Very good point. I just hope that the voters can get through to the congress about this without the vested interests (RIAA/MPAA) bribing all of Congress.
Wow, mod parent UP!! He hits the nail right on the head.
My viewpoint on the article is that the author got what he deserved. He gave out a vague description of his problem so he got a vague solution back.
I was recently reviewing a software design document that correctly paid much-needed attention to the objective of supporting configurable behavior. As opposed to simply documenting how the design would accommodate said configurability, the design description also included the following commanding statement a number of times: "The configuration data will be stored in XML." I
He gets what he deserves!
I'm starting to get extremely annoyed when bosses just say "implement configurable behavior" or "just make the system work right" or "just use your best thought" and then come back to you compiling that the system doesn't work right. Of course it doesn't work right. The boss didn't put any thought into what he actually wanted!! This is why design documents are a waste of time. They are completely unrelated to reality since reality WILL BE THE CODE!! So program smart, program agile/XP/http://martinfowler.com/ieeeSoftware/cont inuousDesign.pdf/
When I was swimming competitively as a kid, one of the nice things about it was that the equipment didn't cost thousands of dollars. Sure, you get a new lycra suit once a year, but that's about it.
I bet these "fast" suits cost a f**king fortune!!
I say, just shave everything and strap on a (yoursize - 6) suit and you're good to go.:)
Quick question here; At work we're using crosstool to build a solid but fairly large distro for our embedded boards. So far it's worked ok. Does anyone have experience comparing buildroot against crosstool? In terms of speed, memory footprint and features?
Paul Graham totally missed the ball on this point.
Having high Capital Gains Tax doesn't influence how popular doing a startup is. Once your company has done an IPO and is listed in Nasdaq, YOU HAVE MADE IT. YOU ARE NO LONGER A STARTUP and you have to start behaving like a grownup company. Thats when Capital gains taxes start mattering.
Besides, for the most part, the stockmarket is built by and for gamblers. It's used to raise capital but that's only after the initial startup has been accepted by VCs and has had some funding already. I feel that having to answer to shareholders actually limits the options a CEO has to move the company forward since shareholders ALWAYS prefer shortterm gains over longterm development. Flame me if you want but after seeing google being bent over by shareholders over the China issue, Im probably correct.
However, I use the best tool for the job. --> firefox for the http protocol.
It would have been nice if the QGeeko component was maintained and extended though. Being able to embed geeko into konqi would be a major win. (And emulating fiefox Extensions, too...)
Twisting existing law and extending Copyright to infinity and beyond is definitely not going to make people happy.
Not threating them with prison and fines for copying will make them happy. Just threaten the businesses instead. So no one makes money except the legitimite media suppliers and they'll have to give up a bit of their business to copying/pirating.
On the other hand, I'm really starting to wonder if bittorrent distribution should work at all. I mean, the media/software companies could spend a tiny fraction of their lawyer fees on seeding corrupt versions of their products on bittorrent/kaaza and destroy all trust in those systems. They could implement little ad-filled viruses into the software/rap the music in executable format to yell at the pirate.
<rant> at the same time, the ability of third parties to access that data must be seriously curtailed. At least the court system needs to get a spine and finally say "back off" to the current administration's constant attempts to bypass citizen's rights.</rant>
My best hack is successfully soldering a DMS3 mod chip into a PS2. For a professional, it's probably a real easy job. But for me and shaky hands, it was a real pain.
But I'm proud to say i did it and managed to even get the PS2 working properly afterwards too.
Or the merging of the two companies will destroy the innovative Flash interface and be replaced by an unusable one just so Adobe doesn't have to maintain two seperate product lines.
There's very good reasons for Flash not to go down the "seperate animation curve/property" approach that all other animation packages seem to use.
Ben
Disclaimer: I've never worked with LiveMotion before though. I just find the idea that Adobe can improve flash editor just because they're adobe to be offenive. I think its more likely they'll kill it one way or another.
