"Anti-vi" is sed(1). It's non-screen oriented, non-interactive, non-modal, takes commands as program arguments and data as input (instead of the other way 'round), and can't edit files in place.
I'm betting that MS will try to eke out extra money from Vista by making annoying ads pop up periodically, at least in the cheap versions. Then they'll market it as a feature, saying that Vista comes with as much as adware pre-installed as XP users needed six months to accumulate.
Anytime you say you want to have a debate about military prisons, secret interrogations, or the general reduction of freedom in the name of public safety and security, you're coming down against it. The very idea of debating in order to decide which is right takes the side that democratic processes and freedoms are more important than strict safety and security: since public discussion is a democratic process, the notion that a public discussion should determine whether or not true democratic process is more important than security is preternaturally determined to come down in favor of democratic processes. If it doesn't, the people involved are idiots.
I used to version OS X the same way they do references for Shakespeare plays: e.g. X.iv.6 refers to the latest version of Tiger, for example. But, not only did it not catch on, no one really understood it so I gave up. The problem is that no one's really sure whether there will ever be an eleventh version of Mac OS or not. After all, it has an X in the name like all good commercial Unices. But OS X has been around for nearly six years, and we've still neither hide nor heard of the next version.
My trick for installing Tiger on a G3 iBook (500MHz, 384 MB RAM) was to insert the install DVD, restart the computer, and hold down 'c' as it booted. I lose some of the fancy Quartz extreme features, and I need to keep an extra 100-200 MB of space on my 9GB hard disk for swap above the version I used previously, 10.2, but for most things it's actually still actually faster than 10.2.8.
As for Vista's requirements, well, it won't really matter until they actually release the software now, won't it? Who knows, maybe by 2015 a 64-bit proc with a gig of memory will be antique tech.
The use of command keys instead of control keys is superior for a very simple reason: you can do it with your thumbs without moving your fingers from the standard touch-typing positions. If I want to use a control key shortcut, I either have to twist my wrist in order to use a thumb, or move one hand off of its position in order to use a pinky. This slows down the use of keyboard shortcuts (I can save, print, or cut/copy/paste in the middle of typing without losing a beat). Furthermore, on laptops with reduced-size keyboards like the iBook and the small Powerbooks, there's only one control key. That means you really have to remember a different set of fingers to use when using the control key as when you type normally. That's very bad.
Lastly, and certainly not least, control is used by every version of the Mac OS I've ever used, as well as Unix, to send.... control characters! You ever wonder why, when people on Slashdot want to make a joke about having to delete some text they mistyped, they use "^H"? That's the printed representation of control-h, the keybinding for the ascii delete character. You couldn't do this at all if control were used for keyboard shortcuts, breaking virtually every interactive Unix program ever written. I suppose you could come up with a different set of keyboard shortcuts for applications that need to use control characters, but that would mean that different apps have wildly inconsistent keyboard shortcuts. So you might as well have every program use what the applications that need control characters use, so that every application can be consistent. For this purpose, I nominate the command key. Once you get used to it, you'll wonder how you managed to get anything done using control keys for that stuff.
As for the Chevy/Mercedes comparison, it's a wholly false analogy. Nobody drives a Mercedes with reversed pedals or a joystick. A better one would probably be automatic vs. manual transmission, but even that fails to take into account the subtleties of the issue.
The only true way in which software can be called "free" is when is metaphysical, for only when the oppressive shackles of determinism have been cast off of all software can the software itself exercise the ultimate freedom of deciding its own destiny that all the rest of us take for granted (whether it actually exists or not).
Until then, all this rhetoric about "free software" is just doublespeak for "indiscriminate employment of software." Black people in Mississippi in 1860 had the freedom to do whatever their masters said; 146 years later, Linux is still there.
Let's analyze your argument. Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR all placed restrictions on the freedom of American citizens during their respective tenures of office. Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR all are revered leaders in American history. These three presidents are revered for their actions as president. A president who restricts freedom in times of conflict is acting like Lincoln, Wilson, and/or FDR. Therefore, a president who restricts freedom is times of conflict is worthy of reverence.
