"This is an extrodinarily narrow view. You know, at one point in time hobbists contributed greatly to WinDOS. You might say they are even responsible for the rise of WinDOS as a platform. You don't have to be someone like Linus or Alan to be a "hobbyist". You can simply be a specialist in another discipline: like the folks who invented the spreadsheet."
Great example! I take it you're implying that some corporate programmer (not like Alan or Linus) invented the spreadsheet on WinDOS? Except that it wasn't. It was Dan Bricklin, and he invented it on an Apple ][ to help him with his college course on accounting. After it was done, he decided to sell it and VisiCalc was born.
So basically, another "hobbiest" invented the spreadsheet. I'd say that it was pretty important technology.
This is a serious mistake that people are still making - expecting the user to have 0 knowledge. That doesn't make any sense.
Would you expect car manufacturers to produce cars that can be driven by someone who doesn't understand what a steering wheel does? Or airplane manufacturers to make planes flyable for someone who's never seen a cockpit before?
A minimum level of competence/understanding should be expected of the users. Anything less is just silly.
I don't know why this comment was modded insightful.
People don't use X. Not directly, anyway, any more than they use the frame or suspension of their car. It's an underpinning that is itself used by a close-to-the-user app (or set of apps), such as Metacity, Enlightenment, FVWM, Gnome, KDE, etc.
Most people don't understand car engines either, but that's no reason to "dumb them down".
Yes, pretty much all dropshadow WMs these days do the same thing. Even the ncurses based dropshadow under character windows do this.
The Amiga had a dropshadow program that calculated & drew shadows based on the stacking height, and projected them down onto lower windows. It looked amazing, and was done on a wimpy old Amiga.
We should be able to do so much more with today's hardware.
On the beloved Amiga, there was a dropshadow program that worked unlike any I've ever seen since.
It actually took into account the stacking of windows, and would draw a shadow that represented the window's "height above desktop" - so a window that was on top of a large stack of windows would have a severely offset shadow, and one on the bottom of the stack would have a minimally offset shadow.
Also - the shadow-casting onto windows beneath also took into account the relative height differences.
The end result was an *amazing* feel of 3d, on a crappy old 7.14MHz 68000. We should definitely be able to do better on today's marvels.
Typical knee-jerk blather. Motivations counts. The Chinese regime is interested in suppressing its people and making money. They're still an anti-democratic totalitarian regime and, asu such, threaten free people everywhere.
Naturally, the American gov't isn't interested in the same. Observe the PATRIOT act ("patriot", ha! nice PR move on the name there, boys), the behaviour towards MS during the remedies phase of their anti-trust trial. Enron. Worldcom. etc.
As for anti-democractic, it's been pointed out numerous times in other posts that the Americans have a habit of deposing democratically elected leaders in other countries, when those leaders don't toe the American line.
The Shah of Iran was installed by the Americans, after they toppled the democratically elected president. The Shah was hated by the people, who formed a popular uprising against him. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the militant Islamics managed to wedge their way into the leadership role, even though they had little to do with the uprising itself.
In numerous South American countries, the US has done the same thing - eliminated the popular local leader, and installed their own "US-Approved" leader, only to cause enormous problems for the locals and the Americans, too. Whenever the US screws around with foreign countries, they seem to complete mess it up.
Can you name ONE country that the US has gone into, toppled the leadership, installed their approved leader, and had the country move onto peace and prosperity? I can't.
The U.S. actions you cite, even if you disagree with them, were actins intended to defeat fascist and totalitarian powers bent on destroying democracy and freedom. Rather than rant about the U.S., people like you should be asking why the rest of the world consistently spawns these evil regimes and consistently fails to eliminate them. If the rest of the world would eliminate the thuggish garbage that passes for government in many places, the U.S. and a few other rational countries wouldn't have to do it themselves.
Consider for a moment these 'evil regimes' - how many of them have invaded other countries? As far as I know, China hasn't toppled any other country's government. Neither has Iraq. US has, though. So who's more evil? It's true that the US doesn't inflict quite as many abuses on its own citizens, however with PATRIOT 1&2, with the illegal arrest & detainment without charge of persons of middle-eastern birth (etc etc), it looks like they're slipping down that slippery slope. Let's not forget Jon Johansen - the MPAA had interpol in invade his home in Norway, confiscate his computers and had him (a 16 year old kid!) and his father arrested, because of some perceived potential violation of an AMERICAN law. How is that supporting freedom? That certainly is money-grubbing, though. (Check up on the DeCSS case if you don't know what I mean).
