Haven't we been sticking women with the details such as cooking, cleaning, amking sure someone takes the kids to the soccer practice, piano lessons and the like? Who keeps track of all the family and extended family birthdays in most families? Do you remember you in-laws' birthdays and anniversaries? It's likely the women in your family do.
Consider fields where the percentages of women and men are closer to even: medicine, chemistry and chemical engineering. Trust me, I have no skill for that stuff, and geez, is that stuff details-loaded! My Mom is the Chief of Cardiology at a hospital in Toronto, and the details of her work are waaay to much for me, a reasonably accomplished programmer with a long resume.
Trust me, the reason many women don't care for computer details is because we've stuck them with too many real-life details that we guys haven't bothered to care for ourselves. Many surveys have shown that women's have considerably less free time than men becuase of the extra societal responsibilities we've chucked onto them.
I'm going to phone Mom right now and thank her for taking care of the details that mattered. I suggest you do the same.
If my knowledge is not grossly lacking (which it may be), then I suggest that this trend that we see in the past is what we see now in technology industries, and, perhaps, it will be what we see in the future. My apologies for this rather anti-women post.
Well, how about a few points?
I'm only talking about Canadian history right now, but until sometime early last (geez, it's now last century, is it?) were women legally "persons". If you're not treating them as people, would you write down their actions in history? Probably not.
History depends on who's writing it. Consider Hiroshima. To some, it was the best way to end the war against a violent aggressor, Japan. To others, it was a needless attack on a largely civilian population that was also overly vicious and unnecessary.
Look at the parallels with hate groups. They claim that nothing of any value has been invented by non-whites. That is, of course, if you forget: the first codification of law (Hammurabi), the decimal system (Hindus and Arabs), toilets, fireworks, type, noodles and printed money (Chinese), and so on. This stuff gets forgotten.
The inventor of the process of assembling paper bags mechanically was a woman (See the 10th Anniversary Uncle John's Bathroom Reader for this story). However, a man later decided to claim the invention was his, and even cited the inventor's womanhood as the impossibility of her inventing such a thing. It was only through the wise decision of the court that she was granted the credit.
To summarize, how can you be part of history if you've been written out? Continue studying your history, but be sure you also read between the lines.
10. Now that's a point-and-click interface. 9. Is the newest of Jennicam's remotes? 8. Ahh, this is what they mean by back-end processing. 7. Cold finger, warm heart! 6. I guess "BSOD" now means "Brown Screen of Death. 5. I can already see the Gap slogan: everybody in...everybody else! 4. Ooh! finger server! Aren't those things notorious for their security holes? 3. How does this fit with your principles, Mr. Stallman? (insert soft, wet jabbing sound followed by the sound of moans muffled by a rubber ball here) 2. If it interfaces with the Sony Aibo gerbil, we'll have Richard Gere as a customer...
...and number one...
1. Damn! That's what I call open source computing!
I don't think we're too far off from that. AT Burning Man '99, a lot of people were wearing costumes or clothes that had electroluminescent wire sewn into them. EL wire comes in about a half-dozen colours and glows like neon when a current is run through it. Some people simply had it connected to a small battery/transformer assembly on their belts, while others had some small pocket sequencers that allowed them to create "chaser" effects. It works well in a rave/club context, and also a safety context -- you were less likely to drive your bike into EL-adorned people (certain parts of Burning Man are pitch black at night).
I'd like to see a communications protocol used by DJs that would broadcast information such as the name and artist of the song currently being played. In a large club setting, it's not always possible to press your way to the DJ booth and ask -- and if you've ever read the "Moody DJ" comic strip series, you know why it's not always a good idea to ask.
There's a large contingent of rave kids who now bring their own African drums to raves to play along. Those things are large enough to embed a ruggedized computer. With Bluetooth wireless technologies, you could surreptitiously order ecstacy from a similarly equipped dealer. Imagine, a new double entendre: e-commerce!
I was surprised that none of the models had a computer stuffed into those tiny knapsacks that women at clubs seem to favour. That seems like a pretty good place to mount a computer without looking ridiculous (depending on your fashion tastes) or at least overly techo-fetishistic. I'm sure a teeny knapsack could hold a computer to interface with the top-secret networks that connects women from across the globe together. You know -- the information network with access terminals in women's washrooms. That's why women go to the washroom in twos -- two people have to enter a part of the decryption key simultaneously. Really, guys, I swear this is true.
R'ing the F'ing M's is not always enough when the manuals are often quickly thrown together, incomplete and poorly-written. In any revolution, either political or software,everyone wants to be a general and no one wants latrine duty. Guess which category doc writing falls under.
If we assume that it was intended for people to hack their clients in ways to give them an edge, then it's not cheating. I remember a story about a starship captain who hacked a "no-win scenario" simulation and got Starfleet Academy's top awards as a result.:-)
The problem is that a good number of players out there either: a) have no idea how to modify their Quake client b) have ability but lack the time c) have both the time and the ability, but think that it's either unfair or takes away the fun
Perhaps there's a way to support both hacked and non-hacked clients. Maybe some servers could be for "pure" clients only (assuming we either trust the honor system or have some reasonable client-verification process) while others could be designated for hacked clients (or Jedi masters/masochists with "pure" clients). That way, the people with "pure" clients play on a reasonably level playing field, while Quake hackers can test both their fragging and hacking ability.
