How about, "I didn't know it was a violent game where the main character puts on a hockey mask and shoots up an elementary school. You would think it would have a label on it or something! How could I, as the parent of the suspect, known what the content of the game was. Every time I went down to the basement, he and his buddies were just watching Nick-at-Night. There was nothing on the box that told me the game was violent and besides, he bought it himself with the money he got from mowing yards."
Sounds like a poor parent who did nothing to investigate what the game's content would be. Reviews, both professional and amateur, would have told this bad parent what the game was about. If, you know, the parent cared enough.
You are missing the point. Sure, the parent is bad... BAD PARENT! But that is not the problem. It is the cause. The problem is when that kid mugs me, or worse, rapes and kills my little girl or shoots up her school.
If you are too lazy to watch your kids or get up off your ass to buy them a video game, then maybe your kids shouldn't be playing these types of games. Your kids are the reason why we need this shit in the first place!
Well, that's the first main problem: I trust society about as far as I can throw it, especially when it comes to knowing "what's right" for it's citizens. Call me a cynic if you must.
Fine, you're a cynic. Although, that's a good thing. I don't trust government either, especially considering that government is elected by the public. And, as we all know, half of the public has below average intelligence!
And by the way: having mandated software locks doesn't force parents to adopt good habits, because (for the moment) no one is saying that parents have to use it.
Well, given the above, most parents WON'T use it. I wouldn't be opposed to a violent game required to be unlocked before use, but that would require parents to set up the console when it is first hooked up. We all know that won't happen either. So, while software locks won't FORCE parental interaction, it is a tool that will help good parents be good parents.
The only way to FORCE (or come close to it anyway) parental interaction would be to require that only an adult can buy adult games. But that is for another discussion.
True. However, this does not make it right to merely do as everyone else does by being a bad parent; it only makes it understandable. If we are to allow this kind of scapegoating to occur, it will further erode personal responsibility.
Poor parenting skills may be blamed on society not setting a good standard but this claim is as valid as saying "The flame is at fault for burning down that store, I just happened to hold the lighter" or "I was just swinging my fists. It's your fault for being in the way!" If we look at these things in a case by case manner, we can see that there is some amount of blame to go around to all sources. Don't rest too easily by generalizing that most, if not all, comes from one input while the rest remains trivial.
How about, "I didn't know it was a violent game where the main character puts on a hockey mask and shoots up an elementary school. You would think it would have a label on it or something! How could I, as the parent of the suspect, known what the content of the game was. Every time I went down to the basement, he and his buddies were just watching Nick-at-Night. There was nothing on the box that told me the game was violent and besides, he bought it himself with the money he got from mowing yards."
Second, the law is done in the "think of the children" vein, which seems to validate poor parenting skills by making it society's fault. And that makes it a silly law.
First, "Think of the Children" is not necessarily a bad thing. We have laws against showing your pee-pee to a five-year-old and the local playground. That is a result of a "Think of the Children" mentality. Does that make it a "silly law"? "Where are the parents? What kind of bad parents let their kids go to the park without them!?!!" (See, same argument applies.)
Next, it is the exact opposite of "validating poor parenting skills". It actually forces some good parental habits. And while it may not be society's fault, it IS society's problem and unfortunately, it is up to society to fix it.
Now, if the gaming industry were to police itself, this wouldn't be necessary. But when you combine apathetic, ignorant parents with a free market, the first company to police itself is the fist to go out of business. Little Johnny: "Man, the X-Box 720 Sux. We tried to play Beach-Racer XXX at Joey's house, but his parents blocked it. So we went to Davie's house because he has a Playstation4 which has no parental blocking. We played Mass-Murderer II until our thumbs hurt! You can bet your ass I'm not going to be asking for an X-Box 720 for Christmas. I'm asking Santa for a PS4!"
This is obviously a major security issue for Obama, and shows us why McCain should not be president.
So, you were for McCain before this? If not, then why would you make us believe that THIS is the reason why McCain should not be president, as if you didn't have a reason before this. Also, THIS is what you call a good reason for someone to not be president, and yet, it's OK to say that Iran is not... IS a threat. That you do... do not... do... did, but not very often attend a church. Or, that your beloved grandmum who wiped your ass, fed and raised you is now a racist bitch... No, I think that you are just a politically biased hack who will point at anything at all and say, "See, McCain left the seat up. THAT's why he shouldn't be president!"
