I'm not so sure that photons not having mass means that they have no inertia. Photons have momentum, can exert a (very) slight pressure, and can be pulled on by gravity. Given that, their inertia is likely to me small, but nonzero.
"if you want a lot of things that FreeBSD has, such as the ports system... why not use FreeBSD?"
I can think of a couple reasons:
1) You need something that is only offered or supported on Linux. FreeBSD's Linux emulation works both well and smoothly, but it's not fit for, say, Linux-only drivers. Also, while some Linux applications run fine on FreeBSD once installed, sometimes the installation scripts make assumptions that are only valid on Linux, so little tweaks have to be made to get them to install.
2) FreeBSD won't install (or install cleanly) on the system. I had this happen with FreeBSD 4.5, which got my hard disk geometry *way* wrong, beyond the usual bogusness that comes with things like workarounds for the 1024 cylinder limit, LBA, etc. Apparently, it got garbage where a cylinder count should be. Both Red Hat and Windows got the disk geometry issues right, no contest.
"Why can't they use plain English instead of their stupid euphemisms for god knows what?"
"You have to be kidding me, right? cat, lpr, grep, sed, ln, ldd."
I don't think he's talking about Windows not using standard Unix commands, but rather Windows using vague, supposedly user-friendly terms instead of the proper technical; in other words, not using jargon in a context where jargon actually makes communication clearer and simpler.
Have you tried selling the management on converting a small portion of the shop to StarOffice, as a trial thing? Maybe attacking it piecemeal is the best solution here.
"Freedom of choice? What kind of freedom are you actually speaking about here?"
As a practical issue, one can talk about the "freedom" to install on funky hardware. Autodetection is great, but it comes with a tradeoff: it tends to fail on old or obscure hardware. It's probably not a bad thing, then, to have both friendly distros targeted at regular users, who tend not to have the funky hardware that trips up autodetection, and more hardcore distros that account for the not-so-common cases.
Storm, Corel, and Progeny also don't constitute Debian proper, although Progeny came closest. There was no guarantee that straight-up Debian packages would work cleanly with those distros, so they really couldn't satisfy someone who wanted just Debian with a nice installer.
Re:Slashdot Spreads Misinformation on a massive sc
on
Qt For The Console
·
· Score: 2
"So most people who see this will assume it's real"
Until they actually compile Qt for the console, at which point they'll figure out the joke and probably get a kick out of it.
"the people who think you "design" software are seriously simplifying the issue, and don't actually realize how they themselves work."
True, but people often work by breaking down a problem into pieces that they can understand and hold in their head. Unix itself, while as much a product of evolution as intentional design, is very modular: it's all in seperate pieces, loosely integrated. The shell is a separate module, the underlying low-level foundation for the GUI, namely X, is a module, and window managers and toolkits are modules on top of that.
There's nothing whiney about acknowledging that Microsoft uses questionable or outright unethical tactics to try to crush competitors or maintain its position. That's just a matter of knowing the business landscape.
"The basic message is that MS can't do Jack Shit to OEMs, except of course to force them to pay the proper price for Windows licences, and not receive any bonuses."
MS can also threaten to not sell any Windows licenses to the OEM, which would be devastating to the OEM.
"If I was in Apple's marketing department I'd be asking 'what would it take to get you to switch to Macs?' not 'why are you thinking about buying a Mac?'"
The thing is, by asking the question, "why are you thinking about buying a Mac?," Apple taps into the opinions of those who are on the fence, those whose could be within Apple's target market, but aren't quite yet there yet.
"Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow adult content sites, then sites that provide birth control information, then..."
"once the toe is in the door, it is hard to stop the leg, then the shoulder..."
That is the classic slippery slope fallacy.
In this case, the slope isn't all that slippery, anyway. Child porn is unique in that it is fairly straightforward both to define (as depiction of minors engaged in sexual activity) and to establish the harm that it causes (since engaging kids in sexual activity tends to harm them, whether or not the activity is recorded or not). For most other kinds of porn, the definition and establishment of harm are a lot more ambiguous.
Stephen King's experiment with "The Plant" did not stick to a straight-up ransom model. Rather what King did was to make an installment of "The Plant" available for download and allow downloaders to pay $1 for it for. If too many downloaders didn't pay, he wouldn't release the next installment.
If he had stuck to the ransom model, the payment would have occured before the download was available, and the question of freeloading downloaders would be irrelevant.
Re:Read Eric Hoffer's "True Believer"
on
Penguin2Apple
·
· Score: 2
"Apple users, it would seem, are by and large kooks."
Or maybe that the Apple users who frequent the Apple shows are the kooks while the non-kook Apple users don't bother you?
There's a difference, though, between leaving free stuff on the curb and offering free stuff through the classifieds. Someone looking to get something advertised in the classifieds has to go out of his/her way to collect the merchandise. In contrast, someone seeing your free stuff on the curb is already pretty close to it anyway, so said someone doesn't have to go far out of his/her way to collect it.
