The genetic algorithms are based on it and it is commonly used by life to create artifacts of lasting value!
Oh well, I do know of it but I didn't pick that example because of certain extremely persistent entry of very negative lasting value, vandalising the biosphere uncontrollably and pretty much disproving the point.
Genetic algorithms are either "creative" in nature - in which case the value of their product is entirely subjective - or they are analytical, in which case a set of concrete criteria and/or metrics for success must exist before the system can even be written.
Or anything inbetween, where some rough metrics of "better" results exists and the product is considered successful (positive value) if it fulfills task at hand. The metrics can be very weak, loose and poor quality to yield significant positive results given enough time and resources.
Wikipedia provides a set of rules of a "good article" (treated more as guidelines than laws), general ideas of what is considered good, and what bad. Citing reliable sources, easy to read format, neutral point of view etc etc. None of them assures good article but they filter off many of bad ones. This is the metric.
Now any article can be changed at random. This is said chaos. Any change can be good or bad. But entries that are against the rules are less likely to stay up or be made, entries that follow the rules (especially reliable sources) are more likely to stay. As effect, the quality improves, as the chaotic changes are roughly filtered, "good" ones are more likely than "bad" ones. Genetic algorithms besides mutation include copying and exchange of parts of the gene, but the random mutation and loose quality-based survivor selection work about the same.
1. The Wikipedia is opaque and encourages recklessness
I saw a theory that claimed Wikipedia quality will keep improving if number of good entries is higher than number of bad entries. But there's more to that, wikipedia provides tools for easy reversal of bad entries, meaning the process of entering and keeping good info is way easier. Recklessness is a sign of immaturity. Wikipedia enables it but quite efficiently discourages it.
2. The Wikipedia is anarchic, not democratic
Wikipedia is based on weighted averaging. Many opinions are contributed, most valuable ones float up and the articles are made to reflect neutral - average - point of view. "Young" articles are far from it. As they mature, they near the high standards.
> It espouses two misconceptions: (a) That chaos can and does lead to the generation of artifacts with lasting value
Did you ever hear of genetic algorithms? They are based exactly on this "misconception" and are commonly used in technology to correctly solve problems and create artifacts of lasting value.
> and (b) That knowledge is an emergent, mass phenomenon.
Knowledge is distributed all over the society. Unequally, but with correct approach separating grain from chaff is possible.
> But The Wikipedia is not conducive to the unfettered exchange of information and opinion that is a prerequisite to both (a) and (b).
This is a misconception. - uncontrolled chaos can't be productive, it's restrains - probabilistic filters like random visits of moderators or a quality function determining the chance for a gene to multiply which produces (a), and knowledge (or, for that matter stupidity) being distributed unequally, needs to be filtered to be of any value.
> 3. The Might is Right Editorial Principle
Training, skill and experience lead to advancement. That's how whole uncorrupted world works. It's not a perfect model but it's about the best we have.
> In the Wikipedia planet, authority is a function of the number of edits, no matter how frivolous. The more aggressive (even violent) a member is; the more prone to flame, bully, and harass; the more inclined to form coalitions with like-minded trolls; the less of a life he or she has outside the Wikipedia, the more they are likely to end up being administrators.
Proven wrong by self-example.
> Wikipedia is misrepresented as an open source endeavor. Nothing can be further from the truth. Open source efforts, such as Linux, involve a group of last-instance decision-makers that coordinate, vet, and cull the flow of suggestions, improvements, criticism, and offers from the public. Open source communities are hierarchical, not stochastic.
Everyone can contribute, but most experienced members of the project control the contributions. Same here. The difference is that everyone has write access to the CVS tree. It's the idea of Open Source moved further, deeper, putting more trust in contributors, and depending on them more, as opposed to some Open Source projects that are so only by name, and the only way to have something contributed to the code is to create your own fork.
> Moreover, it is far easier to evaluate the quality of a given snippet of software code than it is to judge the truth-content of an edit to an article, especially if it deals with "soft" and "fuzzy" topics, which involve the weighing of opinions and the well-informed exercise of value judgments.
That's why strict approach of half-open source software is not applicable here. The access MUST be opened fully.
4. Wikipedia is against real knowledge
Wikipedia is against "original research". No problems referring to your own peer-reviewed paper as a source for your article, but if as an "expert" you "contribute" giving no sources, exactly thanks to the wikipedia opaqueness it's impossible to tell whether you're really an expert. You must either use reputation of actually being knowledgable, or outside credentials - reliable sources.
but you will get 1-3 rare cards in your deck at best, and you won't stand a chance against a guy with hand-picked deck who spent $3000 on building it purchasing single rare cards on eBay or such for $100+/piece. You can play against your friends who spend the same as you, but pretty soon the differences start showing through: those who spend more, win more often. And either you drop the insanity altogether or race of arms begins, he got card X from booster pack and will own your deck, so you buy 3 cards Y which will counteract against it. It's all fun and pretty as long as your aim is fun gameplay, not winning.