Do you really think that we revere leaders like Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt because they took away our freedoms in spite of war? Or in spite of it?
Or, do you suppose that these presidents are largely revered because historians gain the benefits of their tenures (a free and preserved Union) without having to suffer the restrictions which those presidents induced? FDR and Lincoln were both effectively martyred because they died not only while in office, but before the war was completely finished. Wilson was notably reviled by his generation, which explains in part why the US stayed out of the League of Nations and Wilson couldn't get a third term. No one alive today cares particularly much whether the people in 1863 could freely express themselves; the number of people to whom the internment of Japanese during World War is an issue is rapidly diminishing.
"History is written by the victors, but lived by the losers."
Either that, or he's so addicted to the plant-derived stimulant imported from Columbia that he becomes nonfunctional due to withdrawal when he can't get it.
That's nothing. The Greek metro stops in Athens are all mini-museums of stuff they dug up while building it (potsherds, columns, tools, etc) and a couple even have glass walls that show a cross-sectional cutaway of the various archeological strata, including things like tombs and houses. Part of the reason construction of the Olympic facilities came down so close to the deadline is that they had to go through every square inch of earth and see what interesting things they could find.
Completely off-topic, but once when I was walking around in NYC I saw a classy mediterranean restaurant with a bunch of plaster sculptures of a face on the walls--which same sculptures are available in every tourist shop in Minastiraki. It really got me thinking--I guess American high culture is on the same level as Greek kitsch.
I heard that Solaris has problems with Mach IPC and peripheral plug-and-play. Why don't they license Mac OS X, or switch to Darwin, and get Mach IPC/P&P with it. Then they could run a shitty-ass Solaris/CDE personality layer on top of it.
While it probably didn't help his case much, I don't it hurt him as much as you suggest. After all, people in charge of plenty of tech companies say bad things about or make fun of their competition (Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Steve Ballmer). I think the real problem is that this seemed to be Sun's business strategy for the last 8 years or so. Instead of working on ways to make Java a better platform for users (instead of developers), it languished. The much-ballyhooed Java Desktop System hasn't materialized into anything special, and right now it looks like Looking Glass is ending up the same way. Until they released the Niagara, they were falling way behind in the computational power race. And unlike other computer manufacturers, they haven't branched out in any tangible way to supplement their revenue streams (like hp and Dell do with printers, cameras, etc). I guess they haven't had any real solutions to X, Y, or Z that couldn't be duplicated on cheaper hardware with a different OS.
This has to be the dumbest "review" of a game I've read in a long time. To sum up his major "arguments" (and I'm committing an injustice to the civility of marital altercations the world over by using this term):
"I don't like FF7" (not really arguable), "I'm a rational person" (debatable), "therefore no rational people like FF7" (fallacious).
"It's not really an "RPG" according to the classical definition." But then, 90% of D&D sessions I've played in involved about as much role-playing as a random number generator. For better or worse, the term 'RPG' in video games refers to games like Final Fantasy. Get over it.
"The characters are animated inconsistently--there are several versions of each character, with widely varying degrees of realism for each." This is, I suppose, as valid a complaint as any of the author's, but since he spends two paragraphs talking about how great the graphics are (and eventually goes on to complain about how good the graphics were) he does kind of undermine himself here.
"The story is convoluted and weird." This is also true. Too bad FF7 didn't have a plot as good as the original FF, where the ultimate bad guy trying to take over the world is a souped up version of someone you killed in the very beginning, or Suikoden where the King is being controlled by an evil witch--oh wait, no, he's not, he's just love sick.
"Cloud isn't a one-dimensional character who picks one of two personality types and never changes emotional state throughout the game." While technically a true statement, I'm not sure if it counts as criticism.
"Sephiroth is a bizarre and incomprehensible villain, and hence inferior to Kefka." Or, to put it another way, Kefka is a 1970's destroy-the-world-I'm-evil comic book villain, and Sephiroth is a guy with his own neurosis, and motivations (however bizarre). Kefka just does it for the hell of it, really.
Basically, what it boils down to, is that this guy wishes all RPGs were still developed for the SNES because things like graphics, characters with personality, and entertainment are all things which subtract from a good RPG.
