That's a fairly old page...while there are good tips there, one thing that nobody seems to have managed is getting the right green tint to the outfit. For someone wanting to try their own, let me suggest Krylon Fusion spray paint in the color they call Honeydew, shade 2335. It seems to be a pretty good match. Dying the bodysuit that color, of course, is a trick...and I haven't yet figured out how to attach ELwire to it directly.
Actually, in this case, a capitalization bobble can create an actual bug, not just a compile error, since Prothon isn't compiled. Consider the following (which may not be exactly correct Prothon syntax, but you'll get the idea):
account.balance:= 0;/* assign to the local variable */ [...] Account.balance += 5000;/* increment the local variable, I thought */ [...] print account.balance;/* WTF?! I put $5000 in that account! */
See the problem? The sequence above (which will, almost certainly, be separated by lots of other code) will silently fail, and the change intended to the local variable will instead be applied to a global that's not used for anything. If the programmer is lucky, that will be detected at runtime the first time that code path is exercised, but even that is problematical at best.
Both of these, however, are specialized uses that have nothing to do with natural language and the way the average person thinks. Not all programmers have backgrounds in mathematics or linguistics, nor should they be required to.
1) German. Here, character case is, inexplicably, a grammatical marker that the word denotes a noun, rather than some other part of speech. Aside from the few cases (two examples in this thread; how many others)? where two words are, in fact, separated by case only, miscapitalizing the first letter results in an error that's easily compensated for without actual loss of information. (The German equivalent of "I read the handbook" would be no less understandable if you wrote "handbuch" instead of "Handbuch", although your reader would cluck his tongue at the error.) For those cases where there are indeed two distinct words separated only by case, how do you disambiguate in conversation instead of written communication? In particular, if I were to say one of those sentences above to you out of the blue, how could you tell which I meant? Context, and context alone.
2) Homonyms. "Polish" and "polish" are the most common examples here. They are disambiguated both by context and pronunciation, and if I were to write "I had a polish sausage for lunch", one would have to stretch the possibilities to consider that I had eaten a sausage skin full of Pledge. (That's a common furniture polish here in the US, for those of you who aren't inundated with American advertising.) Other cases are simply nonsensical: consider the alternative meaning of "polish prime minister". Similarly, danish (the pastry, which is often written with a leading capital) and Danish (the nationality) are disambiguated by use, since the latter is an adjective or adverb, not a noun. (The English noun is Dane.)
That the few examples here are commonly trotted out whenever this argument is raised further proves my point: if capitalization truly conveyed information in the common case, there would be lots of counterexamples. As it is, there are only a few, and they tend to happen by coincidence or importation of foreign words rather than by the normal process of language evolution.
I don't mind indentation syntax (after all, all it really is is enforcing prettyprinting, something I do anyway), and having tabs only as indentation characters makes sense to me.
However, having character case be syntactically significant is a major botch. Case sensitivity was Dennis Ritchie's biggest mistake, and every time someone perpetuates it - or, as in this case, makes it even more significant - it just entrenches the botch even more.
Case sensitivity is wrong because people don't naturally think that way. In no natural language does the case of a character convey information that cannot be gained from context. I'm sure I'll get flooded with replies saying "but I do think of C and c as different!"...to which I'll reply by asking, "But did you, before you learned C/Unix/whatever computer language or OS first required you to pay attention to character case?"
I predict that this will be a rich source of bugs and programmer frustration in Prothon programs, just as it is in C. That assumes, of course, that Prothon ever makes it out of the Sourceforge page and into the real world.
No proponent of freedom says that you should be free to steal other peoples stuff.
I'm not saying that either.
So pissed off that you want to "disinfect" them. I suppose that means killing them or something because I don't know how else you would disinfect something.
I'm referring to the GPL itself, which is a legal virus that infects everything it touches. I've been arguing that for 15 years.
omehow you have gotten into your head that freedoms means you can do whatever the fuck you feel like whenever you feel like it. I hate to break this to you but that's not the way it works. Having absolute freedom means denying everybody else of their theirs. You are not free to rape women because you think they are pretty and you are not free to steal other peoples code. Just because you are not allowed to rape your next door naighbor that does not mean you are not free. No definition of freedom allows for something like that (except yours of course).
