The "science is just more different religion" statement doesn't take into account that while science leaves room for the possibility that someone may have gotten something wrong, most mainstream religion follows much more of an Absolute Truth philosophy.
Yes, in formulating scientific theories, we hold true, for instance that 2+2=4. However, the reason for such assumption is a mindset of "these are assumptions we have made in order to create an infrastructre to work within" as opposed to "because the word of God is truth." Specifically, while science leaves the possiblity open that such infrastructure may need to change, religion is much slower (if at all) to welcome such changes.
To those who can afford it, I would imagine it is actually very practical. For instance, a 'companion' that dosnt' need to be walked and is mostly self-caring would be ideal for the elderly who want a pet, but simply can't expend the energy nescesary for a 'real' one. Also, it's internet connectivity could be used to provide an easy, interactive interface to the web (once set up).
Also, I guess if you lived in a place that didn't allow animals, it's an alternative if you can spend the money.
If there was one feature that I would pick for OO.o over Office it's a simple choice for what I need to do. File-->Export to PDF. (or PS). For those of us with professors that prefer electronic documents in "universal" formats it's a really nice feature. Installing third party "printers" which half the time don't even work properly are a waste of time and effort. I have never had OO.o crash on either WindowsXP or Linux.
This isn't the least bit shocking. In fact, I've been waiting to hear more about things like this.
When I worked at a computer retail chain, I had several customers looking for antivirus and firewall products complain about having to buy them stating that the government should more involved in regulating Internet content.
The vast majority of consumers have NO CLUE what the Internet even IS let alone how it works; they treat it isomorphically to cable television where content is distributed by some central authority. (I actually had several customers think that Google, Yahoo, and other serch engines were products of Microsoft).
So, it's not all that surprising to use !Windows for a public information display. In fact I would say it's a better idea... not because linux is really better or anything (well I guess in a way) but more so that when a linux video terminal dies, it usually just goes black, as opposed to throwing up a BSOD. If I were waiting in line at a bank or something, and one of their displays bluescreened, I would loose a bit of respect for them. Maybe that's just me.
You can waste time on *any* system regardless of OS. Gentoo users might spend time tweaking things here and there, but a $OS user might as well spend time playing solitare. While installing Gentoo does take some time, unless you have wierd hardware, you won't spend that much time "fiddling" (and if you do have wierd hardware, expect to be fiddling in ANY distro). Tweaking a Gentoo system is apealing as a time-waster to those that enjoy doing so, not because it's a must; if you are going to waste time, you'll find a way to do it one way or another. As for productivity not being a point of Gentoo, I would say that this really all depends on what you consider productive- I have an optimized system with an interface that's custom fit to the way I work, with tools that make such customizations really easy. In addition, installing software optimized for my system is as easy as 'emerge program' (and I usually do this at night before I go to bed to have it ready for the next day); Portage is, for the most part, compleatly automated - I rarely have to worry about dependancy conflicts or broken packages. Overall I rank Gentoo's productivity pretty high.
While shipping a desktop computer with a one-button mouse is perfectly understandable (it can always be replaced) what I DONT understand is why apple notebook products don't ship with a two-button touch-pad. It would be trivial to bind both buttons to the same action by default as to not confuse existing apple users, but at the same time, allow those who appreciate the efficienty of contextual menus (with out needing keyboard modifiers) enjoy using their machines. Now - while you *can* get an external mouse for your laptop, that's really REALLY pointless when the whole point of getting the notebook in the first place was to be able to carry it around WITHOUT extra stuff.
Does any one see the possibilty of KDE and Gnome merging at some point to provide a general WM solution?
Compared to the differences between say, FluxBox and KDE, the differences between Gnome and KDE (interface wise) are relativly small and both of them provide a similar UI (main menu, taskbar, desktop w/program icons, pannel applets, etc). Personally I can see a lot of benefit taking the best features out of both KDE and Gnome and making a 'complete' WM. Do you agree?
I wish that developers would, instead of noting that such violations exist, correct them.
Now... this is not always possible... for instance, I'm sure that a patent or copyright exists for "displaying multiple pages through the use of a clickable scroll bar" and undoubtedly, more than one OS has this functionality. Perhaps the issue will boil down to not whether or not parts of Linux violate copyrights but rather, whether or not said copyrights are even enforceable in the first place?