The point isn't really that the manufacturer should be liable if you do it, but that people (fanboys in particular) shouldn't complain so loudly if you want to. Yes, it might blow up your system. But that's really the risk you take overclocking stuff willy-nilly, isn't it?
Actually, the way I read it, it seems like a typographical error that changed fairly significantly the meaning of the sentence. Try parsing it with a semicolon instead of a colon:
They did so for one reason; It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod.
In other words, this would suggest that the government funded research into microelectronics was for purpose A, probably "fighting the Russians", and it ended up being useful for purpose B, a generalized form of "storing your music collection in a pack of cards." Contrariwise, the actual quote:
They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod.
suggests that the particular reason for funding this research lies in the clause following the colon; to wit, developing the iPod. But the phrase "it turned out..." is thus somewhat problematic, since you wouldn't say "With regards to A, it turned out that B" when B is the intended and expected result of A (e.g. in "It turned out that my taxes were filed on time", there is an implicit expectation that the taxes hadn't been filed in time to meet the deadline). So it's the speechwriter's fault, and (by extension) Bush's for not getting it edited properly. But I agree that it wasn't the intended meaning to suggest that Bush, or the government, actually developed the iPod. Still, with the way these things go, he'll probably never live it down.
I think Free Will is a way of thinking about randomness, or entropy. That is, "choice" is a word we use to describe actions which, like the behavior of molecules in a thermodynamic system, are on a micro scale essentially unpredictable.
Followers of sociology may find themselves slightly validated--the fact that individuals are at heart unpredictable doesn't mean large enough quantities of them can evidence patterns of behavior, whether the individuals are hydrogen molecules or human beings.
On a side note, if this is correct then predictive mind-reading is basically impossible--cognitive functions would be sufficiently Brownian to prevent drawing any conclusions about future or past state from a single snapshot.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure they do. Ever heard of the BSA?
So what about the People's Democratic Republic of Korea?
"Anti-vi" is sed(1). It's non-screen oriented, non-interactive, non-modal, takes commands as program arguments and data as input (instead of the other way 'round), and can't edit files in place.
I'm betting that MS will try to eke out extra money from Vista by making annoying ads pop up periodically, at least in the cheap versions. Then they'll market it as a feature, saying that Vista comes with as much as adware pre-installed as XP users needed six months to accumulate.
It'll be a hit, I can see it now.
Anytime you say you want to have a debate about military prisons, secret interrogations, or the general reduction of freedom in the name of public safety and security, you're coming down against it. The very idea of debating in order to decide which is right takes the side that democratic processes and freedoms are more important than strict safety and security: since public discussion is a democratic process, the notion that a public discussion should determine whether or not true democratic process is more important than security is preternaturally determined to come down in favor of democratic processes. If it doesn't, the people involved are idiots.
I used to version OS X the same way they do references for Shakespeare plays: e.g. X.iv.6 refers to the latest version of Tiger, for example. But, not only did it not catch on, no one really understood it so I gave up. The problem is that no one's really sure whether there will ever be an eleventh version of Mac OS or not. After all, it has an X in the name like all good commercial Unices. But OS X has been around for nearly six years, and we've still neither hide nor heard of the next version.
My trick for installing Tiger on a G3 iBook (500MHz, 384 MB RAM) was to insert the install DVD, restart the computer, and hold down 'c' as it booted. I lose some of the fancy Quartz extreme features, and I need to keep an extra 100-200 MB of space on my 9GB hard disk for swap above the version I used previously, 10.2, but for most things it's actually still actually faster than 10.2.8.
As for Vista's requirements, well, it won't really matter until they actually release the software now, won't it? Who knows, maybe by 2015 a 64-bit proc with a gig of memory will be antique tech.
The use of command keys instead of control keys is superior for a very simple reason: you can do it with your thumbs without moving your fingers from the standard touch-typing positions. If I want to use a control key shortcut, I either have to twist my wrist in order to use a thumb, or move one hand off of its position in order to use a pinky. This slows down the use of keyboard shortcuts (I can save, print, or cut/copy/paste in the middle of typing without losing a beat). Furthermore, on laptops with reduced-size keyboards like the iBook and the small Powerbooks, there's only one control key. That means you really have to remember a different set of fingers to use when using the control key as when you type normally. That's very bad.
