I just spent about half an hour crafting a response to your post, complete with well-reasoned arguments, apologies for my facetious manner in my last post, etc, when either Netscape or Gnome ate up all my memory, forcing the system into five minutes of heavy swapping and eventually crashing the X server. The irony was not lost on me.:)
So here's a second attempt at a reply, much shorter because it's been rewritten from scratch to remove redundancy.:)
You have libraries crawling up the walls. Is there a reason I have to have curses on my system? Or if I don't have that, I have to have TK? Would it kill the kernel developers to make a X based config tool (Native, not dependant on TK)? Redundancy is the #1 problem in Linux.
I quite agree. Unfortunately the solution is to spend a year writing the Toolkit To End All Toolkits, then a thousand years rewriting all your existing apps to use it.
Currently, I use GNOME with Sawmill because it looks so much nicer, and the environment is much better. I do, however, like KDevelop. Thus, I have to install both GNOME and KDE.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. If you really want to reduce bloat, port KDevelop to Gnome.
You settle for trivial responses, but think about it. Why NOT a system-wide CORBA implementation. What's there to lose? There is a lot to gain!
It's a good idea, one which is mentioned in the CORBA 2 specs - a system-wide ORB provided by the operating system. Unfortunately that requires writing a new operating system. At the moment I have more urgent things on my to-do list.:(
You are so shallow. Do you even think before you post?
Not in this instance, no. I'm sorry.
If you ever read the DirectX docs, you should realize that architecture is independant of interface IN A WELL DESIGNED SYSTEM.
OK, I've heard the OO dogma as well, but in real life it's rarely that simple. People don't just work with the interface provided, they think about what goes on behind that interface and make design decisions based on their conclusions. If you don't provide any information about the implementation, they will reverse engineer it. It's one of the basic hacker drives - "find out how it works, and exploit that knowledge to make it work better". So there's rarely as clean a separation between implementation and interface as designers would like. And even when everybody sticks strictly to the API, new features get added and the interface grows. Give DirectX or BeOS 30 years and see how clean the API looks then.
Take the CORBA implementation. CORBA has a set API, no? Why not make an object (or a library or whatever) to allow an app to access CORBA. Now, you can use whatever damn CORBA implementation you chose, as long as it responds in a given way to a given input.
That's what the developers of Mico and ORBit both set out to do. Unfortunately they disagreed about how it should be done. If you want to extend ORBit to allow it to replace Mico in KDE setups, I'm sure the Gnome project would welcome your patches.
BTW, I don't want a great *consumer* OS. I think that distinction (between consumer and business, server and workstation) is bogus. A good design should scale; it should handle being a server just as well as being a workstation for Mom.
I suspect the reason that Unix and Win2k have accumulated so much cruft is that they have tried to be all things to all people. Apple can afford to strip away the crap because they know their target audience. Mac users don't want a bizarre GUI which runs on one machine and displays on another. They don't want obscure text formatting languages which don't let you specify how your document should look. They don't want to be able to run scientific simulations they wrote in FORTRAN in the 1970s. They want a Mac. Not a Beowulf cluster, not a palmtop, not a workstation. A simple, functional personal computer.
The day free software developers are prepared to abandon scalability is the day they start writing the free MacOS X.
3) You are unlikely to send more than several gigabytes of text in communications in your lifetime. You never need to reuse the pad.
But don't forget you need a separate pad for each person you communicate with. So if your pads are several gigs in size, it quickly becomes impractical to use one-time pads for all your emails, etc.
It's true. Linux is becoming increasingly more bloated. In terms of memory use, its true. GNOME +X +Linux take as much memory as Windows.
And they do the same job. What a coincidence!
BeOS doesn't have nearly as much crap in it as Linux does.
I guess by "crap" you mean "applications"? Seriously, Linux and Gnome could be a lot smaller if they ditched support for existing Unix/X applications and standards, but then nobody except you would use them. Unfortunately a lot of computer users want to do useful work with their computers rather than spending their time measuring each other's kernels.
Take the whole KDE/GNOME/X thing. If someone runs KDE 2 and GNOME 2, they will have a total of two large cobra implementations, three drag and drop protocols, three print servers, three+ widget sets, dozons of critical libraries, and an ass-load of duplicated functionality.
You said it. Why would anyone run KDE and Gnome when they do the same job? And by the way, it's CORBA, not COBRA.
Why cannot a Linux-wide COBRA implementation be used?