We now take you to animated special: "The Spirit of Newtonmas"
Kenny: mmrmf mff rrmff mmf. Cartman: Yeah, math is stupid. Kyle: Don't belittle my favorite subject, you fat fucker! Cartman: I don't have to take that crap from a goddamn calculus geek!
Cut to a wide shot, where an Englishman in a powdered wig descemds from the heavens
Englishman: Behold my glory. Stan: Holy shit! Sir Isaac Newton! Cartman: What're you doin' in South park, Sir Isaac? Englishman: I come seeking...retribution. Stan: Oh my God, Kyle...he's come to kill you because you forgot what the gravitional constant was! Kyle: Oh, fuck! Englishman: No, I love all who read my Principia Mathematica. I come seeking a place called...the math department. Stan: We'll take you there.
Stan accidentally sets off in the wrong direction.
Cartman: Hey Einstein, the math building is the other way. Stan: Dude, don't say Einstein in front of Newton. Cartman: Ah, fuck you.
Cut to the math building. We see the kids lead Newton into the lobby, where some students are gathering around an old Polish mathematician.
Newton: There he is. Leibniz: Ho, ho, ho...we meet again...Newton. Newton: I should be getting all the credit for inventing calculus, not you!
Sorry, you'll have to script the rest...suggestions include:
"Oh my God! They differentiated Kenny! You bastards!"
"What would Alan Turing do?" (bonus points for whoever gets the sly joke)
(Sing to the "Draedel" tune): "dx, dy, dz, I solved you in a day..."
Consider the piano and its dirt-simple interface: keys to the right of the keyboard play higher notes, keys to the left play lower ones.The volume with which a note is played depends on the force with which you strike it. If you play a note while stepping on the sustain pedal, the notes take longer to decay to silence. If simplicity of interface meant simplicity of output, it would mean that no music of any significance could be written on the piano.
Obviously, this is not the case: the piano is a very popular compositional tool, even amongst people for whom it is not their primary instrument. Simplicity of music doesn't even exclude it from greatness (although "great music" is a subjective thing): I personally like using Louie, Louie as a proof for the existence of God:)
There are some people who have a piano in their living room simply for family sing-alongs. They'll never play a tune more complex than Louie, Louie, Blue Moon or Chopsticks and will probably never compose their own music. Others with pianos will produce hundreds of original compositions. Both groups, if we ignore the type and quality of the piano, use essentially the same instrument.
You never hear of a great piano maestro looking down his or her nose at "newbie" piano players (the same applies to any musician, regardless of instrument). A maestro would never say "We don't want your kind playing this instrument. Perhaps you should play something more suited to your abilities...like the radio. Hur hur hur." It's not part of their nature to scoff at someone because they only play other people's music and never write their own compositions, or that they never playing anything more complex than a three-chord pop tune. You never hear anyone jump on someone's case because they don't know that the frequency of middle "A" is 440Hz or becuase they can't tell their canons from their fugues. Musicians understand that not everyone is going to be hardcore, but that many people amongs the non-hardcore still want (and deserve) the joy that comes from playing music. Many musicians encourage people to take up an instrument -- one argument they use is that these people should break away from music provided to them by corporate radio and TV.
Unfortunately, we don't always have this attitude in the Linux community. Can't write your own program, or even put together a simple Perl/Python script or C program? Stay away. You're not really interested in doing more than writing an essay, playing games or surfing the web? Go away. You're an artist who wants to use the computer to create art but can't be bothered to RTFM so you know what "ps auxww | grep -vv root" means? Fuck right off.
What we have here is a clique that's no better than the clique of popular kids at school, who are "better" only by some arbitrary measure. Ours is the only industry where this kind of arrogance is tolerated by the market, and that tolerance won't last forever. We'll probably never have a Columbine-esque incident (forgive the Katzism), but the desertion of the non-hardcore for other OSs will be just as devastating, and we will have earned it. What Linux needs more than anything is not hardware nor software; there's always a ready solution or workaround for tech problems. The hard thing will be a solution for its human element. As long as members of the high priesthood continue to act as they do, Linux will be relegated to a niche. We should borrow a trick or two from the musicians' book.
It wasn't a Carol Burnett show, but a Bob Hope Christmas special! Even worse! The formula: Star Wars space hype + Bob Hope + Olivia Newton John (!) + LAPD + Christmas The Skinny: Some guy plays "Fluke Sleepwalker," Olivia Newton-John plays Princess Olivia and Bob Hope plays Bart Vaiter. Yes, there's a "walkie," yes, the jokes are lame, and yes Mark Hamill charges the stage and arrests Bob Hope for "malicious mutilation of a marvelous movie". I will assume Hamill was referring to Star Wars and not Hope's film "I'll Take Sweden."
One imagines a young Rick Moranis watching this. Later, while wandering through the desert, high on cheap cooking wine and peyote, he sees this Indian, who tells him to audition for the part of "Dark Helmet". Moranis not only gets the part, but also tell Oliver Stone about the bit with the Indian, which he works into his film, The Doors.
It might have been the drugs in the hyper-sweet orange drink that McDonald's gave out free to school and charity events when I was a kid, or perhaps the extra-low-frequency waves from my childhood Coleco CB-40(TM). I have vague memories not only of that terrible Wookie holiday special (especially the soft-porn holograms), but also of horrible, horrible Star Wars-inspired crimes against entertainment during the late seventies and very early '80's...