I hope that this will eventually lead to needing the GBrowser to read your Gmail. I like gmail only because I can access it with a browser of my choosing and use a notification plugin (thus-far) of my choosing to use it. The reason I don't use Windows isn't just for the whole "windows is evil" thing... I use Linux because I can use my computer with the tools and applications I feel most comfortable using. I can use MY computer MY way. Using windows feels like a constant chore for me, and honistly, makes my eyes hurt. "But you'll loose functionality!" some cry; so what, I would rather not do something at all then have to do it feeling like crap the whole way through.
I have honistly tried and thought about all possible ways this is true... and well, I really just can't think of one. If anything, the OSS movement allows for more innovation because we don't have to worrry about something that might be "bad for the company."
Corporations constantly scrub projects all the time because they don't go along with their corporate image, or there's not a big enough market, or because they're getting under-the-table funding for doing something else.
Corporations arn't about being innovative [rare exceptions]. They're about making money. Innovations come from the people that don't have anything to loose; the people that are willing to take greater risks and try something new.
Sorry Bill, look back on history, more great inventions came from a small group of independant visionaries than from large mega-corps.
No, SCO Lost the Kryptonite lock pattent around the same time as they lost every other piece of IP they have... although, that won't stop them from *claiming* that they own it; which is why they'll sue the OSS community for publishing "SCO IP Security Circumvention"
Back when I had a dialup connection, if I spent 30 minutes downloading a song, and decided I really liked it, it was worth the price to go out and get the CD (it probably wasn't that much more expensive than the phone charges for sevral hours of downloading anyway). Broadband connections challange this now. I could (assuming that the other person who is serving the files has decent upload) download an entire CD in around 10 minutes. This is about 1/3 the time it would take to get in my car, drive to the nearest Best Buy or $music_store and buy the cd, and drive back (and I didn't have to pay for the disk or gas either). Now, i'm not saying that downloading music is entiely right, as dispite the poor royalities the MPAA gives to artists, it's still something; although, I would rather spend the money for a concert that goes slightly more to the artist.
It's my opinion that the entire music-downloading craze is entirely the MPAAs fault for fixing CD prices. I went to Borders yesterday and I could either get a tape for $7.99 or the same thing on a CD for $15.00... Ok, I don't know about anyone else, but I always thought CDs were MUCH less expensive to make. This dosn't make sense to me.
Dosn't your system have some way of requiring your students to register via MAC address or something so that non-university people, even if they *did* get access to the network, couldn't do anything?! Limiting your users just by the coverage of your access points is stupid and provides no real security. Now, a student running a bridge or something that masquerades other users as his/her own is another story...
BTW, how will 802.11G solve the problem... the only difference from 802.11b is it's faster. 802.11G access points are backwards compatible with 802.11B equipment... that's why they exist.
What many people have failed to notice is that IBM provides more to the OSS community than just a corporate image. For the most part, the OSS community little way of inforcing the GPL or for that matter has very little force of it's own (both of these need to change) to protect itself from larger companies (MSFT, SCO, etc). IBM (and it's legal team, money, etc) provide an incubational service to the OSS community by offering a bit of corporate [legal/monitary/etc] power while we build some of our own.
Given that most of CS at CMU expects access to *NIX, it's doubtful that only Windows machines will be used; People will complain WAAAYYY too much about having to remotely connect to Andrew over cygwin or xwin32.
We are?
AFAIK there are the Haberman clusters (mac) and the CFA graphics clusters (mac/pc)..and uh... ?
CMU was mostly UNIX (solaris, irix, etc), and is now moving to the trend of Linux and Windows. When the Haberman cluster was built in Wean Hall, it was a big deal that they got shiny iMACs to replace the unix machines that were there.
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The "science is just more different religion" statement doesn't take into account that while science leaves room for the possibility that someone may have gotten something wrong, most mainstream religion follows much more of an Absolute Truth philosophy. Yes, in formulating scientific theories, we hold true, for instance that 2+2=4. However, the reason for such assumption is a mindset of "these are assumptions we have made in order to create an infrastructre to work within" as opposed to "because the word of God is truth." Specifically, while science leaves the possiblity open that such infrastructure may need to change, religion is much slower (if at all) to welcome such changes.