It's CORBA you monkey!
How exactly is GNOME different from KDE aside from ascthetics(namely that until 2.0 the KDE people had none)? Sure there are some architecture differences, but to the app, they provide basically the same services with the same features.
Oh, it's just architecture differences? Well then, they're basically the same, aren't they? Just like Windows and Linux are basically just two operating systems that provide some services to applications. Monkey.
It would be really nice if someone would define a standard set system of objects, (or function calls, no-one cares) that could be implemented by and DE and widget set of the users choice.
They did. It's called Xlib. That's exactly what it was designed for.
Sega doesn't have to support it. Nintendo is still saying that emulators are illegal. Of course, when the courts have already ruled it legal, it would be a good idea for Sega to try to make money from it, rather than fighting it.
And they would fight it why? Anything that harms Sony helps Sega, and an emulator which removes the only remaining reason to buy a Playstation (great library of old games) helps Sega enormously. One of the PSX2's big selling points will be that it can play PSX games. If the Dreamcast can do the same it will be a major coup for Sega.
Find a free ISP in Holland or France that allows you to sign up and get your login & password over the web. Make up a name and address if you have to. Set up a cheap international calling account, and dial in from the UK. If they still want to eavesdrop on you, they have to tap your phone.
Anyone have links to any more information on Mobile Linux? I read the part about running on devices with low memory and no hard disk, and I thought "Playstation"...
As a continuation, I had always thought that a solution could be doing depth of field in software and displaying the resultant image. You still need the gaze tracking hardware to figure out what the user is looking at and thus what depth should be in focus, but you wouldn't need the extra optical hardware, but now that I think about it this is of no use at all (well it would probably look pretty). The problem is that the blured image would still be completely in focus everyware. And once again, since your mind no longer has to keep track of focal lengths... disaster.
I've been thinking about a similar idea. The "screen" is held at the same distance from your eye as a normal pair of glasses (about 2cm) - too close for you to focus on, but you don't focus on an image projected on the screen, you focus through the screen. The image is blurred using software so that each dot on the "virtual screen" (which you are focussing on) becomes a semi-transparent circle on the real screen (which you are looking through). Your eye resolves these blobs back into dots when you focus on the virtual screen, and the apparently long focal length gives the illusion of distance.
Since you have a separate screen for each eye, you could even encode different parts of the image at different apparent distances (use different size/opacity blobs for different distances and show a different side of the object to each eye), creating depth of field. You would be able to change focus from an apparently nearby object to an apparently distant object just as you would in real life, and the other parts of the image would slip out of focus just as they do in real life (the blobs would be the wrong size to be translated back into sharp dots).
Hey presto - slimline 3D glasses with depth of field, no tracking hardware required. And because the screen is so close to your eyes, you would get a very wide field of vision.
The only problem that I can see would be getting LCD screens which were small enough (about 3cm * 4cm) but which had high enough resolution. Low resolution would not result in things looking pixelated as it normally does, because you would not be focussing on the screen. However, I think it would cause problems with focussing - objects in the virtual space would never be in sharp focus because the blobs would not be perfectly round.
Can anyone confirm that this idea would work, given good enough LCDs? It's been buzzing around my head for a while now.
The difference is that PC peripheral manufacturers are competing, while open source developers are cooperating. The reason for this is closed hardware specifications. Open source developers share a common goal (better software), and a common vehicle (they all hack on the same codebase). Hardware manufacturers share a common goal (better hardware), but NDAs and patents force them to introduce incompatible, competing standards.
If the PC specs had been released under a GPL-like license, ie "if you develop any hardware using these specs you must release the specs to your hardware under this license", maybe we would have seen a PC peripherals market with more small players and less conflicting/competing standards.
Next week: how the GPL could have cured the Black Death and brought peace to all mankind.
Creative plans to release a binary-only driver to replace the current open source drivers. The open source drivers are simply a stop-gap, and a way to get Linux users to buy Creative cards. The current drivers only implement wave recording and playback, and support for external MIDI devices. Presumably you will need the binary-only drivers to use any of the Emu10k1 or wavetable features. See Creative's SB Live on Linux FAQ for more information.
if the government was going to pursue eugenics in a socially dominating manner, it would have done it already. The Nazis tried, certainly. We can see how well they did.
