On the one hand I am beginning to find this development interesting.
On the other hand, we already have a proven stable graphical application protocol. It's called X and it's been around for 30 years. I just don't get it. Why reinvent the wheel?
Let's try and keep this discussion civilized shall we?
There are lots and lots of reasons I -prefer- the X11 way of doing things over anything else. But what I said has very little to do with my preference, and everything with the concept of established standards.
X11 is such a standard. Unless you don't care about portability or network transparency (in its true sense), for example when you're working in an embedded environment, X11 is the standard way to separate the display from the application. The X11 protocol is largely hardware agnostic - the X server handles direct hardware access, and provides client applications an interface to work with. It does not matter if you're working through a UNIX socket on one and the same host, or through a remote network connection, your application will work independently of the actual hardware you're running on. So, an old SGI or SUN workstation could be perfect display host for heavy duty applications because the applications themselves run on a heavy UNIX or Linux host or cluster.
Why not continue using and developing on and for X? It is and remains -the- standard way for UNIX applications to get a graphical user interface. X is also largely platform independent. If I want to run my X server on system A and the applications on system B, it is the X protocol that separates my desktop from my applications. My display is not necessarily directly connected to the computer I run my applications on.
That may go well for empirical data or with math, but as soon as something cannot be explained in absolute terms, things become much more complicated.
But let's look at a concrete example. People with trichromatic vision will perceive grass to be 'green'. Provided there were no lapses in their education and provided that did not suffer physical or psychological trauma that would cause them to do otherwise, they will also call grass 'green'.
A person with dichromatic vision, however, may perceive grass to be 'purple', because his eyes cannot actually distinguish between those two colours. He will still call grass 'green', because that is what he was taught. Perception - or rather in this case a defect in it - literally colours his world view. His brain - in this pasrticular case a conscious effort - modifies that perception by altering his interpretation of the world. He 'knows' grass is green, because everyone in his life has always told him so. The truth, in this case, has become a matter of convention. Had he grown up to be the one person with trichromatic vision in a society of people with dichromatic vision, the circumstances would have been reversed. He would perceive the grass to be 'green', while the rest of the world would perceive it to be 'purple'. He would still call the grass 'purple' though, because in that society, that is the established convention.
Is grass green or purple? Of course it is. It is all in the eye of the beholder, after all.
The objective truth is what remains when the human factor is eliminated. That is impossible, because someone still has to tell it. Even a camera has to be operated, as has the equipment to playback what was recorded. The interesting part is to determine to what extent the human factor can be eliminated and to determine to what extent the recorder and/or editor of the footage have influence over what was recorded and ultimately to what extent the person who operates the machinery to playback the footage has influence over it. And even then, just the acts of measuring and determining those things may also influence that.
In other words, there is no such thing as the objective truth when it comes to matters of perception and how we deal with it. A person who was bullied by people from a certain ethnic background in his youth will always hold a bias against those people, and the other way around (that doesn't make either of it right though, but that's a different story).
I ran a Sun Sparc 2 until 2007. Had it loaded up with 96 MB of memory. I was using it as a DNS and qmail server. It was running fine when I took it down. I just didn't want to support a 16 year old machine.
I still run a 40 year old Linn LP-12 belt-drive turntable. Not because it's "vintage". No. I run it because it's a damn good turntable and you can't buy anything better today without paying $2000 or more.
Not that a brand-new LP12 is less expensive. The entry level model is priced at about $5500 if I'm not mistaken.
I dunno about you, but I'm an atheist because there simply aren't any gods... but an anti-theist because of the way faith and religion makes people behave. Small difference, perhaps, but I wouldn't want people to believe that my objective interpretation of reality is merely a response to the way those pricks behave.
The very fact that you call it your interpretation of realitity makes it subjective by definition (nothing wrong with that by the way).
We are all coloured by our experiences from the past. Our look at life is subjective at the core, because our brain interprets the data coming in through our senses whether we are aware of it or not. The best we can do is to strive for an as objective view of life as we possibly can. But even then our view of life is by definition, not objective, because of that little possessive pronoun preceding 'view of life'.
SecureBoot is nothing more than a modern kind of vendor lock-in, so why support it at all? Haven't the FSS and OSS communities by now gained enough leverage on their own to stimulate the development of software in the direction it should go, namely that essential software, like an OS, a BIOS or a piece of firmware, should be free (in the FSS sense) for use by anyone?