And, therefor, THIS is why we shouldn't listen to people like you.
Besides, everyone and their dog knows that Obama is headed to the MidEast over the next few days. You don't need security clearance to know that! For that matter, I doubt that McCain is even privy to Obama's schedule.
The Tesla roadster can go for 250 miles before charging. Not bad. It costs $100,000, but its a start. Until then, we have hybrid cars to bridge the gap for the "common person". We will get there eventually. I'd say the bigger problem is not the amount of power generation, but the fact that a huge amount of people, at least in urban areas, live in apartments/condos where they can't plug-in. You can solve the power problems for a city with a single nuke plant, but try going around fixing thousands of apartment buildings to be wired for power at every single parking spot.
Also, we may need plug-in stations for our parking lots at work as well. I assume that that 250 estimate is on flat ground @ 55 mph with the radio and AC/heater turned off. I would curious to know what that range is when it's 105 degrees outside, sitting in stop and go traffic with the AC set to MAX and the radio turned on. I ask that because I have a 60 mile round trip to work every day in Texas. There is no way I'm going back to sitting in traffic with no AC!
As for long road trips, we will need a way to get a decent charge in less than 5 minutes. I've heard of work using capacitors as batteries but I don't know how safe that idea is or how far that research has gone.
When we have enough nuke plants ready then electric cars might sell. Until then they will not.
Basically, you have to get the cost to operate of an electric car below a gasoline car first.
It's already there. It costs much less to recharge an electric car than it does to fill up a gasoline powered vehicle. The problem is that an electric car has a limited range. Once you run out of gas... er... power, you're stuck. With a gasoline powered car, you can fill up at any given gas station that you find every five miles. With an electric car, that's not an option. Even if they started allowing you plug-in to recharge at filling stations, you would still have to wait 4-8 hours for your car to be completely recharged. While this isn't a problem in your garage, it is a huge problem if you are traveling anywhere that is out of your electric car's range.
Thats... typically american. "Don't do anything, it'll fix itself"... *sigh*
then again, warning people 200-500 years in the future shouldn't be hard, thats only a few generations, and we can't expect human language to change that much...
Maybe that's because we have found that all too often, the cure is worse than the disease.
The dollar changes, the Joule is forever. Regardless of whether or not the power from a nuclear plant can cover the costs of its construction and decommissioning at the present time is irrelevant. We aren't designing plants to come online in a year, we are designing them to come online in 10-15 years. Thermodynamically, nuclear is worthwhile. When oil starts to really bite that is all that will matter, whether or not we have an energy source that can sustain us. Market forces are subservient to physical forces.
Oil powers our cars and pretty much all forms of transportation, including transporting products... like food. Nuclear plants power our homes and businesses. If we build a million nuclear plants, it won't change our oil dependency one bit until we all start driving electric cars.
I guess that gig he has with the Cable Weather Satellite channel was just a temporary gig. I heard him on there the other day:
Tomorrow's weather, partly cloudy with little temperature change.
On an unrelated note... Anyone know how Canada got its name?
They placed a bunch of letters in a hat and drew them out. The one doing the drawing picked out the first letter, "C, Eh". then "N, Eh" and finally "D, Eh." (if you didn't get it, say it out loud).
It was a poor way to bring up the point that the Bush administration has done a lot to hurt the environment. It was pretty surprising to see that someone they tried to do to benefit the environment got shot down.
Bush's record is not the point. The point is that when someone does something you don't like, you bash them. When someone does something that you DO like, you praise them.
Now that we have the ground rules in place let's bring it back to the topic at hand. The GGP bashed the Prez, as you did, after doing he did something GOOD for the environment. Which takes us back to our rule we established earlier: When you bash someone all the time, even when they do something good, you lose all credibility and look like a little partisan bitch.
But on a more serious note.. I feel this administration has ruined out economy and now its after our environment.
This couldnt be more f'd up
So, let me get this straight. A BUSH ADMINISTRATION clean air initiative... meaning a BUSH plan that was GOOD for the environment BY DESIGN gets shot down by the courts and YOU BLAME THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION?