Salvage The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Andy Griffith + Sanford and Son The Skinny: Imagine Matlock building a spaceship out of junk, flying it to the moon, salvaging space junk and using an ordinary fire extinguisher as a handy thruster for space walks. And yes, no episode was complete without some big-shot NASA official scoffing at Andy's home-spun spacecraft built with home-spun wisdom, only to get showed up at the end. One imagines a young Linus Torvalds watching this show, not conscious of how it will inspire him.
Yogi's Space Race The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Yogi Bear + Wacky Races/Laff-a-lympics + Disco fever of the same era The Skinny: It had four segments, the two Star Wars-inspired ones being Space Race, which had the stable of Hanna-Barbera characters racing in space vehicles and Galaxy Goof-Ups, with Yogi and friends as some kind of space police who spent their off-hours goofing off at the local space disco. A cartoony attempt to swipe as much Star Wars momentum as possible -- I distinctly remember one episode where the bad guy was a Darth Vader rip-off assisted by an R2-D2 rip-off. One imagines George Lucas watching Yogi's space adventures and being inspired to create the Ewoks.
Galaxina The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten + The guy from those '70's Doritos commericals The Skinny: The Infinity is a ship captained by the Doritos guy and maintained by the ultra-vixen android Galaxina, a robot with feelings. The Infinity crew is a randy bunch of sailors (There's a brothel scene in which the crew sing a song called "Porno Patrol" to the tune of "Bridge Over the River Kwai") and eventually Galaxina and a crewmember fall in love. I actually remember a line in which the guy says "Too bad you don't have a you-know-what," to which Galaxina responds "We can order one in the catalog." Kind of like Arthur C. Clarke's "predictions," except for cyberdildonics. One imagines Rick Berman (writer for the post-Shatner Star Trek series, whose hedonistic appetites are legendary among sci-fi fandom) watching this.
Quark The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Richard Benjamin + Mr. Spock + Mindy's Dad (from Mork and Mindy) + Buck Henry + Sanitation engineering The Skinny: A sci-fi spoof created by Buck Henry. TV's first "Quark" is not the bar owner from Deep Space Nine, but Richard Benjamin as a garbage scow captain with a nitwit crew. In a tip of the dumpster to Star Trek, the science officer is an emotionless half-human/half-plant being (I remember him saying his species does not kiss, but rather pollenates. I am not making this up). There were a few Star Wars references too, including "The Source," which gave Quark power only if he believed in it, as well as a character named Obeemud, a wookie-like creature who was Quark's boss' side-kick, and a bumbling C3P0-ish android named Andy. If I recall, it never got past a half-dozen shows. This is probably one of Buck Henry's few bombs, but perhaps he was saving his creative energies for other things, such as Saturday Night's Live's "Lord and Lady Douchebag" skit (around the same era, if drug-and-age-addled memory serves). Commentary on science fiction and present-day stuff through a sci-fi lens with unintentionally hilarious results. One imagines a young John Katz watching every episode...twice.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Gil Gerard + Mel Blanc + Skin tight disco outfits The Skinny: Would you leave your job to play opposite Seven of Nine? Gil Gerard left his job at a chemical engineering firm to play Buck Rogers, Earth's super special agent who often came to the aid of women in skin-tight outfits (this is the future, you know). Upped the cheese factor by getting Gary Coleman to play a child prodigy (a concept that Universal also used in Galactica 1980 with "Doctor Zee"). In later seasons, it tried to be more true to "real" SF with many Asimov references, most notably the character of (gasp) Admiral Asimov. It's the only TV show I recall in which Asimov's Laws of Robotics get metioned. The original formula was so good that Universal Studios recycled it as Knight Rider a few years later -- one imagines a young David Hasselhoff getting his jollies watching this show.
A very painful Carol Burnett show (for the Tim Conway fan from an earlier posting) The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Tim Conway + Mark Hammill + Christmas The Skinny: This is the only one for which I have no proof, but only a vague memory (any help would be appreciated). Santa Claus' sled gets abducted by an evil starship and Tim Conway (playing a Luke Skywalker parody), a "Walkie" and a garbage can-shaped droid (the R2D2 parody) attempt to stop the evil. The lame Star Wars jokes continue until Mark Hammill walks on set, bringing the Force -- the Los Angeles Police Force -- who arrest the actors in the skit for copyright infringement. One imagines a young ESR and RMS watching this, shocked at how Carol Burnett's attempt to modify the Star Wars story was crushed under the bootheel of a proprietary screenplay.
Well, writing this has cured my insomnia. Thank you and good night.
My guess is that when the WebTV prototype didn't arrive as expected, someone in Redmond placed a call to UPS. UPS probably told them that the unit had already been delivered. After a Seinfeld-ish exchange of "It's been delivered / No it hasn't," UPS gave them the delivery address ("See, I told you we delivered it..."). This address isn't M$ headquarters in Redmond, but some place in NYC.
I can already see some manager wondering who got their hands on it -- a competitor? 2600 or LoD -- aren't they based in the east coast, possibly New York? Then thoughts shift to what this will do when management hears about this: have we just committed a "career-limiting act"?
In the end, they assumed theft-by-scam, for which it would have been justified to call the cops. Since it wasn't the case, it's yet more egg on Microsoft's face, and you can allow yourself a little schadenfreude and know that somewhere inside 1 Microsoft Way, someone is getting the riot act read to them.
