Of course, your analogy holds only for certain kinds of goods. I have a reasonable expectation that the art I have bought will last beyond my lifetime. Also, remember that the things that wear out don't do so because they were designed that way -- in fact, engineers have worked hard to make your tires last as long as they can.
I don't have the time to check it now, but gnu coreutils' source code is a 3.8 MiB.tar.bz2, and I'm guessing you will not find a single IDE-related file in there, since most of the developers just use simple text editors. Linus uses MicroEmacs. RMS (obiously) uses Emacs. It is very possible to handle very large projects without an IDE and many people do. It is not simply because they are stupid or unwilling to change.
Most of the dogs I've seen would just as soon kill one another than "roam around in their little packs". I've had to break up a good number of fights between smaller dogs with a poor sense of perspective and rottweilers or pit bulls.
I get that, but in reverse. Every time I have to visit half a dozen websites to find out if there's a new version of the windows software I recommend for my students, I remember how this is not required on Linux. Even for apps that check for updates themselves, this usually requires running them or some background process to make it work. And don't get me started on development libraries, although I'll admit that that's not such a problem for normal users.
A couple of things would need to change before I went over to Word.
The advanced typography is a good move in the right direction, but I don't see any mention of paragraph-optimal line breaks.
Automatic figure placement more like the floating bodies idea. The opportunity exists to have this implemented in a nicer way than LaTeX, by allowing manipulation after the automatic placement. I'd even settle for something I could run periodically, rather than being run online.
The equation support has been improved a lot, with much better-looking rendering. Unfortunately common numbering schemes are still not supported with easy-to-use cross-referencing.
Reproducability/documentation of method. The single biggest problem with word is that there is no way of determining how a certain effect was achieved by examining the document. This means that I often find myself (or colleagues) saying "I know it's aroung here somewhere" and hunting in the menus, where I could have just copied and pasted the code from my LaTeX document or shown someone else.
Indication of formatting borders. There is often doubt about where the insertion point should be to be on the "right side" of formatting. A mode similar to firebug's inspection mode (where boxes are drawn around styles) would be a good start.
So, you would like the guy to double-guess everything he says, even words like twig, which is really common in South Africa where I live? How do you suppose he should know that you don't know what it means? Perhaps you can link to a post checker which highlights English words that will not be understood in America.
This brings up a point that gets me going: using units instead of descriptive names. People talk about how much something weighs, how tall someone is etc, but somehow when they describe the energy content of food, it's "how many calories does it have?" Have you every asked someone "how many pounds do you have?"
When they talk about disk space or system RAM they talk about "how many gigs does it have?" Let's just bring back descriptive words rather than using units as proxies.
It takes lots of time to earn a degree (I've been studying for more than 10 years up to PhD level). I would hope that it would generate some income for several years. Oh, wait -- it can, but I need to continue working.
Everything you can say about "knowledge workers" can be said about Engineers and other technical personnel that solve problems every day for a salary. They plan for their future not by hoping that someone will give them money today for work they did ten years ago, but by putting away money while they are earning it for work they are doing right now.
I sense quite a lot of the OP's resentment is just because someone is using his book without paying for it. One of my colleagues had this issue with notes he distributes to his class electronically (as part of the course). An enterprising student started selling printed copies for a profit, to students that could have printed it out themselves, but felt his price was reasonable. The colleague felt hard done by that someone was profiting from his work without him getting a cut. The sense of ownership that one feel about ones work makes one feel like it should remain in your control forever. Unfortunately this is an untenable situation with stuff like words which can be reproduced easily.
Languages aren't fast -- compilers are efficient. How "fast" a language is perceived to be is purely a function of whether an efficient compiler exists for the particular platform.
I reckon most of the Matlab frontend is Java. As near as I can tell, only the plotting part uses X at all on OS X. That said, the insane license manager they use for Unix-like platforms (as opposed to a very simple activation code in Windows) has led me to scipy. I have not looked back much, except for the interactive graphs they added to the newer releases.
Actually, Aristarchus was even earlier, and he even figured out that the earth rotates around the sun in addition to the diameter of the Earth, moon and sun and the earth and moon's orbit, with the correct order of the planets that they could observe at the time, all based on trigonometry and observation by unaided eye. Of course, his figures weren't perfectly accurate (notably the distance of the earth to the sun) but the method is sound and works well with more accurate measurements.
