Very true, but I wouldn't want to try it with 8 year olds. I wonder at what age it would be appropriate for kids to start building their own OS?
I think I should point out, though, that it is just as easy for student to just learn commands without really understanding as it is for students to just remember control panels without really understanding. People often seem to think that command lines are somehow "pure" and tend to forget that both a command-line interface and a graphical interface are still just interfaces.
Actally, I believe you've missed my point by a mile.
My point was not that extensive customizability is a negative thing, but that it's usually unnecessary, and does very little to make your actual computing experience more powerful.
I know guys who dedicate their lives to perfecting their shell setup files. I'm sure they have lots of fun doing it, but I don't think it really makes that much difference to how much work they can get done.
School should be about learning how to learn. I know that this is increasingly no longer the case, but if it your goal is learning, rather than training, non-education market-share is completely irrelevant.
The purpose of having computers in the classroom is not to teach kids how to use computers, but instead to use computers to teach kids how to do all kinds of other things. I think it will be a sad day when the purpose of school is to prepare kids for clerical jobs.
If you stick a young child in front of a PC, they're lost. If an older child wants to do anything remotely advanced on a PC, they're thwarted and frustrated. Half the time will be spent learning to use Windows, rather than learning things like reading.
And if we do want to prepare children for the real world, using Windows they'll learn nothing about computer concepts, because everything is hidden from the user. If a kid uses some Unix variant - Linux or OSX - they're going to be a lot more prepared for doing real computing work than if they grew up using Windows.
The problem with IT admins, in my opinion, and I will probably be flamed for this, is that they're IT admins. They're not computer scientists, they're not engineers, they probably didn't go to University. As such, they don't really know much about computing in general, instead usually knowing only how to administer a certain OS, and maybe if they're lucky, a couple of OSes. Obviously someone who only knows how to use PCs is not going to go out and buy a pile of Linux or Mac boxes.
Power users with a lot of time on their hands...
on
Qt/Mac KDE Call for Help
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· Score: 3, Interesting
KDE is great if you want to spend about half your time configuring it. You can really customise KDE. It's got more options than the next California election. What's the point, though? In the end, you're still getting the same stuff done.
I really don't think someone with a fanatical need to configure their desktop is really a power user. I'd call them more of a nerd with a god complex. The real power users are the people who know how to get stuff done... have a solid understanding of unix, know how to script well, and actually use that knowledge. The real power users would rather customise their shell than their GUI.
Apple actually gives the user a lot of control over how the OS works, just very little over its appearance. In my opinion, that gives you a lot more power.
I used to run KDE on my iBook. It was neat to watch the OSX dock pop up over the KDE dock when I scrolled down, and it was fun to play around with it, but it never actually made it easier for me to do anything or gave me any more realy power, just nerd empowerment, which is a very different thing.
What I would find useful however, is the ability to run more GNOME and KDE apps independently.
I was thinking about the differences between various the various *NIXes and Windows. It seems to me that Windows tries to obfuscate the user experience - they hide things from you so that if you want to do anything more than a few basic tasks, you've got to go get Microsoft Training. The names of system files are meaningless, every directory is deep within some bizarre structure, and the only way to find anything is through the copious use of shortcuts. Unix (and Linux) makes it much easier to get at the power of your computer - I mean, it's easier to more fully understand a Solaris install than Windows - but they throw it at you all at once, which makes it difficult and intimidating to get started. Using KDE (I haven't used GNOME) I find that you have the benefits of Unix that I mentioned, and you've got this GUI on top, but that the GUI, like Windows, hides things from you. It's better than Windows, but it still doesn't really expose you to how your computer works. My experience with OSX, although others' may be different, is that it draws you into Unix. You find yourself understanding the underlying system intuitively, and being drawn into it. It seems to sort of trick you into learning Unix. You don't need the terminal - but inevitably you're drawn to it. The thing about Macs is that non-technical Mac users often turn into power users without thinking about it.
I've been playing with this open-source java charting library for a while now, and it's quite impressive. It can be easily integrated into applets or JSPs.