By accepting and even supporting suspicious software and business models such as SecureBoot, aren't the FSS and OSS communities more or less digging their own graves because Microsoft - who admittedly has changed a lot for the better the last few years - owns the very keys their software relies on for proper functioning?
What has this world come to when buzzing objects in people's luggage scares us to the point that entire airports are shutdown?
This only shows that the terrorists have already won. They no longer need to bomb our cities. All they need to do to cause wanton panic and disturb daily life is to put something in someone's bag that vibrates...
Did the specification come complete with grammatical errors?
"Thy computer shalt be blessed with a sound card and speakers. Thou shalt be provided a CD-ROM drive in which to receive silver discs. Thy processor shalt not be completely crap."
That should probably be: "Thy computer shall be blessed with a soundcard and speakers. Thou shalt be provided a CD-ROM drive in which to receive silver discs. Thy processor shall not be complete crap."
It's just funny. The average English speaking individual is nowadays more concerned with split infinitives and stranded prepositions than he or she is with putting the correct verb form with the grammatical person in a sentence.
Split infinitives have been there since before Middle English. Stranded prepositions are found in the entire Germanic speaking realm. They really don't matter. The archaic, but still valid second person singular form of the verb in English does. For ordinary verbs it's the "verb stem" + st, for modal/preterite-present verbs it's the "verb stem" + t.
Just wanted to point it out. I hope I didn't step on anyone toes. If so, I apologize, for that was not my intention.
In my years in secondary school and later on at university the usage of any TI calculator was strongly discouraged, the reason being that it could not even calculate the sine of pi properly. Instead of plain 0, it gave a (infinitessimally) minute number instead...
One of the cornerstones of the whole "free internet" thing is that since ISPs are just conduits, they can't be held responsible for what goes through their "pipes". I would think that the same would apply to individuals who have WLAN bubbles in and around their house, regardless of whether or not they had secured them. Especially, if you have a closed WLAN, however insecure it may be, gaining access to that WLAN without the owner's permission would be equivalent to breaking down the door. In other words: it is breaking and entering. I don't see the inhabitants of a home being held responsible for their home being used as a conduit for drug trafficking while they're away, if there's a lock on the front and back door.
You're a suspect in a serious crime. You're actually innocent, but the evidence is mounting against you and there's little you can do about it or the police is just to stupid to realize that fact.
In comes your case handler (detective, interrogator, mental tormentor, whatever you wish to call it): "Mr. A: you have two options: confess and plead guilty and we'll subtract some years of that sentence or plead innocence and receive the full sentence."
You: "But I'm innocent" Case handler: "Confess your crime and we'll sweep those two years of the table." You: "I am innocent!" Case handler: "All nice and well, but did you know you could shave three years of that sentence by confessing?" You: "I AM INNOCENT" Case handler: "You're still uncooperative. Oh well, we'll add obstruction of justice to our claim." You: *sigh*
In what way is making a suspect confess to a crime he did not commit ever justified? Just because the evidence against him is so overwhelming that he must be guilty? Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty."
By the way, if that person does confess, just to be rid of the pressure, in what way is this different from turture?
You: "I have a confession to make, your Honor" Judge: "And what might that be my good man?" You: "I committed perjury" Judge: "Well I'll be damned. And what did you lie about?" You: "I confessed to this crime, but I did not actually commit it."...
This is a black day for science. This drumhead was obviously meant to find a scapegoat for what happened. Ultimately it falls into the same category as the Chinese astrologer who was sentenced to death by the Emperor for failing to predict the solar eclipse.
It is an affront to science and to humanity in general.
That would imply there is a malice to transfer. I may be a layman, but I cannot seem to find any malice in a guy texting his girlfriend about the wonderful sex he would like to have with her.
Why is it assault at all, if it's a clearcut case of mistaken identity? Does it not make the law by definition 'unjust' and 'unfair'?
If he had kissed his girlfriend as he intended to, he would not have committed assault. Therefore, since his intention was to kill his girlfriend, he cannot have committed assault at all. Anything else would be unjust and unfair.
