Java isn't slow, but sometimes you do have to program more thoughtfully to make Java fast.
This benchmark is about as "thoughtfully" written for Java as is possible--it includes only straight line arithmetic and a few simple array references. If a Java compiler/JIT can't do well on that, it's going to have real problems on other tasks.
But, more generally, I think there is something wrong with your attitude that you have to write the code "carefully". What is the point of writing numerical code in Java if I have to write it in a Fortran 77 style to get any decent performance? This is the 21st century--we use abstraction in our numerical code: classes representing complex numbers, quaternions, rotation matrices, and other algebraic objects. Fortran 95 compilers can handle that and so can C++ compilers. C# has the primitives to deal with it efficiently (value classes, operators), and its compilers will likely catch up performance-wise.
Only Java is conspicuously absent, lacking both the syntax to express such abstractions conveniently and the primitives to compile them efficiently.
(And this isn't even taking into account all the floating point related blunders in the Java language definition that make writing efficient numerical Java code hard even if you do stick to a Fortran 77 style.)
There are plenty of "high performance array languages". Matlab is one of them, and so is Numerical Python, and A+. I don't see any particular reason to push a commercial product like "K". Languages like that derive their speed from excellent underlying libraries; there is nothing amazing or special about that.
On this particular benchmark, "K" would probably perform very poorly--because it doesn't involve any big arrays. But, since you like "K" so much, why don't you try for yourself and report back?
The thing is all those companies are asking What is the sweet spot? How can I make money and still be open source?. I don't think anyone has perfected this yet, so the dual license is just another attempt at profitability using open source. You can't blame TrollTech for trying either.
No, I don't blame them. However, you can't blame me either for arguing that their license and policies are detrimental to the future of GUIs on Linux desktops and Linux handhelds. You may disagree, and you may have good arguments to counter mine, but it's something that should be open to debate.
My point is to ask "what is fair"? If someone is going to make money on trolltechs investment, should trolltech get something out of it? How is trolltech to continue to produce open source code if they do not have a reliable revenue stream?
I don't think "fairness" is the right criterion. It's a free market, and to keep it efficient, I should choose what's in my long-term interest.
There are areas where I think Troll Tech's business model (dual licensing) is harmless or beneficial to open source. But when it comes to GUIs, I don't think success for Troll Tech's business model for Qt is in the long term interest of Linux users.
One is that Qt doesn't stand a chance as being selected as the default toolkit by companies like IBM or Sun--those companies don't want to be tied to some small vendor for the future of commercial applications on their platforms; only a toolkit that allows free commercial usage and is open source, like a toolkit with an LGPL, BSD, or similar license, will do for them. And that's what we are already seeing.
Another reason is that Troll Tech's commercial interests in the toolkit call their technical choices into question. Is Qt/Embedded really the best technical solution or is it merely a convenient way of ensuring that all commercial apps for the Sharp have to pay Troll Tech. To what degree is failure of Qt/KDE to interoperate with non-Qt/KDE desktops a technical issue or a business strategy issue? Dual licensing calls everything into question.
If Qt were the only game in town, we might have to live with this. But Gtk+, wxWindows, FLTK, and while you can quibble whether they are "as good", other systems are viable alternatives. So, I just don't see much need for open source efforts to have this kind of arrangement with Troll Tech. Or, if you want to look at it differently, no, Troll Tech doesn't "deserve" to be paid for Qt because they are much more expensive than other comparable toolkits--which are free. The market is a harsh mistress.
(I might point out that Troll Tech, through the prominence it gained through their arrangement with KDE, pretty much single-handedly killed off a number of other commercial cross-platform toolkits, toolkits which arguably were better supported and more complete. Was that "fair"? I don't know, and that's why I think it's not the right question to ask.)
Measuring and monitoring the presence and amounts of chemicals in the environment and in food might be a good area to get involved in. You can get by with limited resources, the experiments tend not to be dangerous, it teaches excellent laboratory technique, and you can accomplish something useful. You could pick a problem that interests you personally (oxygen levels, organic matter, pollutants in a local lake), or you might look around for a volunteer organization to get involved in--they might even be able to provide laboratory facilities and train you.
Other areas that involve chemistry and makes a good hobby are geology and mineralogy. You can collect samples, characterize them, learn about crystallography, and also analyze the samples chemically.