The Nazis were not defeated because of their ideas about eugenics. In fact, Winston Churchill was a believer in eugenics. The portrayal of the second World War as "the Allies rushing to rescue Europe from the grip of a genocidal madman" is popular today, but it would not have been recognised in 1941. The Allies fought the war out of self interest - Britain feared invasion, and the United States would have stood by and allowed Hitler to conquer Europe if the Pearl Harbor attack had not made it politically impossible for them to remain neutral.
It is dangerous to dismiss eugenics as harmless just because the Nazis were defeated. The fact that the Nazis' genocidal policies were initially popular should give us cause for grave concern, since we are sure to face a resurgence of eugenic ideas with advances in biotechnology.
The Sony website says there will be a network adapter for the PSX2 available in 2001 *using the PSX2's Type III PCMCIA slot*. Obviously there are plenty of PCMCIA Ethernet cards available now (even 100 Mbps) so I can only assume they will be introducing yet another proprietary standard, this time for network hardware.
I've just been looking at the Sony website, and I noticed something interesting about the PSX2 development hardware - it is "Linux-based", and uses the same "Emotion Engine" CPU as the PSX2. In other words, Sony have already ported Linux to the Playstation 2! And if I understand the GPL correctly, they have to release their changes under the GPL!
I don't know about you, but my PC is on its way out.
I'd me more inclined to agree with you if they didn't charge 70 UK pounds for a *cable* to fit the proprietary SP/DIF interface on their 200 UK pounds DAT recorder. Yes, if you buy a Playstation you get a Playstation. But if you want to use four controllers with it, who do you have to go running back to?
If you place it close to your monitor, it will interfere with the picture. If you place it far away, the eavesdropper will be able to distinguish between the two sources.
"When Mosiac comes around, I do 1) lie my ass off and say what they want to hear from a "normal" kid"
Probably wouldn't work - tests of this kind are designed to pick up liars. For example, they will ask you two differently worded questions about the same topic. To use a grossly simplified example:
Would you describe yourself as punctual? Yes/No Would you describe yourself as patient? Yes/No
The two questions will be in separate parts of the questionnaire, to make it harder to remain consistent. There will be a lot of cross-referenced questions. The only way to appear "normal" is to put yourself into a "normal" state of mind... and if you can do that they aren't worried about you. =)
Unfortunately sand doesn't contain much steel. Or are we talking about robots so small that they can pull atoms apart and construct new elements from the protons and neutrons? That would certainly solve the power supply problem.;)
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So here's a second attempt at a reply, much shorter because it's been rewritten from scratch to remove redundancy. :)
You have libraries crawling up the walls. Is there a reason I have to have curses on my system? Or if I don't have that, I have to have TK? Would it kill the kernel developers to make a X based config tool (Native, not dependant on TK)? Redundancy is the #1 problem in Linux.
I quite agree. Unfortunately the solution is to spend a year writing the Toolkit To End All Toolkits, then a thousand years rewriting all your existing apps to use it.
Currently, I use GNOME with Sawmill because it looks so much nicer, and the environment is much better. I do, however, like KDevelop. Thus, I have to install both GNOME and KDE.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. If you really want to reduce bloat, port KDevelop to Gnome.
You settle for trivial responses, but think about it. Why NOT a system-wide CORBA implementation. What's there to lose? There is a lot to gain!
It's a good idea, one which is mentioned in the CORBA 2 specs - a system-wide ORB provided by the operating system. Unfortunately that requires writing a new operating system. At the moment I have more urgent things on my to-do list. :(
You are so shallow. Do you even think before you post?
Not in this instance, no. I'm sorry.
If you ever read the DirectX docs, you should realize that architecture is independant of interface IN A WELL DESIGNED SYSTEM.
OK, I've heard the OO dogma as well, but in real life it's rarely that simple. People don't just work with the interface provided, they think about what goes on behind that interface and make design decisions based on their conclusions. If you don't provide any information about the implementation, they will reverse engineer it. It's one of the basic hacker drives - "find out how it works, and exploit that knowledge to make it work better". So there's rarely as clean a separation between implementation and interface as designers would like. And even when everybody sticks strictly to the API, new features get added and the interface grows. Give DirectX or BeOS 30 years and see how clean the API looks then.
Take the CORBA implementation. CORBA has a set API, no? Why not make an object (or a library or whatever) to allow an app to access CORBA. Now, you can use whatever damn CORBA implementation you chose, as long as it responds in a given way to a given input.
That's what the developers of Mico and ORBit both set out to do. Unfortunately they disagreed about how it should be done. If you want to extend ORBit to allow it to replace Mico in KDE setups, I'm sure the Gnome project would welcome your patches.
