No, the real issue is why fewer women join computer science courses. The trouble is that there may be a lot of women who don't mind computer science as a subject, but don't enrol in a computer science course for some other reasons (fear of male oriented study/work environment, lack of female role models etc).
The tasks where typing speed dominates, like rote transcription, involve very little need for comprehension, decision making, or complex thought - certainly much less than composing an email or a complex report.
Are you sure? Touch typing allows me to spend more time and effort thinking about what to write, while my fingers quickly type out what I'm thinking. I'm never slowed down by my typing. I wonder if a non touch typist can claim that.
I agree that ability to type properly may not always be the bottleneck, it it certainly will boost your efficiency.
I never learned touch typing formally. I once tried out one of those "typing tutor" programs. Half heartedly went through a few of the exercises. Don't know what happened after that, but about a month later I found myself typing with all fingers. Of course, I wasn't the hunt-and-peck type before -- I was very familiar with the QWERTY layout, but i typed with my two index fingers only. By the way, my typing speed at 100% accuracy is only around 45-50wpm. Still a huge improvement.
I suspect that most of the slashdot crowd is very familiar with their keyboards. Get yourself a typing program, go through a few lessons, put in a bit of effort and you'll soon be touch typing. Hardly takes any effort, and is an extremely useful skill (as any even moderately capable touch typist would testify).
Precisely my thoughts. For one thing, I have no doubt Messenger was named such because Mercury was the messenger of the Greek Gods. I've always felt that Messenger was an obvious name for a Mercury probe, so it was no surprise when I heard of this one. (Similarly, i've always thought Mercury would be a great name for an email program, instant messenger or some type of communications software, but i guess the name is too common).
The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging bit is obviously contrived and yes, very much like various acts (CAN-SPAM = "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing")
I'm not an expert on this, but it would seem that we are evolved to walk upright. For instance, somewhere in our evolutionary past we lost most of our body hair, but retained the hair on our heads -- to protect against the sun when on two legs.
I've also heard theories about lower air temparatures few feet above the ground in african plains giving our upright ancestors an evolutionary advantage.
Many more i've heard, a google search will probably find you plenty
As others have correctly pointed out, you keep the copyright. Try reading the GPL. Afaik, it is only so if you are actually writing for the FSF.
No one else can use the FSF's work without the FSF's permission, just like any other proprietary software.
Can hardly be further from the truth. The FSF has developed a whole bunch of useful stuff and licensed it under the GPL. They allow you to use the binaries as you like, and give you the full source too ("may the source be with you").You can sell it for a profit (at a reasonable price), comply with a couple of restrictions (distribute the source along with the binaries) -- as long as you don't make modifications and then distribute as proprietary softare.
Good list, but you left out one very important thing: Gecko rendering engine -- supports standards much better, and supports them well.
Its easy to foget about how important it is. Forget about web developers... just image how much cooler the web would be today if a Gecko based browser was no. 1. Want some examples? Look here. We'd be seeing fewer of the Flash dependant websites for one thing.
Also worth mentioning, my Firefox is much faster than IE. See the comments on the earlier story abuot the firefox 0.9 release.
There was a nice post on optimizing Firefox (or any gecko based browser) in the Mozillazine Firefox forums here. These tweaks can apparently speed up page load/render time by nearly 30% for some pages.
Celestia, for those who do not know, is an OSS planetarium program for several platforms available here. Its a relatively small download (11mb), and is lots of fun.
It was especially useful for me during the recent lunar eclipse.
On a related note, i first heard of the Incredibles when i heard that Michael Giacchino was to compose the score for it. Michael Giacchino is best know for for his scores for the Medal of Honor series of games, which have been critical succeses.
Interesting, since a composer who first saw success writing scores for video games is now composing a score for a mainstream film.
As for the new direction for netscape, there's a news article here.
My guess is that Netscape is going to be a service from AOL that gives users a new version of the (Mozilla based) Netscape browser, centered around Netscape.com. I guess they don't want to let go off a brand name that was once so recognised.
Was thinking the other day, what if Mozilla.org got the rights to use the Netscape brand? There are plenty of people who haven't heard of Mozilla, but know Netscape very well. There are so many who know of Netscape 6 and 7, but know nothing of its association with Mozilla.
Anyway, lets hope the world gets a better mozilla based Netscape browser. If Netscape doesn't screw it up this time (by just taking the apparently non end-user Mozilla, adding a few more features and AOL bloatware), and comes up with a really good browser. If this happens we really can expect IE's dominance to be challenged. I've been using Mozilla exclusively for about 4 years, but I now feel that the single biggest hurdle it faces is that so few people have even heard of it.