Why MTG sucks? Because the one with most money wins.
You can build an uber deck and pwn everyone with a common deck. You can build unbeatable machines. Some rules have been adjusted to prevent heavy abuse but... I got a taste of this playing the computer version of MTG with older ruleset. A deck consisting of LOTS of black lotuses (now forbidden), +3 mana), some gravedigging cards costing less mana to restore used cards than the black lotuses produce (so you have a perpeetum mobile, produce mana over and over), then more cards for pulling cards from library to hand (never run out of them) and finally a few that deal immediate damage to the enemy proportional to mana used.
Such deck would cost some $2000 or so.
So the gameplay looks like this: I use up all the black lotuses producing lots of mana. Dig more cards from library, some more from graveyard, then keep producing mana. Then in one or two blasts (two in case the enemy drew some "reflect" instant, one if I know he doesn't have any) I kill the enemy. In one round. Sometimes just for fun hitting for 60 damage. They don't get to use anything other than an interrupt if any.
Now if someone designs similar InstaGib deck, what fun is playing it?
maybe it's frustration with too hard puzzles, maybe other reasons... I recently discovered Siberia and I must say it's not only the most climatic hame I have played, it's overall best...
Gfx: 6/19 pretty but static. Sound: 7/10 very nice music, not much of it. Gameplay: 5/10 at times a bit frustrating or boring. Mood: 30/10 OMFG THIS STORY IS INCREDIBLE!!! Final score: 12/10:)
Therefore if something is said by a person with unreputable character, it should be disregarded. 2+2=4 should be banned from use in maths. If Hitler said 2+2=4, it must be wrong and evil!
Yes, it is. Add some 4-5 lines to xorg.conf or XF86Config. Quite easy if you know how. If you don't, it's about 1 hour of googling. There's NO GUI tool to add them.
Yes, don't do it the hard way - you might learn something.
I thought so too, for good 5 years when I was supporting Linux without any doubts. Then there came several harder weeks, when I just had to get my job done quickly and efficiently. And as different problems started popping up, I would spend 5-6 hours a time seeking a solution, fixing them, getting no actual work done. Sure I was learning a lot of new things, but things at hand were delayed.
Now typing this from WinXP. Because the Ubuntu I have installed has several usablity problems I just cannot get myself to solve, to dig deep enough in config files and docs, to spend another 2 days or so reconfiguring the system to get it to work like -I- want it, to learn the keyboard shortcuts to all the essentials etc. First, that's 2 days when I'm not doing things I want to do, but ones I'm forced to do. Second, in 3-4 years another desktop manager will come, or the one I'm using will get "updated" so much that I'll drop it, and all I learn will become useless again.
I've been using AfterStep on Linux for 5 years or so, it was cool, comfortable, very customizable and above all, ultra-fast. After some time, the project "maturing" added lots of hard-to-disable clutter (comfort gone), became rather slow (and my style of usage required it to be ultra-fast!) and stability from acceptable went to poor. About a week of exploring and intense learning of the configsm customizablity and such, becoming an expert of the desktop manager, went straight to hell when I decided enough is enough and simply dropped it. With Afterstep 2.x it died for me. I haven't found a desktop manager I'd like since then, and I tried really lots.
Primary market of OS X: Graphicians. Photoshop support aside, even assuming GIMP lives up to the expectations, there is no Linux distro that would support a digitizer tablet out of the box without need to manually edit xorg.conf or XF86Config.
The way we played, there were no rules outside the banker. Pickpocketing, bribes, free trade, all tricks allowed. Shuffle that house two fields away onto your area and claim it's yours, or put the dice down, 6-up and claim you just threw them. Bring your own monopoly money from home. Nobody got desperate enough to trade the in-game cash for real money, but that would be perfectly legal too. The "dirty" version of the game was fun. Electronics will most likely kill this kind of gameplay.
Space Shuttles MUST land horizontally. Soyuz and such MUST land vertically. And the summary says Blue Origin will have VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) capability , which might suggest it's something like an option, extra, non-default.
Soyuz for example gets launched vertically and lands vertically (on a parachute). That's not what is usually meant by VTOL but certainly meets the definition. What about that craft? Launch will almost certainly be vertical, landing on a landing strip is much harder than a splashdown or such. So will it be a cool "all-terrain space plane" or just a vanilla space rocket?