US apologists love to talk about these "Evil Regimes" who are "bent on destroying democracy & freedom". That's exactly what the US does! So is this a case of "You aren't allowed to destroy democracy and freedom! That's the job of the US!"
I think your "president", who lost the election but won the seat (partially with the help of his brother causing 50,000 floridians to be considered 'criminals' and ineligable for the vote) sounds more like these third-world dictators who fudge the elections to get into power. It's the same thing. Just as despicable.
According to historical records, Hiroshima was bombed on Aug 6 1945, and Nagasaki on Aug 9. That's 3 days. Not much time for a formal surrender.
They surrendered Sep 2 1945, 24 days after the Nagasaki bomb.
According to your reasoning, a 3 day span between a bomb and a surrender is unacceptable (hence the Nagasaki bomb), and therefore there should have been 8 more nuclear bombs dropped on Japan before they surrendered.
I agree with you - Working with Glade + Python is amazing. You can put together beautiful, responsive applications incredibly quickly (far nicer and faster than a java app, incidentally).
As for your symbol completion - VIM has the ability via CTRL-P to do completion, based on some sophisticated & programmable rules. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some capability within Emacs to do the same.
Regarding the tech's opinions on switching hotmail to MS:
In the beginning was The Plan,
And then came the assumptions,
And the assumptions were without form,
And the plan was completely without substance,
And the Darkness came upon the face of the workers.
And they did rent their garments and spake unto the Production Manager, saying, "Yea, it is an unholy crock of shit and the stench doth offend us".
And the Production Manager went unto the Strategists, saying " It is a pail of excrement and none may abide its odour thereof".
And the Strategists went unto the Business Manager crying unto the heavens saying " It is a container of manure, it is very strong such that none here may abide it."
And the Business Manager went unto the Director saying unto him,
"Harken unto me, it is a vessel of fertiliser, and none may abide its strength".
And the Director went unto the Vice-President crying " It contains that which aids plant growth, and is very strong".
And the Vice-President came before the Senior Vice-President and raising his face before God cried loudly "It promoteth growth and it is very powerful - see how we are blessed",
And the Senior Vice-President went forward and spake unto the President saying " Let not your heart be trouble for this new plan will actively promote the growth and efficiency of the company",
And the President looked upon the plan and saw that it was good,
I think you have a problem with your machine if it took 2 days to compile gcc 3.1. I just emerged (downloaded & compiled) my gentoo gcc 3.1.1, on my PIII laptop (600MHz), and it took less than 2 hours.
Now, if you were talking about OpenOffice, that took something like 13 hours.
Let's not forget that the amount of energy in a chunk of matter as large as an adult male human is greater than any nuclear bomb detonated yet.
So instead of just leaving a face imprint, if JC turned into energy, he would have left a gigantic crater. Unless, of course, he turned into energy at a nice, controlled slow rate. But then he'd probably be burning away for a few centuries.
Right - So we don't have a huge standing army, so we should shut the f--- up or we're going to be invaded?
So you've gone from predicting that other countries will look to the US for help, to admitting that we'd better toe the line or we'll get stomped on.
Sounds like a playground bully to me. I feel really sorry for the Founding Fathers of the US, because I think they had a really great idea, and they had some amazing philosophies behind their work. The declaration of independence, and the constitution, are powerful, thought provoking works.
It's a shame that the recent leadership has strayed from them and the principles they were founded on. In fact, it seems that they've strayed so far that they're acting like the very leaders the fonders wanted to break from.
Truth, honor, justice are all now just empty words, or even marketing phrases. Instead, the US now seems to be about Lawyers, Guns and Money.
If you read the site you quoted, you'll find that Canada declared war on Germany 5 days after US delcared neutrality. The Canadians declared war to help out their allies. (Note that Americans only apparently declare war to protect their assets (Kuwait), or when they get punched in the nose [ala Pearl Harbor & Sept 11])
Then, almost a year into the fighting, the US--get this--froze german and italian assets in the states! OMFG! Now that's protection!
In fact, the US apparently didn't declare war on Germany ever, but it did declare war on Japan, AFTER Pearl Harbor (almost 2 years into the fighting). So again, we have a case of the us staying out of things until they get hurt themselves.