You misunderstand my argument. I never said that you should have the freedom to harm others without their active, informed consent. Indeed, I do not believe this. OTOH, pissing someone off does not harm them.
The reason you are pissed off is ample evidence that it works. You want to make money off of their backs. You want to take their code and make it your own, you want to sell it and make money off of it and they won't let you.
Please stop putting words in my mouth. I do not want to take GNU code and sell it, and nowhere have I ever said that I do. I am objecting to their redefinition of the term "freedom" because I believe freedom is far too important an ideal to allow it to be frittered away by those who think it's not important to protect it in its full flowering.
Even the best of marriages have bumps and disagreements. Their disagreement now is in the nature of a lovers' quarrel, not a divorce issue. They're in agreement over much more than they disagree about.
I did say what's bad about what Stallman does, and since it's comparable to what SCO is doing, I draw the comparison. Yes, there are differences, but there are similarities, and those similarities should be hauled into the light and discussed.
Ignoring RMS's demand has consequences: he will refuse to speak with any journalist that doesn't agree up front to his demand, for example. Yes, it's not in the same league as suing them, but there are consequences just the same. This makes it a bona fide demand.
You are free to consider me a troll, but I am not one by the Jargon File definiition, and so will not agree with you. I will, however, defend to the death your right to say it.
I'm not unhpy at M$ or Oracle (well, not about this, anyway) because, unlike Stallman, they're not saying that their work advances the cause of freedom.
Stallman and his followers are free to license their code any way they want. I may disagree with it, but that's their prerogative. What I find truly unacceptable is that they're wrapping themselves falsely in the mantle of fighters for freedom. As long as their idea of freedom only applies to those who believe as they do, their claims of advancing freedom are fraudulent.
Whatever happened to the idea that real freedom was embodied in the famous statement "I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it"? Stallman's version would be "I disagree with what you're doing, and won't defend your right to do it even a little."
Of course Stallman's not like SCO overall, and nowhere have I claimed that. Stallman's demand that people refer to the system as GNU/Linux, OTOH, is more like SCO's claim that everything that started as Unix is still Unix than it is unlike it, and so there's enlightenment to be had there.
Not even the recent change in the terms of the XFree86 license, which are also a demand for credit, is as obnoxious as Stallman's demand to rename the OS. XF86 isn't demanding that the system be called XFree86/Linux, after all. Yet people are vilifying XF86 far more than they're vilifying Stallman, for a more reasonable demand. (If it's at all unreasonable, Stallman's demand is even more so since he's demanding a name change; if it's not unreasonable, then people should quit bitching and let them do it.)
No, I'm not the one redefining the term "free". Stallman's idea of freedom is exactly equivalent to those who would outlaw hate speech in the name of freedom: they suppress speech because they disagree with it. Similarly, Stallman disallows some reuse of his so-called "free" code because he disagrees with it.
Further, Stallman's idea of freedom is not truly free because it denies freedoms to programmers who wish to actually make money from the fruits of their labors. (Yes, I know the GPL doesn't prohibit selling code licensed under it. However, it only allows selling one copy, practically speaking, since the code can be given away by anyone who buys a copy.) It also denies the user the freedom to choose a software package that combines the best of both worlds.
Thus, Stallman's definition of "freedom" is truly free only to those who buy into his utopia. To the rest of us, it's a hollow shell.
I believe the Founding Fathers would agree with my view on the subject, because they universally held that free speech must extend even to those concepts that some find offensive or objectionable. The only limits on freedom are those necessary to prevent actual harm to others. Stallman's limits are not that narrowly drawn, since some of the activities they prevent are not harmful to anyone.
What Stallman may want in regards to the legality of such a suit does not have any bearing on the fct that his claim is, fundamentally quite similar to SCO's.
This is the only thread I'm posting in, and I don't spend a lot of time on Slashdot. I haven't read most of the messages in reply to this story. What got me here was that I read the original story, and like many others, thought "Damn...Ian's reinvented Gentoo."
My expression is shrill and foolish only to those who will not take the time and make the effort to examine arguments that strike at their core beliefs.
I explained in another reply why Stallman's actions are like SCO's. Yes, they're different, too, and yes, Stallman would outlaw such suits if he could...but the core similarity is too large to just laugh off.
