That is, in fact, the logical trap that I was trying to set. You did not fall for it, but now you must admit that it's a matter of your passivity versus their volunteer efforts. I hereby claim that "self-appointed" is not a term of disparagement, but an accolade.
That's a fair opinion. I don't yet agree, but would be willing to see a concrete proposal for an appointment process. Do you feel strongly enough about this to make it happen, or are the volunteers more motivated about this than you?
It's very interesting to me how people use the term "self-appointed" to disparage those who volunteer. Is volunteerism really such a bad thing? If so, how do you think spokespersons should be appointed?
Agreed. I'm guessing that's why most people don't know about themes in openstep. Speaking of GTK, I'm curious if the design of the themes allows for NeXT-ish scrollbar buttons. The new version of GTKstep that uses themes has them back at either end of the bar.:-(
That's a good point. It's a conclusion that the creators of Openstep came to long ago. Most people don't know it, but you can make your Openstep/Mach applications look like Windows apps with a single parameter change to the defaults database.
...the dream of having only one standard GUI interface is so anti-linux that i am amazed that someone will even bring it up.
I suppose that you have to be able to look beyond your own individual GUI tastes and freedoms to see the intent -- which is not to impose One True(tm) GUI upon the geek, but rather to enable someone to easily impose One True(tm) GUI upon their users in a business. Like it or not, letting every drone in a corporate beehive apply personalized warpaint to their tools is a recipie for a disaster within the tech-support department.
You may be surprised to learn that this is actually consistent with a long tradition of consultants & IT departments that provide X11-based solutions to their users. The argument is that X allows you to set up a desktop where the only available operations are those that allow the user to use/maintain the applications that you provide, which is about as close to idiot-proof as one can get. In a setting where most of your users can barely figure out the semantics of mouse-control, this is a good thing.
NeXTstep found good middle-ground in the enterprise, giving end-users freedom to install local applications if they needed to, but not so much freedom that they could make life miserable for tech-support. The kicker: the GUI was designed so that it made an intelligent personal choice as well: the use of color only where it adds information, scroll adjustments that minimized mouse-travel, blah blah blah...
I told you jokers a dozen times what Linux or any OS needs, and that is reliable end user data validation, BEFORE the form gets sent to the server.
I've seen someone post this opinion before here. Perhaps it was you.
I think that you're confusing some very important things here, and that it's preventing you from making meaningful evaluations of technologies.
First of all, data validation is not something that belongs in the operating-system. Rather, it is something that belongs in an application. That said, you can have a programmer write a good application for you (that puts the data validation where it should be) or you can have a programmer do a poor job writing the application where the application hurts you more than it helps. It appears that you have experience with this latter case, but that you're misplacing the blame on the language and/or operating-system.
Make no mistake: the tools are not to blame. Blame your programmer for his shoddy workmanship.
IMHO, irrational behavior is the default setting for humanity. Rationality must be practiced.
Much of modern scientific thought comes from people who believed in God (Newton, Einstein).
Well, first of all, being irrational doesn't imply being incapable of discovery. Oh, and by the way, Einstein has this to say about god: "It was, of course, a lie that you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called 'religious' then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Dogma literally means the teachings of the Catholic church.
Confusing the etymology of a word with its meaning is a symptom of irrationality. Be careful not to bolster the original poster's position. If you cannot admit that natural languages are in a constant state of flux, then there's no firm ground for rational discourse.
In short, matters of faith are non-rational, by definition: accepting a non-falsifiable hypothesis as truth is a leap that is not supported by structured reasoning. You'll have to attack that point directly if you want to make any headway in this thread.
That comparison might make sense if the issue were merely about bundling their browser with their system software. Unfortunately, the issue is about integrating it with their system software: they claim that they can't un-bundle without breaking their OS. There is no such similarity in the linux world, where the lines between kernel, application, and shared-library are all clearly defined. Maybe if you thought about it some more you might be able to come up with a fair analogy, but the one with respect to shells doesn't cut the mustard.
It seems like in any given discussion, 97.5% of the people are saying the same thing.
Who am I to argue with a statistic that is accurate to a 10th of a percent?:-/
Regarding how things seem to you, occam's razor guides us to a more simple explaination for your observations. Accept the hypothesis that people gravitate towards the threads in which they can bitch, and avoid those with which they take no exception. (This is actually a mere restatement of your own alt.flame comparison.) If that were the tendency, one would observe the same high degree of concurrence. Moreover, this hypothesis does not require us to leap to the conclusion that the same individuals are behind the contradictory statements.
I totally have to agree with this comment...You people sure can play both sides of the coin when it's convienient.
Well, here's proof that even obvious brain-farts will probably resonate with someone who will claim to have heard the beautiful music of truth.
Stop and think, for a second, about how many people frequent this site. Now ask yourself (and give an honest answer) "If I read two comments that seem to be at odds, does it mean that the Slashdot Clan(tm) is guilty of hypocrisy, or could it mean that they were written by different individuals with different viewpoints?"