Thus, in a world where the routers along the way are fundamentally trusted to do their job and route packets, you're not going to have much luck protecting yourself against this sort of attack by your provider.
That's why this is one of the few... VERY FEW cases where government is needed to step in and say, "you can't do that."
Whatever, you misrepresented the actual situation with this issue.
You may be right. In the sense of fairness, here is another quote from the same link as above. Also, please notice that six months have past since the previous post:
Comment #22 from William Jon McCann (gnome-screensaver developer, points: 22) 2006-03-03 14:44 UTC [reply]
Take it easy everyone. Please understand that I'm not paid to do this and it isn't my full time job. Also understand that simply reiterating the issue doesn't add anything. Also, unless you are motivated enough to actually write some code or pay/convince someone else to do it for you then you are less likely to get what you want. That's open source for you. Please try not to make demands of me.
I've added a stub to the FAQ about directory translation.
Chris Weiss: I'm glad to see that you have actually looked into this. I'm afraid there is probably something wrong with your system since that should work fine. Try submitting a bug to your distro.
I think was is needed here is a product manager or something that acts as a firewall/router to translate between the actual coders and the general public.
Coders are geeks. They don't deal well with people who don't understand what it is that they really do. It doesn't help that they get bombarded with stupid requests from people who don't know what the software is supposed to do. In my current position, part of my job is to act as that firewall. I take the good requests to our developers to consider and keep the stupid ones to myself. I understand coders and don't get offended when they say, "that's a stupid idea. This was never designed to do that crap and the user needs to find another way to get that done." The user would get offended and find another solution to their problem, probably from our competition (Linux's main competition is Windows). Instead, I tell them, "here, try this application. It does a better job as all it really does is what you are trying to accomplish."
Either way, users need to be treated with respect whether they are paying customers or not. When I'm deciding between upgrading my 50 office machines to Visa or switching to Ubuntu, it doesn't help when my requests are brushed off because a developer doesn't think they are necessary.
How many lines of code can 128 MB of RAM hold and what is the average 'line' for C?
I don't know, but 15 years ago, I would have killed for 128 MB of RAM or even a 128 MB HDD. My first "PC" had 4 MB RAM and a 102 MB HDD. It ran DOS 6.2, Windows 3.1 and a host of crappy DOS games. (Actually, I don't think the DOS games used more than the first MB) Strip the GUI and even the CLI, and you'll find that 128MB is quite a bit if your main concern is code. Data could take quite a chunk of that, but if you're just talking about text files with data and configuration, a few MB could handle it with not problem.
Now, once you're on the ground and you want to start storing some hires pics to send back to Houston... you better have a flash card stashed away on that thing somewhere!
You know, maybe he chose to be the maintainer because nobody else stepped up and it needed one. He was (is?) a volunteer who donated his own time. You have zero right to demand anything of him. If you want a feature implemented badly, pay someone to do it.
I love the way you complete disregard the part where I said
(not to mean that I don't appreciate his efforts..)
Then again, if you have you wouldn't have your strawman if you did.
But to get back on topic, the GP said I should place a bug report and said that everyone should as it helps the maintainers know that there is a problem. I showed him what happens when people do.
I don't have a problem with maintainers. I have a problem with maintainers that don't listen to the users. Regardless of what you think of them or how whiney they are, they are the ones who use the product. Besides, isn't that the point of all this; to get more people using Linux?
How many users do you think we're going to get by saying:
You have zero right to demand anything of him. If you want a feature implemented badly, pay someone to do it.
Here is the GNome developer response to the screensaver thingie:
Is this a troll or do you suffer from short attention span? This was his first comment, but the discussion on bugzilla was very long, and further down he identified technical issues that prevent this from being done sanely atm, wrote an FAQ on the matter, asked for help from those who see this feature, and so on.
Right, after about 20 posts of people ragging on him. The fact remains that he tried to weasel his way out by saying that it shouldn't have to be done because it was hard to do. I bet it is hard. That's why I'm not a programmer, much less a maintainer. If he has a problem with what the people using the product want, he should hand it off to someone who gives a damn. (not to mean that I don't appreciate his efforts, but he chose to be the maintainer for a reason.)
Anyone interest in the issue is well-advised not to rely on the parent but read the discussion themselves.
Good idea. If only had posted a link or something...