I'm familiar with "non-destructive editing" that uses an edit decision list. Avisynth and the multitrack editor of Adobe Audition work the same way. But can a non-destructive environment save e.g. a brush stroke in the film restoration process? And can the effects be rendered in real time for multitrack preview? (I use a predecessor to Audition, and it warns me that several of its effects do not work in real time.)
I thought that Premire/after effects "realtime" preview worked because of the reduced resolution and simplication of the filter effects. (of course you can't apply a guassian filter on DV in realtime. (I'll have to ask my friend about this though) And why can't brush strokes be stored in a vector format and just use the stencil as a uuencoded image in a text file. I don't see how this reflects on using a text format vs. binary format.
True, but efficiently != consistently, especially when trying to apply two separate binary diffs to a single file where the desired result is the file with both of the changes made. This can happen in a layered image format (e.g..xcf or.psd) when two users make changes to separate layers.
If there was a SCM API, the programmer could give it a custom diff algorithm. Then the SCM would be able to track revisions of that file type in a sane manner. Otherwise, the SCM would fallback to the standard diff algo.
When will Microsoft or Apple offer this? Or when will peripheral hardware manufacturers start working with other OS vendors?
Maybe never. Thats why it would be interesting to implement it in KDE or gnome instead, just to see the possibilities. Then maybe the big players would adopt it too.
Besides video, maybe audio and maybe image processing Which are promoted as the killer applications for any device that's larger than a handheld device.
I was thinking more about office (word, excel, access, powerpoint, frontpage, etc.) and it's open source siblings koffice and openOffice. Obviously not all video and image processing is possible. It is interesting to note though that applications like Adobe premire DO NOT modify video directly until it is exporting to a final file. Instead, it takes raw video clips and applies filters to the video so the user gets an idea of what the final product will look like. It's data files are (relatively) simple lists of which video clips to use and the list of filters to apply. (As well as the cut points and layer and insertation point information...) Adobe's formats are in binary but there's no reason why the files couldn't be in diffable text instead... I believe (but don't quote me) that photoshop works the same way.
Have widely available SCMs become intelligent enough to handle images, audio, video, and other non-textual files with better semantics than just "one byte was inserted, so the entire file changed, and diffs can't be merged"? And has the usability of widely available SCMs advanced to the point where it's as easy to teach SCM use as it is to teach open/save use?
Well, a lot of SCM notation can be translated into normal filemanager notation: submit => save sync to head => load branch => copy merge => override (but obviously not as powerful) rename => move I think it's more about how intutive the tools are then how the actual CLI SCM works. And the benefit is the users won't have to save a million files with names like mydoc.1, mydoc.2, mydoc.0605012, etc.... once they learn that the system CAN track revisions for them. Binary files are different matter but I think there are diff algos out there which can handle binary data relatively efficiently. I mean, thats what textual diff'ing is doing.
You said undo and redo should be "universal... in the part of the system which the user uses always". So should non-advanced programmers be locked out of developing GUI applications? Then you turn PCs into game consoles.
Maybe the underlying operating system should offer a easy to use SCM for application writers to use. Something with an API like "get a file handle to head", "submit new version(taginfo=0)", "Get a list of reversions", "Get a old reversion", "Branch", etc... basically integrate a SCM component into the development platform. This would make the programmer's life a bit easier.
Besides, "pretty cheap" != free, and people who have a paid-for machine that's old enough to justify an "insensitive clod" comment on Slashdot will likely complain if the ability to delete files is removed because it cannot be undone.
The nice thing about a SCM system is you can control how much space a revision list is supposed to take. So say you have 50 revisions of a file and you want to submit another one. The system will run out of space if another revision is submited. The system should detect this and: A) automatically delete the first 2-3 revisions (for a novice user) B) pop up a dialog (BAD!) and ask the user what set of revisions he doesn't need anymore to free up space. I bet a combination of these two procedures should work.