My mother is Latvian, and she and all her relatives were routed from Latvia thanks to the Russians. The Russians, I might add, who were "given" the territory by an agreement with the US. Thanks again, America! Land of the Free!
Who the hell wants US assistance? It's the fastest way to getting your country screwed over.
When the Russians were invading Afghanistan, the US gave money and weapons to the Mujaheddin (sp?) who kicked out the Russkies, but then became the Taliban!
Saddam Hussein is CIA trained and was working with the CIA before he decided to go it alone.
Let's not forget all the fuckups in South America.
And thanks to more stupidity and blundering on the part of the USians, Canadians have been killed on the battlefield for the first time since Vietnam. From friendly fire, by USians!
I don't have the figures handy, but I remember reading that more USians were killed during operation Desert Storm by friendly fire than by Iraqis. Boy, that's who I want helping me out, let me tell you.
I meant that if Hollywood goes all digital, and theatres can't (or won't) afford the equipment cost, they'll have to go elsewhere for their content, which means the indies.
Maybe having "Hollywood" only support digital theatres would be a good thing, at least for the small-time movie producer.
Most of the movies I've seen recently that have been really enjoyable and thought provoking have been independant films. It would be great if they would get wider theatre exposure.
Of course, another alternative is simply some cheaper form of digital projection. Since consumer grade digital cameras are getting quite good in quality, and programs like Final Cut Pro allow you to edit in your living room, we could easily see the "Desktop Video" revolution acutally start to happen.
Which makes your XP personal $208 and XP Pro $347. A bit overpriced yes, but the North American version can be easily had from a U.S. vendor for half the price. Troll.
This is pretty funny. I'm not being a troll. I'm stating plain facts. And as for 'A bit overpriced...' wtf? I can buy RedHat for CDN $90 (which is like US $5), or $1.50 from CheapBytes. How can you call US $347 a little overpriced? And aren't you contradicting your own first message?
I don't understand why there is so much aggrivated rivalry between Linux, BSD, OSX, etc. Friendly competition, and even friendly jibes, are understandable. But the 'ha ha, it's BSD not linux!' or vice versa, is childish and regressive.
I've been using Linux since 1996, and I love it. But I don't feel any enmity with the BSD folk, or any other free software/OSS system. I use RedHat. Not because it's necessarily better, but it works for me and I like it. But if you like Debian, or Gentoo, or SuSE, more power to you! I don't feel the need to inflict my choice on you.
Competition is good. Gnome vs KDE is good for both sides. It stimulates thought and advancement. Same goes for Linux vs BSD. I mean, come on! Most of the software even runs on both platforms!
MS, on the other hand, isn't about competition. It's about crushing everything that isn't MS. They don't give you a choice. In fact, the take away choices that you already have. That's worth fighting against.
If Peru goes BSD, then great! If they use Linux, fantastic! It doesn't matter, because it means freedom in either case. It also means great interoperability, because Linux & BSD get along just fine in a heterogenous environment. So they could use BSD *and* Linux! That's the whole point.
Slashdot Mirror
Great example! I take it you're implying that some corporate programmer (not like Alan or Linus) invented the spreadsheet on WinDOS? Except that it wasn't. It was Dan Bricklin, and he invented it on an Apple ][ to help him with his college course on accounting. After it was done, he decided to sell it and VisiCalc was born.
So basically, another "hobbiest" invented the spreadsheet. I'd say that it was pretty important technology.
This is a serious mistake that people are still making - expecting the user to have 0 knowledge. That doesn't make any sense.
Would you expect car manufacturers to produce cars that can be driven by someone who doesn't understand what a steering wheel does? Or airplane manufacturers to make planes flyable for someone who's never seen a cockpit before?
A minimum level of competence/understanding should be expected of the users. Anything less is just silly.
People don't use X. Not directly, anyway, any more than they use the frame or suspension of their car. It's an underpinning that is itself used by a close-to-the-user app (or set of apps), such as Metacity, Enlightenment, FVWM, Gnome, KDE, etc.
Most people don't understand car engines either, but that's no reason to "dumb them down".
The Amiga had a dropshadow program that calculated & drew shadows based on the stacking height, and projected them down onto lower windows. It looked amazing, and was done on a wimpy old Amiga.
We should be able to do so much more with today's hardware.