It will take me a while to do the math on that, but thank you very much. Ah, who are we kidding. I'm never going to do the math. I'm just going to assume it's correct.
Community software should mean that people can easily post bug reports and get issues like these addressed.
Open a bug for each issue and hopefully they will be addressed.
I think it is beneficial to the entire community when people report these things.
The problem is that these don't appear to be bugs, but design choices. I believe that the gnome developers intentionally removed the option to configure each of the different screen savers and that the KDE dev's set up their horrid desktop icon system by design.
Your failure is one of scale. You fail to take into account that this is one experiment. Nature doesn't work that way. Nature experiments with THOUSANDS of different "petri dishes" every moment of every day. It doesn't care about reproducibility or the scientific method. Another experiment might have made this switch in 20 generations instead of 44,000. And even if it took 44,000 generations, that's only 44,000 years for platypus's.
Parallel evolution, immense timescales. You don't go from a door-mouse to a platypus in one step. It'll take you 10 million years, the right conditions and a shit-load of serendipity. If you had to do it all over again, you could never guarantee it would happen because you have no idea of the selective pressures applied, when and in what situations they were beneficial.
We have proven that life EVOLVES. We will probably never be able to prove that all life came from a SINGLE cellular parent (probably because it didn't).
You are correct that the scale increases the odds exponentially. I do acknowledge your point, although it reminds me of an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters...
My point was that no matter how many petri dishes you start with, all those dishes still work independently of each other. No matter how many petri dishes are thrown in, it's still a straight line when tracing the platypus back to a single dish. Granted, there will be branches, but since those die off or do not be come platypuses, we shouldn't consider them when working backwards.
I guess my point is an issue of math and lack of evidence. Let's assume that a mouse generation is one year. We have about 65,000,000 years since the anything much larger than a mouse became extinct along with the dinosaurs. That gives 65,000,000 generations for a mouse (or something like it) to evolve into an elephant (and all other mammalian life, but let's concentrate on the elephant). And, 65,000,000 generations is generous since as life gets more complex, the time between generations increases, but we'll stick with that.
Since we have accurate mouse specimens dating back at least 2000 years (being conservative), with little or no change, we can assume that detectable changes take more than 2000 years. That leaves 32,500 generations for a mouse to evolve into an elephant, which is a pretty big change and can not happen gradually. Shouldn't we see the mouse evolving at least somewhat in either the lab or in our sewers? Shouldn't we have at least one species mouse we can point to and say that it evolved directly from that species of mouse over there?
Of course, that's just mouse to elephant. Throw in your own examples; mouse to humpback whale, mouse to human, mouse to mastodon, it doesn't matter.
These are just questions I am genuinely seeking answers to and this seems like a good place to ask them. I am not a biologist, so I'm fairly ignorant when compared to one, but I do have a basic grasp of how evolution works. My question is basically, "Was there enough time?" and if so, "Why don't we see more of it?"
I was under the impression that Obama is not perfect but that he would always admit if he was wrong and quickly qork towards the right direction. I think this will be a big test of him in my eyes. If he never turns around on this issue it means he is clearly as stubborn as the rest. If he can admit he is wrong then hes better than someone who started out agreeing with me more.
How do you know that they won't change their views back once elected?
That's the dilemma that politicians face. If they change their views, they are "flip-floppers". If they don't, they are stubborn.
Ignore for a second how you feel about any particular politician and consider this example. Obama is being hammered for changing his views. Bush is hammered for NOT changing his views. They are damned if the do and damned if they don't.
Slashdot Mirror
How about, "I didn't know it was a violent game where the main character puts on a hockey mask and shoots up an elementary school. You would think it would have a label on it or something! How could I, as the parent of the suspect, known what the content of the game was. Every time I went down to the basement, he and his buddies were just watching Nick-at-Night. There was nothing on the box that told me the game was violent and besides, he bought it himself with the money he got from mowing yards."
Sounds like a poor parent who did nothing to investigate what the game's content would be. Reviews, both professional and amateur, would have told this bad parent what the game was about. If, you know, the parent cared enough.
You are missing the point. Sure, the parent is bad... BAD PARENT! But that is not the problem. It is the cause. The problem is when that kid mugs me, or worse, rapes and kills my little girl or shoots up her school.