For the same reason we have a commit statement in an SQL DBMS: to make our changes visible to other processes that expect reasonably atomic updates. Even in applications that commit after typing each word, the "Save" command marks a specific version more prominently so that the program can suggest reverting to that version.
Users are NOT processes. Besides, if the files were treated as being in an SCM, specific versions would be version 1.3.4 (Date 2006-25-3 13:34) or whatever other tag the user wanted. Maybe add a "Tag" button so the user can mark a new version but I doubt it would be used very often.
Because not enough beginning programming books mention the model-view-controller paradigm that treats all changes as reversible transactions. Maybe these ideals should be aimed only towards advanced programmers?
Because there's a limited amount of space on the hard disk so you can't just "undo Empty Recycle Bin". Hard disk space is pretty cheap nowadays. Besides video, maybe audio and maybe image processing, there's no applications that take a huge amount of space (besides word files packed with embedded images) If the files were stored as diffs (even the binary files), you probably wouldn't be using very much space...
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, bravo, bravo.
Very good point. I just hope that the voters can get through to the congress about this without the vested interests (RIAA/MPAA)
bribing all of Congress.
Ben
My viewpoint on the article is that the author got what he deserved. He gave out a
vague description of his problem so he got a vague solution back.
He gets what he deserves!
I'm starting to get extremely annoyed when bosses just say "implement configurable behavior" or "just make the system work right" or "just use your best thought" and then come back to you compiling that the system doesn't work right. Of course it doesn't work right. The boss didn't put any thought into what he actually wanted!! This is why design documents are a waste of time. They are completely unrelated to reality since reality WILL BE THE CODE!! So program smart, program agile/XP/http://martinfowler.com/ieeeSoftware/con
Cheers
Ben
Rockbox has this functionality already.
E'nuf said
Ben
It does work. After you shave, you feel FAST and every stroke you take is effortless.
Of course, it only works after you've practiced swimming (nonshaved) for a year or more. IMHO
Ben
And how much did the "fastskin" suit cost?
:)
When I was swimming competitively as a kid, one of the nice things about it was that the equipment didn't cost thousands of dollars. Sure, you get a new lycra suit once a year, but that's about it.
I bet these "fast" suits cost a f**king fortune!!
I say, just shave everything and strap on a (yoursize - 6) suit and you're good to go.
ben
Funny!!!
this is great
You do know that ZFS is only for Solaris right? (excuse the crappy spelling)
Sun may or may not port it to Linux and then maybe you'll see it submitted to the main branch.
So right now, ZFS DOESN"T exist on Linux, nor does ext4.
Cheers
Ben
Quick question here;
At work we're using crosstool to build a solid but fairly large distro for our embedded boards.
So far it's worked ok.
Does anyone have experience comparing buildroot against crosstool?
In terms of speed, memory footprint and features?
Just curious,
Ben
I wish that Linux had a similar system.
That way you would know when a driver (eg. i810 on X11) takes down the whole system.
I'm really sick of this problem and having absolutely no way to fix it.
At least it would bring focus on the shitty driver writers.
Ben
Paul Graham totally missed the ball on this point.
Having high Capital Gains Tax doesn't influence how popular doing a startup is. Once your company has done an IPO and is listed in Nasdaq,
YOU HAVE MADE IT. YOU ARE NO LONGER A STARTUP and you have to start behaving like a grownup company. Thats when Capital gains taxes start mattering.
Besides, for the most part, the stockmarket is built by and for gamblers. It's used to raise capital but that's only after the initial startup has been accepted by VCs and has had some funding already. I feel that having to answer to shareholders actually limits the options a CEO has to move the company forward since shareholders ALWAYS prefer shortterm gains over longterm development. Flame me if you want but after seeing google being bent over by shareholders over the China issue, Im probably correct.
Cheers,
Ben
i agree with you 100%. fish is awesome
However, I use the best tool for the job. --> firefox for the http protocol.
