If you search the web for "gnome configurability" or "gnome interface customization", nearly nothing comes back, other than "we have _removed_ this and that and it is better for you". I used to like gnome because the underlying library structure was very modular. No C++ container clases thrown together with widgets in a single library 'QT'. One library for one particular task.
But since they've really messed up the UI, I'm already considering switching back to KDE [And I have used gnome/GTK for more than 3 years!!]. KDE developed alot, and they've also learned that not everything they develop should depend on libqt.
If it would be only the file manager in gnome. I use the CLI for managing files. But no fscking ___UNDO___-Dialogs, because everything should be "instant apply". Instant apply, ok, but I want to revert my changes to *try them out*! It is a pity, too, that the IMHO wonderful, modular GTK toolkit gets bad press from gnome.
Ahh, I know,/. is the wrong place to rant but IMHO this should get +5, Insightful.
What the world needs is 100% allowed copying between *citizens*. Only the privacy issues which arise when monitoring p2p should be enough to bring all the current, draconic anti-copy laws to fall.
What should not be allowed and what should be prohibited by law is the commercial exploitation of another one's copyright. That would include commercially used software, music etc.
This is such a big problem for me that I still have plans to put around 20 alarm-clocks all over my room and wire them with a central 'set-alarm' wire. I want to put all these into the locations where it is most difficult to switch them off, i.e. hang them from the ceiling, in the shelves etc. and, yes, I want to remove/disable the snooze buttons. So it would be really hard to be lazy in the morning. Switchting them off would be done by starting the computer and entering some weird, 30 character-long program name. It would of course not be impossible to switch them off earlier (destroying them, fetching a screwdriver etc.), but I hope my lazyness would not make me do such things!:)
Yes, and the pen-and-paper system is easy to understand for EVERYONE. Not only nerds. Noone has to trust some obscure algorithms and electronic measures 1%% of the population understands or thinks to understand.
What's the fuss?! It's even simpler. Simply do not use voting machines at all!
What is wrong with the good old system of voting?
Am I missing something? It has been working for centuries now, why is it suddenly so outdated that it has to be abolished?!
BTW: I'm writing this as a E.U. citizen, the same 'modernization' of the voting system was proposed here. Gladly, most of the parties who demanded such a system are now opposing - Thanks to the diebold scandal...
[It is an issue noone talks about any longer - And this is can be counted at least as a partial success against electronic voting:) ]
Yes, and I think just like Mr. Pythagoras had a problem with irrational numbers, we today have a problem with the incompleteness of mathematics. Some hundreds of years later (presumed that humanity will still exist), and these things will be taught in school and uncomputable numbers feel just like reals. At least, I hope so:)
I'm really interested if there will be different fees for traffic with different QoS. Because you don't want to have your phone's VoIP stream compete with the neighbours p2p streaming app.
It is neccessary to implement QoS here, I think. And it *must* be differently priced. Else, everyone would set the QoS fields leading to a tragedy of the commons.
Yes, and I *really, really* hope they have made provisions to switch to IPv6 or are doing everything on top of IPv6.
It would be a pain in the a** to update all the people's IP telephones from IPv4 to IPv6 (If it would be possible at all). And that would hamper the spread of IPv6 alot.
They are brave enough to switch to IP, hopefully they're also brave enough to switch to IPv6.
It is only possible to make money with FLOSS if it is imperfect (i.e. needs _support_).
But this doesn't make this mindset bad or somehow wrong. It is imperfect in the current world, but commercial software development is even more imperfect.
The problems which arise when one writes free software without compensation are even recognized by RMS, the hated fundamentalist in the FLOSS movement. Somewhere on the GNU pages, in the philosophical sections, you'll find texts where RMS talks exactly about that. I'm not saying here that I support a software tax, like he does. BUT:
If there are very talented people who write very good software in their spare time, then there must be something fudamentally wrong with the assumption that intellectual property and capitalistic greed is _neccessary_ to produce good software.
This is assumption is stated over and over again, yet it is apparently flawed.
I will, of course, if neccessary and/or attractive, code for money in the traditional, commercial, closed-source sense. I can't change the world alone.
But I'm convinced already that the world, especially the software world, can't be reduced to the 'greed is good' rule stated by 90% of all economists.
I won't propose a solution to the dilemma here (since, of course, I have none), but saying "Free software doesn't feed you. Period." is not enough.