To those who can afford it, I would imagine it is actually very practical.
For instance, a 'companion' that dosnt' need to be walked and is mostly self-caring would be ideal for the elderly who want a pet, but simply can't expend the energy nescesary for a 'real' one. Also, it's internet connectivity could be used to provide an easy, interactive interface to the web (once set up).
Also, I guess if you lived in a place that didn't allow animals, it's an alternative if you can spend the money.
If there was one feature that I would pick for OO.o over Office it's a simple choice for what I need to do. File-->Export to PDF. (or PS).
For those of us with professors that prefer electronic documents in "universal" formats it's a really nice feature. Installing third party "printers" which half the time don't even work properly are a waste of time and effort. I have never had OO.o crash on either WindowsXP or Linux.
I for one welcome our feline-human hybrid overlords.
This isn't the least bit shocking. In fact, I've been waiting to hear more about things like this. When I worked at a computer retail chain, I had several customers looking for antivirus and firewall products complain about having to buy them stating that the government should more involved in regulating Internet content. The vast majority of consumers have NO CLUE what the Internet even IS let alone how it works; they treat it isomorphically to cable television where content is distributed by some central authority. (I actually had several customers think that Google, Yahoo, and other serch engines were products of Microsoft).
So, it's not all that surprising to use !Windows for a public information display. In fact I would say it's a better idea... not because linux is really better or anything (well I guess in a way) but more so that when a linux video terminal dies, it usually just goes black, as opposed to throwing up a BSOD. If I were waiting in line at a bank or something, and one of their displays bluescreened, I would loose a bit of respect for them. Maybe that's just me.
You can waste time on *any* system regardless of OS. Gentoo users might spend time tweaking things here and there, but a $OS user might as well spend time playing solitare. While installing Gentoo does take some time, unless you have wierd hardware, you won't spend that much time "fiddling" (and if you do have wierd hardware, expect to be fiddling in ANY distro). Tweaking a Gentoo system is apealing as a time-waster to those that enjoy doing so, not because it's a must; if you are going to waste time, you'll find a way to do it one way or another. As for productivity not being a point of Gentoo, I would say that this really all depends on what you consider productive- I have an optimized system with an interface that's custom fit to the way I work, with tools that make such customizations really easy. In addition, installing software optimized for my system is as easy as 'emerge program' (and I usually do this at night before I go to bed to have it ready for the next day); Portage is, for the most part, compleatly automated - I rarely have to worry about dependancy conflicts or broken packages. Overall I rank Gentoo's productivity pretty high.
While shipping a desktop computer with a one-button mouse is perfectly understandable (it can always be replaced) what I DONT understand is why apple notebook products don't ship with a two-button touch-pad. It would be trivial to bind both buttons to the same action by default as to not confuse existing apple users, but at the same time, allow those who appreciate the efficienty of contextual menus (with out needing keyboard modifiers) enjoy using their machines. Now - while you *can* get an external mouse for your laptop, that's really REALLY pointless when the whole point of getting the notebook in the first place was to be able to carry it around WITHOUT extra stuff.
The PIXMA 3000, 4000, and 5000 All replaced that line of printers and offer 4 (C,Y,M,Bk) for the 3000 or 5 (C,Y,M,PBk,Bk) inks for the 4000 and 5000.
Yea... ever since the X303 incident and Anubis's attack, they've had to get more creative.
Does any one see the possibilty of KDE and Gnome merging at some point to provide a general WM solution? Compared to the differences between say, FluxBox and KDE, the differences between Gnome and KDE (interface wise) are relativly small and both of them provide a similar UI (main menu, taskbar, desktop w/program icons, pannel applets, etc). Personally I can see a lot of benefit taking the best features out of both KDE and Gnome and making a 'complete' WM. Do you agree?
:: snickers and wonders how many people will post fettishes in response ::
I wish that developers would, instead of noting that such violations exist, correct them. Now... this is not always possible... for instance, I'm sure that a patent or copyright exists for "displaying multiple pages through the use of a clickable scroll bar" and undoubtedly, more than one OS has this functionality. Perhaps the issue will boil down to not whether or not parts of Linux violate copyrights but rather, whether or not said copyrights are even enforceable in the first place?
