Great, so because it's OSS and because some people work in their free time, they should not listen to anyone that requests feature X or state that they need to accomplish Y.
The day a developer stops listening to user requests directly or indirectly and starts to do whatever he likes most (in their free or payed time) is the day I'll want to switch to something else (personal choice here).
People usually don't ask for a response, they just ask for someone to listen to what they need. For a large project this may mean some people specialize in just that (communication between the org and the users) and for a small project these may be the same people developing.
I think developers will benefit from users feeback *if they know how to handle it*, and that does not necesarily mean they should be the users bitches or anything like that. There is no magic solution. They key is to be able to listen to good requests and ideas, ditch the bad ideas and have a way to balance the time it takes to read these and do actual work.
Law should require that donations be valued at marginal cost AND NOT the price they charged some other guy or even the price they'd like to have charged.
It's very easy why, but in the land of Economics (USA) nobody can see something as easy as that:(
Companies are really abusing the economy and the citizens. But people will figure it at some point, if not already doing it (i have doubts though)
I don't know, but I could not afford any Windows system in my company. It's not like we can't pay once for a license, the thing is all the machines run *unattended* 4000 miles away from our headquaters.
We used Red Hat, and we REMOTELY reinstalled the entire OS for a Slackware Linux without the need to even ask our ISP to hardboot the machine even once.
After they that reboot, we expect the machine to NEVER come down and to only require some patches (security).
After the reboot, the machine's been up for half a year (load average is about 0.9 so it's not completely quiet).
I couldn't have trusted Windows for that. I know I'd rather be using Windows as desktop (provided i have a *nix nearby i can login) though gnome is fine. But I am SURE I couldt use Windows at our servers.
Sure,.Net will force us to use Windows at some point and we'll have to comply (or suffer), but that's a monopoly "choice" we'll have to follow, as the goverments are deep in the monopolists money (free markets are no use for them...and the consumer are just things that vote and that lie to listen to lies...at least in my country).
I hope we can keep using Linux for the longest possible.
Who told you they think? They don't, they see a challenge and take it. They don't really know anything about economics or have the big picture, and that's ok. The problem only comes when the herd talks about hurting microsoft. Because in the end only us are hurt.:)
What the hell, i myght get an XBox myself...if they are going to win anyway why not have fun with the ride? Hackers are a bit inmature to see the big picture and that makes me wonder if i did the right thing when i invested in evangelizing linux/gnu/etc...
MS file formats are designed to break compatibility. Even MS word crashes with document it has created itself. It's badly done.
OO has put a lot of effort in filters, but it's not only a compatibility thing, it has to actually implement _EVERYTHING_ Word and Excel do as well as provide their own funcionalities as well as reverse engineer every damn change. It's not easy and it will never be perfect.
Try to create your spreadsheet in Excel (same spreadsheet) and if it STILL crashes OO please file a gub report. They are very responsive and want to help.
But it's be nice if you used CVS or something else than.xls from perl.
Do you actually read your own post and check for consistency? Besides, I know MSOffice is the standard and that i can't use anything but Office when i need to talk to "normal people", but we will NEVER get 100% compatibility.
So the point is having a file format that every other single office suite can talk to. Then we can create a MSOffice import/export filter and that's it.
We can't keep saving everything as excel files as the standard. We need 1 single xls import/export filter to talk to a unified file format EVERYONE ELSE can use.
But you'll never understand so I don't feel write for answering and losing my time...
Ok, what I am going to say is not along the usual slashdot karma whoring, but I am not here for the karma but to state my opinion...so...(but try to reply if possible).
You mean I should give up my mouse and keyboard, as it's got MS on it?
No, but you should have bough a Genius mouse for 1/10 of the price and have donated the rest to the EFF or to the GNU foundation.
Also consider the fact that by buying an Xbox and no games, you are probably costing MS about $200..
Also consider that cost of production should arround $190 per box (not including R&D which is always a sunk cost and that doesn't hurt MS marginally if they sell 1 or 1000000000000 millions Xboxes). What makes you believe they pay $400 per Box? Ignorance is very damaging, and your figure is just _uneducated_ guess.