In keeping with the spirit of the FSF, I certainly hope that they stick to their principles and make sure that everything at this event -- even the catering -- is open source.
Think about it. Suppose the canapes are lacking that certain je ne sais quoi. If the recipe were freely available, the combined effort of chefs worldwide could make it tastier, less bloating and more attractively presented. When chefs can read, redistribute, and modify the recipe for an appetizer (hereafter referred to as an "app"), it evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people add fresh-ground pepper using one of those increasingly long and phallic peppermills. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional canape development, seems astonishing. I want to know what went into the shrimp cocktail, dammit!
You need only read Martha Stewart's ground-breaking essay, The Burger Chain and the Bistro and her follow-up paper, Homesteading the Noodle Soup to convince you of the virtues of open source catering. Then just as you support the open source software developed by fat men (computing is a sedentary profession, and many of its bright lights could benefit by visiting the gym), let's also support the open source cooking of the Two Fat Ladies!
You can also do your part by not eating closed source food. Kentucky Fried Chicken (the Colonel's secret recipe, remember?) is particularly bad, but the worst is McDonald's, who refuse to divulge the recipe of the Big Mac's "secret sauce," and threaten samller developers with FUD (Fries, Uncertaintly and Doubt).
Funny, you have no compunctions about flaunting your arrogance...
Flaunting one's ignorance would be something along the lines of "I don't know who John Gilmore is, and I don't care!" The poster didn't have some information and took an appropriate measure to get it. Last I checked, that's how it's supposed to be done...
I have been told by an applied math geek friend of mine that STW is another one of those "it's all connected, maaaan..."-type theories along the line of "e^(pi * i) + 1 = 0", although a good deal messier. I've also been informed that STW was used heavily in Wiles' proof, not unlike a load-bearing block in Jenga.
(Never mind "First Post!" I hereby start the new tradition of "Most Links!" After all, it's more productive, and more importantly, it's all connected, maaaaaan....)
I've heard more than a few stories about how a company ordered computers that sent through by UPS that have arrived dead and disfigured on arrival. Usually these machines were the victim of rough handling -- you'd pick up the machine and hear a loose component rattling inside the case. This was usually more of an annoyance (although a big one) since the box was insured and somehow the next machine would survive the journey unscathed.
The most extreme case I've ever seen regarding UPS damage happened when friend of mine shipped a generator to Reno for Burning Man '99 via UPS. It came out of the box severely beaten, even sporting some impressive (but non-critical) dents. Keep in mind that generators are pretty tough. We've lugged my friend's one up and down steep rocky hills, even dropping it many times -- all without doing more damage than scratching the paint job. How the hell did UPS manage to dent it?
Perhaps the big brown trucks have little mini-catapults...
(Sorry, couldn't resist throwing in a Monty Python reference, especially to the skit about the foreigner with the faulty English phrasebook.)
There is an online Python/Perl phrasebook if you want to compare the two languages in action. A lot of the information is based on Tom Christiansen's Perl Data Structures Cookbook, as well as help from the two languages' respective creators, Larry Wall and Guido van Rossum. It shows how you'd accomplish a wide array of pretty common tasks in each languages. It's ample fodder for clear-headed analysis of all-out flameage...it's your pick.
I'll have to agree with the site's author: Python wins for readability, approach to OOP, the blessed absence of $, @ and % characters in front of variables (never liked 'em in Basic) and the homage to a great comedy act (and the convention of using "eggs" and "spam" instead of "foo" and "bar" in code examples). Perl wins for its better handling of regular expressions, quoting and having lots of people who know it. They're quite similar and becoming more so, especially since the re module in Python has been changed to be quite similar to Perl's regular expression functions. Performance is pretty close.
It may boil down to the language the alpha geek prefers or the project already uses, if you drain religion from the argument...but what fun would that be?
I not only RTFMed, I signed on with OD when I heard about it. I'm all for the OpenDesk concept. And I have no trouble with platform independence -- that's going to be a big thing now that computing is becoming ubiquitous. And as long as the developers are getting paid, free is good. Thus far, we're reading from the same page.
However, the "interface nightmare" I was talking about was not the developer's, but the user's. I sympathize with developers (self-interest) but I must extend even more sympathy towards the users. When using a renderer based on something like TK (which I like), OD should work like a charm. You've got much better widgets in that case. It's when you're doing the rendering in HTML, which is the way you have to do it in a browser. As far as the end user is concerned, the shortcoming have everything to do with HTML.
Based on what you've written so far, you sound like you know what you're talking about, so you'll have to agree that the interface widgets that HTML provides currently are very primitive compared to those in an OS GUI. Simple things like tabbing order, keyboard shortcuts, menu bars and drag-and-drop editing are quite difficult to kludge if not impossible to implement. A spreadsheet should (just) be possible to render in HTML, but a word processor that uses the controls available to an HTML renderer would probably be pretty terrible to most people, except perhaps for LaTeX and nroff-heads.
I have nothing against the OD coders themselves and I think the idea's great. I just think that the current state of browsers is terrible for anything but reading and casual-use apps.
(P.S. I'll quit with the cheap shots if you will. Call it the "SlashRage" syndrome.)
"Free" I have no problem with. Many good things come for free. Many bad things too (disease, for one, is free, guessing by the number of poor people who have 'em). My concern is whether or not a product serves the users well, the people for whom we write code.