I suspect the reason that Unix and Win2k have accumulated so much cruft is that they have tried to be all things to all people. Apple can afford to strip away the crap because they know their target audience. Mac users don't want a bizarre GUI which runs on one machine and displays on another. They don't want obscure text formatting languages which don't let you specify how your document should look. They don't want to be able to run scientific simulations they wrote in FORTRAN in the 1970s. They want a Mac. Not a Beowulf cluster, not a palmtop, not a workstation. A simple, functional personal computer.
The day free software developers are prepared to abandon scalability is the day they start writing the free MacOS X.
But don't forget you need a separate pad for each person you communicate with. So if your pads are several gigs in size, it quickly becomes impractical to use one-time pads for all your emails, etc.
And they do the same job. What a coincidence!
BeOS doesn't have nearly as much crap in it as Linux does.
I guess by "crap" you mean "applications"? Seriously, Linux and Gnome could be a lot smaller if they ditched support for existing Unix/X applications and standards, but then nobody except you would use them. Unfortunately a lot of computer users want to do useful work with their computers rather than spending their time measuring each other's kernels.
Take the whole KDE/GNOME/X thing. If someone runs KDE 2 and GNOME 2, they will have a total of two large cobra implementations, three drag and drop protocols, three print servers, three+ widget sets, dozons of critical libraries, and an ass-load of duplicated functionality.
You said it. Why would anyone run KDE and Gnome when they do the same job? And by the way, it's CORBA, not COBRA.
Why cannot a Linux-wide COBRA implementation be used?
It's CORBA you monkey!
How exactly is GNOME different from KDE aside from ascthetics(namely that until 2.0 the KDE people had none)? Sure there are some architecture differences, but to the app, they provide basically the same services with the same features.
Oh, it's just architecture differences? Well then, they're basically the same, aren't they? Just like Windows and Linux are basically just two operating systems that provide some services to applications. Monkey.
It would be really nice if someone would define a standard set system of objects, (or function calls, no-one cares) that could be implemented by and DE and widget set of the users choice.
They did. It's called Xlib. That's exactly what it was designed for.
Now THERE is smart flexibility.
I'm glad you agree. :)
You must be a mathematician.
And they would fight it why? Anything that harms Sony helps Sega, and an emulator which removes the only remaining reason to buy a Playstation (great library of old games) helps Sega enormously. One of the PSX2's big selling points will be that it can play PSX games. If the Dreamcast can do the same it will be a major coup for Sega.
Find a free ISP in Holland or France that allows you to sign up and get your login & password over the web. Make up a name and address if you have to. Set up a cheap international calling account, and dial in from the UK. If they still want to eavesdrop on you, they have to tap your phone.
Anyone have links to any more information on Mobile Linux? I read the part about running on devices with low memory and no hard disk, and I thought "Playstation"...
As a continuation, I had always thought that a solution could be doing depth of field in software and displaying the resultant image. You still need the gaze tracking hardware to figure out what the user is looking at and thus what depth should be in focus, but you wouldn't need the extra optical hardware, but now that I think about it this is of no use at all (well it would probably look pretty). The problem is that the blured image would still be completely in focus everyware. And once again, since your mind no longer has to keep track of focal lengths... disaster.
I've been thinking about a similar idea. The "screen" is held at the same distance from your eye as a normal pair of glasses (about 2cm) - too close for you to focus on, but you don't focus on an image projected on the screen, you focus through the screen. The image is blurred using software so that each dot on the "virtual screen" (which you are focussing on) becomes a semi-transparent circle on the real screen (which you are looking through). Your eye resolves these blobs back into dots when you focus on the virtual screen, and the apparently long focal length gives the illusion of distance.
Since you have a separate screen for each eye, you could even encode different parts of the image at different apparent distances (use different size/opacity blobs for different distances and show a different side of the object to each eye), creating depth of field. You would be able to change focus from an apparently nearby object to an apparently distant object just as you would in real life, and the other parts of the image would slip out of focus just as they do in real life (the blobs would be the wrong size to be translated back into sharp dots).
Hey presto - slimline 3D glasses with depth of field, no tracking hardware required. And because the screen is so close to your eyes, you would get a very wide field of vision.