But getting any program to run using GTK requires several hours of digging through tutorials. Drawing a 2D/3D plot even if you have access just to a single "put pixel" function, is easy. Getting from opening the C editor to first pixel correctly drawn a'la hello world in your program is the trick - using GTK the first time you do it is pure hell, if changing current drawing color consists of three lines of obscure invocations. Drawingarea is horrible. No idea about this GTK Extra but I seriously doubt if it's much easier.
"when money is tight". The OP was about people for whom money is definitely NOT tight. Agreed, people already understood leadership based on inheritance (monarchy) is not the way to go and replaced it with sharing equal power of decision who's to rule, aka democracy. Now if the same happened to economy...
You're still clueless about point of this discussion. Closed software existed long before MS ever came to be and always suffered from the same problems it suffers now.
> Your "many" developers are a minority.
Numbers? I agree, they are a minority. It's a minority who write drivers or hack the kernel, most of development happens in the userspace. They are a significant margin though, and without developers who do this, the others would hardly be able to do anything. After all, no reason for a program to run in memory if data isn't entered from input device and the result never reaches any output device - and these require drivers. About half of these developers work at companies that produce hardware and have direct access to all required documentation. The other half struggless against the wall of secret, incomplete or inaccurate documentation.
Resulting in software being faulty or simply not existant, badly written, with flaws otherwise easily avoided. And when software is faulty, it IS users' problem.
> My users don't have the source to my applications, yet its not buggy.
But if your application depended on reverse-engineering some other app, it would be buggy. And your users would suffer from these bugs. If you're in the luxury situation of writing software that doesn't depend on any external entities that are underdocummented, then this is no-case, your bugs are your fault and your good practices prevent them. You don't have to be bug-for-bug compatibile with some 80's MS DOS software because it's to drive a machine with 20 years old closed-source firmware nobody understands anymore.
> Closed software does NOT lead to more bugs.
It does. Not in -self- but in software dependant on it. Having the source isn't going to help the user at all, but it will help the developer fix bugs, extend and modify the software correctly. One extra layer of indirection: Closed source doesn't hurt users. Closed source hurts developers. Hurting developers hurts users.
> Your example is pointless. Get a modern sound card.
Typical Microsoft employee response. FYI, I live in Poland. Here hardware is more expensive than in US, salaries are much lower. I don't need a better soundcard, why do I have to upgrade? The new soundcard will not improve the sound performance in -any- way because I use the same 2 speakers, no 5.1, no surround, no extras, and I don't need it. The upgrade would be forced strictly for political reasons... ISA is additional overhead and cost. Writing and shipping extra drivers is too. Releasing API docs that would allow 3rd parties to write these drivers is not.
> But windows users in your position don't have your problem; they never upgraded from win98, and when they do, it will be because they buy a whole new PC.
Win98 reached end of life. No security updates, no new compatibile software, I'd be happy with it if it just remained on the status it was 2 years ago: supported legacy product. But Microsoft doesn't release more win98 security updates, so I'm forced to replace my soundcard. Logical? Not quite, but that's how it works.
> Well good for them. Did I ever say Linux has no place, and sometimes isn't the right choice? No, I didn't.
You implied there are no tasks Linux can do that Windows can't. Somehow I don't see Google running on Windows.
> Windows runs a large portion of ATMs. Are you saying its not stable enough for routing but it is for banking transactions?
ATMs are essentially desktops in fancy cases. No heavy wizardry here. This could be done with 1MHZ 8051 microcontroller, a PC running windows is actually overkill for that task. Plus I've seen BSOD on ATM and played solitaire on an account listing printing kiosk touchscreen. Both "live", connected, crashed naturally, one to BSOD, the other to desktop. Yay for leaving Solitaire on an "embedded device":)
> Let me give you a hint: they don't control the 3rd party vendors that build software for their platform
As I said: Whose fault it is, is irrelevant. Windows is a platform: Microsoft's OS plus various third party software. OS suggests certain politics in 3rd party software, though doesn't enforce it. It's the politics that causes mentioned problems. Licenses. Microsoft doesn't control it per se, it just suggests certain route.
> Users don't care, nor could they do anything, with the source or API.
You're very short-sighted. It is a problem for many developers. Sometimes a serious problem. Resulting in software being faulty or simply not existant, badly written, with flaws otherwise easily avoided. And when software is faulty, it IS users' problem. Example: I have a soundcard I'd like to use instead of crappy AC97 builtin. I have XP and win98 driver. There is no XP driver, at all. The card is supported under Linux but not under XP. Am I screwed? Yes. I keep using the crappy AC97. If there's ever a driver for XP for this card, it will likely be a 3rd party backport from Linux...