And if you get seriously involved, you can actually accomplish new science in areas like those, even with fairly modest resources. There are lots of publications dedicated to both the hobbyist and the professionals in those areas; look at them at your local university library to get some ideas.
For your information both of the most popular linux desktop have strong commercial ties. [...] It just isn't open-source versus commercial anymore. People need to get out of this mindset. Ximian puts a lot of money into GNOME, and GNOME would not have been as far along as it had without their full time programmers.
Yes, Gnome is sponsored commercially, as are many other projects. There is nothing wrong with commercial sponsorship.
There is a big difference, however: Troll Tech has a dual licensing model, and they claim that the ability to license their software commercially is necessary to finance their open source efforts. In contrast, when other companies sponsor open source efforts, the sponsors do not retain any special rights to the sponsored software.
That has numerous implications. For example, contributing to Qt and Gtk+ has very different implications and beneficiaries.
And with their dual licensing model, Troll Tech's motivations are different as well. On the Zaurus, if you want to develop commercial apps, you have no choice but to pay them; that is a very strong incentive for them to push Qt/Embedded over Qt/X11. If Troll Tech were sponsoring Qt like IBM is sponsoring the Linux kernel, they would have no special economic incentive to prefer Qt/Embedded over Qt/X11--their choice would be driven only by technical considerations. Those are the dangers of a Troll Tech-like model.
"If that is true, I think it really calls into question the entire open source effort." No it doesn't. Not in any way, shape or form. Open source and commercial can co-exist fine.
I think they can co-exist, like IBM and Linux do. Troll Tech is a different model, and I think it's dangerous. Sun, in fact, is trying to do something similar with Java, and I think it suffers from similar problems.
The stated premise behind both the Sharp Zaurus GUI and KDE is that non-commercial open source efforts simply can't deliver a high quality GUI--open source supposedly needs companies like Troll Tech to help with GUIs. If that is true, I think it really calls into question the entire open source effort.
However, I don't think it's true. First of all, owning a Zaurus myself, I find its use of QPE the biggest problem with the device--it means I can't use it for what I primarily want to use a Linux PDA for: running regular Linux software. Almost any software that uses a GUI needs to get ported. I can't script with my favorite scripting environments (Tcl/Tk, wxPython, fltk-lua), I can't use my favorite image display programs, etc.
Fortunately, the folks at handhelds.org have been working busily on putting together a high-quality X11-based handheld distribution. And the Opie versions of the Sharp/QPE applications have been recompiled for X11.
To me, Sharp will be a success story when it really does run the entire Linux environment: command line and graphical. Let's hope that in 2003, Sharp will base their Linux distribution on X11. Because of Qt/X11, the user experience and applications will remain unchanged (well, things may actually get a little faster with X11, but that's not going to be that important on a 400MHz XScale).
They don't want to use odometer readings because it would tax driving outside of Oregon as well. Also, what do you do with out-of-state drivers?
A gas tax avoids issues with out of state drivers. And while it does tax some miles driven outside Oregon, that's not a legal problem--it's clear that Oregon has the right to tax gas however it likes.
My site doesn't waste time listing products that aren't for sale and may never exist. [...] From the Nomad site: "available soon"...how lame is that?
The only thing that's lame is your excuses. The Nomad Zen and the entire Archos product line have been at our local electronics store for a while. And if you bothered to check PriceGrabber.COM or similar sites, you'd see that, while some companies are sold out due to Xmas, several still have them in stock. Reviews on Amazon.com go back to October 23.
Besides, I love it when Nomad and Archos L-users whine:)
And that's your excuse for putting out inaccurate and outdated information?
It's very hard to figure out what browser "market share" is anyway. In fact, it's not even clear that it is a well-defined number. Many users probably have access to multiple browsers. If you make your site work only with IE, they may shop there, but less frequently than they otherwise would. Maybe they'll be able to access it from their home PC but not their wireless PDA, etc.
If there is a number at all, I'd say IE usage is probably in the low 80s, with the rest split among Mozilla, embedded browsers, and a few other players. No serious business can design only for IE, and no serious business has to anyway.
