - not the module developers' fault for independently creating the different modules.
Your numbers are slightly exaggerated, I think. All of the widget libraries I am using right now, in the gnome panel, galeon, xterms, emacs, gedit, freeciv, and x-chat, together take up roughly 10 megabytes. About half of this is the X libraries themselves. Perhaps you are thinking of the associated pixmap libraries or desktop environment libraries.
As to the implied argument that KDE and/or GNOME themselves are bloated, I can only wonder what you expected. These are complete desktop environments, each one equivalent on its own (along with X, and a wm) to all of the basic gui functionality of OS X or w2k.
That you can run them alongside one another is only meant to be a charming illustration of the community spirit and excellent engineering at work.
> That's extremely weird, as Python can be picked up in about 2 hours, by complete programming newbies, who know no language (unless you consider Visual Basic a language).
> Silly me, for thinking the data from a BSDi staffer would be 'inflammatory'. But hey, obviously you have better data. So, post it.
"Better data" implies a comparison. You've provided no data to compare against. Maybe you should actually post something substantial before you start getting defensive.
There's plenty of good fantasy in Anime. Record of Lodoss War and Vision of Escaflowne come to mind. Gotta get them in the original Japanese, though. The Esca dub on Fox was horrible (terrible VAs and overzealous editing), but RoLW is going to be on toonami pretty soon.
> Beyond that, I think it's pretty fucking hypocritical to say that something is made for kids when it's got a PG-13 slapped all over it for violence. Yeah, why don't we just cut out the middle man and have little Billy watch Saving Private Ryan instead?
Because that's not "cool" violence. "Cool" violence is what your stereotypical hyperactive eleven year old boy wants, and it's what you've got in Star Wars. SPR is realistic violence (or so I've heard).
> Well it is a lot different. There has been and will be much insight and debate on thinking whether the reality of a thinking machine will ever come about.
If you're a strong materialist, how can you avoid it? I'm not asking this as a rhetorical question - I really want some ideas.
> It is a matter on which I'm sure no one here is qualified to make any valuable judgments
Equality presupposes that everyone does their taxes as an equal (that's not the case), has equal opportunity (also not the case), and wields an equal amount of influence in how taxes are set (not the case).
> By all accounts that I have read, the mathematical model is based mainly on work Hegelin did at CERN labs. How do you construe something like that to validate some preconceived idea and get it to work properly!
Well, that's what he was hired to do, and he's a bright lad, I'm sure he came up with a good way. Nothing that will stand up against scrutiny, but then I'm not aware of much scrutinization going on. I'd certainly like to see his papers for myself.
> I've always believed scientists are mostly politics-foolish, but this guy is completely wack.
But Hagelin isn't politics foolish, he's science foolish. His Unified Field Theory was constructed specifically to "prove" that Trancendental Meditation(tm) can reduce crime, improve crop yields, affect weather patterns, and so on.
Even though it goes against the empirical evidence. Science foolish.
I was the only person at my prom wearing a t-shirt (except for my friends, who were dressed up like some kinda hippie gurus). But it was a t-shirt with a tuxedo design on the front.
Slashdot Mirror
> [2] Which seems extraordinarily unlikely, given the "community"'s steadfast resistance to change.
I find it ironic that you should make this claim in a post focused on your observation that there isn't any standardization. If anything, there are too many standards.
The community changes all the time. They simply do not make the specific changes you seem to want them to. Rightly so - it would be hypocritical for communities founded on freedom and openness to embrace the principles of oppression and design by fiat which underlie your suggestions.
Bloat refers to individual systems, not aggregations. If a system has a dozen redundant modules, then any bloat is the administator's fault - he or she did not remove the extra ones - not the module developers' fault for independently creating the different modules.
Your numbers are slightly exaggerated, I think. All of the widget libraries I am using right now, in the gnome panel, galeon, xterms, emacs, gedit, freeciv, and x-chat, together take up roughly 10 megabytes. About half of this is the X libraries themselves. Perhaps you are thinking of the associated pixmap libraries or desktop environment libraries.
As to the implied argument that KDE and/or GNOME themselves are bloated, I can only wonder what you expected. These are complete desktop environments, each one equivalent on its own (along with X, and a wm) to all of the basic gui functionality of OS X or w2k.