It's my opinion that HTML forms are a user interface nightmare and have really lowered the bar on user interface design. Simple things such as enabling and disabling controls require crazy workarounds, and even then, they don't quite work as well as the interface controls on GUIs for OSs.
Besides, did you think I was being literal about forcing anyone to do anything? When they get around to providing lives and clues on a web page, I strongly suggest you bookmark that one.
Web pages are interface nightmares. The ability to use them on just about any platform is an advantage that is far outweighed by their many disadvantages, the least of which is that their interface controls are still pretty primitive in comparsion to those on just about any GUI system, be it Windoze, MacOS, or any of the Unix-based ones such as X, KDE or Gnome.
I suggest that the developers of this odious office-suite-on-a-browser be forced to program using a web-based suite of development tools. If ever there was a time that someone had to "eat their own dog food," this is it!
The desktop metaphor is problematic, but not for the reasons you're citing. The most telling phrase in your statement is
and since I was never a Mac or Windows user, I was never tied very strongly to the desktop metaphor. As a unix user, client server has always felt natural to me.
The Win/Mac approach is very different from the Unix approach. Unix is by programmers for programmers. It's designed with toolbuilders in mind -- to use Unix, you have to have a mental model that is much closer to what the computer is really doing than in consumer OSs. It's natural for programmers to have service spread all over the place and to cobble them together as needed using either single command lines with or | or scripting. It is unnatural (and cruel) to expect this for most other users. We should not force them to learn computer science anymore than we ourselves are forced to learn internal combustion just in order to drive a car.
The desktop metaphor is a pretty good concept for the average person. This should not be read as "stupid", but rather as people whose primary field is not computer science or straight-out unix use.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider fields where the percentages of women and men are closer to even: medicine, chemistry and chemical engineering. Trust me, I have no skill for that stuff, and geez, is that stuff details-loaded! My Mom is the Chief of Cardiology at a hospital in Toronto, and the details of her work are waaay to much for me, a reasonably accomplished programmer with a long resume.
Trust me, the reason many women don't care for computer details is because we've stuck them with too many real-life details that we guys haven't bothered to care for ourselves. Many surveys have shown that women's have considerably less free time than men becuase of the extra societal responsibilities we've chucked onto them.
I'm going to phone Mom right now and thank her for taking care of the details that mattered. I suggest you do the same.
Well, how about a few points?
I'm only talking about Canadian history right now, but until sometime early last (geez, it's now last century, is it?) were women legally "persons". If you're not treating them as people, would you write down their actions in history? Probably not.
History depends on who's writing it. Consider Hiroshima. To some, it was the best way to end the war against a violent aggressor, Japan. To others, it was a needless attack on a largely civilian population that was also overly vicious and unnecessary.
Look at the parallels with hate groups. They claim that nothing of any value has been invented by non-whites. That is, of course, if you forget: the first codification of law (Hammurabi), the decimal system (Hindus and Arabs), toilets, fireworks, type, noodles and printed money (Chinese), and so on. This stuff gets forgotten.
The inventor of the process of assembling paper bags mechanically was a woman (See the 10th Anniversary Uncle John's Bathroom Reader for this story). However, a man later decided to claim the invention was his, and even cited the inventor's womanhood as the impossibility of her inventing such a thing. It was only through the wise decision of the court that she was granted the credit.
To summarize, how can you be part of history if you've been written out? Continue studying your history, but be sure you also read between the lines.
10. Now that's a point-and-click interface.
9. Is the newest of Jennicam's remotes?
8. Ahh, this is what they mean by back-end processing.
7. Cold finger, warm heart!
6. I guess "BSOD" now means "Brown Screen of Death.
5. I can already see the Gap slogan: everybody in...everybody else!
4. Ooh! finger server! Aren't those things notorious for their security holes?
3. How does this fit with your principles, Mr. Stallman? (insert soft, wet jabbing sound followed by the sound of moans muffled by a rubber ball here)
2. If it interfaces with the Sony Aibo gerbil, we'll have Richard Gere as a customer...
1. Damn! That's what I call open source computing!
I don't think we're too far off from that. AT Burning Man '99, a lot of people were wearing costumes or clothes that had electroluminescent wire sewn into them. EL wire comes in about a half-dozen colours and glows like neon when a current is run through it. Some people simply had it connected to a small battery/transformer assembly on their belts, while others had some small pocket sequencers that allowed them to create "chaser" effects. It works well in a rave/club context, and also a safety context -- you were less likely to drive your bike into EL-adorned people (certain parts of Burning Man are pitch black at night).
I'd like to see a communications protocol used by DJs that would broadcast information such as the name and artist of the song currently being played. In a large club setting, it's not always possible to press your way to the DJ booth and ask -- and if you've ever read the "Moody DJ" comic strip series, you know why it's not always a good idea to ask.
There's a large contingent of rave kids who now bring their own African drums to raves to play along. Those things are large enough to embed a ruggedized computer. With Bluetooth wireless technologies, you could surreptitiously order ecstacy from a similarly equipped dealer. Imagine, a new double entendre: e-commerce!
I was surprised that none of the models had a computer stuffed into those tiny knapsacks that women at clubs seem to favour. That seems like a pretty good place to mount a computer without looking ridiculous (depending on your fashion tastes) or at least overly techo-fetishistic. I'm sure a teeny knapsack could hold a computer to interface with the top-secret networks that connects women from across the globe together. You know -- the information network with access terminals in women's washrooms. That's why women go to the washroom in twos -- two people have to enter a part of the decryption key simultaneously. Really, guys, I swear this is true.