All my purchases on BN.com for a while were made through IE because their web site didn't work reliably with Mozilla: the purchase would fail after typing in all the information. Very frustrating. They probably had near 100% IE usage at the time.
Does that mean that they should have just ignored Mozilla? Quite to the contrary. Instead of the several thousand dollars I would have spent on books over that period, I only spent a few hundred--on books I couldn't easily get on another web site. When I did need to order from them, I'd drag myself over to my Windows laptop after looking long and hard elsewhere. And I still don't trust their web site and avoid it when I can.
GPS is simply not needed for this. Oregon should just increase the gas tax. Not only does that tax miles driven, it also encourages the use of more fuel efficient vehicles and is completely anonymous.
If Oregon wants to give special treatment to selected groups (truck drivers, low income, etc.), they can tax diesel differently, issue identification that would let these groups pay reduced taxes right at the pump, or institute a rebate program.
The use of GPS for this purpose is so stupid that it suggests to me that there may be a hidden agenda: get the GPS into vehicles and start using it for tracking and surveillance. Or, perhaps, it's simple political stupidity: politicians think that increasing gas taxes is political suicide, but voters are too stupid to figure out thie Rube Goldberg proposal. Or maybe it's just heavy lobbying from electronics manufacturers.
it amazes me that they used linux as I assume that there must be easier tools under windows that do the same?
Well, that is primarily indicative of your ignorance of Linux and your willingness to buy into Microsoft propaganda.
i mean it must be easier to find the tool under windows thebn setup a linux machine
There is nothing to set up. Linux can boot and run from CD, with all software installed (check for DemonLinux and Knoppix, for example). That's one of the many reasons Linux is so good at this sort of thing.
How easy is it?
Connect drive you want to copy to to the disk controller or USB port, or plug in Ethernet card.
Insert bootable Linux CD and boot from CD.
If you just want to mirror the drive, type something like "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb".
To mirror it over the network, type something like "pump; cat/dev/hda | ssh me@host cat \> image".
I mean, how much easier can it get?
For forensic applications, you might want to make sure that you hardware write-protect the source drive first, just to avoid accidents.
These people know what they are doing and how to reduce their workload. That is why they are using Linux.
The document states that image files were generated fo the contents of the hard drives. I do not have confidence that an image would also display latent data.
It's pretty clear what "dd" images: the entire content of the hard disk drive as it is readable by its disk controller. It won't image residual data that has been erased.
I know myself that when I do a data recovery on a system, I can get many more megs of recovered data from file fragments, deleted folders, etc than can fit on the drive. Most of this extra stuff ias junk data, but you get the idea.
Unless your recovery efforts involve custom hardware, the disk image obtained with "dd", together with bad block information and drive geometry, contains every bit of information you are ever going to get out of that drive. Any software-based recovery working on that image is going to be equivalent to recovery working on the original drive.
Trying to recover data that has been physically overwritten, using analog methods or imaging, is so expensive and time consuming that it is feasible only in special cases.
Yes, if you want to make it to the very top, then you probably need to accept a lot of risk. And, people who don't have much to lose are willing to accept a lot of risk.
A good education gives you a choice: you can limit your risks and your rewards, or you can accept a lot of risk and possibly make it to the very top. Most people apparently do the rational thing given this choice: they limit their risk and their rewards. Most people are happy with a decent income, a nice family, predictable work, and reasonable success at their job. Most people deep down don't really desire to be Bill Gates or Steven Spielberg.
It's easier to convert the output of the speech synthesizer to mp3 and use an MP3 player for the car. That way, you don't have to dress up like the Borg to do a fast forward/reverse/skip. The code for dealing with it is also much simpler. Here's a simple 8 line Bash script that downloads a list of URLs and converts them to MP3 files (options are from memory, so double check before using it):
You can run this nightly from cron. If you want better speech output, use Festival. You may want to filter the output from "lynx" through a sed script to remove redundant content.
That argument roughly the equivalent of Clinton redefining the meaning of the word "is". We all have reasonable expectations of what happens to our trash when we put it out. Primarily, we expect that it gets disposed of and mixed with lots of other trash. Possibly, homeless people might go through it. We don't have the expectation that our government scrutinizes it bit by bit.