The _free_ software movement is in danger of being squashed like a bug by the commercial world with money, i.e. power.
I wonder where the real *freedom* goes in the process. Let the _free_ market grow, _occupy_ 'mind space' by patents and other overly restrictive _intellectual property_ laws. WTF?!
I'm somewhat of a moderate 'green'. I'm very much in favour of nuclear power plants to help stopping the climate change, and even to power space craft (because a non-activated U-235 reactor contains no highly radioactive material - contrary to RTGs, and is much more capable than RTGs).
But some of your statements are playing down the risk in a disproportionate, immoral way.
... take a look at pebble-bed reactors, for example.
Pebble bed reactors, like all HTRs (high temperature reactors) have the risk of burning if they get in contact with air. Yes, they work in 'stable' mode, but they do not play well with air entry as a rather common fault condition.
Nuclear waste doesn't glow, it doesn't cause three headed fish, it won't kill you if you just look at it.
Uhh, depends how you define 'look at it'. If you are behind a *really *thick lead glass shield, fine. If not, a just-decommisioned fuel rod will certainly kill you in seconds if you're, let's say, a few meters away from it. Why are power plants leaving their spent fuel rods under water for years? Because it is harmless?!
And, yes they glow under water for quite a long time (months/years) - because of cherenkov radiation. There exist also glowing isotopes, google for "radio luminescence".
Yes, microsoft is an evil company. But why is your personal opinion "Just another cost of supporting Microsoft, I suppose." neccessary? Some apparently think that they need to keep the/. crowd in the anti-microsoft league. But their evil doings/mistakes/whatever are obvious and can be commented in the appropiate stories.
Here in germany, the FCC's equivalent is the 'RegTP' (Regulierungsbehörde für Telekommunikation und Post). It does regulate communications. Not much more, not much less.
In my eyes and as one can read from the other posts, you US citizens are fed up with the FCC because it does so much beside regulating the EM spectrum. Because it enforces moral standards and other things which have nothing to do with that.
Of course, all these regulatory bodies are still heavily influenced by big money. The FCC/RegTP/ITU is more in favour of the Mobile phone providers than the small guy's WiFi every time.
Wouldn't this be impossible to create with IPv6? Because of the *huge* address space and the negligible probability of a packet entering a darknet? This is in no way an argument against IPv6, I'm eagerly awaiting it - I'm just curious...
The system is similar to patronage. I think this will work for the most visible projects, but the small developer has to take unpaid spare time to bring sth. up.
This works only as long as there is a sizeable middle-class (educated, non-greedy and interested in more than 'making money') somewhere in the world. If poverty spreads in the western world, the FLOSS movement would grind to a halt.
[rant]IMHO, the (mostly) hobbiest nature of of the free software movement is a very valuable thing in itself. Yet, big money is trying to destroy it because it is in it's way. This is the most shameful thing about all the lawsuits, and patent abuses against the FLOSS world. Freedom to what one likes - But do not come into the way of my guaranteed revenue stream![/rant]
UV is ionizing. Ionizing means that you can remove electrons from atoms, and that happens already with frequencies in the optical range (Planck's E=hv is the formula you're interested in).
Of course, radiation in the optical range, i.e. 'light' shouldn't be too dangerous for you:)
> Thanks for the info!:-) No problem, It took me quite some time to figure them out even with google, because as another poster said, everything today is "mobile" and "p2p" and whatever. The right word here is "adhoc", I think...:)
Hey, there is another idea and something I'd really like to implement if it is feasible, because it would be ONLY SOFTWARE that has to be implemented:
- Provider-free Message-passing for PDAs and cellular phones -
AFAIK, today's cellulars are equipped with much processing power, a standarized software platform (java), bluetooth and IRDA. Wouldn't it be nice to send (encrypted) SMS (or something similar to SMS) 'for-free' in an adhoc mobile phone network? A store-and-forward scheme for messages, with a bit of redundancy (if messages get lost somewhere), but possibly big time-delays between forwarding? Let's say A writes a message to D, meets B, B forwards to C and C meets D later in the day... great for university campuses and the like:)
But I see several principial problems here: - Is it possible to access bluetooth and irda networking in Phone-Java? (I don't own one, only an old Palm Pilot) - If yes, can one automatically, without user interaction, pass objects/messages to other/foreign phones (pressing "yes, ok, I want to relay traffic from this stranger I don't know" repeatedly can't be a solution:) - Getting the routing right (scaling) is probably hard.