I can only assume you were being sarcastic here, but just in case you were not:
"It's pretty blatantly obvious why he was convicted. He texted kids saying he wanted sex. Absolutely any other evidence whatsoever is irrelevant, and can be disregarded. Someone somewhere either spouted or thought of the phrase 'Think of the children', so he was strung up by the courts for all to see the horrible pedophile that he obviously is."
Het texted his girlfriend he wanted to have sex with her, in very explicit terms. By accident this text message was sent to everyone on his contact list, including two minors.
The first, in itself, is not a crime. We would probably shrug off the second as a foolish mistake, were it not for the last part where the explicit test message also ended up in the inboxes of two of his (underage) pupils. This last part could only be considered a crime if they had been the intended recipients of the text message. With the information at hand, one could only conclude that he should not have been convicted in the first place and should at worst have been asked to apologize to the people in his contact list, especially the pupils that got these messages by accident, their parents, and his girlfriend.
Instead, this guy was convicted to 18 months in prison (although this sentence was later reduced to a nine months suspended sentence, time served, by the appeals-court) and added to the sexual offender's registry. In other words: his life is over. His chances of ever finding a job are greattly reduced, he will never be allowed to work with children again, you name it. In essence he will become a social pariah.
Why? Because some overzealous lawmaker decided that regardless of intent or the actual circumstances, children must be protected to the extent that innocent people get hurt.
The concept of 'strict liability' is an affront to the concept of 'fair trial'. Its 'victims' have limited to no possibility of legal defense. You are named guilty even if you are in fact only a victim of circumstance. In other words: at best you are guilty until proven innocent, which in turn is an affront to the concept of 'innicent until proven guilty'. The sooner these laws are rescinded and replaced by something that provides a fair trial according to criminal law, the better. In any jurisdiction or civilized nation.
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I still prefer XFS ;-).
On the one hand I am beginning to find this development interesting.
On the other hand, we already have a proven stable graphical application protocol. It's called X and it's been around for 30 years. I just don't get it. Why reinvent the wheel?
Let's try and keep this discussion civilized shall we?
There are lots and lots of reasons I -prefer- the X11 way of doing things over anything else. But what I said has very little to do with my preference, and everything with the concept of established standards.
X11 is such a standard. Unless you don't care about portability or network transparency (in its true sense), for example when you're working in an embedded environment, X11 is the standard way to separate the display from the application. The X11 protocol is largely hardware agnostic - the X server handles direct hardware access, and provides client applications an interface to work with. It does not matter if you're working through a UNIX socket on one and the same host, or through a remote network connection, your application will work independently of the actual hardware you're running on. So, an old SGI or SUN workstation could be perfect display host for heavy duty applications because the applications themselves run on a heavy UNIX or Linux host or cluster.
Why not continue using and developing on and for X? It is and remains -the- standard way for UNIX applications to get a graphical user interface. X is also largely platform independent. If I want to run my X server on system A and the applications on system B, it is the X protocol that separates my desktop from my applications. My display is not necessarily directly connected to the computer I run my applications on.
Plea bargains are a perversion of justice anyway and should be abolished, along with other perversions of justice, such as jury trials.
Yes you can.
That may go well for empirical data or with math, but as soon as something cannot be explained in absolute terms, things become much more complicated.
But let's look at a concrete example. People with trichromatic vision will perceive grass to be 'green'. Provided there were no lapses in their education and provided that did not suffer physical or psychological trauma that would cause them to do otherwise, they will also call grass 'green'.
A person with dichromatic vision, however, may perceive grass to be 'purple', because his eyes cannot actually distinguish between those two colours. He will still call grass 'green', because that is what he was taught. Perception - or rather in this case a defect in it - literally colours his world view. His brain - in this pasrticular case a conscious effort - modifies that perception by altering his interpretation of the world. He 'knows' grass is green, because everyone in his life has always told him so. The truth, in this case, has become a matter of convention. Had he grown up to be the one person with trichromatic vision in a society of people with dichromatic vision, the circumstances would have been reversed. He would perceive the grass to be 'green', while the rest of the world would perceive it to be 'purple'. He would still call the grass 'purple' though, because in that society, that is the established convention.
Is grass green or purple? Of course it is. It is all in the eye of the beholder, after all.