If you discount expectations that reasonable people might have, you will soon have homes looked into using ultrasound and infrared, the NSA breaking into your computer and turning on your web cam, etc. Hey, after all, you could, in theory, take steps to prevent that if it really bothered you.
If we go down that road, it will mean that only the very rich can have privacy because only they will be able to block all the ways in which their privacy can be invaded without technically violating some simple bounds.
I think it's the government's responsibility to protect the privacy of all Americans, not just the very rich. And that means that the government needs to protect our trash and respect it, too.
Of course, I agree to the degree that if examining trash is fair game, it should be fair game for everybody. However, you can bet that the next legal argument will be that once you put the trash out on the curb, it legally belongs to the recycling center, and therefore, you are committing trespass and theft if you examine it.
This means more apps on Quartz for OSX. Yeah right, they don't want it...
Yes, they don't want this. Gtk+OSX applications are not Macintosh native, and they are not consistent.
Of course, since Apple can't easily stop this, they'll still be happy to count the application when making claims about how much software OSX supports.
Get a Nomad Zen instead. It has both FireWire and USB interfaces, slightly longer battery life, and it supports recording. Or consider the new Archos players and recorders: USB2, FireWire, and lots of other features.
Both Archos and Creative have entirely new product lines out there. Some Archos drives are much sleeker and more capable and support both FireWire and USB2 (as well as MPEG4 video and audio).
The Creative Nomad Zen is sleek and small, and supports both FireWire and USB, as well as recharging through USB.That alone makes it a much better choice for Linux users than the iPod. It also seems to have somewhat better battery life, and it supports recording.
Excuse me, but I don't give a shit what Apple wants or doesn't want me to be able to run on their hardware.
Well, you should, because ultimately, Apple does control what does and doesn't run there.
it's about expanding support for the Aqua GUI.
The Gtk+ port does not use the Aqua GUI, it uses the regular Gtk+ rendering and primitives. It's not much different from running Gtk+ under XDarwin.
I don't care what you do with your Mac, or your Linux machine.
Well, perhaps you should. The fewer people buy and use Macs, the more trouble Apple is in. And if the open source community doesn't bother with supporting ports of open source software to the Mac anymore, you won't be getting much open source software anymore either.
Man, where do you live? The moon? You do not know what you are talking about. Ever heard of Dijkstra's contributions, just for an instance?
Systems don't become usable by having a good theoretical foundation, systems become usable by taking into account principles of cognitive science and psychology in their design, and by adapting to the needs of their users over time.
Huh? And what better appeared since the 60s? Do you have a pointer to prove your muddling up allegations?
Object oriented databases, functional databases, knowledge representation systems, and logical databases, to name just a few.
It is crystal clear you never read them properly if at all. Either that or your thought is too muddled by OO to be able to analyse the issues at hand.
Fortunately, these things will not be decided by your insults or put-downs, but by the market. And I don't see anything replacing SQL when it comes to the preferred language for querying relational databases because, while SQL isn't much of a language, people know it and it has evolved to the point where it gets the job done. I do, however, see an increasing reliance on non-relational databases in the market.
I agree that many MacHeads prefer Photoshop because they know it. I also agree that it has many more features. In fact, Photoshop has really become a mix of graphic design, web design, and image manipulation tools.
But that merely makes it different from the Gimp, not necessarily superior to it. For the specific purpose of digital photography and image manipulation, the Gimp is excellent, and its user interface works very well.
In any case, I do agree that there isn't much point in porting the Gimp to OSX. People buy Macs because they want to run commercial software and because they want a certain "look". Anybody who wants to run the Gimp would get a much faster machine and a much more consistent GUI for less money by running it on a PC running Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
This benchmark is about as "thoughtfully" written for Java as is possible--it includes only straight line arithmetic and a few simple array references. If a Java compiler/JIT can't do well on that, it's going to have real problems on other tasks.
But, more generally, I think there is something wrong with your attitude that you have to write the code "carefully". What is the point of writing numerical code in Java if I have to write it in a Fortran 77 style to get any decent performance? This is the 21st century--we use abstraction in our numerical code: classes representing complex numbers, quaternions, rotation matrices, and other algebraic objects. Fortran 95 compilers can handle that and so can C++ compilers. C# has the primitives to deal with it efficiently (value classes, operators), and its compilers will likely catch up performance-wise.