Yes, and I was interested since I had my first grasp of TCP/IP, packet switching and all that.
I imagined every house with free space optical (FSO) devices on top of it+a router, long distance would be the last task for phone companies/ISPs. But sadly, it didn't happen.
Maybe the telcos are trying to prevent that? Maybe people are too lazy and too stupid to grasp the whole idea? Remember, you'd have to convince many people to 'relay' packets before such a network gets usable. I don't really know, but IMHO it is both technically and socially superior. (Promotes local exchange etc.)
Maybe I'm pessimistic, but I think you'd pay a fee in such a network, even if you only exchange data between you and your neighbour (the telcos want to live, right?).
I once heard (maybe an urban legend, but anyway) that Nokia is making 30% of their sales with...... RINGTONES.
Maybe someone has the exact numbers availbe?
Such a gimmick seems to be a very thoughtful addition to the phone for me. Now, Nokia could start selling people LED-Messages. And, since they pay alot for ___RINGTONES___...
I have also no interest in making screeners (never did), but if cameras get smaller and smaller as they do, wouldn't it become very hard to spot them? I mean... it's a camera, which is there to *collect light*, not to spit it out:)
Incidentally, you don't need "loops" to make a language turing complete. "if" and "goto" with variable assignment will suffice. So will lambda abstraction. So will a control stack (consider Forth or PostScript; both are turing complete but "loops" are just macros to manipulate a control stack).
You're right. But all you're describing is the ability to make loops:) Who said loop==while?
Slashdot Mirror
I hope the gnome developers read /.
If you search the web for "gnome configurability" or "gnome interface customization", nearly nothing comes back, other than "we have _removed_ this and that and it is better for you".
I used to like gnome because the underlying library structure was very modular. No C++ container clases thrown together with widgets in a single library 'QT'. One library for one particular task.
But since they've really messed up the UI, I'm already considering switching back to KDE [And I have used gnome/GTK for more than 3 years!!]. KDE developed alot, and they've also learned that not everything they develop should depend on libqt.
If it would be only the file manager in gnome. I use the CLI for managing files. But no fscking ___UNDO___-Dialogs, because everything should be "instant apply". Instant apply, ok, but I want to revert my changes to *try them out*!
It is a pity, too, that the IMHO wonderful, modular GTK toolkit gets bad press from gnome.
Ahh, I know, /. is the wrong place to rant but IMHO this should get +5, Insightful.
What the world needs is 100% allowed copying between *citizens*. Only the privacy issues which arise when monitoring p2p should be enough to bring all the current, draconic anti-copy laws to fall.
What should not be allowed and what should be prohibited by law is the commercial exploitation of another one's copyright. That would include commercially used software, music etc.
ACK!
:)
This is such a big problem for me that I still have plans to put around 20 alarm-clocks all over my room and wire them with a central 'set-alarm' wire.
I want to put all these into the locations where it is most difficult to switch them off, i.e. hang them from the ceiling, in the shelves etc. and, yes, I want to remove/disable the snooze buttons. So it would be really hard to be lazy in the morning. Switchting them off would be done by starting the computer and entering some weird, 30 character-long program name.
It would of course not be impossible to switch them off earlier (destroying them, fetching a screwdriver etc.), but I hope my lazyness would not make me do such things!
Yes, and the pen-and-paper system is easy to understand for EVERYONE. Not only nerds. Noone has to trust some obscure algorithms and electronic measures 1%% of the population understands or thinks to understand.
What's the fuss?!
:) ]
It's even simpler. Simply do not use voting machines at all!
What is wrong with the good old system of voting?
Am I missing something? It has been working for centuries now, why is it suddenly so outdated that it has to be abolished?!
BTW: I'm writing this as a E.U. citizen, the same 'modernization' of the voting system was proposed here. Gladly, most of the parties who demanded such a system are now opposing - Thanks to the diebold scandal...
[It is an issue noone talks about any longer - And this is can be counted at least as a partial success against electronic voting
Yes, and I think just like Mr. Pythagoras had a problem with irrational numbers, we today have a problem with the incompleteness of mathematics. Some hundreds of years later (presumed that humanity will still exist), and these things will be taught in school and uncomputable numbers feel just like reals. At least, I hope so :)
It is common to write umlauts as ae, oe, ue and ss. For the german-speaking crowd on slashdot, this is is easy to read *and* it is very easy to type.