.... control characters! You ever wonder why, when people on Slashdot want to make a joke about having to delete some text they mistyped, they use "^H"? That's the printed representation of control-h, the keybinding for the ascii delete character. You couldn't do this at all if control were used for keyboard shortcuts, breaking virtually every interactive Unix program ever written. I suppose you could come up with a different set of keyboard shortcuts for applications that need to use control characters, but that would mean that different apps have wildly inconsistent keyboard shortcuts. So you might as well have every program use what the applications that need control characters use, so that every application can be consistent. For this purpose, I nominate the command key. Once you get used to it, you'll wonder how you managed to get anything done using control keys for that stuff.
Lastly, and certainly not least, control is used by every version of the Mac OS I've ever used, as well as Unix, to send
As for the Chevy/Mercedes comparison, it's a wholly false analogy. Nobody drives a Mercedes with reversed pedals or a joystick. A better one would probably be automatic vs. manual transmission, but even that fails to take into account the subtleties of the issue.
The only true way in which software can be called "free" is when is metaphysical, for only when the oppressive shackles of determinism have been cast off of all software can the software itself exercise the ultimate freedom of deciding its own destiny that all the rest of us take for granted (whether it actually exists or not).
Until then, all this rhetoric about "free software" is just doublespeak for "indiscriminate employment of software." Black people in Mississippi in 1860 had the freedom to do whatever their masters said; 146 years later, Linux is still there.
Let's analyze your argument. Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR all placed restrictions on the freedom of American citizens during their respective tenures of office. Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR all are revered leaders in American history. These three presidents are revered for their actions as president. A president who restricts freedom in times of conflict is acting like Lincoln, Wilson, and/or FDR. Therefore, a president who restricts freedom is times of conflict is worthy of reverence.
Do you really think that we revere leaders like Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt because they took away our freedoms in spite of war? Or in spite of it?
Or, do you suppose that these presidents are largely revered because historians gain the benefits of their tenures (a free and preserved Union) without having to suffer the restrictions which those presidents induced? FDR and Lincoln were both effectively martyred because they died not only while in office, but before the war was completely finished. Wilson was notably reviled by his generation, which explains in part why the US stayed out of the League of Nations and Wilson couldn't get a third term. No one alive today cares particularly much whether the people in 1863 could freely express themselves; the number of people to whom the internment of Japanese during World War is an issue is rapidly diminishing.
"History is written by the victors, but lived by the losers."
Either that, or he's so addicted to the plant-derived stimulant imported from Columbia that he becomes nonfunctional due to withdrawal when he can't get it.
No they're not!
That's nothing. The Greek metro stops in Athens are all mini-museums of stuff they dug up while building it (potsherds, columns, tools, etc) and a couple even have glass walls that show a cross-sectional cutaway of the various archeological strata, including things like tombs and houses. Part of the reason construction of the Olympic facilities came down so close to the deadline is that they had to go through every square inch of earth and see what interesting things they could find.
Completely off-topic, but once when I was walking around in NYC I saw a classy mediterranean restaurant with a bunch of plaster sculptures of a face on the walls--which same sculptures are available in every tourist shop in Minastiraki. It really got me thinking--I guess American high culture is on the same level as Greek kitsch.
I work retail. I sell bottles of water with 5.9e23 molecules of water in it on a daily basis.
Fighting for freedom means less the more freedoms you are forced to give up.
I heard that Solaris has problems with Mach IPC and peripheral plug-and-play. Why don't they license Mac OS X, or switch to Darwin, and get Mach IPC/P&P with it. Then they could run a shitty-ass Solaris/CDE personality layer on top of it.
All LISP use is mastery.
Don't tell Shoto Tanemura.
I want to set up a corporation doing the exact same thing, but instead of basing in East Asia I'll base it on the high seas. Arrrr!