It actually took into account the stacking of windows, and would draw a shadow that represented the window's "height above desktop" - so a window that was on top of a large stack of windows would have a severely offset shadow, and one on the bottom of the stack would have a minimally offset shadow.
Also - the shadow-casting onto windows beneath also took into account the relative height differences.
The end result was an *amazing* feel of 3d, on a crappy old 7.14MHz 68000. We should definitely be able to do better on today's marvels.
However, since MS just gave it away, there were no royalties to be paid. The end result was that Spyglass got nothing for their precious I.P.
This is from memory, but I do believe that spyglass got royally (punny...) screwed on that deal.
Naturally, the American gov't isn't interested in the same. Observe the PATRIOT act ("patriot", ha! nice PR move on the name there, boys), the behaviour towards MS during the remedies phase of their anti-trust trial. Enron. Worldcom. etc.
As for anti-democractic, it's been pointed out numerous times in other posts that the Americans have a habit of deposing democratically elected leaders in other countries, when those leaders don't toe the American line.
The Shah of Iran was installed by the Americans, after they toppled the democratically elected president. The Shah was hated by the people, who formed a popular uprising against him. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the militant Islamics managed to wedge their way into the leadership role, even though they had little to do with the uprising itself.
In numerous South American countries, the US has done the same thing - eliminated the popular local leader, and installed their own "US-Approved" leader, only to cause enormous problems for the locals and the Americans, too. Whenever the US screws around with foreign countries, they seem to complete mess it up.
Consider for a moment these 'evil regimes' - how many of them have invaded other countries? As far as I know, China hasn't toppled any other country's government. Neither has Iraq. US has, though. So who's more evil? It's true that the US doesn't inflict quite as many abuses on its own citizens, however with PATRIOT 1&2, with the illegal arrest & detainment without charge of persons of middle-eastern birth (etc etc), it looks like they're slipping down that slippery slope. Let's not forget Jon Johansen - the MPAA had interpol in invade his home in Norway , confiscate his computers and had him (a 16 year old kid!) and his father arrested, because of some perceived potential violation of an AMERICAN law. How is that supporting freedom? That certainly is money-grubbing, though. (Check up on the DeCSS case if you don't know what I mean).Can you name ONE country that the US has gone into, toppled the leadership, installed their approved leader, and had the country move onto peace and prosperity? I can't.
US apologists love to talk about these "Evil Regimes" who are "bent on destroying democracy & freedom". That's exactly what the US does! So is this a case of "You aren't allowed to destroy democracy and freedom! That's the job of the US!"
I think your "president", who lost the election but won the seat (partially with the help of his brother causing 50,000 floridians to be considered 'criminals' and ineligable for the vote) sounds more like these third-world dictators who fudge the elections to get into power. It's the same thing. Just as despicable.
According to historical records, Hiroshima was bombed on Aug 6 1945, and Nagasaki on Aug 9. That's 3 days. Not much time for a formal surrender.
They surrendered Sep 2 1945, 24 days after the Nagasaki bomb.
According to your reasoning, a 3 day span between a bomb and a surrender is unacceptable (hence the Nagasaki bomb), and therefore there should have been 8 more nuclear bombs dropped on Japan before they surrendered.
I agree with you - Working with Glade + Python is amazing. You can put together beautiful, responsive applications incredibly quickly (far nicer and faster than a java app, incidentally).
As for your symbol completion - VIM has the ability via CTRL-P to do completion, based on some sophisticated & programmable rules. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some capability within Emacs to do the same.
I think you have a problem with your machine if it took 2 days to compile gcc 3.1. I just emerged (downloaded & compiled) my gentoo gcc 3.1.1, on my PIII laptop (600MHz), and it took less than 2 hours.
Now, if you were talking about OpenOffice, that took something like 13 hours.
Let's not forget that the amount of energy in a chunk of matter as large as an adult male human is greater than any nuclear bomb detonated yet.
So instead of just leaving a face imprint, if JC turned into energy, he would have left a gigantic crater. Unless, of course, he turned into energy at a nice, controlled slow rate. But then he'd probably be burning away for a few centuries.
Right - So we don't have a huge standing army, so we should shut the f--- up or we're going to be invaded?
So you've gone from predicting that other countries will look to the US for help, to admitting that we'd better toe the line or we'll get stomped on.