I remember a few years back reading about a guy who ran his powerbook over with his truck. The screen cracked and was kind of warped, but everything else still worked - this was one of the old-school lumpy-looking ones, though. I don't know how tough the metal ones are. I give my iBook shit, though, and it has always served me well. I mean, I put it in my backpack and then toss my backpack all over the place. Somtimes the 30 pounds of textbooks land on top of it.
How do you fine someone for selling you software? If you don't want it, don't buy it. Basically what they're saying is that they should take a 10% discount on all non-open software, which just means that Microsoft and others will slap on a 10% "sales to countries with stupid policies" sales. I don't even know if policies like that are constitutional or enforceable in most democratic countries.
No-one seems to have noticed that Motorolla's focus seems to be shifting towards low-power chips. It looks like these will use about a third of the power of a P4 and roughly half that of the current G4s, and as such will be a pretty good option for laptops and possibly smaller devices.
Every CS program I've looked at will have you doing most of your work on their servers, either at the labs or remotely by SSH, so whatever power your machine has will be essentially worthless. Don't waste your money on Windows, because you'll have uninstalled it by second year. I find my mac works well, whereas people running Windows get really frustrated by having to use stuff like putty. If you are comfortable with Linux, you could use it to save money, but otherwise for CS you'll want a Mac.
For physics, it doesn't really matter, because mathematica and all that other stuff is all cross-platform.
For engineering, you'll want a handgun to shoot yourself.
I've done all three at various points. I like my laptop, but I never take it to class or anything, so it's not really that useful unless you're a commuter.
Perhaps this is no longer the case, but I was under the impression that if anyone fired an ICBM at the US, their automated defense systems would fire off enough nukes to instantly ensure the end of civilization.
The purpose of a missile defense shield is most likely not to defend from a first strike from someone else, something that is highly unlikely, but instead to allow the US to attack nuclear-equipped nations (using conventional or unconventional weapons) without needing to worry as much about a nuclear response. No country is going to launch nukes at the U.S. unless the U.S. is about to destroy them anyway and they've got nothing to lose.
Compiling KDE from source took a little under two days on my really old ibook. That sounds hellish, but really isn't, because it just ran in the background and I noticed no noticeable slow-down (I wish my XP box at work could do that... it's so easy to bring it to its knees). It was also incredibly easy, largely thanks to finkcommander.
the integration between KDE and OSX is absolutely beautiful.
Actually, the poor are filtered out long before they ever get to the SATs. They get filtered out by the underfunding of their schools. Everyone makes a big deal about the SAT being unfair, but if they'd just spend the money to make sure everyone got a good education, it wouldn't be such a big issue.
For school, I have to use sftp and I recently discovered Fugu, which is an open-source frontend for it. It's by far the best ftp program I've ever used. So simple, yet so effective.
I really like running KDE on OSX. They work pretty well together, provided you've got the dock set on "autohide". With fink and KDE, I get everything I could ever want from Linux, everything I need from OSX, nothing runs in emulation, and I only have a single kernel. I think it's a pretty good solution.
Have you noticed that Apple tends to only include highly-polished software? There's a reason they built their own KHTML based browser, rather than just porting Konqueror. They have really high standards for the usability of their software, so any non-command-line tool would need to be entirely redesigned to fit their standards, which introduces a lot of work.
Even for command-line programs, once Apple releases something themselves, they implicitly take responsibility for it. If they start doing half-assed ports, then their whole "it just worked" thing goes down the tubes because if their stuff doesn't work, people will hold it against them. They'd probably have to carefully QA every port they did in extensive detail, and that would be expensive. Then there's technical support, maintaining the ports, etc.
There's lots of stuff I'd like to see built into darwin, but I can understand why it isn't really their priority. As has been pointed out, most people who need additional command-line tools can get them themselves and I think apple would rather put their energy into making the tools they do have easier to use by building helpful GUI front-ends for those of us who either don't know how to use unix well, or just find it a lot less enjoyable.