R'ing the F'ing M's is not always enough when the manuals are often quickly thrown together, incomplete and poorly-written. In any revolution, either political or software,everyone wants to be a general and no one wants latrine duty. Guess which category doc writing falls under.
The problem is that a good number of players out there either:
a) have no idea how to modify their Quake client b) have ability but lack the time c) have both the time and the ability, but think that it's either unfair or takes away the fun
Perhaps there's a way to support both hacked and non-hacked clients. Maybe some servers could be for "pure" clients only (assuming we either trust the honor system or have some reasonable client-verification process) while others could be designated for hacked clients (or Jedi masters/masochists with "pure" clients). That way, the people with "pure" clients play on a reasonably level playing field, while Quake hackers can test both their fragging and hacking ability.
C'mon moderators, it "bent, but didn't break," so in my books, this is funny, not flamebait.
Kenny: mmrmf mff rrmff mmf.
Cartman: Yeah, math is stupid.
Kyle: Don't belittle my favorite subject, you fat fucker!
Cartman: I don't have to take that crap from a goddamn calculus geek!
Cut to a wide shot, where an Englishman in a powdered wig descemds from the heavens
Englishman: Behold my glory.
Stan: Holy shit! Sir Isaac Newton!
Cartman: What're you doin' in South park, Sir Isaac?
Englishman: I come seeking...retribution.
Stan: Oh my God, Kyle...he's come to kill you because you forgot what the gravitional constant was!
Kyle: Oh, fuck!
Englishman: No, I love all who read my Principia Mathematica. I come seeking a place called...the math department.
Stan: We'll take you there.
Stan accidentally sets off in the wrong direction.
Cartman: Hey Einstein, the math building is the other way.
Stan: Dude, don't say Einstein in front of Newton.
Cartman: Ah, fuck you.
Cut to the math building. We see the kids lead Newton into the lobby, where some students are gathering around an old Polish mathematician.
Newton: There he is.
Leibniz: Ho, ho, ho...we meet again...Newton.
Newton: I should be getting all the credit for inventing calculus, not you!
Sorry, you'll have to script the rest...suggestions include:
Obviously, this is not the case: the piano is a very popular compositional tool, even amongst people for whom it is not their primary instrument. Simplicity of music doesn't even exclude it from greatness (although "great music" is a subjective thing): I personally like using Louie, Louie as a proof for the existence of God :)
There are some people who have a piano in their living room simply for family sing-alongs. They'll never play a tune more complex than Louie, Louie, Blue Moon or Chopsticks and will probably never compose their own music. Others with pianos will produce hundreds of original compositions. Both groups, if we ignore the type and quality of the piano, use essentially the same instrument.
You never hear of a great piano maestro looking down his or her nose at "newbie" piano players (the same applies to any musician, regardless of instrument). A maestro would never say "We don't want your kind playing this instrument. Perhaps you should play something more suited to your abilities...like the radio. Hur hur hur." It's not part of their nature to scoff at someone because they only play other people's music and never write their own compositions, or that they never playing anything more complex than a three-chord pop tune. You never hear anyone jump on someone's case because they don't know that the frequency of middle "A" is 440Hz or becuase they can't tell their canons from their fugues. Musicians understand that not everyone is going to be hardcore, but that many people amongs the non-hardcore still want (and deserve) the joy that comes from playing music. Many musicians encourage people to take up an instrument -- one argument they use is that these people should break away from music provided to them by corporate radio and TV.
Unfortunately, we don't always have this attitude in the Linux community. Can't write your own program, or even put together a simple Perl/Python script or C program? Stay away. You're not really interested in doing more than writing an essay, playing games or surfing the web? Go away. You're an artist who wants to use the computer to create art but can't be bothered to RTFM so you know what "ps auxww | grep -vv root" means? Fuck right off.
What we have here is a clique that's no better than the clique of popular kids at school, who are "better" only by some arbitrary measure. Ours is the only industry where this kind of arrogance is tolerated by the market, and that tolerance won't last forever. We'll probably never have a Columbine-esque incident (forgive the Katzism), but the desertion of the non-hardcore for other OSs will be just as devastating, and we will have earned it. What Linux needs more than anything is not hardware nor software; there's always a ready solution or workaround for tech problems. The hard thing will be a solution for its human element. As long as members of the high priesthood continue to act as they do, Linux will be relegated to a niche. We should borrow a trick or two from the musicians' book.
The formula: Star Wars space hype + Bob Hope + Olivia Newton John (!) + LAPD + Christmas
The Skinny: Some guy plays "Fluke Sleepwalker," Olivia Newton-John plays Princess Olivia and Bob Hope plays Bart Vaiter. Yes, there's a "walkie," yes, the jokes are lame, and yes Mark Hamill charges the stage and arrests Bob Hope for "malicious mutilation of a marvelous movie". I will assume Hamill was referring to Star Wars and not Hope's film "I'll Take Sweden."
One imagines a young Rick Moranis watching this. Later, while wandering through the desert, high on cheap cooking wine and peyote, he sees this Indian, who tells him to audition for the part of "Dark Helmet". Moranis not only gets the part, but also tell Oliver Stone about the bit with the Indian, which he works into his film, The Doors.
Help me, Tim Conway...you're my only hope...