A properly calibrated brain will respond that the opinions stem from individuals, and that you can't claim to have found hypocrisy unless the conflicting viewpoints come from the same source...and that using the nebulous concept of the Slashdot Clan(tm) as the single common source is fallacious.
Neutral-bias is way over-rated. As a media consumer, I shop for bias (though not necessarily one that matches my own) because it makes the product more tasty. If slashdot claimed to be "unbiased" on the label, I would expect it in the content -- but then it would probably be way too dry to read. Biased reporting can be respectable journalism too. Just wear it on your sleeve.
Computer "notations" are not rich enough to describe human thought.
Must a language be so powerful that it can express all thoughts just to qualify as a "language?" If so, then I claim that languages do not exist, period.:-) English cannot express a huge universe of musical thoughts, for example.
My claim was that computer languages allow humans to express thoughts, and never meant to imply all thoughts -- which would be a silly claim to make for any language!
Programming languages are obviously languages (systems for constructing symbolic strings, within constraints of syntax, with semantic associations). They are human invention, and they allow humans to express thoughts. So why should they not be called "human languages"?
I dare you to have this conversation with a farmer, troll-boy. It used to be the case that farmers produced their own seeds. Today, even prior to this new invention by Monsanto, we're in a dangerous situation where we may find ourselves, on a large scale, without enough seeds to plant. (All it will take is bad weather in the wrong place.) Famine may cure your myopic capitalist dogma some day soon.
I appreciate visual design, but would prefer NeXT black over iMac day-glo. I would even sacrifice a little speed for a machine that lends my home-office some style.
However, I would gladly do without both style and high-end performance for a zero-noise machine. I suppose I could live with head-seek noise from the fixed-disk, but power-supply fans and cpu-fans bite the big one.
Your bound is correct, and easily provable. All one needs to do is observe that there is a finite number of people, ergo a finite number of good people. QED.:-)
Now that you mention it, I was struck by that line too. It's sad to see something that's ostensibly a tribute to mathematics, but employs no mathematical thought.
I love mathematics, go, and hallucinations but PI just didn't do it for me. Maybe I'm just too picky, but there was a flaw with the movie that was just too huge to ignore: the wierdness from the 216-digit number was supposed to stem from the fact that the hasidic numerologist was looking for a 216-character name of god, but the method of summing the hebrew characters of a 216 character word won't produce a 216-digit number. In fact, the resulting number is guaranteed to be very much smaller than 216 digits long. I suppose if I had been stoned I might have fallen prey to their handwaving and might have enjoyed it, but I kept thinking "you dolt, n-digits does not imply n-letters!"
On the other hand, the spiral on the go board seemed stupid at first. Upon reflection, there was a group of 3 dead stones at the center of the spiral, where infitity lies. At least it was consistent with the infinity=death theme that appeared elsewere in the film.
Face it, people love to bash. MS isn't the only target (don't kid yourself). If it's not them, then it's ESR or RMS. And if it's not them, then it's the slashdot crowd. If not them, then it's Anonymous Cowards. If it's the bashing that you don't like, that's one thing. But it looks like it's the bashing of MS in particular that's getting under your skin. Am I reading you wrong?
Slashdot Mirror
That is, in fact, the logical trap that I was trying to set. You did not fall for it, but now you must admit that it's a matter of your passivity versus their volunteer efforts. I hereby claim that "self-appointed" is not a term of disparagement, but an accolade.
That's a fair opinion. I don't yet agree, but would be willing to see a concrete proposal for an appointment process. Do you feel strongly enough about this to make it happen, or are the volunteers more motivated about this than you?
It's very interesting to me how people use the term "self-appointed" to disparage those who volunteer. Is volunteerism really such a bad thing? If so, how do you think spokespersons should be appointed?
Agreed. I'm guessing that's why most people don't know about themes in openstep. Speaking of GTK, I'm curious if the design of the themes allows for NeXT-ish scrollbar buttons. The new version of GTKstep that uses themes has them back at either end of the bar. :-(
Anyway, so much for devil's advocacy. ;-)
I suppose that you have to be able to look beyond your own individual GUI tastes and freedoms to see the intent -- which is not to impose One True(tm) GUI upon the geek, but rather to enable someone to easily impose One True(tm) GUI upon their users in a business. Like it or not, letting every drone in a corporate beehive apply personalized warpaint to their tools is a recipie for a disaster within the tech-support department.
You may be surprised to learn that this is actually consistent with a long tradition of consultants & IT departments that provide X11-based solutions to their users. The argument is that X allows you to set up a desktop where the only available operations are those that allow the user to use/maintain the applications that you provide, which is about as close to idiot-proof as one can get. In a setting where most of your users can barely figure out the semantics of mouse-control, this is a good thing.
NeXTstep found good middle-ground in the enterprise, giving end-users freedom to install local applications if they needed to, but not so much freedom that they could make life miserable for tech-support. The kicker: the GUI was designed so that it made an intelligent personal choice as well: the use of color only where it adds information, scroll adjustments that minimized mouse-travel, blah blah blah...
I've seen someone post this opinion before here. Perhaps it was you.
I think that you're confusing some very important things here, and that it's preventing you from making meaningful evaluations of technologies.