This reminds me of a condominium development I was looking at in Toronto with some seriously cool high-tech toys. My friend's dad was one of the architects. Here's to hoping the market crashes soon and I can pick up one of their units. I think the same developers might have done a cool project in Vancouver as well.
I keep wondering why they weren't considering open-source in the first place. After all, if big companies like IBM are using open-source software now, you'd think the IT staff at a large organization like a state or large city government wouldn't be in the dark about open source. If students can do it, shouldn't IT pros?
The problem seems to be that too many politicians and civil servants are incompetent and poorly qualified and if they're not presently capable of making a well-informed decision without legislation, then they're not going to make a good decision with legislation. Forcing them to consider open-source is going to confuse these morons. They'll want to call "open-source" in to make a powerpoint presentation, and will become quite confused when they can't find a number in the phone book.
To use open-source software, you need a qualified IT staff, and if you have a qualified IT staff, you're probably already considering (not necessarily using, but at least considering) open-source.
I think some firings. some better hiring practices, and perhaps requiring more basic computer knowledge of bureaucrats in general would go a lot farther than any of this legislation will. I do believe that open-source has general advantages for government, so I think a general pro-open position is a good idea, I just think that until we see some other changes, it's not going to do much.
I'm from Toronto. I'm not sure how many of you saw our mayor interviewed on TV the other day about SARS. If you did, you'll understand why I think the people running our cities are morons. Our city staff managed to blow insane amounts of money on computer services that we never even received. These people don't know shit about computers. They just know that their brother-in-law or their golf partner or whoever owns a computer consulting company, so they give him a massive contract and then they never think about computers again until they get busted by the auditor.
Slashdot Mirror
Because they're not Sun.
Very true, but I wouldn't want to try it with 8 year olds. I wonder at what age it would be appropriate for kids to start building their own OS?
I think I should point out, though, that it is just as easy for student to just learn commands without really understanding as it is for students to just remember control panels without really understanding. People often seem to think that command lines are somehow "pure" and tend to forget that both a command-line interface and a graphical interface are still just interfaces.
Actally, I believe you've missed my point by a mile.
My point was not that extensive customizability is a negative thing, but that it's usually unnecessary, and does very little to make your actual computing experience more powerful.
I know guys who dedicate their lives to perfecting their shell setup files. I'm sure they have lots of fun doing it, but I don't think it really makes that much difference to how much work they can get done.
School should be about learning how to learn. I know that this is increasingly no longer the case, but if it your goal is learning, rather than training, non-education market-share is completely irrelevant.
The purpose of having computers in the classroom is not to teach kids how to use computers, but instead to use computers to teach kids how to do all kinds of other things. I think it will be a sad day when the purpose of school is to prepare kids for clerical jobs.
If you stick a young child in front of a PC, they're lost. If an older child wants to do anything remotely advanced on a PC, they're thwarted and frustrated. Half the time will be spent learning to use Windows, rather than learning things like reading.
And if we do want to prepare children for the real world, using Windows they'll learn nothing about computer concepts, because everything is hidden from the user. If a kid uses some Unix variant - Linux or OSX - they're going to be a lot more prepared for doing real computing work than if they grew up using Windows.
The problem with IT admins, in my opinion, and I will probably be flamed for this, is that they're IT admins. They're not computer scientists, they're not engineers, they probably didn't go to University. As such, they don't really know much about computing in general, instead usually knowing only how to administer a certain OS, and maybe if they're lucky, a couple of OSes. Obviously someone who only knows how to use PCs is not going to go out and buy a pile of Linux or Mac boxes.