Salvage
The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Andy Griffith + Sanford and Son
The Skinny: Imagine Matlock building a spaceship out of junk, flying it to the moon, salvaging space junk and using an ordinary fire extinguisher as a handy thruster for space walks. And yes, no episode was complete without some big-shot NASA official scoffing at Andy's home-spun spacecraft built with home-spun wisdom, only to get showed up at the end. One imagines a young Linus Torvalds watching this show, not conscious of how it will inspire him.
Yogi's Space Race
The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Yogi Bear + Wacky Races/Laff-a-lympics + Disco fever of the same era
The Skinny: It had four segments, the two Star Wars-inspired ones being Space Race, which had the stable of Hanna-Barbera characters racing in space vehicles and Galaxy Goof-Ups, with Yogi and friends as some kind of space police who spent their off-hours goofing off at the local space disco. A cartoony attempt to swipe as much Star Wars momentum as possible -- I distinctly remember one episode where the bad guy was a Darth Vader rip-off assisted by an R2-D2 rip-off. One imagines George Lucas watching Yogi's space adventures and being inspired to create the Ewoks.
Galaxina
The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten + The guy from those '70's Doritos commericals
The Skinny: The Infinity is a ship captained by the Doritos guy and maintained by the ultra-vixen android Galaxina, a robot with feelings. The Infinity crew is a randy bunch of sailors (There's a brothel scene in which the crew sing a song called "Porno Patrol" to the tune of "Bridge Over the River Kwai") and eventually Galaxina and a crewmember fall in love. I actually remember a line in which the guy says "Too bad you don't have a you-know-what," to which Galaxina responds "We can order one in the catalog." Kind of like Arthur C. Clarke's "predictions," except for cyberdildonics. One imagines Rick Berman (writer for the post-Shatner Star Trek series, whose hedonistic appetites are legendary among sci-fi fandom) watching this.
Quark
The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Richard Benjamin + Mr. Spock + Mindy's Dad (from Mork and Mindy) + Buck Henry + Sanitation engineering
The Skinny: A sci-fi spoof created by Buck Henry. TV's first "Quark" is not the bar owner from Deep Space Nine, but Richard Benjamin as a garbage scow captain with a nitwit crew. In a tip of the dumpster to Star Trek, the science officer is an emotionless half-human/half-plant being (I remember him saying his species does not kiss, but rather pollenates. I am not making this up). There were a few Star Wars references too, including "The Source," which gave Quark power only if he believed in it, as well as a character named Obeemud, a wookie-like creature who was Quark's boss' side-kick, and a bumbling C3P0-ish android named Andy. If I recall, it never got past a half-dozen shows. This is probably one of Buck Henry's few bombs, but perhaps he was saving his creative energies for other things, such as Saturday Night's Live's "Lord and Lady Douchebag" skit (around the same era, if drug-and-age-addled memory serves). Commentary on science fiction and present-day stuff through a sci-fi lens with unintentionally hilarious results. One imagines a young John Katz watching every episode...twice.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Gil Gerard + Mel Blanc + Skin tight disco outfits
The Skinny: Would you leave your job to play opposite Seven of Nine? Gil Gerard left his job at a chemical engineering firm to play Buck Rogers, Earth's super special agent who often came to the aid of women in skin-tight outfits (this is the future, you know). Upped the cheese factor by getting Gary Coleman to play a child prodigy (a concept that Universal also used in Galactica 1980 with "Doctor Zee"). In later seasons, it tried to be more true to "real" SF with many Asimov references, most notably the character of (gasp) Admiral Asimov. It's the only TV show I recall in which Asimov's Laws of Robotics get metioned. The original formula was so good that Universal Studios recycled it as Knight Rider a few years later -- one imagines a young David Hasselhoff getting his jollies watching this show.
A very painful Carol Burnett show
(for the Tim Conway fan from an earlier posting)
The Formula: Star Wars space hype + Tim Conway + Mark Hammill + Christmas
The Skinny: This is the only one for which I have no proof, but only a vague memory (any help would be appreciated). Santa Claus' sled gets abducted by an evil starship and Tim Conway (playing a Luke Skywalker parody), a "Walkie" and a garbage can-shaped droid (the R2D2 parody) attempt to stop the evil. The lame Star Wars jokes continue until Mark Hammill walks on set, bringing the Force -- the Los Angeles Police Force -- who arrest the actors in the skit for copyright infringement. One imagines a young ESR and RMS watching this, shocked at how Carol Burnett's attempt to modify the Star Wars story was crushed under the bootheel of a proprietary screenplay.
Well, writing this has cured my insomnia. Thank you and good night.
I guess we all know who's going to be the first one on the block to buy "Dorf on Linux" when it comes out...
I can already see some manager wondering who got their hands on it -- a competitor? 2600 or LoD -- aren't they based in the east coast, possibly New York? Then thoughts shift to what this will do when management hears about this: have we just committed a "career-limiting act"?
There's probably always been a kind of siege mentality at Microsoft. I'm sure that this has only intensified with the recent finding of fact by Judge Jackson, BackOrifice 2000, the spotlight that Linux took from Windows and all the general ill will towards the company. Couple that with the human tendency to assume that something that's gone missing has been stolen (especially if that something is valuable), and you have a recipe for paranoia. Except that paranoia is the mistaken impression that people are out to get you.