If you use Mozilla, you don't need that feature. From Edit > Prefs > Internet Search you can set your default browser to google. After that, to search via the address bar, just type in your search query, press the down arrow to select the "Search Google for blah" option and hit enter.
I couldn't do without this feature. I rarely visit Google's homepage any more.
In Firefox you would use the search bar (which is usually next to your adress bar) for the same thing.
Doesn't seem to me to be specifically open sourcey (sp?) to be religious about technical issues. I mean just look at Microsoft, they are a frikkin' technical monopoly:.Net good, use.Net, write everything in C#, Java bad, GPL evil, etc.
That's not what the paper meant. The author meant that open source developers, due to philosophical reasons, refuse to learn or adapt ideas from proprietary software, especially in the area of UI design. On the other hand, as everyone knows, Micrsoft would readily adapt ideas from any source (even their arch rivals) as long as it suits them.
All the author was trying to say is that FOSS developers should have an open mind when it comes to adapting from proprietary software.
And BTW, MS's stand on.NET etc. is perfectly normal for any company. They spent millions developing those tools, so they obviously want people to use them. This has nothing to do with rejecting software ideas because of their origin (something that microsoft doesn't do).
Question: What prevents you from removing WMP or MSIE from your XP install?
The fact that Windows Update requires IE for one. Not that Windows Update is strictly neccesary (you could simply manually download all the patches), but its much more convenient.
That's right. I know many people have used Netscape 7.x but very few have even heard about Mozilla.
It would have been nice if AOL gave mozilla.org the rights to the name "Netscape", and hence allowed mozilla.org to market Netscape as the end-user browser. Such a move would have hugely increased Mozilla's recognition.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the real issue is why fewer women join computer science courses. The trouble is that there may be a lot of women who don't mind computer science as a subject, but don't enrol in a computer science course for some other reasons (fear of male oriented study/work environment, lack of female role models etc).
Sorry, but I've already patented that idea.
Technique for gaining satisfaction by beating the living s*** out of holders of patents on genetic material
The tasks where typing speed dominates, like rote transcription, involve very little need for comprehension, decision making, or complex thought - certainly much less than composing an email or a complex report.
Are you sure? Touch typing allows me to spend more time and effort thinking about what to write, while my fingers quickly type out what I'm thinking. I'm never slowed down by my typing. I wonder if a non touch typist can claim that.
I agree that ability to type properly may not always be the bottleneck, it it certainly will boost your efficiency.
I never learned touch typing formally. I once tried out one of those "typing tutor" programs. Half heartedly went through a few of the exercises. Don't know what happened after that, but about a month later I found myself typing with all fingers. Of course, I wasn't the hunt-and-peck type before -- I was very familiar with the QWERTY layout, but i typed with my two index fingers only. By the way, my typing speed at 100% accuracy is only around 45-50wpm. Still a huge improvement.
I suspect that most of the slashdot crowd is very familiar with their keyboards. Get yourself a typing program, go through a few lessons, put in a bit of effort and you'll soon be touch typing. Hardly takes any effort, and is an extremely useful skill (as any even moderately capable touch typist would testify).
Precisely my thoughts. For one thing, I have no doubt Messenger was named such because Mercury was the messenger of the Greek Gods. I've always felt that Messenger was an obvious name for a Mercury probe, so it was no surprise when I heard of this one. (Similarly, i've always thought Mercury would be a great name for an email program, instant messenger or some type of communications software, but i guess the name is too common).
The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging bit is obviously contrived and yes, very much like various acts (CAN-SPAM = "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing")
I'm not an expert on this, but it would seem that we are evolved to walk upright. For instance, somewhere in our evolutionary past we lost most of our body hair, but retained the hair on our heads -- to protect against the sun when on two legs.
I've also heard theories about lower air temparatures few feet above the ground in african plains giving our upright ancestors an evolutionary advantage.
Many more i've heard, a google search will probably find you plenty
As others have correctly pointed out, you keep the copyright. Try reading the GPL. Afaik, it is only so if you are actually writing for the FSF.
No one else can use the FSF's work without the FSF's permission, just like any other proprietary software.
Can hardly be further from the truth. The FSF has developed a whole bunch of useful stuff and licensed it under the GPL. They allow you to use the binaries as you like, and give you the full source too ("may the source be with you").You can sell it for a profit (at a reasonable price), comply with a couple of restrictions (distribute the source along with the binaries) -- as long as you don't make modifications and then distribute as proprietary softare.
If his first enemy would be Monkey Man.
More here....