That you can run them alongside one another is only meant to be a charming illustration of the community spirit and excellent engineering at work.
Say, did I just decipher why Perl nicks your nacker?
Seriously, if you wrote a better Python tutorial, I'd read it.
You implied that they did know VB - I refer you to your own grammar for the particulars.
> That's extremely weird, as Python can be picked up in about 2 hours, by complete programming newbies, who know no language (unless you consider Visual Basic a language).
So does this mean that Python is similar to VB?
> ...why would anyone use Ogg Vorbis instead of MP3, aside from just being part of groupthink?
Isn't there some kind of corrolary to Godwin's Law dealing with 1984 references?
Quick, someone call steve jackson games!
Xenix would have been funnier.
> Silly me, for thinking the data from a BSDi staffer would be 'inflammatory'. But hey, obviously you have better data. So, post it.
"Better data" implies a comparison. You've provided no data to compare against. Maybe you should actually post something substantial before you start getting defensive.
There's plenty of good fantasy in Anime. Record of Lodoss War and Vision of Escaflowne come to mind. Gotta get them in the original Japanese, though. The Esca dub on Fox was horrible (terrible VAs and overzealous editing), but RoLW is going to be on toonami pretty soon.
> Beyond that, I think it's pretty fucking hypocritical to say that something is made for kids when it's got a PG-13 slapped all over it for violence. Yeah, why don't we just cut out the middle man and have little Billy watch Saving Private Ryan instead?
Because that's not "cool" violence. "Cool" violence is what your stereotypical hyperactive eleven year old boy wants, and it's what you've got in Star Wars. SPR is realistic violence (or so I've heard).
THEY Might Be Giants, but We're Certainly Not Dwarves.
(Apologies to Terry Pratchett.)
> ... I'm a leech. That's human nature ...
That must mean that non-leeches aren't human. What are they? My theory is ALIENS!
And heaven is just two doors down.
> Well it is a lot different. There has been and will be much insight and debate on thinking whether the reality of a thinking machine will ever come about.
If you're a strong materialist, how can you avoid it? I'm not asking this as a rhetorical question - I really want some ideas.
> It is a matter on which I'm sure no one here is qualified to make any valuable judgments
Translation: "Quiet, ya dumb slashdotters!"
> so let us not discuss it.
And so therefore we must.
Equality presupposes that everyone does their taxes as an equal (that's not the case), has equal opportunity (also not the case), and wields an equal amount of influence in how taxes are set (not the case).
A market economy precludes the idea of equality.
Frankly, I doubt we will ever develop computers with the sophisticated power of even a mouse brain ...
And 640k should be enough for anybody, right? :-)
Nice.
Source?
> Basically he wants to tax the weathly to fund welfare for the poor. That's socialism
What do you call taxing everyone to fund welfare for the poor (and the rich), like we're doing now?
Actually, mozilla renders the microsoft quotes pretty okay ...
> By all accounts that I have read, the mathematical model is based mainly on work Hegelin did at CERN labs. How do you construe something like that to validate some preconceived idea and get it to work properly!
Well, that's what he was hired to do, and he's a bright lad, I'm sure he came up with a good way. Nothing that will stand up against scrutiny, but then I'm not aware of much scrutinization going on. I'd certainly like to see his papers for myself.
Maybe science mischevous would be a better term.
> He's undeniably very intelligent
SO intelligent, he made a Unified Field Theory based on the assumption that Transcendental Meditation can affect the way crops grow!
> and is (imho) in this for the right reasons.
And not, say, to bring TM(tm) into public schools.
Right.
> I've always believed scientists are mostly politics-foolish, but this guy is completely wack.
But Hagelin isn't politics foolish, he's science foolish. His Unified Field Theory was constructed specifically to "prove" that Trancendental Meditation(tm) can reduce crime, improve crop yields, affect weather patterns, and so on.
Even though it goes against the empirical evidence. Science foolish.
I was the only person at my prom wearing a t-shirt (except for my friends, who were dressed up like some kinda hippie gurus). But it was a t-shirt with a tuxedo design on the front.
If it's free, I should be able to download it for free and distribute it freely. So don't say it's free unless you can provide a working link.
> So no one in this country has ever gotten rich because they worked hard?
That seems to be what he's implying, yes. Perhaps, if you disagree, you could provide a counterexample.