Claiming that by buying MS stuff and using them in any other way you are damaging them is at least a _very_ dangerous game. Not to etion there are many other ways to not-help Microsoft that can really establish a decent competitor.
who marked it as flaimebait?
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LinuXbox Boots
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I think he has a point and a very important one.
Oh, I see, it's because you don't allow insigh that doesn't go like "HAHHAHA, we are beating MS asses , we are much smarter!". Well, in fact you can't be sure about that.
Microsoft can't sell general porpuse computers for home use with Windows for $200, because they would get slatered at courts (dumping anyone?).
But once Linux hacks their way out, how can they be prevented from doing just that? In fact, they ARE trying to replace the computer with XBoxes.
They ONLY good thing would be to see no XBoxes are sold and that they just failed miserably.
Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...
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LinuXbox Boots
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It may be possible that a brillian guy came up of a way to use 3D cards (new ones like NV30) for that, and that you could use several of them per machine (8 or 16 or more).
Depends on the kind of calculation you need of course. Textures would be numerical data and you can define operation on them, the buffers will hold the results.
Anyway, if it's usefull in any way, somebody will find out soon, as it's high bandwith, high speed, low price and scales well (several per each cheap intel box).
Re:doesnt this have an adverse effect
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Nope, they can just offer lots of rebates in carefully crafted ways to mae sure you can't run a non gaming stuff at subsidy prices. And that's if MS is not already making a profit in each of XBox sold today.
So instead of using an open format to create a spreadsheet, you use a perl module and create some.xls closed format file and then expect other non MS suites to open them perfectly, and when one of them doesn't perfectly open your perl-created closed-format excel you request to have them working right and to not focus in file format?
I'f I had the power I'd award your post the troll of the milenia award!
Whoah, that's only a little tiny microscopic part of the problem. Consider a University that does not only ask students to be high profile and high pocketed and high IQ, but also MANDATES them to _BUY_ MS OFFICE and to intall it in the students personal computers (bough by them of course).
There should be plenty of universities, the one that I know is Harvard. You either install XP and MS Office or you can choose yourself another university (a lossers one or what?)...
Take a look at the computer requirements and be enjoy! (warining: the requirements are sent to the students as MS Word Attachments, so you must have office to look at them).
Linxu evangelization is fine, but when you have the inquisition at universities, what good is the Cult of Linux??? They'll just hung or burn you if you don't pledge guilty of wizardry!
That's the message you ... !!
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Lessig @ OSCON
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· Score: 2
Step 1: Free speech is in danger Step 2: You can't do much alone Step 3: Profit! (well, donations)
Ok, it's not a business plan, but only the EFF coordinated effort can aleviate the problem, so please donate if you can.
Well, it's a difficult task, because you need to do glue many different subsystems that are meant to be used at the console level. In a sense, it's like a garage hot-rod. It's certainly as powerfull, can sustain 9000 rpm for hours and some people will just love it above anything. On the other hand, Windows is like a BMW.
It was not because of tech people saying oh I can make $$$. It was because non-tech people saw they could make money. And why is that? Because investors though they could just make money by selling stock at a higher price disregarding the actual cash flow (in the.com bubble I'd call those "drawings").
If an invesment in a dt com should go like this: 1) 1M start-up -> 2M for next 3 years -> 6M for 5 years -> breakeven -> lots of profits They just did it like: 2) 10M investment, sell stock for 1000M in 6 months -> 50M investment, stock value jumps to 5000M -> 1 year later, profits vs. market value are ridiculous -> buble explodes
The shame is that some good companies wanted to go the 2) way but couldn't. The couldn't choose the "spendings roadmap" because they needed to actually BURN the funds so that they could issue the IPO. Once the IPO was up and the initial investors laughing whatever happened to the company could only hurt: - millions of individual investors - the IT industry So the people that set up the bubble are really happy and the only ones I see have survived are the companies that wanted to be in business for the long run, had plenty of their OWN cash in sufficient quantities so that will not need anybody elses money before break-even (6 or 7 years). Some other managed to survive because they where able to cut costs inmediately and as they where overfunded after IPO, the remaining cash at the new spending rate was enough to reach the shore (but VAN of these projects was a disaster).