Sounds like a playground bully to me. I feel really sorry for the Founding Fathers of the US, because I think they had a really great idea, and they had some amazing philosophies behind their work. The declaration of independence, and the constitution, are powerful, thought provoking works.
It's a shame that the recent leadership has strayed from them and the principles they were founded on. In fact, it seems that they've strayed so far that they're acting like the very leaders the fonders wanted to break from.
Truth, honor, justice are all now just empty words, or even marketing phrases. Instead, the US now seems to be about Lawyers, Guns and Money.
Actually, I'm an ungrateful Canadian.
If you read the site you quoted, you'll find that Canada declared war on Germany 5 days after US delcared neutrality. The Canadians declared war to help out their allies. (Note that Americans only apparently declare war to protect their assets (Kuwait), or when they get punched in the nose [ala Pearl Harbor & Sept 11])
Then, almost a year into the fighting, the US--get this--froze german and italian assets in the states! OMFG! Now that's protection!
In fact, the US apparently didn't declare war on Germany ever, but it did declare war on Japan, AFTER Pearl Harbor (almost 2 years into the fighting). So again, we have a case of the us staying out of things until they get hurt themselves.
My mother is Latvian, and she and all her relatives were routed from Latvia thanks to the Russians. The Russians, I might add, who were "given" the territory by an agreement with the US. Thanks again, America! Land of the Free!
Who the hell wants US assistance? It's the fastest way to getting your country screwed over.
When the Russians were invading Afghanistan, the US gave money and weapons to the Mujaheddin (sp?) who kicked out the Russkies, but then became the Taliban!
Saddam Hussein is CIA trained and was working with the CIA before he decided to go it alone.
Let's not forget all the fuckups in South America.
And thanks to more stupidity and blundering on the part of the USians, Canadians have been killed on the battlefield for the first time since Vietnam. From friendly fire, by USians!
I don't have the figures handy, but I remember reading that more USians were killed during operation Desert Storm by friendly fire than by Iraqis. Boy, that's who I want helping me out, let me tell you.
I believe the EFF fits the bill nicely. They do a lot of debunking and information distribution, though not so much mudslinging.
I meant that if Hollywood goes all digital, and theatres can't (or won't) afford the equipment cost, they'll have to go elsewhere for their content, which means the indies.
Maybe having "Hollywood" only support digital theatres would be a good thing, at least for the small-time movie producer.
Most of the movies I've seen recently that have been really enjoyable and thought provoking have been independant films. It would be great if they would get wider theatre exposure.
Of course, another alternative is simply some cheaper form of digital projection. Since consumer grade digital cameras are getting quite good in quality, and programs like Final Cut Pro allow you to edit in your living room, we could easily see the "Desktop Video" revolution acutally start to happen.
This is pretty funny. I'm not being a troll. I'm stating plain facts. And as for 'A bit overpriced...' wtf? I can buy RedHat for CDN $90 (which is like US $5), or $1.50 from CheapBytes. How can you call US $347 a little overpriced? And aren't you contradicting your own first message?
I'm not being a smart ass, or contentious.
I live in Canada. For me, the Canadian dollar is 1:1 the Canadian Dollar.
Therefore, the prices are as I quoted: $300 for personal, $500 for professional.
Well, here in Canada, WinXP personal is $300, and WinXP pro is $500.
So I guess I'm not too young, then.
I don't understand why there is so much aggrivated rivalry between Linux, BSD, OSX, etc. Friendly competition, and even friendly jibes, are understandable. But the 'ha ha, it's BSD not linux!' or vice versa, is childish and regressive.
I've been using Linux since 1996, and I love it. But I don't feel any enmity with the BSD folk, or any other free software/OSS system. I use RedHat. Not because it's necessarily better, but it works for me and I like it. But if you like Debian, or Gentoo, or SuSE, more power to you! I don't feel the need to inflict my choice on you.
Competition is good. Gnome vs KDE is good for both sides. It stimulates thought and advancement. Same goes for Linux vs BSD. I mean, come on! Most of the software even runs on both platforms!
MS, on the other hand, isn't about competition. It's about crushing everything that isn't MS. They don't give you a choice. In fact, the take away choices that you already have. That's worth fighting against.
If Peru goes BSD, then great! If they use Linux, fantastic! It doesn't matter, because it means freedom in either case. It also means great interoperability, because Linux & BSD get along just fine in a heterogenous environment. So they could use BSD *and* Linux! That's the whole point.