This is not quite true. There are many well-defined protocols that are absolutely 100% defined down to the last bit. The ones that are really that well defined tend to be things that happen on wires and need to be interpreted by very simple circuits, but GÃdel only really comes into play with proving correctness of statements in more complicated grammars. I could easily tell you "your alphabet consists of 1 and 0, when you transmit a 1, I will make the beep sound, when you transmit a 0 I will cut the been circuit. You may not send different symbols faster than 1Hz".
Of course, the task of completely specifying something as complex as ODF is daunting enough to be practically impossible with modern cost of human time.
The scanners create the field I was talking about. Either they are stationary and have (relatively) high power antennae to reach the tag or they are hand-held and have (relatively) low power antennae which have to be held closer to the tag for it to work. Only in the second case is there a benefit from not having a tag yourself, as you could direct the scanner away from you. In the first case (as in walking through a doorway-style scanner) there is no benefit in not having a tag on your person, you get subjected to the same field strength everyone else does.
The reason the scanners have limited range is because of the way that field strength declines over distance.
The article also mentions that there is a secure channel through which all the biometric data are transmitted in a single packet to make it harder to tamper with them.
The field is around anyway, whether there is a chip or not. It's not like the chip attracts the field or anything. If you're worried about the increase in the background EMF strength in general, that's perfectly reasonable, but blaming RFID is not so much.
Unfortunately, countries don't have the luxury of being able to focus on one thing at a time. The old passports were being forged wholesale, leading to public relations problems. TFA actually mentions that SA citizens will be required to get a visa to enter the UK due to high rates of passport fraud. We can't very well sit back and say 'first, lets get this HIV thing licked, then we'll try to pick up the pieces of our foreign relations'.
I know a lot of researchers who develop on macs and run their simulations on some off-site computer. Just because you happen to be using a BlueGene from IBM to do your number crunching doesn't mean you have to use a Lenovo laptop. Also, the tone of your message implies that you wouldn't use OS X for "serious" work. I would if I had the cash -- xgrid is really cool, but mac servers are a bit dear.
My comment was not really supposed to contradict yours, just expand on the tangentially related (and totally on-topic of the overall slant of this whole thread) subject of language racism -- some languages are shunned on the technical merits, but some are shunned without even a second glance.
The whole scalability of languages thing is a bit of a semantic argument for me, as you could make a case both ways. On one hand you could say the implementation (compiler, interpreter, whatever) is responsible for handling issues with scaling, but on the other hand certain language constructs make it easier for compiler writers to do this and for programmers to "get" what is happening.
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody better tell the admins of the computers on this list they're wasting their time.
Of course, your analogy holds only for certain kinds of goods. I have a reasonable expectation that the art I have bought will last beyond my lifetime. Also, remember that the things that wear out don't do so because they were designed that way -- in fact, engineers have worked hard to make your tires last as long as they can.
I don't have the time to check it now, but gnu coreutils' source code is a 3.8 MiB .tar.bz2, and I'm guessing you will not find a single IDE-related file in there, since most of the developers just use simple text editors. Linus uses MicroEmacs. RMS (obiously) uses Emacs. It is very possible to handle very large projects without an IDE and many people do. It is not simply because they are stupid or unwilling to change.
Most of the dogs I've seen would just as soon kill one another than "roam around in their little packs". I've had to break up a good number of fights between smaller dogs with a poor sense of perspective and rottweilers or pit bulls.
I get that, but in reverse. Every time I have to visit half a dozen websites to find out if there's a new version of the windows software I recommend for my students, I remember how this is not required on Linux. Even for apps that check for updates themselves, this usually requires running them or some background process to make it work. And don't get me started on development libraries, although I'll admit that that's not such a problem for normal users.
So you don't feel like you should have the right to fix your own car?
I run a dual-head setup, and many people ask me "why do you have two computers?"
So, you would like the guy to double-guess everything he says, even words like twig, which is really common in South Africa where I live? How do you suppose he should know that you don't know what it means? Perhaps you can link to a post checker which highlights English words that will not be understood in America.
This brings up a point that gets me going: using units instead of descriptive names. People talk about how much something weighs, how tall someone is etc, but somehow when they describe the energy content of food, it's "how many calories does it have?" Have you every asked someone "how many pounds do you have?"
When they talk about disk space or system RAM they talk about "how many gigs does it have?" Let's just bring back descriptive words rather than using units as proxies.
I cannot imagine a single reason for not eating another human when no other food source is available. It's just meat, right?
If wishes were horses...
