The creators of C/Plan 9 designed a new language, and decided to call it 'Aleph', the first letter of most Semitic alphabets. So... we don't know whether they intended to use the standard alphabet or 'B, C, P, L' C++ sidestepped this problem.
Americans today choose among more options in more parts of life than has ever been possible before. To an extent, the opportunity to choose enhances our lives. It is only logical to think that if some choice is good, more is better; people who care about having infinite options will benefit from them, and those who do not can always just ignore the 273 versions of cereal they have never tried. Yet recent research strongly suggests that, psychologically, this assumption is wrong. Although some choice is undoubtedly better than none, more is not always better than less.
There was a/. article about it recently.
Anyway: Too little choice is depressing; too much choice is depressing. There is a sweetspot where positive emotions peaks, but there are no concrete numbers.
And, consider this: The toaster, the microwave, the fridge: They all have very specific, well defined purposes. The computer, on the other hand, can do so many things. I guess this is why Microsoft is so adamant in pushing task based interfaces: on microwave ovens, the most multipurpose machine I can think of at the moment, there are several buttons which clearly indicate what task will be performed if pressed.
I wonder, how well all-in-one appliances actually sell. Because computers are like all-in-one devices: combining a typewriter, TV, calculator, radio, etc. into one device.
Call be crazy, but why can't they use Pango? It is platform independent, graphics-system agnostic -- the only problem I can forsee is (a) it uses glib (b) it seems to only support Xft, X11 core and fontconfig.
Well, now that I think of it, it is because Qt has to be a clean room implementation... But I don't see anything wrong using Pango (as an external library, like FreeType) on systems where it is available.
Re:New and Elegant "foreach" ?
on
A Taste of Qt 4
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps this is because, Lisp, unlike so many other languages, has only one (effectively, anyway) syntactic construct, the list?
Since the distinction between built-in and non-built-in functions does not exist, 'extension' of the language is trivial. (I use 'extension' a bit liberally here.)
On an equal temprament scale (every tone is precisely 2^(1/12) times the frequency of the previous semitone), 60Hz would be closer to B-semiflat, and 50Hz would be closer to G-semisharp. (Interesting note: G is approximately 49Hz)
Would you rather techs adapt to the way users think and produce a wide array of single-use appliances -- Excel in a box, Word in a box, etc.?
People think of the computer as a simple tool. It isn't, and probably never will be. A computer is flexible -- with flexibility comes choice, and with choice comes complexity.
If users want computers to be like appliances and just work, then they should have single-use specialised boxes. And if we do that, they'll say they want a single box which does everything, because they don't want many boxes cluttering their desk. And when we give them that, they'll say it is too difficult to use. Many times, users think too shallow, and take for granted what they have.
If we were forcing everyone to think the way we do, the world might be a better place -- everybody would learn rather than presume. Everyone will no longer think of ignorance as cool. Granted, tolerance for stupidity will probably plummet, but I think we can live with that.
You say it like a bad thing. With Open Source, there will always be archived versions of the software for which backward compatibility has been broken. In some cases, there will even be a fork.
Backwards compatibility can be a major obstacle to improvement. Let's say, you unwisely used a 32-bit unsigned integer to denote the number of records in a database table. Then, your biggest client wants to do a global census. They collect all the data, and start input. Then, all the records dissappear when the counter overflows at record 4,294,967,296. You fix the problem by changing it to a 64-bit counter... but now compatibility is broken with older versions.
These are hardly the inner workings. The inner workings would be the source code itself. Nobody is asking you to read and modify the source code.
As for dependencies, they are good, generally speaking, because they cut down on reinventing-the-wheel (write your own) and duplication (include external libraries/sources). It may be difficult, but there are benefits. If you really don't want to deal with this, use a package management system. (Fink for OS X, Darwin Ports, iInstaller (or something like that))
The computer is not a tool. The computer is infrastructure. The computer should not be thought of as a tool, much less a mere simple tool.
The computer is the foundation on which other tools do their work.
If people want computers that just work, they might have to give up flexibility for specialisation. Tools that do one thing well are generally simple and intuitive.
The computer is not a tool. It is not a single-function tool. It is not a multi-function tool. It is infrastructure for programs like electricity to appliances.