While it probably didn't help his case much, I don't it hurt him as much as you suggest. After all, people in charge of plenty of tech companies say bad things about or make fun of their competition (Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Steve Ballmer). I think the real problem is that this seemed to be Sun's business strategy for the last 8 years or so. Instead of working on ways to make Java a better platform for users (instead of developers), it languished. The much-ballyhooed Java Desktop System hasn't materialized into anything special, and right now it looks like Looking Glass is ending up the same way. Until they released the Niagara, they were falling way behind in the computational power race. And unlike other computer manufacturers, they haven't branched out in any tangible way to supplement their revenue streams (like hp and Dell do with printers, cameras, etc). I guess they haven't had any real solutions to X, Y, or Z that couldn't be duplicated on cheaper hardware with a different OS.
- "I don't like FF7" (not really arguable), "I'm a rational person" (debatable), "therefore no rational people like FF7" (fallacious).
- "It's not really an "RPG" according to the classical definition." But then, 90% of D&D sessions I've played in involved about as much role-playing as a random number generator. For better or worse, the term 'RPG' in video games refers to games like Final Fantasy. Get over it.
- "The characters are animated inconsistently--there are several versions of each character, with widely varying degrees of realism for each." This is, I suppose, as valid a complaint as any of the author's, but since he spends two paragraphs talking about how great the graphics are (and eventually goes on to complain about how good the graphics were) he does kind of undermine himself here.
- "The story is convoluted and weird." This is also true. Too bad FF7 didn't have a plot as good as the original FF, where the ultimate bad guy trying to take over the world is a souped up version of someone you killed in the very beginning, or Suikoden where the King is being controlled by an evil witch--oh wait, no, he's not, he's just love sick.
- "Cloud isn't a one-dimensional character who picks one of two personality types and never changes emotional state throughout the game." While technically a true statement, I'm not sure if it counts as criticism.
- "Sephiroth is a bizarre and incomprehensible villain, and hence inferior to Kefka." Or, to put it another way, Kefka is a 1970's destroy-the-world-I'm-evil comic book villain, and Sephiroth is a guy with his own neurosis, and motivations (however bizarre). Kefka just does it for the hell of it, really.
Basically, what it boils down to, is that this guy wishes all RPGs were still developed for the SNES because things like graphics, characters with personality, and entertainment are all things which subtract from a good RPG.The point isn't really that the manufacturer should be liable if you do it, but that people (fanboys in particular) shouldn't complain so loudly if you want to. Yes, it might blow up your system. But that's really the risk you take overclocking stuff willy-nilly, isn't it?
In other words, this would suggest that the government funded research into microelectronics was for purpose A, probably "fighting the Russians", and it ended up being useful for purpose B, a generalized form of "storing your music collection in a pack of cards." Contrariwise, the actual quote:
suggests that the particular reason for funding this research lies in the clause following the colon; to wit, developing the iPod. But the phrase "it turned out..." is thus somewhat problematic, since you wouldn't say "With regards to A, it turned out that B" when B is the intended and expected result of A (e.g. in "It turned out that my taxes were filed on time", there is an implicit expectation that the taxes hadn't been filed in time to meet the deadline). So it's the speechwriter's fault, and (by extension) Bush's for not getting it edited properly. But I agree that it wasn't the intended meaning to suggest that Bush, or the government, actually developed the iPod. Still, with the way these things go, he'll probably never live it down.
I think Free Will is a way of thinking about randomness, or entropy. That is, "choice" is a word we use to describe actions which, like the behavior of molecules in a thermodynamic system, are on a micro scale essentially unpredictable.
Followers of sociology may find themselves slightly validated--the fact that individuals are at heart unpredictable doesn't mean large enough quantities of them can evidence patterns of behavior, whether the individuals are hydrogen molecules or human beings.
On a side note, if this is correct then predictive mind-reading is basically impossible--cognitive functions would be sufficiently Brownian to prevent drawing any conclusions about future or past state from a single snapshot.
That's nothing. The iPod superstring generates all the music you could ever possibly want by using a 1-dimensional loophole to an alternate universe.
The load times when waiting for a civilization to develop to the degree of sophistication needed to invent music is kind of long, though.