Is there really strong evidence that copyright has lead to better books (or paintings or music)? It depends on what you mean by better.
It takes lots of time to earn a degree (I've been studying for more than 10 years up to PhD level). I would hope that it would generate some income for several years. Oh, wait -- it can, but I need to continue working.
Everything you can say about "knowledge workers" can be said about Engineers and other technical personnel that solve problems every day for a salary. They plan for their future not by hoping that someone will give them money today for work they did ten years ago, but by putting away money while they are earning it for work they are doing right now.
I sense quite a lot of the OP's resentment is just because someone is using his book without paying for it. One of my colleagues had this issue with notes he distributes to his class electronically (as part of the course). An enterprising student started selling printed copies for a profit, to students that could have printed it out themselves, but felt his price was reasonable. The colleague felt hard done by that someone was profiting from his work without him getting a cut. The sense of ownership that one feel about ones work makes one feel like it should remain in your control forever. Unfortunately this is an untenable situation with stuff like words which can be reproduced easily.
Languages aren't fast -- compilers are efficient. How "fast" a language is perceived to be is purely a function of whether an efficient compiler exists for the particular platform.
I think GP meant this STREAMS, not the ones you are thinking of.
I reckon most of the Matlab frontend is Java. As near as I can tell, only the plotting part uses X at all on OS X. That said, the insane license manager they use for Unix-like platforms (as opposed to a very simple activation code in Windows) has led me to scipy. I have not looked back much, except for the interactive graphs they added to the newer releases.
Actually, Aristarchus was even earlier, and he even figured out that the earth rotates around the sun in addition to the diameter of the Earth, moon and sun and the earth and moon's orbit, with the correct order of the planets that they could observe at the time, all based on trigonometry and observation by unaided eye. Of course, his figures weren't perfectly accurate (notably the distance of the earth to the sun) but the method is sound and works well with more accurate measurements.
Too many numbers to remember? Who remembers numbers anymore?
This is not quite true. There are many well-defined protocols that are absolutely 100% defined down to the last bit. The ones that are really that well defined tend to be things that happen on wires and need to be interpreted by very simple circuits, but GÃdel only really comes into play with proving correctness of statements in more complicated grammars. I could easily tell you "your alphabet consists of 1 and 0, when you transmit a 1, I will make the beep sound, when you transmit a 0 I will cut the been circuit. You may not send different symbols faster than 1Hz".
Of course, the task of completely specifying something as complex as ODF is daunting enough to be practically impossible with modern cost of human time.
The scanners create the field I was talking about. Either they are stationary and have (relatively) high power antennae to reach the tag or they are hand-held and have (relatively) low power antennae which have to be held closer to the tag for it to work. Only in the second case is there a benefit from not having a tag yourself, as you could direct the scanner away from you. In the first case (as in walking through a doorway-style scanner) there is no benefit in not having a tag on your person, you get subjected to the same field strength everyone else does.
The reason the scanners have limited range is because of the way that field strength declines over distance.
The article also mentions that there is a secure channel through which all the biometric data are transmitted in a single packet to make it harder to tamper with them.
The field is around anyway, whether there is a chip or not. It's not like the chip attracts the field or anything. If you're worried about the increase in the background EMF strength in general, that's perfectly reasonable, but blaming RFID is not so much.
Unfortunately, countries don't have the luxury of being able to focus on one thing at a time. The old passports were being forged wholesale, leading to public relations problems. TFA actually mentions that SA citizens will be required to get a visa to enter the UK due to high rates of passport fraud. We can't very well sit back and say 'first, lets get this HIV thing licked, then we'll try to pick up the pieces of our foreign relations'.
I know a lot of researchers who develop on macs and run their simulations on some off-site computer. Just because you happen to be using a BlueGene from IBM to do your number crunching doesn't mean you have to use a Lenovo laptop. Also, the tone of your message implies that you wouldn't use OS X for "serious" work. I would if I had the cash -- xgrid is really cool, but mac servers are a bit dear.
My comment was not really supposed to contradict yours, just expand on the tangentially related (and totally on-topic of the overall slant of this whole thread) subject of language racism -- some languages are shunned on the technical merits, but some are shunned without even a second glance.
The whole scalability of languages thing is a bit of a semantic argument for me, as you could make a case both ways. On one hand you could say the implementation (compiler, interpreter, whatever) is responsible for handling issues with scaling, but on the other hand certain language constructs make it easier for compiler writers to do this and for programmers to "get" what is happening.