Yes, I'm aware SCO has sued folks, and that Stallman has not. That is the way their claims differ. They are similar in that SCO claims that any system based on Unix must necessarily be Unix; Stallman claims that any system including GNU utilities and such is the GNU system, and should be named as such.
Because of this decision, the GNU system is not the same as the collection of all GNU software. The GNU system includes programs that are not GNU software, programs that were developed by other people and projects for their own purposes, but which we can use because they are free software.
Stallman claims this even though the authors of the software in question may not want their software to be considered part of the GNU system, just as IBM doesn't wantJFS to be considered part of SCO's Unix.
My objection is to his redefinition of the term "free". He picked a motherhood-and-apple-pie term and applied it to his concept in order to have some of the good opinion rub off.
Where this falls down is that true freedom must necessarily include the freedom to do things that piss others off, so long as it does not harm them. Stallman's version explicitly excludes the freedom to reuse code unless you buy in to his utopia. This is not freedom; it's a weak counterfeit. That is why I object to his redefinition of the term.
I believe the "troll" moderation is inherently unfair, since it's inherently ill-defined and therefore ripe for misuse to punish people for posting unpopular opinions. I think it should be abolished. Since I don't have Rob and Jeff's ear, this is the best I can do.
"Kowtowing to Stallman" how exactly? By including an optional non-free repository?
By caving in to his SCO-like demand to call the system "GNU/Linux", for starters. They also use his misdefinition of the term "freedom" as applied to software, and then there's their idiotic mishandling of KDE a few years back. They're more Stallmanite than any other distribution group out there.
No, I'm not a troll. I'm arguing my honestly held, honestly arrived at beliefs You, OTOH, are demonstrating the regrettable Slashdot tendency to label everything that doesn't follow the Stallmanite line a troll. I metamoderate every Troll moderation I see as unfair for this reason.
Ignoring for the moment that Debian is objectionable to no small number of us because of their explicit kowtowing to Stallman...
Gentoo is not just a source distribution. It is true that many folks treat it that way, and doing so has its advantages. However, if you don't want to compile everything from scratch to optimize it for your specific hardware, you can install precompiled binary packages and go to town. Look at the Gentoo Reference Platform (GRP) for details.
There is no debate about what strong RF signals will do. There might be room for argument about what low levels of RF will do.
The difference is that the levels of RF radiation from BPL installations are anything but strong to anything but a radio receiver. It doesn't take much signal to make a receiver capable of copying a signal measured in tenths of microvolts unusable.
Get yours out of your rear end. If you think that it's valid to compare a kilowatt of RF at 2400 MHz pumped into a cavity containing the tissue of interest with less than a watt at about 5 MHz radiated at some distance from the tissue of interest, you truly don't understand the problem.
lets see, 30-50Mhz is in HF.
Wrong. VHF starts at 30 MHz. HF is 3 to 30 MHz.
I just love the "arm-chair" techies: Hey, no one has directly proven that xyz causes abc, so it must be safe!
I strongly suspect that I know more about the subject - both radio and its propagation, and specifically its effects on the human body - than you do. I do not claim to be an expert, but I've been around radio for 30 years and medicine for 20. Naturally, I've read up on the subject. Yes, there's a real reason to be concerned about higher power levels, and about higher frequencies, but there's simply not enough power radiated by BPL to be a problem if you're not concerned with trying to hear weak signals with a radio receiver in the same frequency range as the carriers they intend to use....de Jay, K5ZC
...well, mostly. The hazards of RF exposure are controversial at best, with widely varying opinions in the medical community and no real, controlled studies. It's pretty certain, though, that at the low HF frequencies that the BPL folks are proposing, the effects of exposures to a few watts are pretty minimal.
This doesn't mean that BPL is a good idea. As the ARRL (which stands for American Radio Relay League) correctly points out - and has been covered on Slashdot before - BPL is a disaster for HF radio communications. Government agencies are weighing in strongly against it. I doubt it'll see the light of day in widespread use in the US.
