As a UKian who's visited the US a couple of times, my impression is that you might be more concerned about sugar. (Or, in your case, high-fructose corn syrup.)
From what I remember, a wide variety of foods are sweeter there than I'm used to; and there are correspondingly fewer sour or bitter tastes. (And I gather that UK food is still a little way along this road compared to, say, Mediterranean food.) Take a look at the ingredients on common foods next time you're in the supermarket, and see just how much sugar or other sweeteners are used. It's quite frightening.
Maybe if people's taste buds weren't quite so sugar-acclimatised, they wouldn't needs such strong spices for variety?
One more for the list is LilyPond, which is a music engraving (score printing) package.
It's not a drop-in replacement for Sibelius, or the various music packages which do score-printing like Cubase, Finale, etc., because it has no GUI -- it takes in a text file, and writes out a PDF. You get best results by writing the input by hand, but it's not easy (practically a full programming language), although there are converters from ABC, MIDI, and other popular formats (though with mediocre success). I believe it can be driven from RoseGarden, though I don't know how well.
However, it's well worth the effort, because its output is the best going -- much more natural and easier to read than any other engraving software, to the point where you don't mind not being able to tweak the output, drag bars around until it looks right, because LilyPond generally makes it look right itself!
I do remember it slightly -- I'm too young to have seen it the first time around, but I've seen the film, and caught a few of the episodes they've shown since.
But I'm afwaid I was quoting something a bit wacier, though of a welatively similar vintage. The speaker was addwessing a huge cwowd, bewating them for making fun of his fwiend, a vewy impowtant Woman who commanded a cwack legion, and who had jutht been of thome athithtanth in a thudden crithith: Biggus Dickus himself.
(I am a native English speaker, and I've long given up correcting people's grammar, spelling, punctuation, and logic around here. What depresses me isn't that people make mistakes -- we all do that -- but that they don't care. Being able to communicate clearly with others is important, people! And every mistake makes it that bit harder to follow your meaning.
As ESR says, "We've found by experience that people who are careless and sloppy writers are usually also careless and sloppy at thinking and coding (often enough to bet on, anyway). [...] you will get a limited amount of slack for spelling and grammar errors -- but no extra slack at all for laziness (and yes, we can usually spot that difference).")
Ah, right, this is about open code but secret keys.
So tell me: if the code is open -- if anyone can modify and recompile it -- then how on earth are the keys supposed to remain secret?
Or is this 'open' in the sense of 'you can see the code, modify, and recompile it, but running it is illegal'? I wouldn't count that as 'open' under any reasonable definition.
Before folks mod this 'Funny' -- why not? Seriously? This is exactly the sort of thing that S.I. prefixes were designed for.
It always bothers me when people start talking about 'x thousand kilometres'; what's wrong with 'x megametres'? If you don't like the prefixes, then you can always use 'x million metres', but why on earth would you want to mix the two up?
According to my dictionary a parsec is about 3x10^16 metres, i.e. 30 petametres (Pm). (A kiloparsec is then about 30 exametres; there are further prefixes for a factor of at least a further million, and while they're not yet well-known, perhaps they should be?) I've no idea what the speed of light is in parsecs per hour, but if everything's in metres then it's dead easy to use. It's also dead easy to compare it with other scales, such as the everyday or the very small.
There's no compelling benefit from the exact value, either. Okay, a metre's original definition as a fraction of the Earth's meridian is a bit arbitrary and irrelevant to astronomy, but then the parsec's definition depends both upon the Earth's orbit and our system of angular measurement, so out of our solar system it doesn't strike me as terribly fundamental either. In that respect, the light-year is probably the more obviously useful, but even there it's not fundamental.
Shouldn't the benefit of tying into all our other measurements of distance, speed, and related quantities outweigh the unfamiliarity?
I'm not at all convinced by your claim about lack of downsides.
It clearly does cost something: the poster's time in tidying up the code, packaging it, releasing it, maintaining the web server or whatever he uses to distribute it. It may well also cost his time in answering emails, reviewing code submissions, merging in patches or maintaining a version control system, making future releases. (Of course, I'm assuming his time is worth something to his company...!) The web server or whatever may also cost time and money to get/support.
And there are associated risks: releasing code may potentially open them up to lawsuits for patent or copyright infringement. Depending on what's in there, it may even leave them liable for trademark infringement, libel, or release of trade secrets or other sensitive information.
Now, these costs and risks might in practice be very low, and outweighed by the benefits, but he needs to establish clearly that they are so -- which will probably cost more of his time, etc.
Indeed. Or at least, it usually appears gradual at the time.