If you are too lazy to watch your kids or get up off your ass to buy them a video game, then maybe your kids shouldn't be playing these types of games. Your kids are the reason why we need this shit in the first place!
Well, that's the first main problem: I trust society about as far as I can throw it, especially when it comes to knowing "what's right" for it's citizens. Call me a cynic if you must.
Fine, you're a cynic. Although, that's a good thing. I don't trust government either, especially considering that government is elected by the public. And, as we all know, half of the public has below average intelligence!
And by the way: having mandated software locks doesn't force parents to adopt good habits, because (for the moment) no one is saying that parents have to use it.
Well, given the above, most parents WON'T use it. I wouldn't be opposed to a violent game required to be unlocked before use, but that would require parents to set up the console when it is first hooked up. We all know that won't happen either. So, while software locks won't FORCE parental interaction, it is a tool that will help good parents be good parents.
The only way to FORCE (or come close to it anyway) parental interaction would be to require that only an adult can buy adult games. But that is for another discussion.
True. However, this does not make it right to merely do as everyone else does by being a bad parent; it only makes it understandable. If we are to allow this kind of scapegoating to occur, it will further erode personal responsibility.
Poor parenting skills may be blamed on society not setting a good standard but this claim is as valid as saying "The flame is at fault for burning down that store, I just happened to hold the lighter" or "I was just swinging my fists. It's your fault for being in the way!" If we look at these things in a case by case manner, we can see that there is some amount of blame to go around to all sources. Don't rest too easily by generalizing that most, if not all, comes from one input while the rest remains trivial.
How about, "I didn't know it was a violent game where the main character puts on a hockey mask and shoots up an elementary school. You would think it would have a label on it or something! How could I, as the parent of the suspect, known what the content of the game was. Every time I went down to the basement, he and his buddies were just watching Nick-at-Night. There was nothing on the box that told me the game was violent and besides, he bought it himself with the money he got from mowing yards."
Second, the law is done in the "think of the children" vein, which seems to validate poor parenting skills by making it society's fault. And that makes it a silly law.
First, "Think of the Children" is not necessarily a bad thing. We have laws against showing your pee-pee to a five-year-old and the local playground. That is a result of a "Think of the Children" mentality. Does that make it a "silly law"? "Where are the parents? What kind of bad parents let their kids go to the park without them!?!!" (See, same argument applies.)
Next, it is the exact opposite of "validating poor parenting skills". It actually forces some good parental habits. And while it may not be society's fault, it IS society's problem and unfortunately, it is up to society to fix it.
Now, if the gaming industry were to police itself, this wouldn't be necessary. But when you combine apathetic, ignorant parents with a free market, the first company to police itself is the fist to go out of business.
Little Johnny: "Man, the X-Box 720 Sux. We tried to play Beach-Racer XXX at Joey's house, but his parents blocked it. So we went to Davie's house because he has a Playstation4 which has no parental blocking. We played Mass-Murderer II until our thumbs hurt! You can bet your ass I'm not going to be asking for an X-Box 720 for Christmas. I'm asking Santa for a PS4!"
Great, a rifle with a stun setting!
I would not want to be the guy that tests the low setting (or the high one for that matter) to make sure it isn't fatal!
This is obviously a major security issue for Obama, and shows us why McCain should not be president.
So, you were for McCain before this? If not, then why would you make us believe that THIS is the reason why McCain should not be president, as if you didn't have a reason before this. Also, THIS is what you call a good reason for someone to not be president, and yet, it's OK to say that Iran is not... IS a threat. That you do... do not... do... did, but not very often attend a church. Or, that your beloved grandmum who wiped your ass, fed and raised you is now a racist bitch... No, I think that you are just a politically biased hack who will point at anything at all and say, "See, McCain left the seat up. THAT's why he shouldn't be president!"
And, therefor, THIS is why we shouldn't listen to people like you.
Besides, everyone and their dog knows that Obama is headed to the MidEast over the next few days. You don't need security clearance to know that! For that matter, I doubt that McCain is even privy to Obama's schedule.
The Tesla roadster can go for 250 miles before charging. Not bad. It costs $100,000, but its a start. Until then, we have hybrid cars to bridge the gap for the "common person". We will get there eventually. I'd say the bigger problem is not the amount of power generation, but the fact that a huge amount of people, at least in urban areas, live in apartments/condos where they can't plug-in. You can solve the power problems for a city with a single nuke plant, but try going around fixing thousands of apartment buildings to be wired for power at every single parking spot.