Full-frame 35mm-sized sensors are hideously expen$ive. I have never seen a body with one (and there are, at this point, only 3 or 4, total, in production) for under $6K. There's also some question as to how well a film-optimized lens will work with digital sensors, due to the latter needing light to strike them much closer to perpendicularly - which is Olympus' stated reason for not using the OM-series lens mount on its new interchangeable-lens digital SLR, the E-1.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a fairly old page...while there are good tips there, one thing that nobody seems to have managed is getting the right green tint to the outfit. For someone wanting to try their own, let me suggest Krylon Fusion spray paint in the color they call Honeydew, shade 2335. It seems to be a pretty good match. Dying the bodysuit that color, of course, is a trick...and I haven't yet figured out how to attach ELwire to it directly.
If I had to work on a program you committed that one in, I'd come after you with a rusty, mistuned chainsaw. $DEITY, how deliberately obscure.
Both of these, however, are specialized uses that have nothing to do with natural language and the way the average person thinks. Not all programmers have backgrounds in mathematics or linguistics, nor should they be required to.
The comments on case break down into two classes:
1) German. Here, character case is, inexplicably, a grammatical marker that the word denotes a noun, rather than some other part of speech. Aside from the few cases (two examples in this thread; how many others)? where two words are, in fact, separated by case only, miscapitalizing the first letter results in an error that's easily compensated for without actual loss of information. (The German equivalent of "I read the handbook" would be no less understandable if you wrote "handbuch" instead of "Handbuch", although your reader would cluck his tongue at the error.) For those cases where there are indeed two distinct words separated only by case, how do you disambiguate in conversation instead of written communication? In particular, if I were to say one of those sentences above to you out of the blue, how could you tell which I meant? Context, and context alone.
2) Homonyms. "Polish" and "polish" are the most common examples here. They are disambiguated both by context and pronunciation, and if I were to write "I had a polish sausage for lunch", one would have to stretch the possibilities to consider that I had eaten a sausage skin full of Pledge. (That's a common furniture polish here in the US, for those of you who aren't inundated with American advertising.) Other cases are simply nonsensical: consider the alternative meaning of "polish prime minister". Similarly, danish (the pastry, which is often written with a leading capital) and Danish (the nationality) are disambiguated by use, since the latter is an adjective or adverb, not a noun. (The English noun is Dane.)
That the few examples here are commonly trotted out whenever this argument is raised further proves my point: if capitalization truly conveyed information in the common case, there would be lots of counterexamples. As it is, there are only a few, and they tend to happen by coincidence or importation of foreign words rather than by the normal process of language evolution.
I don't mind indentation syntax (after all, all it really is is enforcing prettyprinting, something I do anyway), and having tabs only as indentation characters makes sense to me.
However, having character case be syntactically significant is a major botch. Case sensitivity was Dennis Ritchie's biggest mistake, and every time someone perpetuates it - or, as in this case, makes it even more significant - it just entrenches the botch even more.
Case sensitivity is wrong because people don't naturally think that way. In no natural language does the case of a character convey information that cannot be gained from context. I'm sure I'll get flooded with replies saying "but I do think of C and c as different!"...to which I'll reply by asking, "But did you, before you learned C/Unix/whatever computer language or OS first required you to pay attention to character case?"
I predict that this will be a rich source of bugs and programmer frustration in Prothon programs, just as it is in C. That assumes, of course, that Prothon ever makes it out of the Sourceforge page and into the real world.
Zawinski's Law strikes again.
No proponent of freedom says that you should be free to steal other peoples stuff.
I'm not saying that either.
So pissed off that you want to "disinfect" them. I suppose that means killing them or something because I don't know how else you would disinfect something.
I'm referring to the GPL itself, which is a legal virus that infects everything it touches. I've been arguing that for 15 years.
omehow you have gotten into your head that freedoms means you can do whatever the fuck you feel like whenever you feel like it. I hate to break this to you but that's not the way it works. Having absolute freedom means denying everybody else of their theirs. You are not free to rape women because you think they are pretty and you are not free to steal other peoples code. Just because you are not allowed to rape your next door naighbor that does not mean you are not free. No definition of freedom allows for something like that (except yours of course).
You misunderstand my argument. I never said that you should have the freedom to harm others without their active, informed consent. Indeed, I do not believe this. OTOH, pissing someone off does not harm them.
The reason you are pissed off is ample evidence that it works. You want to make money off of their backs. You want to take their code and make it your own, you want to sell it and make money off of it and they won't let you.