It would have been nice if the QGeeko component was maintained and extended though. Being able to embed geeko into konqi would be a major win. (And emulating fiefox Extensions, too...)
Cheers,
Ben
Tahoma's is the shit for sans with Georgia coming up a distance second. Verdana doesn't even place.
:(
Too bad it's only available from M$
Ben
Ahem brother!!
Twisting existing law and extending Copyright to infinity and beyond is definitely not going to make people happy.
Not threating them with prison and fines for copying will make them happy.
Just threaten the businesses instead. So no one makes money except the legitimite media suppliers and they'll have to give up a bit of their business to copying/pirating.
On the other hand, I'm really starting to wonder if bittorrent distribution should work at all. I mean, the media/software companies could spend a tiny fraction of their lawyer fees on seeding corrupt versions of their products on bittorrent/kaaza and destroy all trust in those systems. They could implement little ad-filled viruses into the software/rap the music in executable format to yell at the pirate.
Just my $0.02.
Ben
I agree that JS is the most underrated language in existance....
It's too bad really, had such a bright future and look at it now...;)
Ben
Wow, you didn't even try looking at other commercial wikis?u lt.jsp. It looks like a very good wiki which can handle all of the binary MS file decoding+displaying.
Try http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/defa
Cheers,
Ben
PS. I haven't tried it myself. Have just read the website and other people's reviews.
In the new version of the tutorial: /etc/apt/sources.list
nano
hahahhahaha,
Ben
I thought that swimming in syrup was supposed to be fun and easy.
http://swimming.about.com/b/a/113620.htm I really can imagine how this was a disaster.
Ben
I agree that ISPs do need to retain data but...
<rant> at the same time, the ability of third parties to access that data must be seriously curtailed. At least the court system needs to get a spine and finally say "back off" to the current administration's constant attempts to bypass citizen's rights.</rant>
Cheers,
Ben
My best hack is successfully soldering a DMS3 mod chip into a PS2.
For a professional, it's probably a real easy job. But for me and shaky hands, it was a real pain.
But I'm proud to say i did it and managed to even get the PS2 working properly afterwards too.
Ben
Let me put this way, the shelf is full of racing games and shooters, RPGs and action games. Where are the comedies?
They got run over by the speedsters, shot up by the snipers, eaten by the dragons and blown up by the mine mines.
In other words, they went exstinct because they couldn't survive in today's game world.
Ben
Or the merging of the two companies will destroy the innovative Flash interface and be replaced by an unusable one just so Adobe doesn't have to maintain two seperate product lines.
There's very good reasons for Flash not to go down the "seperate animation curve/property" approach that all other animation packages seem to use.
Ben
Disclaimer: I've never worked with LiveMotion before though. I just find the idea that Adobe can improve flash editor just because they're adobe to be offenive. I think its more likely they'll kill it one way or another.
I'm familiar with "non-destructive editing" that uses an edit decision list. Avisynth and the multitrack editor of Adobe Audition work the same way. But can a non-destructive environment save e.g. a brush stroke in the film restoration process? And can the effects be rendered in real time for multitrack preview? (I use a predecessor to Audition, and it warns me that several of its effects do not work in real time.)
.xcf or .psd) when two users make changes to separate layers.
I thought that Premire/after effects "realtime" preview worked because of the reduced resolution and simplication of the filter effects. (of course you can't apply a guassian filter on DV in realtime. (I'll have to ask my friend about this though) And why can't brush strokes be stored in a vector format and just use the stencil as a uuencoded image in a text file. I don't see how this reflects on using a text format vs. binary format.
True, but efficiently != consistently, especially when trying to apply two separate binary diffs to a single file where the desired result is the file with both of the changes made. This can happen in a layered image format (e.g.
If there was a SCM API, the programmer could give it a custom diff algorithm. Then the SCM would be able to track revisions of that file type in a sane manner. Otherwise, the SCM would fallback to the standard diff algo.