New Delhi residents fear 'Monkey Man'
New India's 'monkey man' branded imaginary
India's Monkey Man and the Politics of Mass Hysteria
Police suspect 'monkey man' is alien or remote-controlled robot
Good list, but you left out one very important thing: Gecko rendering engine -- supports standards much better, and supports them well.
Its easy to foget about how important it is. Forget about web developers... just image how much cooler the web would be today if a Gecko based browser was no. 1. Want some examples? Look here. We'd be seeing fewer of the Flash dependant websites for one thing.
Also worth mentioning, my Firefox is much faster than IE. See the comments on the earlier story abuot the firefox 0.9 release.
There was a nice post on optimizing Firefox (or any gecko based browser) in the Mozillazine Firefox forums here. These tweaks can apparently speed up page load/render time by nearly 30% for some pages.
Celestia, for those who do not know, is an OSS planetarium program for several platforms available here. Its a relatively small download (11mb), and is lots of fun.
It was especially useful for me during the recent lunar eclipse.
There was an interesting opinion on this issue at CNet news.com.com.com a while back here
On a related note, i first heard of the Incredibles when i heard that Michael Giacchino was to compose the score for it. Michael Giacchino is best know for for his scores for the Medal of Honor series of games, which have been critical succeses.
Interesting, since a composer who first saw success writing scores for video games is now composing a score for a mainstream film.
More information here and here.
Here's a HTML version of the PDF, thanks to Google.
As for the new direction for netscape, there's a news article here.
My guess is that Netscape is going to be a service from AOL that gives users a new version of the (Mozilla based) Netscape browser, centered around Netscape.com. I guess they don't want to let go off a brand name that was once so recognised.
Was thinking the other day, what if Mozilla.org got the rights to use the Netscape brand? There are plenty of people who haven't heard of Mozilla, but know Netscape very well. There are so many who know of Netscape 6 and 7, but know nothing of its association with Mozilla.
Anyway, lets hope the world gets a better mozilla based Netscape browser. If Netscape doesn't screw it up this time (by just taking the apparently non end-user Mozilla, adding a few more features and AOL bloatware), and comes up with a really good browser. If this happens we really can expect IE's dominance to be challenged. I've been using Mozilla exclusively for about 4 years, but I now feel that the single biggest hurdle it faces is that so few people have even heard of it.
If you use Mozilla, you don't need that feature. From Edit > Prefs > Internet Search you can set your default browser to google. After that, to search via the address bar, just type in your search query, press the down arrow to select the "Search Google for blah" option and hit enter.
I couldn't do without this feature. I rarely visit Google's homepage any more.
In Firefox you would use the search bar (which is usually next to your adress bar) for the same thing.
Obviously 10. When the article came out a couple of days ago, it had a headline on the lines of "Ten Candles on Spam's Cake"
Doesn't seem to me to be specifically open sourcey (sp?) to be religious about technical issues. I mean just look at Microsoft, they are a frikkin' technical monopoly: .Net good, use .Net, write everything in C#, Java bad, GPL evil, etc.
.NET etc. is perfectly normal for any company. They spent millions developing those tools, so they obviously want people to use them. This has nothing to do with rejecting software ideas because of their origin (something that microsoft doesn't do).
That's not what the paper meant. The author meant that open source developers, due to philosophical reasons, refuse to learn or adapt ideas from proprietary software, especially in the area of UI design. On the other hand, as everyone knows, Micrsoft would readily adapt ideas from any source (even their arch rivals) as long as it suits them.
All the author was trying to say is that FOSS developers should have an open mind when it comes to adapting from proprietary software.
And BTW, MS's stand on
Another April Fool's day on pigeons. It was april 1st in Israel when this story was posted.
The great April 1st pigeon networks joke. Not the first... there's the 1999 RFC 2549.
Yes, the GRE (Gecko runtime environment) has been around for a while. See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/GRE.html
Mozilla.org seems to be real slow now. Try downloading from the mirrors. Out of the mirrors, this one seems to be updated.
Wow, you anticipated it! See what is up now!
Wow. I found the link on the updated original page
btw, for those of you who don't know already, Bruce Perens has written an article on the whole SCO/MyDoom thing, available here.
first post
Question:
What prevents you from removing WMP or MSIE from your XP install?
The fact that Windows Update requires IE for one. Not that Windows Update is strictly neccesary (you could simply manually download all the patches), but its much more convenient.
That's right. I know many people have used Netscape 7.x but very few have even heard about Mozilla.
It would have been nice if AOL gave mozilla.org the rights to the name "Netscape", and hence allowed mozilla.org to market Netscape as the end-user browser. Such a move would have hugely increased Mozilla's recognition.
Pity that Netscape is now just an AOL service.