A user who just wants to do their work but is confronted with an undecipherable tool has always had two options: (a) learn the tool (b) find another tool
I'm quite certain that everybody who believes that Apple/Microsoft software is more intuitive has opted for (a) in the past and are now trying to use a different tool but are opting for (b).
If it takes place on a reasonably public forum, the expectations of privacy should not be the same as those for a private conversation. Therefore, open-access chatrooms/IRC channels should not be included under this law.
If this was a copyright issue, I'd invoke fair use, but it isn't, so I can't. Specifically, I am not publishing these logs, and the person I was conversing with was already making the information available to me, so I fail to see where privacy comes in.
I think that this law should only apply to those who are not visible participants in the conversation, i.e. man-in-the-middle wiretappers. (Lurkers are visible, and thus exempt); and for visible participants, the law should only forbid publication the logs.
Countries that speak Scandinavian languages: * Denmark * Norway * Sweden * Iceland (Icelandic not mutually intelligable with the above) * Finland (Finnish is not related to any of the above, Swedish is an 'official' language)
Countries that are on the Scandinavian penisula: * Norway * Sweden
Countries that agree that the others and themselves are Scandinavian: * Norway * Sweden * Denmark
What Germans think of Scandinavia: * Norway * Sweden * Finland
OS X Panther + Keynote + iLife + Office/Mac 2004 = $129 + $99 + $49 + $399.95 = $672.95
System Management : Finder Browsing : Safari Document Management : ?? (Windows doesn't have this either... yet) Spreadsheets : Excel Presentation Data Production : Keynote, PowerPoint Basic Movie Editing : iMovie XML integration : ???!!! (Show me where this is in Windows.)
Slashdot Mirror
I call my new operating system \u7985. It is precisely one character, but it says a lot!
(Also, hats off to anyone who can convice slashdot.org to enable HTML entities in such a way that page-widening posts still don't work)
The creators of C/Plan 9 designed a new language, and decided to call it 'Aleph', the first letter of most Semitic alphabets. So... we don't know whether they intended to use the standard alphabet or 'B, C, P, L' C++ sidestepped this problem.
Maybe they should have called it C+=2.
There was a
Anyway: Too little choice is depressing; too much choice is depressing. There is a sweetspot where positive emotions peaks, but there are no concrete numbers.
And, consider this: The toaster, the microwave, the fridge: They all have very specific, well defined purposes. The computer, on the other hand, can do so many things. I guess this is why Microsoft is so adamant in pushing task based interfaces: on microwave ovens, the most multipurpose machine I can think of at the moment, there are several buttons which clearly indicate what task will be performed if pressed.
I wonder, how well all-in-one appliances actually sell. Because computers are like all-in-one devices: combining a typewriter, TV, calculator, radio, etc. into one device.
Call be crazy, but why can't they use Pango? It is platform independent, graphics-system agnostic -- the only problem I can forsee is (a) it uses glib (b) it seems to only support Xft, X11 core and fontconfig.
Well, now that I think of it, it is because Qt has to be a clean room implementation... But I don't see anything wrong using Pango (as an external library, like FreeType) on systems where it is available.
Perhaps this is because, Lisp, unlike so many other languages, has only one (effectively, anyway) syntactic construct, the list?
Since the distinction between built-in and non-built-in functions does not exist, 'extension' of the language is trivial. (I use 'extension' a bit liberally here.)
They are being used to 'enhance' and 'clean up' the scanned frames.
There might be problems:
(1) It doesn't support GNU extensions
(2) It doesn't support as much POSIX as Cygwin/MinGW
(3) It has different assembler syntax
and
(0) RMS will criticise you for using non-free software when you could have used an already existing free software replacement.
IBM owns the PowerPC architecture. If anything, they'll claim it is #1.
DMCA by proxy? Sounds plausible, but probably not true.
Maybe they'll try to take it down by showing that some component or other of the hosting site is within DMCA jurisdiction.
In (3b) is 3 taken from the last digit? Where does 9 come from?
On an equal temprament scale (every tone is precisely 2^(1/12) times the frequency of the previous semitone), 60Hz would be closer to B-semiflat, and 50Hz would be closer to G-semisharp. (Interesting note: G is approximately 49Hz)
The AmEx joke... is from a usenet post... from... 1991.
This is like digging up skeletons.
Would you rather techs adapt to the way users think and produce a wide array of single-use appliances -- Excel in a box, Word in a box, etc.?