KDE is great if you want to spend about half your time configuring it. You can really customise KDE. It's got more options than the next California election. What's the point, though? In the end, you're still getting the same stuff done. I really don't think someone with a fanatical need to configure their desktop is really a power user. I'd call them more of a nerd with a god complex. The real power users are the people who know how to get stuff done... have a solid understanding of unix, know how to script well, and actually use that knowledge. The real power users would rather customise their shell than their GUI. Apple actually gives the user a lot of control over how the OS works, just very little over its appearance. In my opinion, that gives you a lot more power. I used to run KDE on my iBook. It was neat to watch the OSX dock pop up over the KDE dock when I scrolled down, and it was fun to play around with it, but it never actually made it easier for me to do anything or gave me any more realy power, just nerd empowerment, which is a very different thing. What I would find useful however, is the ability to run more GNOME and KDE apps independently. I was thinking about the differences between various the various *NIXes and Windows. It seems to me that Windows tries to obfuscate the user experience - they hide things from you so that if you want to do anything more than a few basic tasks, you've got to go get Microsoft Training. The names of system files are meaningless, every directory is deep within some bizarre structure, and the only way to find anything is through the copious use of shortcuts. Unix (and Linux) makes it much easier to get at the power of your computer - I mean, it's easier to more fully understand a Solaris install than Windows - but they throw it at you all at once, which makes it difficult and intimidating to get started. Using KDE (I haven't used GNOME) I find that you have the benefits of Unix that I mentioned, and you've got this GUI on top, but that the GUI, like Windows, hides things from you. It's better than Windows, but it still doesn't really expose you to how your computer works. My experience with OSX, although others' may be different, is that it draws you into Unix. You find yourself understanding the underlying system intuitively, and being drawn into it. It seems to sort of trick you into learning Unix. You don't need the terminal - but inevitably you're drawn to it. The thing about Macs is that non-technical Mac users often turn into power users without thinking about it.
I'd rather buy Chinese than American... they're less of a threat to world peace.
BTW, you should see the things Amnesty has to say about U.S. foreign policy.
I've been playing with this open-source java charting library for a while now, and it's quite impressive. It can be easily integrated into applets or JSPs.
I remember a few years back reading about a guy who ran his powerbook over with his truck. The screen cracked and was kind of warped, but everything else still worked - this was one of the old-school lumpy-looking ones, though. I don't know how tough the metal ones are. I give my iBook shit, though, and it has always served me well. I mean, I put it in my backpack and then toss my backpack all over the place. Somtimes the 30 pounds of textbooks land on top of it.
How do you fine someone for selling you software? If you don't want it, don't buy it. Basically what they're saying is that they should take a 10% discount on all non-open software, which just means that Microsoft and others will slap on a 10% "sales to countries with stupid policies" sales. I don't even know if policies like that are constitutional or enforceable in most democratic countries.
No-one seems to have noticed that Motorolla's focus seems to be shifting towards low-power chips. It looks like these will use about a third of the power of a P4 and roughly half that of the current G4s, and as such will be a pretty good option for laptops and possibly smaller devices.
Every CS program I've looked at will have you doing most of your work on their servers, either at the labs or remotely by SSH, so whatever power your machine has will be essentially worthless. Don't waste your money on Windows, because you'll have uninstalled it by second year. I find my mac works well, whereas people running Windows get really frustrated by having to use stuff like putty. If you are comfortable with Linux, you could use it to save money, but otherwise for CS you'll want a Mac.
For physics, it doesn't really matter, because mathematica and all that other stuff is all cross-platform.
For engineering, you'll want a handgun to shoot yourself.
I've done all three at various points. I like my laptop, but I never take it to class or anything, so it's not really that useful unless you're a commuter.
Perhaps this is no longer the case, but I was under the impression that if anyone fired an ICBM at the US, their automated defense systems would fire off enough nukes to instantly ensure the end of civilization.
The purpose of a missile defense shield is most likely not to defend from a first strike from someone else, something that is highly unlikely, but instead to allow the US to attack nuclear-equipped nations (using conventional or unconventional weapons) without needing to worry as much about a nuclear response. No country is going to launch nukes at the U.S. unless the U.S. is about to destroy them anyway and they've got nothing to lose.
seen the US deficit recently? bush is the biggest spender in US history, by a lot.