Also, we may need plug-in stations for our parking lots at work as well.
I assume that that 250 estimate is on flat ground @ 55 mph with the radio and AC/heater turned off. I would curious to know what that range is when it's 105 degrees outside, sitting in stop and go traffic with the AC set to MAX and the radio turned on.
I ask that because I have a 60 mile round trip to work every day in Texas. There is no way I'm going back to sitting in traffic with no AC!
As for long road trips, we will need a way to get a decent charge in less than 5 minutes. I've heard of work using capacitors as batteries but I don't know how safe that idea is or how far that research has gone.
When we have enough nuke plants ready then electric cars might sell. Until then they will not.
Basically, you have to get the cost to operate of an electric car below a gasoline car first.
It's already there. It costs much less to recharge an electric car than it does to fill up a gasoline powered vehicle. The problem is that an electric car has a limited range. Once you run out of gas... er... power, you're stuck. With a gasoline powered car, you can fill up at any given gas station that you find every five miles. With an electric car, that's not an option. Even if they started allowing you plug-in to recharge at filling stations, you would still have to wait 4-8 hours for your car to be completely recharged. While this isn't a problem in your garage, it is a huge problem if you are traveling anywhere that is out of your electric car's range.
Thats ... typically american. "Don't do anything, it'll fix itself" ... *sigh*
then again, warning people 200-500 years in the future shouldn't be hard, thats only a few generations, and we can't expect human language to change that much...
Maybe that's because we have found that all too often, the cure is worse than the disease.
The dollar changes, the Joule is forever. Regardless of whether or not the power from a nuclear plant can cover the costs of its construction and decommissioning at the present time is irrelevant. We aren't designing plants to come online in a year, we are designing them to come online in 10-15 years. Thermodynamically, nuclear is worthwhile. When oil starts to really bite that is all that will matter, whether or not we have an energy source that can sustain us. Market forces are subservient to physical forces.
Oil powers our cars and pretty much all forms of transportation, including transporting products... like food. Nuclear plants power our homes and businesses. If we build a million nuclear plants, it won't change our oil dependency one bit until we all start driving electric cars.
I guess that gig he has with the Cable Weather Satellite channel was just a temporary gig. I heard him on there the other day:
Tomorrow's weather, partly cloudy with little temperature change.
On an unrelated note... Anyone know how Canada got its name?
They placed a bunch of letters in a hat and drew them out. The one doing the drawing picked out the first letter, "C, Eh". then "N, Eh" and finally "D, Eh." (if you didn't get it, say it out loud).
Sorry if my previous comment was a bit harsh. The harshness wasn't intended for you, but for the GP. You seemed fair enough.
It was a poor way to bring up the point that the Bush administration has done a lot to hurt the environment. It was pretty surprising to see that someone they tried to do to benefit the environment got shot down.
For a (somewhat-biased) record: http://www.nrdc.org/BushRecord/
Bush's record is not the point. The point is that when someone does something you don't like, you bash them. When someone does something that you DO like, you praise them.
Now that we have the ground rules in place let's bring it back to the topic at hand. The GGP bashed the Prez, as you did, after doing he did something GOOD for the environment. Which takes us back to our rule we established earlier:
When you bash someone all the time, even when they do something good, you lose all credibility and look like a little partisan bitch.
But on a more serious note.. I feel this administration has ruined out economy and now its after our environment.
This couldnt be more f'd up
So, let me get this straight. A BUSH ADMINISTRATION clean air initiative... meaning a BUSH plan that was GOOD for the environment BY DESIGN gets shot down by the courts and YOU BLAME THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION?
You're right! That couldn't be from f'd up!
Thus, in a world where the routers along the way are fundamentally trusted to do their job and route packets, you're not going to have much luck protecting yourself against this sort of attack by your provider.
That's why this is one of the few... VERY FEW cases where government is needed to step in and say, "you can't do that."
Whatever, you misrepresented the actual situation with this issue.