The only problem that I can see would be getting LCD screens which were small enough (about 3cm * 4cm) but which had high enough resolution. Low resolution would not result in things looking pixelated as it normally does, because you would not be focussing on the screen. However, I think it would cause problems with focussing - objects in the virtual space would never be in sharp focus because the blobs would not be perfectly round.
Can anyone confirm that this idea would work, given good enough LCDs? It's been buzzing around my head for a while now.
I think it's the fact that the HURD servers are multi-threaded that makes them hard to debug, not the fact that the HURD is a microkernel.
The difference is that PC peripheral manufacturers are competing, while open source developers are cooperating. The reason for this is closed hardware specifications. Open source developers share a common goal (better software), and a common vehicle (they all hack on the same codebase). Hardware manufacturers share a common goal (better hardware), but NDAs and patents force them to introduce incompatible, competing standards.
If the PC specs had been released under a GPL-like license, ie "if you develop any hardware using these specs you must release the specs to your hardware under this license", maybe we would have seen a PC peripherals market with more small players and less conflicting/competing standards.
Next week: how the GPL could have cured the Black Death and brought peace to all mankind.
Creative plans to release a binary-only driver to replace the current open source drivers. The open source drivers are simply a stop-gap, and a way to get Linux users to buy Creative cards. The current drivers only implement wave recording and playback, and support for external MIDI devices. Presumably you will need the binary-only drivers to use any of the Emu10k1 or wavetable features. See Creative's SB Live on Linux FAQ for more information.
The Nazis were not defeated because of their ideas about eugenics. In fact, Winston Churchill was a believer in eugenics. The portrayal of the second World War as "the Allies rushing to rescue Europe from the grip of a genocidal madman" is popular today, but it would not have been recognised in 1941. The Allies fought the war out of self interest - Britain feared invasion, and the United States would have stood by and allowed Hitler to conquer Europe if the Pearl Harbor attack had not made it politically impossible for them to remain neutral.
It is dangerous to dismiss eugenics as harmless just because the Nazis were defeated. The fact that the Nazis' genocidal policies were initially popular should give us cause for grave concern, since we are sure to face a resurgence of eugenic ideas with advances in biotechnology.
Sorry Jon, I think Karl Marx beat them to that one.
The Sony website says there will be a network adapter for the PSX2 available in 2001 *using the PSX2's Type III PCMCIA slot*. Obviously there are plenty of PCMCIA Ethernet cards available now (even 100 Mbps) so I can only assume they will be introducing yet another proprietary standard, this time for network hardware.
I've just been looking at the Sony website, and I noticed something interesting about the PSX2 development hardware - it is "Linux-based", and uses the same "Emotion Engine" CPU as the PSX2. In other words, Sony have already ported Linux to the Playstation 2! And if I understand the GPL correctly, they have to release their changes under the GPL!
I don't know about you, but my PC is on its way out.
I'd me more inclined to agree with you if they didn't charge 70 UK pounds for a *cable* to fit the proprietary SP/DIF interface on their 200 UK pounds DAT recorder. Yes, if you buy a Playstation you get a Playstation. But if you want to use four controllers with it, who do you have to go running back to?
The profits for the Playstation division probably come from game licenses, not selling PSXs.
Does this mean the whole "morph host" x86 emulator theory is out the window?
If you place it close to your monitor, it will interfere with the picture. If you place it far away, the eavesdropper will be able to distinguish between the two sources.
Does the monarchy's use of Linux mean that Linux CDs sold in the UK will be able to carry the "By Appointment to HM the Queen" mark?
"When Mosiac comes around, I do 1) lie my ass off and say what they want to hear from a "normal" kid"
Probably wouldn't work - tests of this kind are designed to pick up liars. For example, they will ask you two differently worded questions about the same topic. To use a grossly simplified example:
Would you describe yourself as punctual? Yes/No
Would you describe yourself as patient? Yes/No
The two questions will be in separate parts of the questionnaire, to make it harder to remain consistent. There will be a lot of cross-referenced questions. The only way to appear "normal" is to put yourself into a "normal" state of mind... and if you can do that they aren't worried about you. =)
Please take your KEYBOARD to see a DOCTOR. It MAY have a *MILD* chemical imbalance in its CAPS LOCK KEY. ;p
"the introduction of new products that no one really wanted, but we are duped into thinking we can't live without"
Like, um, nanites?
Unfortunately sand doesn't contain much steel. Or are we talking about robots so small that they can pull atoms apart and construct new elements from the protons and neutrons? That would certainly solve the power supply problem. ;)