"Can this still be admitted as evidence? I thought the discoveries of fact were over after the initial trial."
IANAL, but AFAIK, you are correct. However, Microsoft's record of influence peddling might affect the settlement because it would indicate to the judge how much MS can or cannot be trusted, and make her even more suspicious of any "weasel room" in the settlement.
"Umm... No, this fallacy is correct. GUIs take just as long to learn as command-line tools do."
However, GUIs require less outright memorization. If one has a rough memory of a app's GUI, one can use the visual cues of the GUI to fill in the rest.
"Icons, for example, were promised to revolutionize computer interfaces. No more would we ever need text. The user could look at an Icon and magically determine what it did."
Icons have their place. Text on its own is harder to scan and kind of blends together. Icons though are fairly distinct and can be scanned for more quickly.
"images are useful as a suppliment to text, not a replacement."
Agreed. Images, though, *are* a useful supplement.
"I disagree, Windows has only one advantage over Linux and that is games."
That's not Windows' *only* advantage. Linux (or free Unices in general) still require technical knowledge to support things like drawing tablets, like the Wacom Intuos.
How do I install the driver for the tablet in Windows? Mostly just a matter of point-and-click.
How do I install the driver for the tablet in a free Unix? I have to edit the XF86Config-4 file manually; the configuration GUIs for X don't cover things like tablets, just mice.
Installing fonts is also something that requires some command line know-how on a free Unix, but is fairly trivial on Windows.
The GUIs for Linux generally don't deal with more obscure cases, while in Windows, most everything a user *needs* to do is point-and-click.
[sarcasm]
Yes, that explains why Unix is so secure. Thank goodness it was designed to use OpenSSH and shadow passwords so many years back. Can you imagine how hard it would be to "add" something like that later, like some feature?
[/sarcasm]
Unix, though, was built to be very flexible, so that it is relatively easy to add or change functionality.
"However, I do think you should be able to patent technologies that utilise specific natural genes - including the "invention" of cloning a particular gene for a particular purpose."
If the patent was specific on the implemetation, i.e. the cloning is done in a specific way, or the administering of the gene is done a certain way, I'd be fine with a patent on that, too.
Slashdot Mirror
"Was GNOME MONO planning on implementing hailstorm as part of their .net workalike? Are they still going to?"
I think Mono was mostly focused on implementing C#.
I'm not so sure that photons not having mass means that they have no inertia. Photons have momentum, can exert a (very) slight pressure, and can be pulled on by gravity. Given that, their inertia is likely to me small, but nonzero.
"if you want a lot of things that FreeBSD has, such as the ports system... why not use FreeBSD?"
I can think of a couple reasons:
1) You need something that is only offered or supported on Linux. FreeBSD's Linux emulation works both well and smoothly, but it's not fit for, say, Linux-only drivers. Also, while some Linux applications run fine on FreeBSD once installed, sometimes the installation scripts make assumptions that are only valid on Linux, so little tweaks have to be made to get them to install.
2) FreeBSD won't install (or install cleanly) on the system. I had this happen with FreeBSD 4.5, which got my hard disk geometry *way* wrong, beyond the usual bogusness that comes with things like workarounds for the 1024 cylinder limit, LBA, etc. Apparently, it got garbage where a cylinder count should be. Both Red Hat and Windows got the disk geometry issues right, no contest.
I don't think he's talking about Windows not using standard Unix commands, but rather Windows using vague, supposedly user-friendly terms instead of the proper technical; in other words, not using jargon in a context where jargon actually makes communication clearer and simpler.
Have you tried selling the management on converting a small portion of the shop to StarOffice, as a trial thing? Maybe attacking it piecemeal is the best solution here.
"Freedom of choice? What kind of freedom are you actually speaking about here?"
As a practical issue, one can talk about the "freedom" to install on funky hardware. Autodetection is great, but it comes with a tradeoff: it tends to fail on old or obscure hardware. It's probably not a bad thing, then, to have both friendly distros targeted at regular users, who tend not to have the funky hardware that trips up autodetection, and more hardcore distros that account for the not-so-common cases.
Storm, Corel, and Progeny also don't constitute Debian proper, although Progeny came closest. There was no guarantee that straight-up Debian packages would work cleanly with those distros, so they really couldn't satisfy someone who wanted just Debian with a nice installer.
"So most people who see this will assume it's real"
Until they actually compile Qt for the console, at which point they'll figure out the joke and probably get a kick out of it.
"the people who think you "design" software are seriously simplifying the issue, and don't actually realize how they themselves work."
True, but people often work by breaking down a problem into pieces that they can understand and hold in their head. Unix itself, while as much a product of evolution as intentional design, is very modular: it's all in seperate pieces, loosely integrated. The shell is a separate module, the underlying low-level foundation for the GUI, namely X, is a module, and window managers and toolkits are modules on top of that.