Please stop putting words in my mouth. I do not want to take GNU code and sell it, and nowhere have I ever said that I do. I am objecting to their redefinition of the term "freedom" because I believe freedom is far too important an ideal to allow it to be frittered away by those who think it's not important to protect it in its full flowering.
Even the best of marriages have bumps and disagreements. Their disagreement now is in the nature of a lovers' quarrel, not a divorce issue. They're in agreement over much more than they disagree about.
I did say what's bad about what Stallman does, and since it's comparable to what SCO is doing, I draw the comparison. Yes, there are differences, but there are similarities, and those similarities should be hauled into the light and discussed.
Ignoring RMS's demand has consequences: he will refuse to speak with any journalist that doesn't agree up front to his demand, for example. Yes, it's not in the same league as suing them, but there are consequences just the same. This makes it a bona fide demand.
You are free to consider me a troll, but I am not one by the Jargon File definiition, and so will not agree with you. I will, however, defend to the death your right to say it.
I'm not unhpy at M$ or Oracle (well, not about this, anyway) because, unlike Stallman, they're not saying that their work advances the cause of freedom.
Stallman and his followers are free to license their code any way they want. I may disagree with it, but that's their prerogative. What I find truly unacceptable is that they're wrapping themselves falsely in the mantle of fighters for freedom. As long as their idea of freedom only applies to those who believe as they do, their claims of advancing freedom are fraudulent.
Whatever happened to the idea that real freedom was embodied in the famous statement "I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it"? Stallman's version would be "I disagree with what you're doing, and won't defend your right to do it even a little."
Of course Stallman's not like SCO overall, and nowhere have I claimed that. Stallman's demand that people refer to the system as GNU/Linux, OTOH, is more like SCO's claim that everything that started as Unix is still Unix than it is unlike it, and so there's enlightenment to be had there.
Not even the recent change in the terms of the XFree86 license, which are also a demand for credit, is as obnoxious as Stallman's demand to rename the OS. XF86 isn't demanding that the system be called XFree86/Linux, after all. Yet people are vilifying XF86 far more than they're vilifying Stallman, for a more reasonable demand. (If it's at all unreasonable, Stallman's demand is even more so since he's demanding a name change; if it's not unreasonable, then people should quit bitching and let them do it.)
No, I'm not the one redefining the term "free". Stallman's idea of freedom is exactly equivalent to those who would outlaw hate speech in the name of freedom: they suppress speech because they disagree with it. Similarly, Stallman disallows some reuse of his so-called "free" code because he disagrees with it.
Further, Stallman's idea of freedom is not truly free because it denies freedoms to programmers who wish to actually make money from the fruits of their labors. (Yes, I know the GPL doesn't prohibit selling code licensed under it. However, it only allows selling one copy, practically speaking, since the code can be given away by anyone who buys a copy.) It also denies the user the freedom to choose a software package that combines the best of both worlds.
Thus, Stallman's definition of "freedom" is truly free only to those who buy into his utopia. To the rest of us, it's a hollow shell.
I believe the Founding Fathers would agree with my view on the subject, because they universally held that free speech must extend even to those concepts that some find offensive or objectionable. The only limits on freedom are those necessary to prevent actual harm to others. Stallman's limits are not that narrowly drawn, since some of the activities they prevent are not harmful to anyone.
What Stallman may want in regards to the legality of such a suit does not have any bearing on the fct that his claim is, fundamentally quite similar to SCO's.
This is the only thread I'm posting in, and I don't spend a lot of time on Slashdot. I haven't read most of the messages in reply to this story. What got me here was that I read the original story, and like many others, thought "Damn...Ian's reinvented Gentoo."
My expression is shrill and foolish only to those who will not take the time and make the effort to examine arguments that strike at their core beliefs.
I explained in another reply why Stallman's actions are like SCO's. Yes, they're different, too, and yes, Stallman would outlaw such suits if he could...but the core similarity is too large to just laugh off.
Yes, I'm aware SCO has sued folks, and that Stallman has not. That is the way their claims differ. They are similar in that SCO claims that any system based on Unix must necessarily be Unix; Stallman claims that any system including GNU utilities and such is the GNU system, and should be named as such.