Only Java is conspicuously absent, lacking both the syntax to express such abstractions conveniently and the primitives to compile them efficiently.
(And this isn't even taking into account all the floating point related blunders in the Java language definition that make writing efficient numerical Java code hard even if you do stick to a Fortran 77 style.)
On this particular benchmark, "K" would probably perform very poorly--because it doesn't involve any big arrays. But, since you like "K" so much, why don't you try for yourself and report back?
No, I don't blame them. However, you can't blame me either for arguing that their license and policies are detrimental to the future of GUIs on Linux desktops and Linux handhelds. You may disagree, and you may have good arguments to counter mine, but it's something that should be open to debate.
My point is to ask "what is fair"? If someone is going to make money on trolltechs investment, should trolltech get something out of it? How is trolltech to continue to produce open source code if they do not have a reliable revenue stream?
I don't think "fairness" is the right criterion. It's a free market, and to keep it efficient, I should choose what's in my long-term interest.
There are areas where I think Troll Tech's business model (dual licensing) is harmless or beneficial to open source. But when it comes to GUIs, I don't think success for Troll Tech's business model for Qt is in the long term interest of Linux users.
One is that Qt doesn't stand a chance as being selected as the default toolkit by companies like IBM or Sun--those companies don't want to be tied to some small vendor for the future of commercial applications on their platforms; only a toolkit that allows free commercial usage and is open source, like a toolkit with an LGPL, BSD, or similar license, will do for them. And that's what we are already seeing.
Another reason is that Troll Tech's commercial interests in the toolkit call their technical choices into question. Is Qt/Embedded really the best technical solution or is it merely a convenient way of ensuring that all commercial apps for the Sharp have to pay Troll Tech. To what degree is failure of Qt/KDE to interoperate with non-Qt/KDE desktops a technical issue or a business strategy issue? Dual licensing calls everything into question.
If Qt were the only game in town, we might have to live with this. But Gtk+, wxWindows, FLTK, and while you can quibble whether they are "as good", other systems are viable alternatives. So, I just don't see much need for open source efforts to have this kind of arrangement with Troll Tech. Or, if you want to look at it differently, no, Troll Tech doesn't "deserve" to be paid for Qt because they are much more expensive than other comparable toolkits--which are free. The market is a harsh mistress.
(I might point out that Troll Tech, through the prominence it gained through their arrangement with KDE, pretty much single-handedly killed off a number of other commercial cross-platform toolkits, toolkits which arguably were better supported and more complete. Was that "fair"? I don't know, and that's why I think it's not the right question to ask.)
Other areas that involve chemistry and makes a good hobby are geology and mineralogy. You can collect samples, characterize them, learn about crystallography, and also analyze the samples chemically.
And if you get seriously involved, you can actually accomplish new science in areas like those, even with fairly modest resources. There are lots of publications dedicated to both the hobbyist and the professionals in those areas; look at them at your local university library to get some ideas.
Yes, Gnome is sponsored commercially, as are many other projects. There is nothing wrong with commercial sponsorship.
There is a big difference, however: Troll Tech has a dual licensing model, and they claim that the ability to license their software commercially is necessary to finance their open source efforts. In contrast, when other companies sponsor open source efforts, the sponsors do not retain any special rights to the sponsored software.
That has numerous implications. For example, contributing to Qt and Gtk+ has very different implications and beneficiaries.
And with their dual licensing model, Troll Tech's motivations are different as well. On the Zaurus, if you want to develop commercial apps, you have no choice but to pay them; that is a very strong incentive for them to push Qt/Embedded over Qt/X11. If Troll Tech were sponsoring Qt like IBM is sponsoring the Linux kernel, they would have no special economic incentive to prefer Qt/Embedded over Qt/X11--their choice would be driven only by technical considerations. Those are the dangers of a Troll Tech-like model.
"If that is true, I think it really calls into question the entire open source effort." No it doesn't. Not in any way, shape or form. Open source and commercial can co-exist fine.
I think they can co-exist, like IBM and Linux do. Troll Tech is a different model, and I think it's dangerous. Sun, in fact, is trying to do something similar with Java, and I think it suffers from similar problems.