After you install linux first-time-ever, you don't understand anything at all. You undertand only what's been mirrored from the windows experience. Ok, you can use an Office suite and some apps, but that's about it.
You don't really understand anything not to mention that the names of the programs and utilities are really confusing. With Windows you need to know much less, because it's been specificaly tuned to easiness. It asumes you don't know skwat. Windows for a power user (system and tools, not apps power user) may be a little lacking. The security may be crap. But it's pretty straightforward. Linux can setup easily, but administrating it and customizing it is a pain. And if some distro makes a tas easier (ex: mandrake font importer) it's not because Linux is simpler, it's because there is a little tool to hide the underliyng complexity. And this is different than just droping some fonts in a/windows/fonts folder.
I would install Linux for a newby that wants to try it, but I don't expect him to know how to use Linux. I only expect him to fire up some apps and close them when done. He couldn't do anything else without learning quite a bit.
I am not mentioning compiling stuff, putting things in the right places (correct prefix when needed), lddng, recompiling a kernel if he's using some hardware that wasn't supprted earlier.
It can be made easier, but it's NOT easy, you can only hide it. Windows on the other hand always asume the user will know nothing, and all installers (not just windows) inherit that view.
Is it so hard to give kudos where kudos are deserved?
Not at all. But you need to deserve it first. What if this paper had been released by a russian hacker? Does it make any difference that MIT is involved? It seems so!
They don't want to fuck with the top univerities of the US, that's right. But i'll send my kudos to them when I hear:
"Microsoft told Vladimir Whatever that while it might prefer that the information not be published, it would be inappropriate to ask anyone to withhold any information.
Re:Am I the only one who understands the implicati
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Depends on the size of the lenses:-) We'll just need some photons here and there to reconstruct the thing. We'll be so advanced by that time. We can even have nanotech robots chasing the right photons:)
I describe it as a pattern matcher and a patterns database, with some lousy oracles (pain, etc). The pattern matcher is in itself determined by patterns. It's circular.
How you think is affected by how you procesed patterns in the past. If you are lazzy or not curious (each incremental match is less important). If your pattern matcher matches lots of non-matches, you are also doomed (once you reach a critical point of false positives vs. true positives, the pattern matcher gets corrupted beyond repair).
I'm truly damaged beyond repair:)
Re:Someone posts a chess computer story...
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Men vs. Machines
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That is exactly how human players prepare for matches against each other.
False, players also need to talk, walk, remember other things, and a bunch of other non-specialized activities. They need to be humans. On the other hand, a computer is "anything, but not a human". Why? Because there is NO limit to how much memory they can use, how much processing power they might use. Perfect memory, perfect calculus.
So if you could build a infinite memory/ infinit processing power computer, you could just precalculate all the possible outcomes of matches. Say a ply of 60 or more.
That computer is smart?
Vision 1: To call a computer chess program "inteligent" you need to draw a line and state: "this memory and this CPU should give you enough resources to beat any human". Anything else is just plain unfair and it's no longer inteligent.
Vision 2: A chess program should be an entityand not a bunch tuned of knowledge / rules / algoritms. It should be able to learn from experience without human intervention (ie: no specialized learning program, this one should be tuned by the computer itself), it should be able to plan it's own strategy, and autotrain itself. Ie: you teach them the chess rules, let it comunicate (gather more data, a database if requested, etc) and then the computer must do everything without interference.
Level 1 is acceptable, but we'd like to see a computer beat a human under the much more fair Vision 2.
Re:Am I the only one who understands the implicati
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Atomic Scale Memory
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Or even more if we learn to travel faster than light. That way we can go very very far away and start recording what everyone actually did since the begining of humans life.
I'd like to know what people should expect if they live in the southern hemisphere... Will it be better, the same, or nothing? (I suppose it should be similar because the earth rotates every day)
Slashdot Mirror
Great, so because it's OSS and because some people work in their free time, they should not listen to anyone that requests feature X or state that they need to accomplish Y.