> Who's employeed in a job where its ESSENTIAL they have that access?
Google is running on a huge cluster of highly customized Linux, with really strong modifications to the kernel. Try doing this with Windows. People who make use of uCLinux, for embedded devices, mess with the kernel on daily basis. I have yet to see a WAN router running Windows. The kernel is unsuitable for this, and can't be modified. Almost every field that is monopolized by Linux/UNIX platform has this monopoly just because the system can be modified to suit its needs.
> Couldn't you just take some open source Linux stuff...and replace a part of Windows kernel with a part of Linux kernel, thus solving otherwise unsolvable Windows problem? Don't you see a certain paradox here?
> and from your previous posts it very much seems like you're blaming MS.
You're still trying to imply I try to blame something or someone. I'm just proving my original point: There are things Windows can't do and Linux can. You wanted me to point them out. I did. Then you try to trivialize them. Well, Google is not so trivial, is it?
> After all, SOMEBODY made that driver, and they didn't do it by guessing.
The manufacturer. They wrote the API. And I'm locked with a ton of crapware and wizards that prevent me from getting the job done because the hardware can do it but the software tries to be as friendly as a drunken and very horny homosexual.
> I doubt there's a library out there when the ONLY change you need is to change a ++ to a --. > If you can't build the entire piece you need on your own, I doubt you have the skill necessary to tweak the existing code without creating other side effects since you likely don't understand it as proven by the fact you couldn't recreate it on your own.
Commenting a single line out in xpdf allowed me to export a "print-only" PDF manual to ascii so I could reformat it my way and print on 20 pages of A4 instead of 130 A5. Exactly two characters:// blocking out the conditional that prevented copying from protected document. Now please show me the same in Acrobat Reader. You need to write a full PDF interpreter. It worked. And I assure you I couldn't write a PDF reader on my own.
> Soldering is already more difficult than typing on a keyboard.
The original point of the comparison went flying over your head and you're clawing at a completely unrelated difference. Smearing solder senselessly may be harder than banging your hands on the keyboard, but that's not what programming or modding hardware is about.
> So you had rather that the family cycle didn't exist, and the entire world was by now owned by one man?
That's soooo flawed. What about the whole world sharing the wealth where it's needed and not in the 20-80 80-20 proportions?
> Before you can spend $300 billion on R&D you have to get a big enough educated population,
Spend half of that $300 billion on the education. Actually, don't separate education from research, simply make one morph into the other with experience.
The actual code for such a plot, pixel cloud or such, is easy. 5-10 lines, nicely covered elsewhere in the comments already. Most difficulty lies in putting the first pixel on the screen, the right way.
In times of Amiga, it would be like typing "ScreenOpen 320,256,32", then a line defining the palette in equally simple terms, then you can start the drawing stuff. On PCs there are dozens of graphics libraries and each one more difficult to use than another. Microsoft Visual someshit have this pretty easy to make in a crappy way, not too difficult in a bit harder way. SVGALib, currently considered obsolete, is quite friendly, SDL is a bit of a bitch to initialize, though both require you to roll your own gfx function libraries (another 10 lines of code like #define plot(x,y,c) SCREEN[(y)*WIDTH+(x)]=(c) ). Stay far away from QT, GTK and alikes. They are a true hell to draw arbitrary stuff. ImageMagick is very nice for generating gfx files, but sucks at displaying stuff. Matlab makes ploting a breese, but that's not really a product you can ship to a customer or deploy in production environment. You could actually take GNUplot sources and plug your piece into them, or use some sockets or scripts to launch GNUplot. Or take one of the ancient languages like Turbo C, Turbo Pascal, Fortran, and write that program in them, it's much easier.
Slashdot Mirror
and the rest is in nearly equal proportions pedophiles seeking kids, kids seeking pedophiles and officers seeking pedophiles.
There are ads on Slashdot? Where?
The genetic algorithms are based on it and it is commonly used by life to create artifacts of lasting value!
Oh well, I do know of it but I didn't pick that example because of certain extremely persistent entry of very negative lasting value, vandalising the biosphere uncontrollably and pretty much disproving the point.
Genetic algorithms are either "creative" in nature - in which case the value of their product is entirely subjective - or they are analytical, in which case a set of concrete criteria and/or metrics for success must exist before the system can even be written.
Or anything inbetween, where some rough metrics of "better" results exists and the product is considered successful (positive value) if it fulfills task at hand. The metrics can be very weak, loose and poor quality to yield significant positive results given enough time and resources.