:)
But... IMHO it doesn't really matter, we all know who is Goedel, Godel, Gödel
I'm really interested if there will be different fees for traffic with different QoS. Because you don't want to have your phone's VoIP stream compete with the neighbours p2p streaming app.
It is neccessary to implement QoS here, I think. And it *must* be differently priced. Else, everyone would set the QoS fields leading to a tragedy of the commons.
Yes, and I *really, really* hope they have made provisions to switch to IPv6 or are doing everything on top of IPv6.
It would be a pain in the a** to update all the people's IP telephones from IPv4 to IPv6 (If it would be possible at all). And that would hamper the spread of IPv6 alot.
They are brave enough to switch to IP, hopefully they're also brave enough to switch to IPv6.
Completely correct.
It is only possible to make money with FLOSS if it is imperfect (i.e. needs _support_).
But this doesn't make this mindset bad or somehow wrong. It is imperfect in the current world, but commercial software development is even more imperfect.
The problems which arise when one writes free software without compensation are even recognized by RMS, the hated fundamentalist in the FLOSS movement. Somewhere on the GNU pages, in the philosophical sections, you'll find texts where RMS talks exactly about that. I'm not saying here that I support a software tax, like he does. BUT:
If there are very talented people who write very good software in their spare time, then there must be something fudamentally wrong with the assumption that intellectual property and capitalistic greed is _neccessary_ to produce good software.
This is assumption is stated over and over again, yet it is apparently flawed.
I will, of course, if neccessary and/or attractive, code for money in the traditional, commercial, closed-source sense. I can't change the world alone.
But I'm convinced already that the world, especially the software world, can't be reduced to the 'greed is good' rule stated by 90% of all economists.
I won't propose a solution to the dilemma here (since, of course, I have none), but saying "Free software doesn't feed you. Period." is not enough.
The _free_ software movement is in danger of being squashed like a bug by the commercial world with money, i.e. power.
I wonder where the real *freedom* goes in the process. Let the _free_ market grow, _occupy_ 'mind space' by patents and other overly restrictive _intellectual property_ laws. WTF?!
I'm somewhat of a moderate 'green'. I'm very much in favour of nuclear power plants to help stopping the climate change, and even to power space craft (because a non-activated U-235 reactor contains no highly radioactive material - contrary to RTGs, and is much more capable than RTGs).
... take a look at pebble-bed reactors, for example.
But some of your statements are playing down the risk in a disproportionate, immoral way.
Pebble bed reactors, like all HTRs (high temperature reactors) have the risk of burning if they get in contact with air. Yes, they work in 'stable' mode, but they do not play well with air entry as a rather common fault condition.
Nuclear waste doesn't glow, it doesn't cause three headed fish, it won't kill you if you just look at it.
Uhh, depends how you define 'look at it'. If you are behind a *really *thick lead glass shield, fine. If not, a just-decommisioned fuel rod will certainly kill you in seconds if you're, let's say, a few meters away from it. Why are power plants leaving their spent fuel rods under water for years? Because it is harmless?!
And, yes they glow under water for quite a long time (months/years) - because of cherenkov radiation. There exist also glowing isotopes, google for "radio luminescence".
.. but is it possible to run linux on that device?
They're selling cheaply, therefore I'm interested.
Yes, microsoft is an evil company. But why is your personal opinion "Just another cost of supporting Microsoft, I suppose." neccessary? /. crowd in the anti-microsoft league. But their evil doings/mistakes/whatever are obvious and can be commented in the appropiate stories.
:)
Some apparently think that they need to keep the
And, no, I'm not new here
Here in germany, the FCC's equivalent is the 'RegTP' (Regulierungsbehörde für Telekommunikation und Post). It does regulate communications. Not much more, not much less.
In my eyes and as one can read from the other posts, you US citizens are fed up with the FCC because it does so much beside regulating the EM spectrum. Because it enforces moral standards and other things which have nothing to do with that.
Of course, all these regulatory bodies are still heavily influenced by big money. The FCC/RegTP/ITU is more in favour of the Mobile phone providers than the small guy's WiFi every time.
Wouldn't this be impossible to create with IPv6? Because of the *huge* address space and the negligible probability of a packet entering a darknet?