People never think "Hey, wow, isn't it great how we're all using this cool new thing!", because by the time everyone's using it, it's no longer cool or new. Novelty is incompatible with prevalence.
Case in point: the rise of mobile phones. Although there had been carphones and large, bulky things for nearly a decade, the time between practical, affordable mobiles becoming available and most people having them was only a couple of years*, which is a pretty rapid revolution compared to most forms of technology, let alone one with such social effects.
(* At least, it seemed to do so here in Europe; I gather that in the US, things took rather longer. This isn't the place to discuss why:-)
The social effects of mobiles have been pretty deep. (I'm not just talking about the complaints about annoying ringtones or rude users; but look at the way that young people communicate and plan their activities, or the way that travelling no longer puts you out of touch.) And yet, at the time, no-one felt that they were seeing a major social change. That's only really visible in hindsight.
And I think that's the case for most changes. It's almost impossible to have some sort of perspective on the present.
The assumption (as stated in the paper): Since Yahoo claims to have indexed twice as much as google, searches should return twice as many entries.
Hey, I've got a brilliant idea for a new 'search engine'! I'll collect a list of 10,000 sites -- a tiny fraction of what the others have, so it must be easy -- and return every one of them, no matter what people are searching for. According to their methodology, that must mean that my engine is abso-flippin'-lutely fantastic!!!
'Lord British' is a stupid name anyway, but if you're going to legitimise it by using the standard form of address, then either 'Lord British' or 'His lordship' (not both) would probably be the correct form.
(And yes, I spell it 'honour' coz I am British, damnit!)
Given which, it's probably an anticlimax to say that I agree with your main points:)
Actually, his surname's McFerrin, and he's done quite a lot of stuff, from unaccompanied African vocal groups to conducting his own orchestra (the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra) in quite respectable classical works. He's also done a 2-man show with Robin Williams (the comedy actor, not Robbie Williams the singer!). His work is variable IMO, and while some of it's not to my taste, he obviously has a wide-ranging talent.
That's what I love about Slashdot. An entire site devoted to expressing, sharing, and discussing people's opinions. And then someone expresses a slightly different opinion and gets flamed for it. Lovely.
Why should the inventor who chooses to make his life easier by using software to make a portable music player not receive the same protections as the all-hardware inventor?
Because developing and producing a hardware player takes significant investment: masses of design, manufacturing, distribution, &c. The large companies would have a huge advantage over a lone inventor, and it's that advantage which patents are intended to prevent. In that sort of situation, they're arguably a Good Thing(tm).
However, developing and producing a software player is orders of magnitude easier. Development might only take a few people, or even just one; production is trivial, and distribution might only need a web server. Here the playing field is much more level, and so the inventor doesn't need that sort of protection in order to compete fairly. Software patents aren't needed, and do much less to help the small business, lone inventor, or open source group -- in fact, due to patent hoarding &c, they're a definite hindrance.
Difference clear?
(And that's before we even get into the argument about patenting the blindingly obvious and completely un-original, which other posts mention.)
Well, adding one more anecdote won't make it 'data', but I've checked a couple of cars against GPS and got similar results to yours: the speedo reads about 10% over the real speed in each case.
Someone said that this was because the regulations concerning speedos are very strict, and any under-reading, no matter how small, will have severe consequences for the manufacturer, so the all set their speedos to over-read to be on the safe side. But surely they can make them more accurate than that -- it sounds to me as if there's also a safety/law enforcement input here...
If a movie already has a good plot, ideas, characters, originality, pacing, cinematography, performances, and/or style, then 3D will add* to them; if it doesn't then 3D won't compensate for them.
In that respect, it's just like the addition of colour, stereo, surround sound, CGI, special effects, or any of the other common features. None of these can make a movie, but they can all enhance one -- if used well.
[* I'm sorry, I couldn't bring myself to put 'add an extra dimension to them'.]
Ah, but they do do something on the old mouse: they let you keep the main button pressed while lifting the mouse off the desk. Which is vital if you need to drag something across the screen and run out of desk space.
Goodness knows how you do that with the new mouse...
In the PC world, people don't have a choice, they have to buy Microsoft Windows if they want to buy cheap and compatible. In the automotive industry it's a totally different situation.
That's a pretty big 'if' there. There are alternatives: Macs are at pretty comparable prices, and can do the majority of things people use PCs for; Linux isn't too complex for a fair proportion of people to install and use, and again, it can do a fair proportion of the things people use PCs for.
Now, obviously, neither of those is a no-thought-needed drop-in replacement; either will need a minimum investment of time and brainpower learning how to drive the system and transfer data and tasks. But compared to their current userbase, a much greater number of people could manage to do so.