Wikipedia provides a set of rules of a "good article" (treated more as guidelines than laws), general ideas of what is considered good, and what bad. Citing reliable sources, easy to read format, neutral point of view etc etc. None of them assures good article but they filter off many of bad ones. This is the metric.
Now any article can be changed at random. This is said chaos. Any change can be good or bad. But entries that are against the rules are less likely to stay up or be made, entries that follow the rules (especially reliable sources) are more likely to stay. As effect, the quality improves, as the chaotic changes are roughly filtered, "good" ones are more likely than "bad" ones. Genetic algorithms besides mutation include copying and exchange of parts of the gene, but the random mutation and loose quality-based survivor selection work about the same.
1. The Wikipedia is opaque and encourages recklessness
I saw a theory that claimed Wikipedia quality will keep improving if number of good entries is higher than number of bad entries. But there's more to that, wikipedia provides tools for easy reversal of bad entries, meaning the process of entering and keeping good info is way easier.
Recklessness is a sign of immaturity. Wikipedia enables it but quite efficiently discourages it.
2. The Wikipedia is anarchic, not democratic
Wikipedia is based on weighted averaging. Many opinions are contributed, most valuable ones float up and the articles are made to reflect neutral - average - point of view. "Young" articles are far from it. As they mature, they near the high standards.
> It espouses two misconceptions: (a) That chaos can and does lead to the generation of artifacts with lasting value
Did you ever hear of genetic algorithms? They are based exactly on this "misconception" and are commonly used in technology to correctly solve problems and create artifacts of lasting value.
> and (b) That knowledge is an emergent, mass phenomenon.
Knowledge is distributed all over the society. Unequally, but with correct approach separating grain from chaff is possible.
> But The Wikipedia is not conducive to the unfettered exchange of information and opinion that is a prerequisite to both (a) and (b).
This is a misconception. - uncontrolled chaos can't be productive, it's restrains - probabilistic filters like random visits of moderators or a quality function determining the chance for a gene to multiply which produces (a), and knowledge (or, for that matter stupidity) being distributed unequally, needs to be filtered to be of any value.
> 3. The Might is Right Editorial Principle
Training, skill and experience lead to advancement. That's how whole uncorrupted world works. It's not a perfect model but it's about the best we have.
> In the Wikipedia planet, authority is a function of the number of edits, no matter how frivolous. The more aggressive (even violent) a member is; the more prone to flame, bully, and harass; the more inclined to form coalitions with like-minded trolls; the less of a life he or she has outside the Wikipedia, the more they are likely to end up being administrators.
Proven wrong by self-example.
> Wikipedia is misrepresented as an open source endeavor. Nothing can be further from the truth. Open source efforts, such as Linux, involve a group of last-instance decision-makers that coordinate, vet, and cull the flow of suggestions, improvements, criticism, and offers from the public. Open source communities are hierarchical, not stochastic.
Everyone can contribute, but most experienced members of the project control the contributions. Same here. The difference is that everyone has write access to the CVS tree. It's the idea of Open Source moved further, deeper, putting more trust in contributors, and depending on them more, as opposed to some Open Source projects that are so only by name, and the only way to have something contributed to the code is to create your own fork.
> Moreover, it is far easier to evaluate the quality of a given snippet of software code than it is to judge the truth-content of an edit to an article, especially if it deals with "soft" and "fuzzy" topics, which involve the weighing of opinions and the well-informed exercise of value judgments.
That's why strict approach of half-open source software is not applicable here. The access MUST be opened fully.
4. Wikipedia is against real knowledge
Wikipedia is against "original research". No problems referring to your own peer-reviewed paper as a source for your article, but if as an "expert" you "contribute" giving no sources, exactly thanks to the wikipedia opaqueness it's impossible to tell whether you're really an expert. You must either use reputation of actually being knowledgable, or outside credentials - reliable sources.
>
but you will get 1-3 rare cards in your deck at best, and you won't stand a chance against a guy with hand-picked deck who spent $3000 on building it purchasing single rare cards on eBay or such for $100+/piece. You can play against your friends who spend the same as you, but pretty soon the differences start showing through: those who spend more, win more often. And either you drop the insanity altogether or race of arms begins, he got card X from booster pack and will own your deck, so you buy 3 cards Y which will counteract against it. It's all fun and pretty as long as your aim is fun gameplay, not winning.
switch(vote){ // republicans // democrats
/* Losers */
/* never give more than DEF_LOSERS votes, default 10% */
// otherwise share the dangerous votes evenly between winners.
case 1:
case 2:
party[vote]++;
break;
default:
if( sum_losers < DEF_LOSERS*( party[1] + party[2] + sum_losers ) ){
party[vote]++; sum_losers++;
} else {
if(rand<0.5) {
party[1]++;
} else {
party[2]++;
}
}
}
Why MTG sucks?