You may be right. In the sense of fairness, here is another quote from the same link as above. Also, please notice that six months have past since the previous post:
Comment #22 from William Jon McCann (gnome-screensaver developer, points: 22)
2006-03-03 14:44 UTC [reply]
Take it easy everyone. Please understand that I'm not paid to do this and it
isn't my full time job. Also understand that simply reiterating the issue
doesn't add anything. Also, unless you are motivated enough to actually write
some code or pay/convince someone else to do it for you then you are less
likely to get what you want. That's open source for you. Please try not to
make demands of me.
I've added a stub to the FAQ about directory translation.
Chris Weiss: I'm glad to see that you have actually looked into this. I'm
afraid there is probably something wrong with your system since that should
work fine. Try submitting a bug to your distro.
Miles: Looks like someone upgraded the wiki and it changed the way the URLs are
accepted. Try, http://live.gnome.org/GnomeScreensaver/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
I think was is needed here is a product manager or something that acts as a firewall/router to translate between the actual coders and the general public.
Coders are geeks. They don't deal well with people who don't understand what it is that they really do. It doesn't help that they get bombarded with stupid requests from people who don't know what the software is supposed to do. In my current position, part of my job is to act as that firewall. I take the good requests to our developers to consider and keep the stupid ones to myself. I understand coders and don't get offended when they say, "that's a stupid idea. This was never designed to do that crap and the user needs to find another way to get that done." The user would get offended and find another solution to their problem, probably from our competition (Linux's main competition is Windows). Instead, I tell them, "here, try this application. It does a better job as all it really does is what you are trying to accomplish."
Either way, users need to be treated with respect whether they are paying customers or not. When I'm deciding between upgrading my 50 office machines to Visa or switching to Ubuntu, it doesn't help when my requests are brushed off because a developer doesn't think they are necessary.
How many lines of code can 128 MB of RAM hold and what is the average 'line' for C?
I don't know, but 15 years ago, I would have killed for 128 MB of RAM or even a 128 MB HDD. My first "PC" had 4 MB RAM and a 102 MB HDD. It ran DOS 6.2, Windows 3.1 and a host of crappy DOS games. (Actually, I don't think the DOS games used more than the first MB)
Strip the GUI and even the CLI, and you'll find that 128MB is quite a bit if your main concern is code. Data could take quite a chunk of that, but if you're just talking about text files with data and configuration, a few MB could handle it with not problem.
Now, once you're on the ground and you want to start storing some hires pics to send back to Houston... you better have a flash card stashed away on that thing somewhere!
You know, maybe he chose to be the maintainer because nobody else stepped up and it needed one. He was (is?) a volunteer who donated his own time. You have zero right to demand anything of him. If you want a feature implemented badly, pay someone to do it.
I love the way you complete disregard the part where I said
(not to mean that I don't appreciate his efforts..)
Then again, if you have you wouldn't have your strawman if you did.
But to get back on topic, the GP said I should place a bug report and said that everyone should as it helps the maintainers know that there is a problem. I showed him what happens when people do.
I don't have a problem with maintainers. I have a problem with maintainers that don't listen to the users. Regardless of what you think of them or how whiney they are, they are the ones who use the product. Besides, isn't that the point of all this; to get more people using Linux?
How many users do you think we're going to get by saying:
You have zero right to demand anything of him. If you want a feature implemented badly, pay someone to do it.
Fuck that. I'd rather buy Windows.
Here is the GNome developer response to the screensaver thingie:
Is this a troll or do you suffer from short attention span? This was his first comment, but the discussion on bugzilla was very long, and further down he identified technical issues that prevent this from being done sanely atm, wrote an FAQ on the matter, asked for help from those who see this feature, and so on.
Right, after about 20 posts of people ragging on him. The fact remains that he tried to weasel his way out by saying that it shouldn't have to be done because it was hard to do. I bet it is hard. That's why I'm not a programmer, much less a maintainer. If he has a problem with what the people using the product want, he should hand it off to someone who gives a damn. (not to mean that I don't appreciate his efforts, but he chose to be the maintainer for a reason.)
Anyone interest in the issue is well-advised not to rely on the parent but read the discussion themselves.
Good idea. If only had posted a link or something...
Excellent. Thanx.
It will take me a while to do the math on that, but thank you very much. Ah, who are we kidding. I'm never going to do the math. I'm just going to assume it's correct.