In the end, they assumed theft-by-scam, for which it would have been justified to call the cops. Since it wasn't the case, it's yet more egg on Microsoft's face, and you can allow yourself a little schadenfreude and know that somewhere inside 1 Microsoft Way, someone is getting the riot act read to them.
After all, Free Software means "Free as in Free Speech, not Free Beer".
Think about it. Suppose the canapes are lacking that certain je ne sais quoi. If the recipe were freely available, the combined effort of chefs worldwide could make it tastier, less bloating and more attractively presented. When chefs can read, redistribute, and modify the recipe for an appetizer (hereafter referred to as an "app"), it evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people add fresh-ground pepper using one of those increasingly long and phallic peppermills. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional canape development, seems astonishing. I want to know what went into the shrimp cocktail, dammit!
You need only read Martha Stewart's ground-breaking essay, The Burger Chain and the Bistro and her follow-up paper, Homesteading the Noodle Soup to convince you of the virtues of open source catering. Then just as you support the open source software developed by fat men (computing is a sedentary profession, and many of its bright lights could benefit by visiting the gym), let's also support the open source cooking of the Two Fat Ladies!
You can also do your part by not eating closed source food. Kentucky Fried Chicken (the Colonel's secret recipe, remember?) is particularly bad, but the worst is McDonald's, who refuse to divulge the recipe of the Big Mac's "secret sauce," and threaten samller developers with FUD (Fries, Uncertaintly and Doubt).
Funny, you have no compunctions about flaunting your arrogance...
Flaunting one's ignorance would be something along the lines of "I don't know who John Gilmore is, and I don't care!" The poster didn't have some information and took an appropriate measure to get it. Last I checked, that's how it's supposed to be done...
I thought this was on topic. When one is a confused young lad, there's nothing like the mall to check outfly members of the gender one prefers.
I have been told by an applied math geek friend of mine that STW is another one of those "it's all connected, maaaan..."-type theories along the line of "e^(pi * i) + 1 = 0", although a good deal messier. I've also been informed that STW was used heavily in Wiles' proof, not unlike a load-bearing block in Jenga.
(Never mind "First Post!" I hereby start the new tradition of "Most Links!" After all, it's more productive, and more importantly, it's all connected, maaaaaan....)
The most extreme case I've ever seen regarding UPS damage happened when friend of mine shipped a generator to Reno for Burning Man '99 via UPS. It came out of the box severely beaten, even sporting some impressive (but non-critical) dents. Keep in mind that generators are pretty tough. We've lugged my friend's one up and down steep rocky hills, even dropping it many times -- all without doing more damage than scratching the paint job. How the hell did UPS manage to dent it?
Perhaps the big brown trucks have little mini-catapults...
There is an online Python/Perl phrasebook if you want to compare the two languages in action. A lot of the information is based on Tom Christiansen's Perl Data Structures Cookbook, as well as help from the two languages' respective creators, Larry Wall and Guido van Rossum. It shows how you'd accomplish a wide array of pretty common tasks in each languages. It's ample fodder for clear-headed analysis of all-out flameage...it's your pick.
I'll have to agree with the site's author: Python wins for readability, approach to OOP, the blessed absence of $, @ and % characters in front of variables (never liked 'em in Basic) and the homage to a great comedy act (and the convention of using "eggs" and "spam" instead of "foo" and "bar" in code examples). Perl wins for its better handling of regular expressions, quoting and having lots of people who know it. They're quite similar and becoming more so, especially since the re module in Python has been changed to be quite similar to Perl's regular expression functions. Performance is pretty close.
It may boil down to the language the alpha geek prefers or the project already uses, if you drain religion from the argument...but what fun would that be?
I guess this is where Rob shld start singing "Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss..."
However, the "interface nightmare" I was talking about was not the developer's, but the user's. I sympathize with developers (self-interest) but I must extend even more sympathy towards the users. When using a renderer based on something like TK (which I like), OD should work like a charm. You've got much better widgets in that case. It's when you're doing the rendering in HTML, which is the way you have to do it in a browser. As far as the end user is concerned, the shortcoming have everything to do with HTML.
Based on what you've written so far, you sound like you know what you're talking about, so you'll have to agree that the interface widgets that HTML provides currently are very primitive compared to those in an OS GUI. Simple things like tabbing order, keyboard shortcuts, menu bars and drag-and-drop editing are quite difficult to kludge if not impossible to implement. A spreadsheet should (just) be possible to render in HTML, but a word processor that uses the controls available to an HTML renderer would probably be pretty terrible to most people, except perhaps for LaTeX and nroff-heads.
I have nothing against the OD coders themselves and I think the idea's great. I just think that the current state of browsers is terrible for anything but reading and casual-use apps.
(P.S. I'll quit with the cheap shots if you will. Call it the "SlashRage" syndrome.)
It's my opinion that HTML forms are a user interface nightmare and have really lowered the bar on user interface design. Simple things such as enabling and disabling controls require crazy workarounds, and even then, they don't quite work as well as the interface controls on GUIs for OSs.
Besides, did you think I was being literal about forcing anyone to do anything? When they get around to providing lives and clues on a web page, I strongly suggest you bookmark that one.
I suggest that the developers of this odious office-suite-on-a-browser be forced to program using a web-based suite of development tools. If ever there was a time that someone had to "eat their own dog food," this is it!
The desktop metaphor is a pretty good concept for the average person. This should not be read as "stupid", but rather as people whose primary field is not computer science or straight-out unix use.