Because the one with most money wins.
You can build an uber deck and pwn everyone with a common deck. You can build unbeatable machines. Some rules have been adjusted to prevent heavy abuse but... I got a taste of this playing the computer version of MTG with older ruleset. A deck consisting of LOTS of black lotuses (now forbidden), +3 mana), some gravedigging cards costing less mana to restore used cards than the black lotuses produce (so you have a perpeetum mobile, produce mana over and over), then more cards for pulling cards from library to hand (never run out of them) and finally a few that deal immediate damage to the enemy proportional to mana used.
Such deck would cost some $2000 or so.
So the gameplay looks like this: I use up all the black lotuses producing lots of mana. Dig more cards from library, some more from graveyard, then keep producing mana. Then in one or two blasts (two in case the enemy drew some "reflect" instant, one if I know he doesn't have any) I kill the enemy. In one round. Sometimes just for fun hitting for 60 damage. They don't get to use anything other than an interrupt if any.
Now if someone designs similar InstaGib deck, what fun is playing it?
maybe it's frustration with too hard puzzles, maybe other reasons... I recently discovered Siberia and I must say it's not only the most climatic hame I have played, it's overall best...
:)
Gfx: 6/19 pretty but static.
Sound: 7/10 very nice music, not much of it.
Gameplay: 5/10 at times a bit frustrating or boring.
Mood: 30/10 OMFG THIS STORY IS INCREDIBLE!!!
Final score: 12/10
Therefore if something is said by a person with unreputable character, it should be disregarded. 2+2=4 should be banned from use in maths. If Hitler said 2+2=4, it must be wrong and evil!
Yes, it is. Add some 4-5 lines to xorg.conf or XF86Config. Quite easy if you know how. If you don't, it's about 1 hour of googling. There's NO GUI tool to add them.
Yes, don't do it the hard way - you might learn something.
I thought so too, for good 5 years when I was supporting Linux without any doubts.
Then there came several harder weeks, when I just had to get my job done quickly and efficiently. And as different problems started popping up, I would spend 5-6 hours a time seeking a solution, fixing them, getting no actual work done. Sure I was learning a lot of new things, but things at hand were delayed.
Now typing this from WinXP. Because the Ubuntu I have installed has several usablity problems I just cannot get myself to solve, to dig deep enough in config files and docs, to spend another 2 days or so reconfiguring the system to get it to work like -I- want it, to learn the keyboard shortcuts to all the essentials etc. First, that's 2 days when I'm not doing things I want to do, but ones I'm forced to do. Second, in 3-4 years another desktop manager will come, or the one I'm using will get "updated" so much that I'll drop it, and all I learn will become useless again.
I've been using AfterStep on Linux for 5 years or so, it was cool, comfortable, very customizable and above all, ultra-fast. After some time, the project "maturing" added lots of hard-to-disable clutter (comfort gone), became rather slow (and my style of usage required it to be ultra-fast!) and stability from acceptable went to poor. About a week of exploring and intense learning of the configsm customizablity and such, becoming an expert of the desktop manager, went straight to hell when I decided enough is enough and simply dropped it. With Afterstep 2.x it died for me. I haven't found a desktop manager I'd like since then, and I tried really lots.
Primary market of OS X: Graphicians. Photoshop support aside, even assuming GIMP lives up to the expectations, there is no Linux distro that would support a digitizer tablet out of the box without need to manually edit xorg.conf or XF86Config.
The way we played, there were no rules outside the banker. Pickpocketing, bribes, free trade, all tricks allowed. Shuffle that house two fields away onto your area and claim it's yours, or put the dice down, 6-up and claim you just threw them. Bring your own monopoly money from home. Nobody got desperate enough to trade the in-game cash for real money, but that would be perfectly legal too.
The "dirty" version of the game was fun. Electronics will most likely kill this kind of gameplay.
Trolling or clueless?
The surface is pressure-sensitive. Can be used as a standard 2-button mouse just fine.
I do find it a bit odd that Air Marshalls can't find at least one suspitious-looking person on a flight over the course of a month.
What about 100?
We don't know how high these quotas are.
Space Shuttles MUST land horizontally. Soyuz and such MUST land vertically. And the summary says Blue Origin will have VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) capability , which might suggest it's something like an option, extra, non-default.