People think of the computer as a simple tool. It isn't, and probably never will be. A computer is flexible -- with flexibility comes choice, and with choice comes complexity.
If users want computers to be like appliances and just work, then they should have single-use specialised boxes. And if we do that, they'll say they want a single box which does everything, because they don't want many boxes cluttering their desk. And when we give them that, they'll say it is too difficult to use. Many times, users think too shallow, and take for granted what they have.
If we were forcing everyone to think the way we do, the world might be a better place -- everybody would learn rather than presume. Everyone will no longer think of ignorance as cool. Granted, tolerance for stupidity will probably plummet, but I think we can live with that.
You say it like a bad thing. With Open Source, there will always be archived versions of the software for which backward compatibility has been broken. In some cases, there will even be a fork.
Backwards compatibility can be a major obstacle to improvement. Let's say, you unwisely used a 32-bit unsigned integer to denote the number of records in a database table. Then, your biggest client wants to do a global census. They collect all the data, and start input. Then, all the records dissappear when the counter overflows at record 4,294,967,296. You fix the problem by changing it to a 64-bit counter... but now compatibility is broken with older versions.
There are better examples, I'm sure.
These are hardly the inner workings. The inner workings would be the source code itself. Nobody is asking you to read and modify the source code.
As for dependencies, they are good, generally speaking, because they cut down on reinventing-the-wheel (write your own) and duplication (include external libraries/sources). It may be difficult, but there are benefits. If you really don't want to deal with this, use a package management system. (Fink for OS X, Darwin Ports, iInstaller (or something like that))
Then the users must learn:
The computer is not a tool. The computer is infrastructure. The computer should not be thought of as a tool, much less a mere simple tool.
The computer is the foundation on which other tools do their work.
If people want computers that just work, they might have to give up flexibility for specialisation. Tools that do one thing well are generally simple and intuitive.
The computer is not a tool. It is not a single-function tool. It is not a multi-function tool. It is infrastructure for programs like electricity to appliances.
A user who just wants to do their work but is confronted with an undecipherable tool has always had two options:
(a) learn the tool
(b) find another tool
I'm quite certain that everybody who believes that Apple/Microsoft software is more intuitive has opted for (a) in the past and are now trying to use a different tool but are opting for (b).
If it takes place on a reasonably public forum, the expectations of privacy should not be the same as those for a private conversation. Therefore, open-access chatrooms/IRC channels should not be included under this law.
If this was a copyright issue, I'd invoke fair use, but it isn't, so I can't. Specifically, I am not publishing these logs, and the person I was conversing with was already making the information available to me, so I fail to see where privacy comes in.
I think that this law should only apply to those who are not visible participants in the conversation, i.e. man-in-the-middle wiretappers. (Lurkers are visible, and thus exempt); and for visible participants, the law should only forbid publication the logs.
Countries that speak Scandinavian languages:
* Denmark
* Norway
* Sweden
* Iceland (Icelandic not mutually intelligable with the above)
* Finland (Finnish is not related to any of the above, Swedish is an 'official' language)
Countries that are on the Scandinavian penisula:
* Norway
* Sweden
Countries that agree that the others and themselves are Scandinavian:
* Norway
* Sweden
* Denmark
What Germans think of Scandinavia:
* Norway
* Sweden
* Finland
Wikipedia article
P.S. Linus Torvalds is a Swedish-speaking Finn.
Royalties are not always fixed-percentage ratios of total revenue...
If I were Spyglass, I'd probably have asked for $0.01 or 1% of the revenue from each unit sold/released/downloaded/acquired, whichever is higher.
You're forgetting another 1/2 billion to Europe.
And destroy the market for Microsoft/Connectix Virtual PC? I don't think so.
Duh. If you don't look for it, how can you find it!
Mmm...
OS X Panther + Keynote + iLife + Office/Mac 2004 = $129 + $99 + $49 + $399.95 = $672.95
System Management : Finder
Browsing : Safari
Document Management : ?? (Windows doesn't have this either... yet)
Spreadsheets : Excel
Presentation Data Production : Keynote, PowerPoint
Basic Movie Editing : iMovie
XML integration : ???!!! (Show me where this is in Windows.)
Haha, only serious!
I believe this might have been true if there was more heterogenousity... The very first Internet Worm ran on a variety of OSes on VAX.