When will Microsoft or Apple offer this? Or when will peripheral hardware manufacturers start working with other OS vendors?
Maybe never. Thats why it would be interesting to implement it in KDE or gnome instead, just to see the possibilities. Then maybe the big players would adopt it too.
Besides video, maybe audio and maybe image processing
... in the part of the system which the user uses always". So should non-advanced programmers be locked out of developing GUI applications? Then you turn PCs into game consoles.
Which are promoted as the killer applications for any device that's larger than a handheld device.
I was thinking more about office (word, excel, access, powerpoint, frontpage, etc.) and it's open source siblings koffice and openOffice. Obviously not all video and image processing is possible. It is interesting to note though that applications like Adobe premire DO NOT modify video directly until it is exporting to a final file. Instead, it takes raw video clips and applies filters to the video so the user gets an idea of what the final product will look like. It's data files are (relatively) simple lists of which video clips to use and the list of filters to apply. (As well as the cut points and layer and insertation point information...) Adobe's formats are in binary but there's no reason why the files couldn't be in diffable text instead... I believe (but don't quote me) that photoshop works the same way.
Have widely available SCMs become intelligent enough to handle images, audio, video, and other non-textual files with better semantics than just "one byte was inserted, so the entire file changed, and diffs can't be merged"? And has the usability of widely available SCMs advanced to the point where it's as easy to teach SCM use as it is to teach open/save use?
Well, a lot of SCM notation can be translated into normal filemanager notation:
submit => save
sync to head => load
branch => copy
merge => override (but obviously not as powerful)
rename => move
I think it's more about how intutive the tools are then how the actual CLI SCM works.
And the benefit is the users won't have to save a million files with names like mydoc.1, mydoc.2, mydoc.0605012, etc....
once they learn that the system CAN track revisions for them. Binary files are different matter but I think there are diff algos out there which can handle binary data relatively efficiently. I mean, thats what textual diff'ing is doing.
You said undo and redo should be "universal
Maybe the underlying operating system should offer a easy to use SCM for application writers to use. Something with an API like "get a file handle to head", "submit new version(taginfo=0)", "Get a list of reversions", "Get a old reversion", "Branch", etc... basically integrate a SCM component into the development platform. This would make the programmer's life a bit easier.
Besides, "pretty cheap" != free, and people who have a paid-for machine that's old enough to justify an "insensitive clod" comment on Slashdot will likely complain if the ability to delete files is removed because it cannot be undone.
The nice thing about a SCM system is you can control how much space a revision list is supposed to take. So say you have 50 revisions of a file and you want to submit another one. The system will run out of space if another revision is submited. The system should detect this and:
A) automatically delete the first 2-3 revisions (for a novice user)
B) pop up a dialog (BAD!) and ask the user what set of revisions he doesn't need anymore to free up space.
I bet a combination of these two procedures should work.
Cheers,
Ben
For the same reason we have a commit statement in an SQL DBMS: to make our changes visible to other processes that expect reasonably atomic updates. Even in applications that commit after typing each word, the "Save" command marks a specific version more prominently so that the program can suggest reverting to that version.
Users are NOT processes. Besides, if the files were treated as being in an SCM, specific versions would be version 1.3.4 (Date 2006-25-3 13:34) or whatever other tag the user wanted. Maybe add a "Tag" button so the user can mark a new version but I doubt it would be used very often.
Because not enough beginning programming books mention the model-view-controller paradigm that treats all changes as reversible transactions.
Maybe these ideals should be aimed only towards advanced programmers?
Because there's a limited amount of space on the hard disk so you can't just "undo Empty Recycle Bin".
Hard disk space is pretty cheap nowadays. Besides video, maybe audio and maybe image processing, there's no applications that take a huge amount of space (besides word files packed with embedded images) If the files were stored as diffs (even the binary files), you probably wouldn't be using very much space...
Cheers
Ben
Because they can. Period.