Compiling KDE from source took a little under two days on my really old ibook. That sounds hellish, but really isn't, because it just ran in the background and I noticed no noticeable slow-down (I wish my XP box at work could do that... it's so easy to bring it to its knees). It was also incredibly easy, largely thanks to finkcommander.
the integration between KDE and OSX is absolutely beautiful.
Actually, the poor are filtered out long before they ever get to the SATs. They get filtered out by the underfunding of their schools. Everyone makes a big deal about the SAT being unfair, but if they'd just spend the money to make sure everyone got a good education, it wouldn't be such a big issue.
99th percentile on all three categories of the PSAT. I walked into a fire hydrant yesterday. You can draw your own conclusions.
For school, I have to use sftp and I recently discovered Fugu, which is an open-source frontend for it. It's by far the best ftp program I've ever used. So simple, yet so effective.
I really like running KDE on OSX. They work pretty well together, provided you've got the dock set on "autohide". With fink and KDE, I get everything I could ever want from Linux, everything I need from OSX, nothing runs in emulation, and I only have a single kernel. I think it's a pretty good solution.
Have you noticed that Apple tends to only include highly-polished software? There's a reason they built their own KHTML based browser, rather than just porting Konqueror. They have really high standards for the usability of their software, so any non-command-line tool would need to be entirely redesigned to fit their standards, which introduces a lot of work.
Even for command-line programs, once Apple releases something themselves, they implicitly take responsibility for it. If they start doing half-assed ports, then their whole "it just worked" thing goes down the tubes because if their stuff doesn't work, people will hold it against them. They'd probably have to carefully QA every port they did in extensive detail, and that would be expensive. Then there's technical support, maintaining the ports, etc.
There's lots of stuff I'd like to see built into darwin, but I can understand why it isn't really their priority. As has been pointed out, most people who need additional command-line tools can get them themselves and I think apple would rather put their energy into making the tools they do have easier to use by building helpful GUI front-ends for those of us who either don't know how to use unix well, or just find it a lot less enjoyable.
I don't have stats in front of me, but I remember seeing a while back that more catholics were being killed than protestants.
And when the IRA declared a ceasefire, didn't the protestant paramilitaries just start fighting each other over the drug business?
More realistically, although this is somewhat overkill, you could use quantum cryptography for 100% security.
Regardless of who was right or wrong, didn't Epitaph get into a major dispute with one of their artists (The Offspring) a while ago?
spoke to a buddy of mine the other day with a similar SMC router: same problems. average reset: once a day.
This reminds me of a condominium development I was looking at in Toronto with some seriously cool high-tech toys. My friend's dad was one of the architects. Here's to hoping the market crashes soon and I can pick up one of their units. I think the same developers might have done a cool project in Vancouver as well.
I keep wondering why they weren't considering open-source in the first place. After all, if big companies like IBM are using open-source software now, you'd think the IT staff at a large organization like a state or large city government wouldn't be in the dark about open source. If students can do it, shouldn't IT pros?
The problem seems to be that too many politicians and civil servants are incompetent and poorly qualified and if they're not presently capable of making a well-informed decision without legislation, then they're not going to make a good decision with legislation. Forcing them to consider open-source is going to confuse these morons. They'll want to call "open-source" in to make a powerpoint presentation, and will become quite confused when they can't find a number in the phone book.
To use open-source software, you need a qualified IT staff, and if you have a qualified IT staff, you're probably already considering (not necessarily using, but at least considering) open-source.
I think some firings. some better hiring practices, and perhaps requiring more basic computer knowledge of bureaucrats in general would go a lot farther than any of this legislation will. I do believe that open-source has general advantages for government, so I think a general pro-open position is a good idea, I just think that until we see some other changes, it's not going to do much.
I'm from Toronto. I'm not sure how many of you saw our mayor interviewed on TV the other day about SARS. If you did, you'll understand why I think the people running our cities are morons. Our city staff managed to blow insane amounts of money on computer services that we never even received. These people don't know shit about computers. They just know that their brother-in-law or their golf partner or whoever owns a computer consulting company, so they give him a massive contract and then they never think about computers again until they get busted by the auditor.