May the Mod-Gods smile upon you.
Community software should mean that people can easily post bug reports and get issues like these addressed.
Open a bug for each issue and hopefully they will be addressed.
I think it is beneficial to the entire community when people report these things.
Here is the GNome developer response to the screensaver thingie:
Comment #1 from William Jon McCann (gnome-screensaver developer, points: 22)
2005-09-19 13:32 UTC [reply]
I don't have any plans to support this. My view is that any screensaver theme
that requires configuration is inherently broken.
Is developer arrogance a bug or a feature?
Community software should mean that people can easily post bug reports and get issues like these addressed.
Open a bug for each issue and hopefully they will be addressed.
I think it is beneficial to the entire community when people report these things.
The problem is that these don't appear to be bugs, but design choices. I believe that the gnome developers intentionally removed the option to configure each of the different screen savers and that the KDE dev's set up their horrid desktop icon system by design.
What's to file?
I see your $0.02 and raise you a nickel.
My problem with KDE 4 is that I can't drag a box over several desktop to select multiple desktop icons. That drives me nuts!
My problem with Gnome is the fact that I can't adjust the screen saver properties without some ugly hack.
I know, these are minor issues, but annoying nonetheless. And your post was probably the nickel's worth anyway.
Your failure is one of scale. You fail to take into account that this is one experiment. Nature doesn't work that way. Nature experiments with THOUSANDS of different "petri dishes" every moment of every day. It doesn't care about reproducibility or the scientific method. Another experiment might have made this switch in 20 generations instead of 44,000. And even if it took 44,000 generations, that's only 44,000 years for platypus's.
Parallel evolution, immense timescales. You don't go from a door-mouse to a platypus in one step. It'll take you 10 million years, the right conditions and a shit-load of serendipity. If you had to do it all over again, you could never guarantee it would happen because you have no idea of the selective pressures applied, when and in what situations they were beneficial.
We have proven that life EVOLVES. We will probably never be able to prove that all life came from a SINGLE cellular parent (probably because it didn't).
You are correct that the scale increases the odds exponentially. I do acknowledge your point, although it reminds me of an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters...
My point was that no matter how many petri dishes you start with, all those dishes still work independently of each other. No matter how many petri dishes are thrown in, it's still a straight line when tracing the platypus back to a single dish. Granted, there will be branches, but since those die off or do not be come platypuses, we shouldn't consider them when working backwards.
I guess my point is an issue of math and lack of evidence. Let's assume that a mouse generation is one year. We have about 65,000,000 years since the anything much larger than a mouse became extinct along with the dinosaurs. That gives 65,000,000 generations for a mouse (or something like it) to evolve into an elephant (and all other mammalian life, but let's concentrate on the elephant). And, 65,000,000 generations is generous since as life gets more complex, the time between generations increases, but we'll stick with that.
Since we have accurate mouse specimens dating back at least 2000 years (being conservative), with little or no change, we can assume that detectable changes take more than 2000 years. That leaves 32,500 generations for a mouse to evolve into an elephant, which is a pretty big change and can not happen gradually. Shouldn't we see the mouse evolving at least somewhat in either the lab or in our sewers? Shouldn't we have at least one species mouse we can point to and say that it evolved directly from that species of mouse over there?
Of course, that's just mouse to elephant. Throw in your own examples; mouse to humpback whale, mouse to human, mouse to mastodon, it doesn't matter.
These are just questions I am genuinely seeking answers to and this seems like a good place to ask them. I am not a biologist, so I'm fairly ignorant when compared to one, but I do have a basic grasp of how evolution works. My question is basically, "Was there enough time?" and if so, "Why don't we see more of it?"
I was under the impression that Obama is not perfect but that he would always admit if he was wrong and quickly qork towards the right direction. I think this will be a big test of him in my eyes. If he never turns around on this issue it means he is clearly as stubborn as the rest. If he can admit he is wrong then hes better than someone who started out agreeing with me more.
How do you know that they won't change their views back once elected?
That's the dilemma that politicians face. If they change their views, they are "flip-floppers". If they don't, they are stubborn.
Ignore for a second how you feel about any particular politician and consider this example. Obama is being hammered for changing his views. Bush is hammered for NOT changing his views. They are damned if the do and damned if they don't.