However, I don't think it's true. First of all, owning a Zaurus myself, I find its use of QPE the biggest problem with the device--it means I can't use it for what I primarily want to use a Linux PDA for: running regular Linux software. Almost any software that uses a GUI needs to get ported. I can't script with my favorite scripting environments (Tcl/Tk, wxPython, fltk-lua), I can't use my favorite image display programs, etc.
Fortunately, the folks at handhelds.org have been working busily on putting together a high-quality X11-based handheld distribution. And the Opie versions of the Sharp/QPE applications have been recompiled for X11.
To me, Sharp will be a success story when it really does run the entire Linux environment: command line and graphical. Let's hope that in 2003, Sharp will base their Linux distribution on X11. Because of Qt/X11, the user experience and applications will remain unchanged (well, things may actually get a little faster with X11, but that's not going to be that important on a 400MHz XScale).
A gas tax avoids issues with out of state drivers. And while it does tax some miles driven outside Oregon, that's not a legal problem--it's clear that Oregon has the right to tax gas however it likes.
The only thing that's lame is your excuses. The Nomad Zen and the entire Archos product line have been at our local electronics store for a while. And if you bothered to check PriceGrabber.COM or similar sites, you'd see that, while some companies are sold out due to Xmas, several still have them in stock. Reviews on Amazon.com go back to October 23.
Besides, I love it when Nomad and Archos L-users whine :)
And that's your excuse for putting out inaccurate and outdated information?
If there is a number at all, I'd say IE usage is probably in the low 80s, with the rest split among Mozilla, embedded browsers, and a few other players. No serious business can design only for IE, and no serious business has to anyway.
Does that mean that they should have just ignored Mozilla? Quite to the contrary. Instead of the several thousand dollars I would have spent on books over that period, I only spent a few hundred--on books I couldn't easily get on another web site. When I did need to order from them, I'd drag myself over to my Windows laptop after looking long and hard elsewhere. And I still don't trust their web site and avoid it when I can.
If Oregon wants to give special treatment to selected groups (truck drivers, low income, etc.), they can tax diesel differently, issue identification that would let these groups pay reduced taxes right at the pump, or institute a rebate program.
The use of GPS for this purpose is so stupid that it suggests to me that there may be a hidden agenda: get the GPS into vehicles and start using it for tracking and surveillance. Or, perhaps, it's simple political stupidity: politicians think that increasing gas taxes is political suicide, but voters are too stupid to figure out thie Rube Goldberg proposal. Or maybe it's just heavy lobbying from electronics manufacturers.
Well, that is primarily indicative of your ignorance of Linux and your willingness to buy into Microsoft propaganda.
i mean it must be easier to find the tool under windows thebn setup a linux machine
There is nothing to set up. Linux can boot and run from CD, with all software installed (check for DemonLinux and Knoppix, for example). That's one of the many reasons Linux is so good at this sort of thing.
How easy is it?
- Connect drive you want to copy to to the disk controller or USB port, or plug in Ethernet card.
- Insert bootable Linux CD and boot from CD.
- If you just want to mirror the drive, type something like "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb".
- To mirror it over the network, type something like "pump; cat
/dev/hda | ssh me@host cat \> image".
I mean, how much easier can it get?For forensic applications, you might want to make sure that you hardware write-protect the source drive first, just to avoid accidents.
These people know what they are doing and how to reduce their workload. That is why they are using Linux.
It's pretty clear what "dd" images: the entire content of the hard disk drive as it is readable by its disk controller. It won't image residual data that has been erased.
I know myself that when I do a data recovery on a system, I can get many more megs of recovered data from file fragments, deleted folders, etc than can fit on the drive. Most of this extra stuff ias junk data, but you get the idea.
Unless your recovery efforts involve custom hardware, the disk image obtained with "dd", together with bad block information and drive geometry, contains every bit of information you are ever going to get out of that drive. Any software-based recovery working on that image is going to be equivalent to recovery working on the original drive.
Trying to recover data that has been physically overwritten, using analog methods or imaging, is so expensive and time consuming that it is feasible only in special cases.
A good education gives you a choice: you can limit your risks and your rewards, or you can accept a lot of risk and possibly make it to the very top. Most people apparently do the rational thing given this choice: they limit their risk and their rewards. Most people are happy with a decent income, a nice family, predictable work, and reasonable success at their job. Most people deep down don't really desire to be Bill Gates or Steven Spielberg.