There's nothing whiney about acknowledging that Microsoft uses questionable or outright unethical tactics to try to crush competitors or maintain its position. That's just a matter of knowing the business landscape.
"Lots of fighting and ultraviolet explosions"
I gather you mean "ultraviolent explosions," although if the vampires blow up in a blaze of light, I guess "ultraviolet explosions" is appropriate.
(Bad pun on a British miniseries (presumably) about vampires called "Ultraviolet.")
"The basic message is that MS can't do Jack Shit to OEMs, except of course to force them to pay the proper price for Windows licences, and not receive any bonuses."
MS can also threaten to not sell any Windows licenses to the OEM, which would be devastating to the OEM.
"If I was in Apple's marketing department I'd be asking 'what would it take to get you to switch to Macs?' not 'why are you thinking about buying a Mac?'"
The thing is, by asking the question, "why are you thinking about buying a Mac?," Apple taps into the opinions of those who are on the fence, those whose could be within Apple's target market, but aren't quite yet there yet.
"Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow adult content sites, then sites that provide birth control information, then..."
"once the toe is in the door, it is hard to stop the leg, then the shoulder..."
That is the classic slippery slope fallacy.
In this case, the slope isn't all that slippery, anyway. Child porn is unique in that it is fairly straightforward both to define (as depiction of minors engaged in sexual activity) and to establish the harm that it causes (since engaging kids in sexual activity tends to harm them, whether or not the activity is recorded or not). For most other kinds of porn, the definition and establishment of harm are a lot more ambiguous.
Stephen King's experiment with "The Plant" did not stick to a straight-up ransom model. Rather what King did was to make an installment of "The Plant" available for download and allow downloaders to pay $1 for it for. If too many downloaders didn't pay, he wouldn't release the next installment.
If he had stuck to the ransom model, the payment would have occured before the download was available, and the question of freeloading downloaders would be irrelevant.
"Apple users, it would seem, are by and large kooks."
Or maybe that the Apple users who frequent the Apple shows are the kooks while the non-kook Apple users don't bother you?
There's a difference, though, between leaving free stuff on the curb and offering free stuff through the classifieds. Someone looking to get something advertised in the classifieds has to go out of his/her way to collect the merchandise. In contrast, someone seeing your free stuff on the curb is already pretty close to it anyway, so said someone doesn't have to go far out of his/her way to collect it.
"P.S. Everyone always whines about the Windows registry because it's binary, you can't edit it blah, blah, blah... But the fact is: It works."
Actually, the problem with the Windows registry is that it *doesn't* work. It's a single point of failure that has been all too easy to corrupt.
"Can this still be admitted as evidence? I thought the discoveries of fact were over after the initial trial."
IANAL, but AFAIK, you are correct. However, Microsoft's record of influence peddling might affect the settlement because it would indicate to the judge how much MS can or cannot be trusted, and make her even more suspicious of any "weasel room" in the settlement.
"Umm... No, this fallacy is correct. GUIs take just as long to learn as command-line tools do."
However, GUIs require less outright memorization. If one has a rough memory of a app's GUI, one can use the visual cues of the GUI to fill in the rest.
"Icons, for example, were promised to revolutionize computer interfaces. No more would we ever need text. The user could look at an Icon and magically determine what it did."
Icons have their place. Text on its own is harder to scan and kind of blends together. Icons though are fairly distinct and can be scanned for more quickly.
"images are useful as a suppliment to text, not a replacement."
Agreed. Images, though, *are* a useful supplement.
"I disagree, Windows has only one advantage over Linux and that is games."
That's not Windows' *only* advantage. Linux (or free Unices in general) still require technical knowledge to support things like drawing tablets, like the Wacom Intuos.
How do I install the driver for the tablet in Windows? Mostly just a matter of point-and-click.
How do I install the driver for the tablet in a free Unix? I have to edit the XF86Config-4 file manually; the configuration GUIs for X don't cover things like tablets, just mice.
Installing fonts is also something that requires some command line know-how on a free Unix, but is fairly trivial on Windows.
The GUIs for Linux generally don't deal with more obscure cases, while in Windows, most everything a user *needs* to do is point-and-click.
"There won't be this form of competition once Microsoft implements its software subscription licensing."
That's *if* MS can get the software subscription thing off the ground. A lot of CIOs are just not buying into it.
Unix, though, was built to be very flexible, so that it is relatively easy to add or change functionality.
"Nope - IIRC u r wrong - Unix was NOT designed to use neither OpenSSH nor shadow passwords"
Um, that was the point of the parent post. It was being sarcastic.
"However, I do think you should be able to patent technologies that utilise specific natural genes - including the "invention" of cloning a particular gene for a particular purpose."
If the patent was specific on the implemetation, i.e. the cloning is done in a specific way, or the administering of the gene is done a certain way, I'd be fine with a patent on that, too.