Soyuz for example gets launched vertically and lands vertically (on a parachute). That's not what is usually meant by VTOL but certainly meets the definition. What about that craft? Launch will almost certainly be vertical, landing on a landing strip is much harder than a splashdown or such. So will it be a cool "all-terrain space plane" or just a vanilla space rocket?
But getting any program to run using GTK requires several hours of digging through tutorials. Drawing a 2D/3D plot even if you have access just to a single "put pixel" function, is easy. Getting from opening the C editor to first pixel correctly drawn a'la hello world in your program is the trick - using GTK the first time you do it is pure hell, if changing current drawing color consists of three lines of obscure invocations.
c ( $fgcolor );
Drawingarea is horrible. No idea about this GTK Extra but I seriously doubt if it's much easier.
Setting current drawing color in GTK:
$fgcolor = Gtk::Gdk::Color->parse_color( 'white' );
$fgcolor = $drawing_area->window->get_colormap()->color_allo
$drawing_area->window->set_foreground( $fgcolor );
Same in SVGAlib:
$svga->setrgbcolor(255,255,255);
"when money is tight".
The OP was about people for whom money is definitely NOT tight.
Agreed, people already understood leadership based on inheritance (monarchy) is not the way to go and replaced it with sharing equal power of decision who's to rule, aka democracy. Now if the same happened to economy...
>You're still trying to lay blame
:)
You're still clueless about point of this discussion. Closed software existed long before MS ever came to be and always suffered from the same problems it suffers now.
> Your "many" developers are a minority.
Numbers? I agree, they are a minority. It's a minority who write drivers or hack the kernel, most of development happens in the userspace. They are a significant margin though, and without developers who do this, the others would hardly be able to do anything. After all, no reason for a program to run in memory if data isn't entered from input device and the result never reaches any output device - and these require drivers. About half of these developers work at companies that produce hardware and have direct access to all required documentation. The other half struggless against the wall of secret, incomplete or inaccurate documentation.
Resulting in software being faulty or simply not existant, badly written, with flaws otherwise easily avoided. And when software is faulty, it IS users' problem.
> My users don't have the source to my applications, yet its not buggy.
But if your application depended on reverse-engineering some other app, it would be buggy. And your users would suffer from these bugs. If you're in the luxury situation of writing software that doesn't depend on any external entities that are underdocummented, then this is no-case, your bugs are your fault and your good practices prevent them. You don't have to be bug-for-bug compatibile with some 80's MS DOS software because it's to drive a machine with 20 years old closed-source firmware nobody understands anymore.
> Closed software does NOT lead to more bugs.
It does. Not in -self- but in software dependant on it. Having the source isn't going to help the user at all, but it will help the developer fix bugs, extend and modify the software correctly. One extra layer of indirection: Closed source doesn't hurt users. Closed source hurts developers. Hurting developers hurts users.
> Your example is pointless. Get a modern sound card.
Typical Microsoft employee response.
FYI, I live in Poland. Here hardware is more expensive than in US, salaries are much lower. I don't need a better soundcard, why do I have to upgrade? The new soundcard will not improve the sound performance in -any- way because I use the same 2 speakers, no 5.1, no surround, no extras, and I don't need it. The upgrade would be forced strictly for political reasons...
ISA is additional overhead and cost. Writing and shipping extra drivers is too. Releasing API docs that would allow 3rd parties to write these drivers is not.
> But windows users in your position don't have your problem; they never upgraded from win98, and when they do, it will be because they buy a whole new PC.
Win98 reached end of life. No security updates, no new compatibile software, I'd be happy with it if it just remained on the status it was 2 years ago: supported legacy product. But Microsoft doesn't release more win98 security updates, so I'm forced to replace my soundcard. Logical? Not quite, but that's how it works.
> Well good for them. Did I ever say Linux has no place, and sometimes isn't the right choice? No, I didn't.
You implied there are no tasks Linux can do that Windows can't. Somehow I don't see Google running on Windows.
> Windows runs a large portion of ATMs. Are you saying its not stable enough for routing but it is for banking transactions?
ATMs are essentially desktops in fancy cases. No heavy wizardry here. This could be done with 1MHZ 8051 microcontroller, a PC running windows is actually overkill for that task.
Plus I've seen BSOD on ATM and played solitaire on an account listing printing kiosk touchscreen. Both "live", connected, crashed naturally, one to BSOD, the other to desktop. Yay for leaving Solitaire on an "embedded device"
>>Don't you see a certain paradox here?
>Not
> Let me give you a hint: they don't control the 3rd party vendors that build software for their platform
...and replace a part of Windows kernel with a part of Linux kernel, thus solving otherwise unsolvable Windows problem?