It's easier to convert the output of the speech synthesizer to mp3 and use an MP3 player for the car. That way, you don't have to dress up like the Borg to do a fast forward/reverse/skip. The code for dealing with it is also much simpler. Here's a simple 8 line Bash script that downloads a list of URLs and converts them to MP3 files (options are from memory, so double check before using it):
/card/audio$id.mp3
id=0
cat list-of-urls |
while read url; do
lynx -dump $url |
rsynth-say -l temp.pcm
bladeenc -mono -b 32 -rawfreq=8000 -rawbits=16 -rawchannels=2 temp.pcm
((id++))
done
You can run this nightly from cron. If you want better speech output, use Festival. You may want to filter the output from "lynx" through a sed script to remove redundant content.
If you discount expectations that reasonable people might have, you will soon have homes looked into using ultrasound and infrared, the NSA breaking into your computer and turning on your web cam, etc. Hey, after all, you could, in theory, take steps to prevent that if it really bothered you.
If we go down that road, it will mean that only the very rich can have privacy because only they will be able to block all the ways in which their privacy can be invaded without technically violating some simple bounds.
I think it's the government's responsibility to protect the privacy of all Americans, not just the very rich. And that means that the government needs to protect our trash and respect it, too.
Of course, I agree to the degree that if examining trash is fair game, it should be fair game for everybody. However, you can bet that the next legal argument will be that once you put the trash out on the curb, it legally belongs to the recycling center, and therefore, you are committing trespass and theft if you examine it.
I believe the German government was very fond of this phrase, too--in the 1930's and 1940's.
Well, thanks, but that doesn't quite answer the question. If I buy an 802.11g network, do I still have to worry about all this stuff?
Did they fix the serious security problems (weak keys) with 802.11b in 802.11g, or do I still need kludgy workarounds in software?
Yes, they don't want this. Gtk+OSX applications are not Macintosh native, and they are not consistent.
Of course, since Apple can't easily stop this, they'll still be happy to count the application when making claims about how much software OSX supports.
Get a Nomad Zen instead. It has both FireWire and USB interfaces, slightly longer battery life, and it supports recording. Or consider the new Archos players and recorders: USB2, FireWire, and lots of other features.
The Creative Nomad Zen is sleek and small, and supports both FireWire and USB, as well as recharging through USB.That alone makes it a much better choice for Linux users than the iPod. It also seems to have somewhat better battery life, and it supports recording.
Well, you should, because ultimately, Apple does control what does and doesn't run there.
it's about expanding support for the Aqua GUI.
The Gtk+ port does not use the Aqua GUI, it uses the regular Gtk+ rendering and primitives. It's not much different from running Gtk+ under XDarwin.
I don't care what you do with your Mac, or your Linux machine.
Well, perhaps you should. The fewer people buy and use Macs, the more trouble Apple is in. And if the open source community doesn't bother with supporting ports of open source software to the Mac anymore, you won't be getting much open source software anymore either.
Systems don't become usable by having a good theoretical foundation, systems become usable by taking into account principles of cognitive science and psychology in their design, and by adapting to the needs of their users over time.
Huh? And what better appeared since the 60s? Do you have a pointer to prove your muddling up allegations?
Object oriented databases, functional databases, knowledge representation systems, and logical databases, to name just a few.
It is crystal clear you never read them properly if at all. Either that or your thought is too muddled by OO to be able to analyse the issues at hand.
Fortunately, these things will not be decided by your insults or put-downs, but by the market. And I don't see anything replacing SQL when it comes to the preferred language for querying relational databases because, while SQL isn't much of a language, people know it and it has evolved to the point where it gets the job done. I do, however, see an increasing reliance on non-relational databases in the market.
But that merely makes it different from the Gimp, not necessarily superior to it. For the specific purpose of digital photography and image manipulation, the Gimp is excellent, and its user interface works very well.
In any case, I do agree that there isn't much point in porting the Gimp to OSX. People buy Macs because they want to run commercial software and because they want a certain "look". Anybody who wants to run the Gimp would get a much faster machine and a much more consistent GUI for less money by running it on a PC running Linux.