The fact that they don't do so means that people aren't troubled by viruses, crashes, &c enough to put in that minimum investment; either they don't believe that things are significantly better on those other platforms (maybe they've come to believe that viruses and crashes are just part of How Computers Work), or they believe that the effort needed to switch is too great. Or they just haven't thought about it. Of course, to us geeks, it seems as if those beliefs are both completely unfounded and misguided; but maybe we should be putting more effort into working out why people have them, and whether/how we might change them?
When it comes to cars, people value security and reliability, even over the latest, shiniest, fastest models. Why do they not apply the same values to computers?
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From what I remember, a wide variety of foods are sweeter there than I'm used to; and there are correspondingly fewer sour or bitter tastes. (And I gather that UK food is still a little way along this road compared to, say, Mediterranean food.) Take a look at the ingredients on common foods next time you're in the supermarket, and see just how much sugar or other sweeteners are used. It's quite frightening.
Maybe if people's taste buds weren't quite so sugar-acclimatised, they wouldn't needs such strong spices for variety?
It's not a drop-in replacement for Sibelius, or the various music packages which do score-printing like Cubase, Finale, etc., because it has no GUI -- it takes in a text file, and writes out a PDF. You get best results by writing the input by hand, but it's not easy (practically a full programming language), although there are converters from ABC, MIDI, and other popular formats (though with mediocre success). I believe it can be driven from RoseGarden, though I don't know how well.
However, it's well worth the effort, because its output is the best going -- much more natural and easier to read than any other engraving software, to the point where you don't mind not being able to tweak the output, drag bars around until it looks right, because LilyPond generally makes it look right itself!
But I'm afwaid I was quoting something a bit wacier, though of a welatively similar vintage. The speaker was addwessing a huge cwowd, bewating them for making fun of his fwiend, a vewy impowtant Woman who commanded a cwack legion, and who had jutht been of thome athithtanth in a thudden crithith: Biggus Dickus himself.
(I am a native English speaker, and I've long given up correcting people's grammar, spelling, punctuation, and logic around here. What depresses me isn't that people make mistakes -- we all do that -- but that they don't care. Being able to communicate clearly with others is important, people! And every mistake makes it that bit harder to follow your meaning.
As ESR says, "We've found by experience that people who are careless and sloppy writers are usually also careless and sloppy at thinking and coding (often enough to bet on, anyway). [...] you will get a limited amount of slack for spelling and grammar errors -- but no extra slack at all for laziness (and yes, we can usually spot that difference).")
So tell me: if the code is open -- if anyone can modify and recompile it -- then how on earth are the keys supposed to remain secret?
Or is this 'open' in the sense of 'you can see the code, modify, and recompile it, but running it is illegal'? I wouldn't count that as 'open' under any reasonable definition.
It always bothers me when people start talking about 'x thousand kilometres'; what's wrong with 'x megametres'? If you don't like the prefixes, then you can always use 'x million metres', but why on earth would you want to mix the two up?
According to my dictionary a parsec is about 3x10^16 metres, i.e. 30 petametres (Pm). (A kiloparsec is then about 30 exametres; there are further prefixes for a factor of at least a further million, and while they're not yet well-known, perhaps they should be?) I've no idea what the speed of light is in parsecs per hour, but if everything's in metres then it's dead easy to use. It's also dead easy to compare it with other scales, such as the everyday or the very small.
There's no compelling benefit from the exact value, either. Okay, a metre's original definition as a fraction of the Earth's meridian is a bit arbitrary and irrelevant to astronomy, but then the parsec's definition depends both upon the Earth's orbit and our system of angular measurement, so out of our solar system it doesn't strike me as terribly fundamental either. In that respect, the light-year is probably the more obviously useful, but even there it's not fundamental.
Shouldn't the benefit of tying into all our other measurements of distance, speed, and related quantities outweigh the unfamiliarity?
It clearly does cost something: the poster's time in tidying up the code, packaging it, releasing it, maintaining the web server or whatever he uses to distribute it. It may well also cost his time in answering emails, reviewing code submissions, merging in patches or maintaining a version control system, making future releases. (Of course, I'm assuming his time is worth something to his company...!) The web server or whatever may also cost time and money to get/support.
And there are associated risks: releasing code may potentially open them up to lawsuits for patent or copyright infringement. Depending on what's in there, it may even leave them liable for trademark infringement, libel, or release of trade secrets or other sensitive information.
Now, these costs and risks might in practice be very low, and outweighed by the benefits, but he needs to establish clearly that they are so -- which will probably cost more of his time, etc.