The day a developer stops listening to user requests directly or indirectly and starts to do whatever he likes most (in their free or payed time) is the day I'll want to switch to something else (personal choice here).
People usually don't ask for a response, they just ask for someone to listen to what they need. For a large project this may mean some people specialize in just that (communication between the org and the users) and for a small project these may be the same people developing.
I think developers will benefit from users feeback *if they know how to handle it*, and that does not necesarily mean they should be the users bitches or anything like that. There is no magic solution. They key is to be able to listen to good requests and ideas, ditch the bad ideas and have a way to balance the time it takes to read these and do actual work.
Law should require that donations be valued at marginal cost AND NOT the price they charged some other guy or even the price they'd like to have charged.
:(
It's very easy why, but in the land of Economics (USA) nobody can see something as easy as that
Companies are really abusing the economy and the citizens. But people will figure it at some point, if not already doing it (i have doubts though)
I don't know, but I could not afford any Windows system in my company. It's not like we can't pay once for a license, the thing is all the machines run *unattended* 4000 miles away from our headquaters.
.Net will force us to use Windows at some point and we'll have to comply (or suffer), but that's a monopoly "choice" we'll have to follow, as the goverments are deep in the monopolists money (free markets are no use for them...and the consumer are just things that vote and that lie to listen to lies...at least in my country).
We used Red Hat, and we REMOTELY reinstalled the entire OS for a Slackware Linux without the need to even ask our ISP to hardboot the machine even once.
After they that reboot, we expect the machine to NEVER come down and to only require some patches (security).
After the reboot, the machine's been up for half a year (load average is about 0.9 so it's not completely quiet).
I couldn't have trusted Windows for that. I know I'd rather be using Windows as desktop (provided i have a *nix nearby i can login) though gnome is fine. But I am SURE I couldt use Windows at our servers.
Sure,
I hope we can keep using Linux for the longest possible.
Who told you they think? They don't, they see a challenge and take it. They don't really know anything about economics or have the big picture, and that's ok. The problem only comes when the herd talks about hurting microsoft. Because in the end only us are hurt. :)
What the hell, i myght get an XBox myself...if they are going to win anyway why not have fun with the ride? Hackers are a bit inmature to see the big picture and that makes me wonder if i did the right thing when i invested in evangelizing linux/gnu/etc...
MS file formats are designed to break compatibility. Even MS word crashes with document it has created itself. It's badly done.
.xls from perl.
OO has put a lot of effort in filters, but it's not only a compatibility thing, it has to actually implement _EVERYTHING_ Word and Excel do as well as provide their own funcionalities as well as reverse engineer every damn change. It's not easy and it will never be perfect.
Try to create your spreadsheet in Excel (same spreadsheet) and if it STILL crashes OO please file a gub report. They are very responsive and want to help.
But it's be nice if you used CVS or something else than
Untrue. There are definitely undocumented parts
...
Do you actually read your own post and check for consistency? Besides, I know MSOffice is the standard and that i can't use anything but Office when i need to talk to "normal people", but we will NEVER get 100% compatibility.
So the point is having a file format that every other single office suite can talk to. Then we can create a MSOffice import/export filter and that's it.
We can't keep saving everything as excel files as the standard. We need 1 single xls import/export filter to talk to a unified file format EVERYONE ELSE can use.
But you'll never understand so I don't feel write for answering and losing my time
Ok, what I am going to say is not along the usual slashdot karma whoring, but I am not here for the karma but to state my opinion...so...(but try to reply if possible).
You mean I should give up my mouse and keyboard, as it's got MS on it?
No, but you should have bough a Genius mouse for 1/10 of the price and have donated the rest to the EFF or to the GNU foundation.
Also consider the fact that by buying an Xbox and no games, you are probably costing MS about $200..
Also consider that cost of production should arround $190 per box (not including R&D which is always a sunk cost and that doesn't hurt MS marginally if they sell 1 or 1000000000000 millions Xboxes). What makes you believe they pay $400 per Box? Ignorance is very damaging, and your figure is just _uneducated_ guess.