The first phrase was ment to read "will NOT eventually lead" .... Famous last words, "should have used the 'preview' button"...
I hope that this will eventually lead to needing the GBrowser to read your Gmail. I like gmail only because I can access it with a browser of my choosing and use a notification plugin (thus-far) of my choosing to use it. The reason I don't use Windows isn't just for the whole "windows is evil" thing... I use Linux because I can use my computer with the tools and applications I feel most comfortable using. I can use MY computer MY way. Using windows feels like a constant chore for me, and honistly, makes my eyes hurt. "But you'll loose functionality!" some cry; so what, I would rather not do something at all then have to do it feeling like crap the whole way through.
Don't you ever read the labels on thermonuclear devices??? They clearly say, "DO NOT LICK".
I have honistly tried and thought about all possible ways this is true... and well, I really just can't think of one. If anything, the OSS movement allows for more innovation because we don't have to worrry about something that might be "bad for the company." Corporations constantly scrub projects all the time because they don't go along with their corporate image, or there's not a big enough market, or because they're getting under-the-table funding for doing something else. Corporations arn't about being innovative [rare exceptions]. They're about making money. Innovations come from the people that don't have anything to loose; the people that are willing to take greater risks and try something new. Sorry Bill, look back on history, more great inventions came from a small group of independant visionaries than from large mega-corps.
No, SCO Lost the Kryptonite lock pattent around the same time as they lost every other piece of IP they have... although, that won't stop them from *claiming* that they own it; which is why they'll sue the OSS community for publishing "SCO IP Security Circumvention"
Why go through the trouble of picking an elevator lock when you can just use a phillips screwdriver to remove the pannel...
Back when I had a dialup connection, if I spent 30 minutes downloading a song, and decided I really liked it, it was worth the price to go out and get the CD (it probably wasn't that much more expensive than the phone charges for sevral hours of downloading anyway). Broadband connections challange this now. I could (assuming that the other person who is serving the files has decent upload) download an entire CD in around 10 minutes. This is about 1/3 the time it would take to get in my car, drive to the nearest Best Buy or $music_store and buy the cd, and drive back (and I didn't have to pay for the disk or gas either). Now, i'm not saying that downloading music is entiely right, as dispite the poor royalities the MPAA gives to artists, it's still something; although, I would rather spend the money for a concert that goes slightly more to the artist. It's my opinion that the entire music-downloading craze is entirely the MPAAs fault for fixing CD prices. I went to Borders yesterday and I could either get a tape for $7.99 or the same thing on a CD for $15.00... Ok, I don't know about anyone else, but I always thought CDs were MUCH less expensive to make. This dosn't make sense to me.
Dosn't your system have some way of requiring your students to register via MAC address or something so that non-university people, even if they *did* get access to the network, couldn't do anything?! Limiting your users just by the coverage of your access points is stupid and provides no real security. Now, a student running a bridge or something that masquerades other users as his/her own is another story... BTW, how will 802.11G solve the problem... the only difference from 802.11b is it's faster. 802.11G access points are backwards compatible with 802.11B equipment... that's why they exist.
What many people have failed to notice is that IBM provides more to the OSS community than just a corporate image. For the most part, the OSS community little way of inforcing the GPL or for that matter has very little force of it's own (both of these need to change) to protect itself from larger companies (MSFT, SCO, etc). IBM (and it's legal team, money, etc) provide an incubational service to the OSS community by offering a bit of corporate [legal/monitary/etc] power while we build some of our own.
Given that most of CS at CMU expects access to *NIX, it's doubtful that only Windows machines will be used; People will complain WAAAYYY too much about having to remotely connect to Andrew over cygwin or xwin32.
We are? AFAIK there are the Haberman clusters (mac) and the CFA graphics clusters (mac/pc)..and uh... ? CMU was mostly UNIX (solaris, irix, etc), and is now moving to the trend of Linux and Windows. When the Haberman cluster was built in Wean Hall, it was a big deal that they got shiny iMACs to replace the unix machines that were there.
;-) Come to our meetings. Every Monday at 4:30 PM in Margaret Morrison A14