But that's not the choice! The choice isn't between browser A and browser B; if that were so, then you've be right to go with marketshare.
The choice is between browser A and standards -- between browser A and practically every other flippin' browser out there!
Between forcing people to use one browser, one computer, and one OS, or letting them choose from the wide range of each.
That's the choice before you. And that's why making it on marketshare alone seems rather shortsighted to some of us.
Indeed. Or at least, it usually appears gradual at the time.
People never think "Hey, wow, isn't it great how we're all using this cool new thing!", because by the time everyone's using it, it's no longer cool or new. Novelty is incompatible with prevalence.
Case in point: the rise of mobile phones. Although there had been carphones and large, bulky things for nearly a decade, the time between practical, affordable mobiles becoming available and most people having them was only a couple of years*, which is a pretty rapid revolution compared to most forms of technology, let alone one with such social effects.
(* At least, it seemed to do so here in Europe; I gather that in the US, things took rather longer. This isn't the place to discuss why :-)
The social effects of mobiles have been pretty deep. (I'm not just talking about the complaints about annoying ringtones or rude users; but look at the way that young people communicate and plan their activities, or the way that travelling no longer puts you out of touch.) And yet, at the time, no-one felt that they were seeing a major social change. That's only really visible in hindsight.
And I think that's the case for most changes. It's almost impossible to have some sort of perspective on the present.
Hey, I've got a brilliant idea for a new 'search engine'! I'll collect a list of 10,000 sites -- a tiny fraction of what the others have, so it must be easy -- and return every one of them, no matter what people are searching for. According to their methodology, that must mean that my engine is abso-flippin'-lutely fantastic!!!
'His honour'? He's not a judge!
'Lord British' is a stupid name anyway, but if you're going to legitimise it by using the standard form of address, then either 'Lord British' or 'His lordship' (not both) would probably be the correct form.
(And yes, I spell it 'honour' coz I am British, damnit!)
Given which, it's probably an anticlimax to say that I agree with your main points :)
It also has run-on sentences, missing apostrophes, spurious prepositions ('way off from'), and many missing commas, parentheses and/or dashes.
Still, it scores higher than most Slashdot posts in both format AND content, so I'm not complaining...
Because developing and producing a hardware player takes significant investment: masses of design, manufacturing, distribution, &c. The large companies would have a huge advantage over a lone inventor, and it's that advantage which patents are intended to prevent. In that sort of situation, they're arguably a Good Thing(tm).
However, developing and producing a software player is orders of magnitude easier. Development might only take a few people, or even just one; production is trivial, and distribution might only need a web server. Here the playing field is much more level, and so the inventor doesn't need that sort of protection in order to compete fairly. Software patents aren't needed, and do much less to help the small business, lone inventor, or open source group -- in fact, due to patent hoarding &c, they're a definite hindrance.
Difference clear?
(And that's before we even get into the argument about patenting the blindingly obvious and completely un-original, which other posts mention.)
Someone said that this was because the regulations concerning speedos are very strict, and any under-reading, no matter how small, will have severe consequences for the manufacturer, so the all set their speedos to over-read to be on the safe side. But surely they can make them more accurate than that -- it sounds to me as if there's also a safety/law enforcement input here...
So rather than change this simple little thing, everyone else has to entirely rearrange their calendars and schedules...?
In that respect, it's just like the addition of colour, stereo, surround sound, CGI, special effects, or any of the other common features. None of these can make a movie, but they can all enhance one -- if used well.
[* I'm sorry, I couldn't bring myself to put 'add an extra dimension to them'.]Goodness knows how you do that with the new mouse...
That's a pretty big 'if' there. There are alternatives: Macs are at pretty comparable prices, and can do the majority of things people use PCs for; Linux isn't too complex for a fair proportion of people to install and use, and again, it can do a fair proportion of the things people use PCs for.
Now, obviously, neither of those is a no-thought-needed drop-in replacement; either will need a minimum investment of time and brainpower learning how to drive the system and transfer data and tasks. But compared to their current userbase, a much greater number of people could manage to do so.
The fact that they don't do so means that people aren't troubled by viruses, crashes, &c enough to put in that minimum investment; either they don't believe that things are significantly better on those other platforms (maybe they've come to believe that viruses and crashes are just part of How Computers Work), or they believe that the effort needed to switch is too great. Or they just haven't thought about it. Of course, to us geeks, it seems as if those beliefs are both completely unfounded and misguided; but maybe we should be putting more effort into working out why people have them, and whether/how we might change them?
When it comes to cars, people value security and reliability, even over the latest, shiniest, fastest models. Why do they not apply the same values to computers?