Claiming that by buying MS stuff and using them in any other way you are damaging them is at least a _very_ dangerous game. Not to etion there are many other ways to not-help Microsoft that can really establish a decent competitor.
I think he has a point and a very important one.
Oh, I see, it's because you don't allow insigh that doesn't go like "HAHHAHA, we are beating MS asses , we are much smarter!". Well, in fact you can't be sure about that.
Microsoft can't sell general porpuse computers for home use with Windows for $200, because they would get slatered at courts (dumping anyone?).
But once Linux hacks their way out, how can they be prevented from doing just that? In fact, they ARE trying to replace the computer with XBoxes.
They ONLY good thing would be to see no XBoxes are sold and that they just failed miserably.
It may be possible that a brillian guy came up of a way to use 3D cards (new ones like NV30) for that, and that you could use several of them per machine (8 or 16 or more).
Depends on the kind of calculation you need of course. Textures would be numerical data and you can define operation on them, the buffers will hold the results.
Anyway, if it's usefull in any way, somebody will find out soon, as it's high bandwith, high speed, low price and scales well (several per each cheap intel box).
Nope, they can just offer lots of rebates in carefully crafted ways to mae sure you can't run a non gaming stuff at subsidy prices. And that's if MS is not already making a profit in each of XBox sold today.
That's not what the article said, the article merely states that there is an interest in doing that.
:-)
That's what they said. You probably forgot to configure the "Slashdot DTD" or Schema for preprocessing slashdot news
So instead of using an open format to create a spreadsheet, you use a perl module and create some .xls closed format file and then expect other non MS suites to open them perfectly, and when one of them doesn't perfectly open your perl-created closed-format excel you request to have them working right and to not focus in file format?
I'f I had the power I'd award your post the troll of the milenia award!
Whoah, that's only a little tiny microscopic part of the problem. Consider a University that does not only ask students to be high profile and high pocketed and high IQ, but also MANDATES them to _BUY_ MS OFFICE and to intall it in the students personal computers (bough by them of course).
There should be plenty of universities, the one that I know is Harvard. You either install XP and MS Office or you can choose yourself another university (a lossers one or what?)...
Take a look at the computer requirements and be enjoy! (warining: the requirements are sent to the students as MS Word Attachments, so you must have office to look at them).
Linxu evangelization is fine, but when you have the inquisition at universities, what good is the Cult of Linux??? They'll just hung or burn you if you don't pledge guilty of wizardry!
Step 1: Free speech is in danger
Step 2: You can't do much alone
Step 3: Profit! (well, donations)
Ok, it's not a business plan, but only the EFF coordinated effort can aleviate the problem, so please donate if you can.
Well, it's a difficult task, because you need to do glue many different subsystems that are meant to be used at the console level. In a sense, it's like a garage hot-rod. It's certainly as powerfull, can sustain 9000 rpm for hours and some people will just love it above anything. On the other hand, Windows is like a BMW.
Small correction: The shame is that some good companies wanted to go the 1) way but couldn't...
It was not because of tech people saying oh I can make $$$. It was because non-tech people saw they could make money. And why is that? Because investors though they could just make money by selling stock at a higher price disregarding the actual cash flow (in the .com bubble I'd call those "drawings").
If an invesment in a dt com should go like this:
1) 1M start-up -> 2M for next 3 years -> 6M for 5 years -> breakeven -> lots of profits
They just did it like:
2) 10M investment, sell stock for 1000M in 6 months -> 50M investment, stock value jumps to 5000M -> 1 year later, profits vs. market value are ridiculous -> buble explodes
The shame is that some good companies wanted to go the 2) way but couldn't. The couldn't choose the "spendings roadmap" because they needed to actually BURN the funds so that they could issue the IPO. Once the IPO was up and the initial investors laughing whatever happened to the company could only hurt:
- millions of individual investors
- the IT industry
So the people that set up the bubble are really happy and the only ones I see have survived are the companies that wanted to be in business for the long run, had plenty of their OWN cash in sufficient quantities so that will not need anybody elses money before break-even (6 or 7 years). Some other managed to survive because they where able to cut costs inmediately and as they where overfunded after IPO, the remaining cash at the new spending rate was enough to reach the shore (but VAN of these projects was a disaster).