The objective truth is what remains when the human factor is eliminated. That is impossible, because someone still has to tell it. Even a camera has to be operated, as has the equipment to playback what was recorded. The interesting part is to determine to what extent the human factor can be eliminated and to determine to what extent the recorder and/or editor of the footage have influence over what was recorded and ultimately to what extent the person who operates the machinery to playback the footage has influence over it. And even then, just the acts of measuring and determining those things may also influence that.
In other words, there is no such thing as the objective truth when it comes to matters of perception and how we deal with it. A person who was bullied by people from a certain ethnic background in his youth will always hold a bias against those people, and the other way around (that doesn't make either of it right though, but that's a different story).
I ran a Sun Sparc 2 until 2007. Had it loaded up with 96 MB of memory. I was using it as a DNS and qmail server. It was running fine when I took it down. I just didn't want to support a 16 year old machine.
I still run a 40 year old Linn LP-12 belt-drive turntable. Not because it's "vintage". No. I run it because it's a damn good turntable and you can't buy anything better today without paying $2000 or more.
Not that a brand-new LP12 is less expensive. The entry level model is priced at about $5500 if I'm not mistaken.
The 112th pope was Boniface VI.
Whoever is elected to succeed pope Benedict XI is going to be the 266th pope.
I dunno about you, but I'm an atheist because there simply aren't any gods... but an anti-theist because of the way faith and religion makes people behave. Small difference, perhaps, but I wouldn't want people to believe that my objective interpretation of reality is merely a response to the way those pricks behave.
The very fact that you call it your interpretation of realitity makes it subjective by definition (nothing wrong with that by the way).
We are all coloured by our experiences from the past. Our look at life is subjective at the core, because our brain interprets the data coming in through our senses whether we are aware of it or not. The best we can do is to strive for an as objective view of life as we possibly can. But even then our view of life is by definition, not objective, because of that little possessive pronoun preceding 'view of life'.
SecureBoot is nothing more than a modern kind of vendor lock-in, so why support it at all? Haven't the FSS and OSS communities by now gained enough leverage on their own to stimulate the development of software in the direction it should go, namely that essential software, like an OS, a BIOS or a piece of firmware, should be free (in the FSS sense) for use by anyone?
By accepting and even supporting suspicious software and business models such as SecureBoot, aren't the FSS and OSS communities more or less digging their own graves because Microsoft - who admittedly has changed a lot for the better the last few years - owns the very keys their software relies on for proper functioning?
What has this world come to when buzzing objects in people's luggage scares us to the point that entire airports are shutdown?
This only shows that the terrorists have already won. They no longer need to bomb our cities. All they need to do to cause wanton panic and disturb daily life is to put something in someone's bag that vibrates...
The last phrase should say:
"Just wanted to point it out. I hope I didn't step on anyone's toes. If so, I apologize, for that was not my intention."
Did the specification come complete with grammatical errors?
"Thy computer shalt be blessed with a sound card and speakers. Thou shalt be provided a CD-ROM drive in which to receive silver discs. Thy processor shalt not be completely crap."
That should probably be: "Thy computer shall be blessed with a soundcard and speakers. Thou shalt be provided a CD-ROM drive in which to receive silver discs. Thy processor shall not be complete crap."
It's just funny. The average English speaking individual is nowadays more concerned with split infinitives and stranded prepositions than he or she is with putting the correct verb form with the grammatical person in a sentence.
Split infinitives have been there since before Middle English. Stranded prepositions are found in the entire Germanic speaking realm. They really don't matter. The archaic, but still valid second person singular form of the verb in English does. For ordinary verbs it's the "verb stem" + st, for modal/preterite-present verbs it's the "verb stem" + t.
Just wanted to point it out. I hope I didn't step on anyone toes. If so, I apologize, for that was not my intention.
It reminds me of an old Sid Meier game (SMAC):
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. "
In my years in secondary school and later on at university the usage of any TI calculator was strongly discouraged, the reason being that it could not even calculate the sine of pi properly. Instead of plain 0, it gave a (infinitessimally) minute number instead...
I have been telling people that for years.
Hell, you could probably bring them both if you wanted to. It would give them a nice leverage over you :P.
That is just sad...