This is in no way an argument against IPv6, I'm eagerly awaiting it - I'm just curious...
The system is similar to patronage. I think this will work for the most visible projects, but the small developer has to take unpaid spare time to bring sth. up.
This works only as long as there is a sizeable middle-class (educated, non-greedy and interested in more than 'making money') somewhere in the world.
If poverty spreads in the western world, the FLOSS movement would grind to a halt.
[rant]IMHO, the (mostly) hobbiest nature of of the free software movement is a very valuable thing in itself. Yet, big money is trying to destroy it because it is in it's way. This is the most shameful thing about all the lawsuits, and patent abuses against the FLOSS world. Freedom to what one likes - But do not come into the way of my guaranteed revenue stream![/rant]
It is next to the '-key on my german keyboard, you insensitive clod! ;)
UV is ionizing. Ionizing means that you can remove electrons from atoms, and that happens already with frequencies in the optical range (Planck's E=hv is the formula you're interested in).
:)
Of course, radiation in the optical range, i.e. 'light' shouldn't be too dangerous for you
It gets dangerous 'beyond blue'.
> Thanks for the info! :-) :)
:)
:)
No problem, It took me quite some time to figure them out even with google, because as another poster said, everything today is "mobile" and "p2p" and whatever. The right word here is "adhoc", I think...
Hey, there is another idea and something I'd really like to implement if it is feasible, because it would be ONLY SOFTWARE that has to be implemented:
- Provider-free Message-passing for PDAs and cellular phones -
AFAIK, today's cellulars are equipped with much processing power, a standarized software platform (java), bluetooth and IRDA.
Wouldn't it be nice to send (encrypted) SMS (or something similar to SMS) 'for-free' in an adhoc mobile phone network?
A store-and-forward scheme for messages, with a bit of redundancy (if messages get lost somewhere), but possibly big time-delays between forwarding?
Let's say A writes a message to D, meets B, B forwards to C and C meets D later in the day...
great for university campuses and the like
But I see several principial problems here:
- Is it possible to access bluetooth and irda networking in Phone-Java? (I don't own one, only an old Palm Pilot)
- If yes, can one automatically, without user interaction, pass objects/messages to other/foreign phones (pressing "yes, ok, I want to relay traffic from this stranger I don't know" repeatedly can't be a solution
- Getting the routing right (scaling) is probably hard.
Yes, and I was interested since I had my first grasp of TCP/IP, packet switching and all that.
I imagined every house with free space optical (FSO) devices on top of it+a router, long distance would be the last task for phone companies/ISPs. But sadly, it didn't happen.
Maybe the telcos are trying to prevent that? Maybe people are too lazy and too stupid to grasp the whole idea? Remember, you'd have to convince many people to 'relay' packets before such a network gets usable. I don't really know, but IMHO it is both technically and socially superior. (Promotes local exchange etc.)
Anyway, appropiate routing protocols and also research exists nowadays:
Manet routing protocols, IETF
Fleetnet, mobile adhoc for cars (very interesting!)
Maybe I'm pessimistic, but I think you'd pay
a fee in such a network, even if you only exchange
data between you and your neighbour (the telcos want to live, right?).
I once heard (maybe an urban legend, but anyway) that Nokia is making 30% of their sales with... ... RINGTONES.
Maybe someone has the exact numbers availbe?
Such a gimmick seems to be a very thoughtful addition to the phone for me.
Now, Nokia could start selling people LED-Messages. And, since they pay alot for ___RINGTONES___...
Well, MICROSOFT, IBM etc. care!
And that's damn important. Because they realize that they have a realistic chance to win in court.
They're companies. Why should *they* care if they think they'll lose?
Of course, it is (hopefully) at least a risky investment.
It's sad to see it this way, but it seems neccessary now (with EU going towards software patents etc.).
I have also no interest in making screeners (never did), but if cameras get smaller and smaller as they do, wouldn't it become very hard to spot them? :)
I mean... it's a camera, which is there to *collect light*, not to spit it out
Incidentally, you don't need "loops" to make a language turing complete. "if" and "goto" with variable assignment will suffice. So will lambda abstraction. So will a control stack (consider Forth or PostScript; both are turing complete but "loops" are just macros to manipulate a control stack). You're right. But all you're describing is the ability to make loops :) Who said loop==while?