Don't believe me? Check out this excerpt from http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html:
Because of this decision, the GNU system is not the same as the collection of all GNU software. The GNU system includes programs that are not GNU software, programs that were developed by other people and projects for their own purposes, but which we can use because they are free software.
Stallman claims this even though the authors of the software in question may not want their software to be considered part of the GNU system, just as IBM doesn't wantJFS to be considered part of SCO's Unix.
My objection is to his redefinition of the term "free". He picked a motherhood-and-apple-pie term and applied it to his concept in order to have some of the good opinion rub off.
Where this falls down is that true freedom must necessarily include the freedom to do things that piss others off, so long as it does not harm them. Stallman's version explicitly excludes the freedom to reuse code unless you buy in to his utopia. This is not freedom; it's a weak counterfeit. That is why I object to his redefinition of the term.
What's GNAA? Expand, please.
I believe the "troll" moderation is inherently unfair, since it's inherently ill-defined and therefore ripe for misuse to punish people for posting unpopular opinions. I think it should be abolished. Since I don't have Rob and Jeff's ear, this is the best I can do.
"Kowtowing to Stallman" how exactly? By including an optional non-free repository?
By caving in to his SCO-like demand to call the system "GNU/Linux", for starters. They also use his misdefinition of the term "freedom" as applied to software, and then there's their idiotic mishandling of KDE a few years back. They're more Stallmanite than any other distribution group out there.
No, I'm not a troll. I'm arguing my honestly held, honestly arrived at beliefs You, OTOH, are demonstrating the regrettable Slashdot tendency to label everything that doesn't follow the Stallmanite line a troll. I metamoderate every Troll moderation I see as unfair for this reason.
Ignoring for the moment that Debian is objectionable to no small number of us because of their explicit kowtowing to Stallman...
Gentoo is not just a source distribution. It is true that many folks treat it that way, and doing so has its advantages. However, if you don't want to compile everything from scratch to optimize it for your specific hardware, you can install precompiled binary packages and go to town. Look at the Gentoo Reference Platform (GRP) for details.
There is no debate about what strong RF signals will do. There might be room for argument about what low levels of RF will do.
The difference is that the levels of RF radiation from BPL installations are anything but strong to anything but a radio receiver. It doesn't take much signal to make a receiver capable of copying a signal measured in tenths of microvolts unusable.
Get your head out of your rear end.
...de Jay, K5ZC
Get yours out of your rear end. If you think that it's valid to compare a kilowatt of RF at 2400 MHz pumped into a cavity containing the tissue of interest with less than a watt at about 5 MHz radiated at some distance from the tissue of interest, you truly don't understand the problem.
lets see, 30-50Mhz is in HF.
Wrong. VHF starts at 30 MHz. HF is 3 to 30 MHz.
I just love the "arm-chair" techies: Hey, no one has directly proven that xyz causes abc, so it must be safe!
I strongly suspect that I know more about the subject - both radio and its propagation, and specifically its effects on the human body - than you do. I do not claim to be an expert, but I've been around radio for 30 years and medicine for 20. Naturally, I've read up on the subject. Yes, there's a real reason to be concerned about higher power levels, and about higher frequencies, but there's simply not enough power radiated by BPL to be a problem if you're not concerned with trying to hear weak signals with a radio receiver in the same frequency range as the carriers they intend to use.
I plan to put up a vertical here with no coax attached a couple of months before running a feedline out to it, just to see how my neighbors react...
...well, mostly. The hazards of RF exposure are controversial at best, with widely varying opinions in the medical community and no real, controlled studies. It's pretty certain, though, that at the low HF frequencies that the BPL folks are proposing, the effects of exposures to a few watts are pretty minimal.
This doesn't mean that BPL is a good idea. As the ARRL (which stands for American Radio Relay League) correctly points out - and has been covered on Slashdot before - BPL is a disaster for HF radio communications. Government agencies are weighing in strongly against it. I doubt it'll see the light of day in widespread use in the US.
Full-frame 35mm-sized sensors are hideously expen$ive. I have never seen a body with one (and there are, at this point, only 3 or 4, total, in production) for under $6K. There's also some question as to how well a film-optimized lens will work with digital sensors, due to the latter needing light to strike them much closer to perpendicularly - which is Olympus' stated reason for not using the OM-series lens mount on its new interchangeable-lens digital SLR, the E-1.