One of the cornerstones of the whole "free internet" thing is that since ISPs are just conduits, they can't be held responsible for what goes through their "pipes". I would think that the same would apply to individuals who have WLAN bubbles in and around their house, regardless of whether or not they had secured them. Especially, if you have a closed WLAN, however insecure it may be, gaining access to that WLAN without the owner's permission would be equivalent to breaking down the door. In other words: it is breaking and entering. I don't see the inhabitants of a home being held responsible for their home being used as a conduit for drug trafficking while they're away, if there's a lock on the front and back door.
Plea bargains are a perversion of justice anyway.
You're a suspect in a serious crime. You're actually innocent, but the evidence is mounting against you and there's little you can do about it or the police is just to stupid to realize that fact.
In comes your case handler (detective, interrogator, mental tormentor, whatever you wish to call it): "Mr. A: you have two options: confess and plead guilty and we'll subtract some years of that sentence or plead innocence and receive the full sentence."
You: "But I'm innocent"
Case handler: "Confess your crime and we'll sweep those two years of the table."
You: "I am innocent!"
Case handler: "All nice and well, but did you know you could shave three years of that sentence by confessing?"
You: "I AM INNOCENT"
Case handler: "You're still uncooperative. Oh well, we'll add obstruction of justice to our claim."
You: *sigh*
In what way is making a suspect confess to a crime he did not commit ever justified? Just because the evidence against him is so overwhelming that he must be guilty? Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty."
By the way, if that person does confess, just to be rid of the pressure, in what way is this different from turture?
You: "I have a confession to make, your Honor" ...
Judge: "And what might that be my good man?"
You: "I committed perjury"
Judge: "Well I'll be damned. And what did you lie about?"
You: "I confessed to this crime, but I did not actually commit it."
This is a black day for science. This drumhead was obviously meant to find a scapegoat for what happened. Ultimately it falls into the same category as the Chinese astrologer who was sentenced to death by the Emperor for failing to predict the solar eclipse.
It is an affront to science and to humanity in general.
Except that no sane person would ever feel that what he did was actually a crime.
That would imply there is a malice to transfer. I may be a layman, but I cannot seem to find any malice in a guy texting his girlfriend about the wonderful sex he would like to have with her.
Why is it assault at all, if it's a clearcut case of mistaken identity? Does it not make the law by definition 'unjust' and 'unfair'?
If he had kissed his girlfriend as he intended to, he would not have committed assault. Therefore, since his intention was to kill his girlfriend, he cannot have committed assault at all. Anything else would be unjust and unfair.
I can only assume you were being sarcastic here, but just in case you were not:
"It's pretty blatantly obvious why he was convicted. He texted kids saying he wanted sex. Absolutely any other evidence whatsoever is irrelevant, and can be disregarded. Someone somewhere either spouted or thought of the phrase 'Think of the children', so he was strung up by the courts for all to see the horrible pedophile that he obviously is."
Het texted his girlfriend he wanted to have sex with her, in very explicit terms. By accident this text message was sent to everyone on his contact list, including two minors.
The first, in itself, is not a crime. We would probably shrug off the second as a foolish mistake, were it not for the last part where the explicit test message also ended up in the inboxes of two of his (underage) pupils. This last part could only be considered a crime if they had been the intended recipients of the text message. With the information at hand, one could only conclude that he should not have been convicted in the first place and should at worst have been asked to apologize to the people in his contact list, especially the pupils that got these messages by accident, their parents, and his girlfriend.
Instead, this guy was convicted to 18 months in prison (although this sentence was later reduced to a nine months suspended sentence, time served, by the appeals-court) and added to the sexual offender's registry. In other words: his life is over. His chances of ever finding a job are greattly reduced, he will never be allowed to work with children again, you name it. In essence he will become a social pariah.
Why? Because some overzealous lawmaker decided that regardless of intent or the actual circumstances, children must be protected to the extent that innocent people get hurt.
The concept of 'strict liability' is an affront to the concept of 'fair trial'. Its 'victims' have limited to no possibility of legal defense. You are named guilty even if you are in fact only a victim of circumstance. In other words: at best you are guilty until proven innocent, which in turn is an affront to the concept of 'innicent until proven guilty'. The sooner these laws are rescinded and replaced by something that provides a fair trial according to criminal law, the better. In any jurisdiction or civilized nation.