After you install linux first-time-ever, you don't understand anything at all. You undertand only what's been mirrored from the windows experience. Ok, you can use an Office suite and some apps, but that's about it.
/windows/fonts folder.
You don't really understand anything not to mention that the names of the programs and utilities are really confusing. With Windows you need to know much less, because it's been specificaly tuned to easiness. It asumes you don't know skwat. Windows for a power user (system and tools, not apps power user) may be a little lacking. The security may be crap. But it's pretty straightforward. Linux can setup easily, but administrating it and customizing it is a pain. And if some distro makes a tas easier (ex: mandrake font importer) it's not because Linux is simpler, it's because there is a little tool to hide the underliyng complexity. And this is different than just droping some fonts in a
I would install Linux for a newby that wants to try it, but I don't expect him to know how to use Linux. I only expect him to fire up some apps and close them when done. He couldn't do anything else without learning quite a bit.
I am not mentioning compiling stuff, putting things in the right places (correct prefix when needed), lddng, recompiling a kernel if he's using some hardware that wasn't supprted earlier.
It can be made easier, but it's NOT easy, you can only hide it. Windows on the other hand always asume the user will know nothing, and all installers (not just windows) inherit that view.
Who mentioned Adobe? "Vladimir" could be any individual. The point is it looks like the important fact here was MIT involvement, not the guy.
Is it so hard to give kudos where kudos are deserved?
Not at all. But you need to deserve it first. What if this paper had been released by a russian hacker? Does it make any difference that MIT is involved? It seems so!
They don't want to fuck with the top univerities of the US, that's right. But i'll send my kudos to them when I hear:
"Microsoft told Vladimir Whatever that while it might prefer that the information not be published, it would be inappropriate to ask anyone to withhold any information.
Depends on the size of the lenses :-) We'll just need some photons here and there to reconstruct the thing. We'll be so advanced by that time. We can even have nanotech robots chasing the right photons :)
I describe it as a pattern matcher and a patterns database, with some lousy oracles (pain, etc). The pattern matcher is in itself determined by patterns. It's circular.
:)
How you think is affected by how you procesed patterns in the past. If you are lazzy or not curious (each incremental match is less important). If your pattern matcher matches lots of non-matches, you are also doomed (once you reach a critical point of false positives vs. true positives, the pattern matcher gets corrupted beyond repair).
I'm truly damaged beyond repair
That is exactly how human players prepare for matches against each other.
False, players also need to talk, walk, remember other things, and a bunch of other non-specialized activities. They need to be humans. On the other hand, a computer is "anything, but not a human". Why? Because there is NO limit to how much memory they can use, how much processing power they might use. Perfect memory, perfect calculus.
So if you could build a infinite memory/ infinit processing power computer, you could just precalculate all the possible outcomes of matches. Say a ply of 60 or more.
That computer is smart?
Vision 1: To call a computer chess program "inteligent" you need to draw a line and state: "this memory and this CPU should give you enough resources to beat any human". Anything else is just plain unfair and it's no longer inteligent.
Vision 2: A chess program should be an entityand not a bunch tuned of knowledge / rules / algoritms. It should be able to learn from experience without human intervention (ie: no specialized learning program, this one should be tuned by the computer itself), it should be able to plan it's own strategy, and autotrain itself. Ie: you teach them the chess rules, let it comunicate (gather more data, a database if requested, etc) and then the computer must do everything without interference.
Level 1 is acceptable, but we'd like to see a computer beat a human under the much more fair Vision 2.
Or even more if we learn to travel faster than light. That way we can go very very far away and start recording what everyone actually did since the begining of humans life.
I'd like to know what people should expect if they live in the southern hemisphere... Will it be better, the same, or nothing? (I suppose it should be similar because the earth rotates every day)