// blocking out the conditional that prevented copying from protected document.
As I said: Whose fault it is, is irrelevant. Windows is a platform: Microsoft's OS plus various third party software. OS suggests certain politics in 3rd party software, though doesn't enforce it. It's the politics that causes mentioned problems. Licenses. Microsoft doesn't control it per se, it just suggests certain route.
> Users don't care, nor could they do anything, with the source or API.
You're very short-sighted. It is a problem for many developers. Sometimes a serious problem. Resulting in software being faulty or simply not existant, badly written, with flaws otherwise easily avoided. And when software is faulty, it IS users' problem.
Example: I have a soundcard I'd like to use instead of crappy AC97 builtin. I have XP and win98 driver. There is no XP driver, at all. The card is supported under Linux but not under XP. Am I screwed? Yes. I keep using the crappy AC97. If there's ever a driver for XP for this card, it will likely be a 3rd party backport from Linux...
> Who's employeed in a job where its ESSENTIAL they have that access?
Google is running on a huge cluster of highly customized Linux, with really strong modifications to the kernel. Try doing this with Windows. People who make use of uCLinux, for embedded devices, mess with the kernel on daily basis. I have yet to see a WAN router running Windows. The kernel is unsuitable for this, and can't be modified. Almost every field that is monopolized by Linux/UNIX platform has this monopoly just because the system can be modified to suit its needs.
> Couldn't you just take some open source Linux stuff
Don't you see a certain paradox here?
> and from your previous posts it very much seems like you're blaming MS.
You're still trying to imply I try to blame something or someone. I'm just proving my original point: There are things Windows can't do and Linux can. You wanted me to point them out. I did. Then you try to trivialize them. Well, Google is not so trivial, is it?
> After all, SOMEBODY made that driver, and they didn't do it by guessing.
The manufacturer. They wrote the API. And I'm locked with a ton of crapware and wizards that prevent me from getting the job done because the hardware can do it but the software tries to be as friendly as a drunken and very horny homosexual.
> I doubt there's a library out there when the ONLY change you need is to change a ++ to a --.
> If you can't build the entire piece you need on your own, I doubt you have the skill necessary to tweak the existing code without creating other side effects since you likely don't understand it as proven by the fact you couldn't recreate it on your own.
Commenting a single line out in xpdf allowed me to export a "print-only" PDF manual to ascii so I could reformat it my way and print on 20 pages of A4 instead of 130 A5. Exactly two characters:
Now please show me the same in Acrobat Reader. You need to write a full PDF interpreter.
It worked. And I assure you I couldn't write a PDF reader on my own.
> Soldering is already more difficult than typing on a keyboard.
The original point of the comparison went flying over your head and you're clawing at a completely unrelated difference. Smearing solder senselessly may be harder than banging your hands on the keyboard, but that's not what programming or modding hardware is about.
Meaning it's good if many people are poor because then money have better value then?
Something's wrong about the priorities here.
> So you had rather that the family cycle didn't exist, and the entire world was by now owned by one man?
That's soooo flawed. What about the whole world sharing the wealth where it's needed and not in the 20-80 80-20 proportions?
> Before you can spend $300 billion on R&D you have to get a big enough educated population,
Spend half of that $300 billion on the education. Actually, don't separate education from research, simply make one morph into the other with experience.
The actual code for such a plot, pixel cloud or such, is easy. 5-10 lines, nicely covered elsewhere in the comments already. Most difficulty lies in putting the first pixel on the screen, the right way.
In times of Amiga, it would be like typing "ScreenOpen 320,256,32", then a line defining the palette in equally simple terms, then you can start the drawing stuff. On PCs there are dozens of graphics libraries and each one more difficult to use than another. Microsoft Visual someshit have this pretty easy to make in a crappy way, not too difficult in a bit harder way. SVGALib, currently considered obsolete, is quite friendly, SDL is a bit of a bitch to initialize, though both require you to roll your own gfx function libraries (another 10 lines of code like #define plot(x,y,c) SCREEN[(y)*WIDTH+(x)]=(c) ). Stay far away from QT, GTK and alikes. They are a true hell to draw arbitrary stuff. ImageMagick is very nice for generating gfx files, but sucks at displaying stuff. Matlab makes ploting a breese, but that's not really a product you can ship to a customer or deploy in production environment. You could actually take GNUplot sources and plug your piece into them, or use some sockets or scripts to launch GNUplot. Or take one of the ancient languages like Turbo C, Turbo Pascal, Fortran, and write that program in them, it's much easier.