First of all, data validation is not something that belongs in the operating-system. Rather, it is something that belongs in an application. That said, you can have a programmer write a good application for you (that puts the data validation where it should be) or you can have a programmer do a poor job writing the application where the application hurts you more than it helps. It appears that you have experience with this latter case, but that you're misplacing the blame on the language and/or operating-system.
Make no mistake: the tools are not to blame. Blame your programmer for his shoddy workmanship.
Straw-man fallacy. No such claim was made.
This is a Linux page,
That's incorrect too.
IMHO, irrational behavior is the default setting for humanity. Rationality must be practiced.
Much of modern scientific thought comes from people who believed in God (Newton, Einstein).
Well, first of all, being irrational doesn't imply being incapable of discovery. Oh, and by the way, Einstein has this to say about god: "It was, of course, a lie that you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called 'religious' then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Dogma literally means the teachings of the Catholic church.
Confusing the etymology of a word with its meaning is a symptom of irrationality. Be careful not to bolster the original poster's position. If you cannot admit that natural languages are in a constant state of flux, then there's no firm ground for rational discourse.
In short, matters of faith are non-rational, by definition: accepting a non-falsifiable hypothesis as truth is a leap that is not supported by structured reasoning. You'll have to attack that point directly if you want to make any headway in this thread.
That comparison might make sense if the issue were merely about bundling their browser with their system software. Unfortunately, the issue is about integrating it with their system software: they claim that they can't un-bundle without breaking their OS. There is no such similarity in the linux world, where the lines between kernel, application, and shared-library are all clearly defined. Maybe if you thought about it some more you might be able to come up with a fair analogy, but the one with respect to shells doesn't cut the mustard.
Who am I to argue with a statistic that is accurate to a 10th of a percent? :-/
Regarding how things seem to you, occam's razor guides us to a more simple explaination for your observations. Accept the hypothesis that people gravitate towards the threads in which they can bitch, and avoid those with which they take no exception. (This is actually a mere restatement of your own alt.flame comparison.) If that were the tendency, one would observe the same high degree of concurrence. Moreover, this hypothesis does not require us to leap to the conclusion that the same individuals are behind the contradictory statements.
Well, here's proof that even obvious brain-farts will probably resonate with someone who will claim to have heard the beautiful music of truth.
Stop and think, for a second, about how many people frequent this site. Now ask yourself (and give an honest answer) "If I read two comments that seem to be at odds, does it mean that the Slashdot Clan(tm) is guilty of hypocrisy, or could it mean that they were written by different individuals with different viewpoints?"
A properly calibrated brain will respond that the opinions stem from individuals, and that you can't claim to have found hypocrisy unless the conflicting viewpoints come from the same source...and that using the nebulous concept of the Slashdot Clan(tm) as the single common source is fallacious.
Neutral-bias is way over-rated. As a media consumer, I shop for bias (though not necessarily one that matches my own) because it makes the product more tasty. If slashdot claimed to be "unbiased" on the label, I would expect it in the content -- but then it would probably be way too dry to read. Biased reporting can be respectable journalism too. Just wear it on your sleeve.
How much must one pay to license all of that ayn rand dogma?
Must a language be so powerful that it can express all thoughts just to qualify as a "language?" If so, then I claim that languages do not exist, period. :-) English cannot express a huge universe of musical thoughts, for example.
My claim was that computer languages allow humans to express thoughts, and never meant to imply all thoughts -- which would be a silly claim to make for any language!
Programming languages are obviously languages (systems for constructing symbolic strings, within constraints of syntax, with semantic associations). They are human invention, and they allow humans to express thoughts. So why should they not be called "human languages"?
I dare you to have this conversation with a farmer, troll-boy. It used to be the case that farmers produced their own seeds. Today, even prior to this new invention by Monsanto, we're in a dangerous situation where we may find ourselves, on a large scale, without enough seeds to plant. (All it will take is bad weather in the wrong place.) Famine may cure your myopic capitalist dogma some day soon.
Soylent Green is old programmers.
I can't get netscape's "find" function to register matches after the advertisement in the middle section. Ugh.
or wcarchive
However, I would gladly do without both style and high-end performance for a zero-noise machine. I suppose I could live with head-seek noise from the fixed-disk, but power-supply fans and cpu-fans bite the big one.
Your bound is correct, and easily provable. All one needs to do is observe that there is a finite number of people, ergo a finite number of good people. QED. :-)
Now that you mention it, I was struck by that line too. It's sad to see something that's ostensibly a tribute to mathematics, but employs no mathematical thought.
On the other hand, the spiral on the go board seemed stupid at first. Upon reflection, there was a group of 3 dead stones at the center of the spiral, where infitity lies. At least it was consistent with the infinity=death theme that appeared elsewere in the film.
Face it, people love to bash. MS isn't the only target (don't kid yourself). If it's not them, then it's ESR or RMS. And if it's not them, then it's the slashdot crowd. If not them, then it's Anonymous Cowards. If it's the bashing that you don't like, that's one thing. But it looks like it's the bashing of MS in particular that's getting under your skin. Am I reading you wrong?