Most people aren't interested in learning how to not use a GUI. They want to check their email. They want to browse the web. They want to pay their bills online. They want to track their spreadsheet. But most of all, they want to do such things easily and efficiently. That's why GUI-based systems like Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows are so popular.
That's a very idealistic way of looking at things. Perhaps the claim is that it is to maintain "polite discussion" or to keep posts "on-topic". But that is nowhere near the truth. Indeed, most of the forums I listed are moderated by people who have basically failed in the real world, and therefore feel the need to moderate others to make themselves feel worthwhile. Funnily enough, many of them claim to be "true Americans" and claim that they support "free speech", moments after deleting messages and banning users. The Founding Fathers would cringe in pain if they knew that Americans were partaking in such censorship and tyranny.
"Trolls" are defined as individuals who intentionally disrupt the natural flow of discussion. Indeed, that is exactly what moderators do! They remove content in order to limit discussion. The real trolls are the moderators. They are the true enemies of freedom and liberty.
Indeed, server-quality x86 hardware is a slight improvement. But it still offers reliability and durability nowhere near that of true VAX technology. There are still unfortunate quality problems to deal with, even if the airflow is slightly better.
Clustered solutions only serve to bring in more points of failure than single, extremely reliable solutions. Now you have to guarantee that the hand-off code and hardware is reliable. Soon enough you'll need to introduce redundancy there. And then you'll need to add hardware and software to provide redundancy for the redundant system redundancy systems.
Perhaps this is just a tool to stir up strife. Remember, the LA Times main interest is finanial: they are they there to make money. Their goal is to deliver advertisements, both in paper and online. Providing news is secondary. Indeed, by moving the strife and controversy machine onto the consumers they are fostering a greater effect.
Soon their wiki pages will become a "battleground" between your dichotomic "liberals" and "conservatives". They'll battle it out, trying to prove each other wrong. But in the end the LA Times will be able to deliver far more ad views for each page loaded and edited during these continual battles. That'll lead to increased revenues for them, and more strife for the rest of us.
Redundancy doesn't solve the problem of inherent low quality. Great, now you've got four systems which have a high probability of failure, in addition to the added complexity of handling off responsibilities when a failure does occur. In your effort to remove a single point of failure, you have instead introduced many more such failure points!
"Glorified message boards"? I don't think that's a very accurate description of what this is. Message boards have the horrible stigma of being moderated[1]. Remember, moderation is a form of censorship, and censorship is used by despotic regimes to limit free thought. Perhaps a better example to use would have been that of Usenet. At least newsgroups are more difficult to censor or moderate, similar to wikis.
References: [1] See sites like slashdot.org, gamefaqs.com, fark.com, somethingawful.com, kuro5hin.com, osnews.com, amongst others, for examples of message boards that are known to be against the idea of free speech.
I've been looking through the diffs, and I see nothing but back and forth trollery from both conservatives and liberals. Instead of constructive thinking, it just looks like pointless, egotistical "I'm correct, you're not" bickering back and forth. With all this bickering, nothing is actually getting accomplished.
A truly democratic-like society requires action, not just constant, self-righteous argumentery. But that won't happen as long as the Big Media continues to push for the liberal/conservative dichotomy, the whole "You're either with us or you're against us" attitude. We need to remember that we are all humans, and we must work together for real change, rather than just bicker on some experimental wiki.
When you look at some of the members[1] of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, you see names like McAfee and Symantec. Indeed, it is these companies best financial interests for security to be mandated. Of course they want legislation that demands that each and every computer on the Internet runs their antivirus or firewall software. And of course their surveys will suggest that that's what people want.
They are worldwide political issues, my friend.
on
Dr Who Rolls On
·
· Score: 1
Actually, I'm British. I'm not American. And no, the political issues I listed affect the entire world.
Don't forget that countries like Britain, Italy, Poland, and many other non-American countries are stuck in the Iraqi quagmire. There are young British men and women being sent over to places like Iraq and Afghanistan only to be blown to bits by some roadside bomb, just like is happening to American troops. Numerous British and other non-American citizenry are being held in places like Guantanamo Bay, and innocent Iraqi citizens were (are?) tortured and molested in places like the Abu-Ghraib concentration camp.
All of those issues take place outside of America (ie. Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba), and involve many non-American citizens living in many non-American countries. To call them "U.S. of A. political issues" is an act of foolery!
But from the responses I've gotten, it is good to hear that this show deals with such world issues, since most American media will not.
Will this Dr. Who tackle harsh political issues?
on
Dr Who Rolls On
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The original Dr. Who series was quick to tackle very controversial political issues, such as (in the early 1970s) the lack of British participation in the American occupation of Vietnam, as well as the threat of terrorism from various groups in Ireland, but with a futuristic setting and insight.
While I haven't seen it, I must ask, does this Dr. Who series do the same? Are they tackling issues such as the torture of innocents at Abu-Ghraib, Guantanamo, etc.? Will they look at the issues behind the fakery of terrorism?
In short, is this new series a provocative, worthwhile viewing experience?
The reason is stability. VAX machines are stable beyond belief. They just plain last. They might not be the most powerful computers per watt, but for applications where reliability and extreme uptimes are required, you go with a VAX.
Indeed, I'd hate to see a Pentium 4 desktop used for any mission critical function. What do you do when the CPU fan dies and the system shuts down (assuming it doesn't melt, like some AMD CPUs), and now the core temperature of your local nuclear power plant isn't being monitored? You're fucked, and probably should have used a VAX.
I think we have seen a reversal in the roles of the Democratic and Republican parties within the United States. Traditionally this sort of thing would have been done by a true (ie. not neoconservative) conservative Republican, fighting for the individual rights of the American citizenry. Indeed, I find it odd that a Democrat is now the one leading the charge for individual rights.
I worked at a pretty laid back development firm developing various applications in VB. Well, one of the projects was a school library management system. One of my coworkers was, well, a bit of a freak. He had a strange obsession with penises and boners.
One of his jokes was to attach code to a button that would make an animation of a penis erecting and ejaculating appear, but only after every 7 or 8 clicks of that button. Normally he would only keep such code in for a day or so, until somebody in QA ran across it.
Anyway, at one point we were at a conference of school librarians demoing our product to them. Things were going well, until we clicked on a button, and up on the large screen came an animation of an erect penis ejaculating. Needless to say, we were quite embarrassed! I don't think he was with the company much after that.
We are seeing the very same consolidation of the commercial Linux vendors that happened back in the late 1980s with commercial UNIX. Indeed, it will be interesting to see where this leads.
If it weren't for those other reports of such blatant misfunctionality, I don't think I would believe what you wrote (not that I mistrust you, personally). I have to wonder how they plan for this project to be successful, especially if they are alienating all of their existing users, and most likely not impressing any of the new ones.
There has been very negative discussion of RB 2005 at the comp.lang.basic.realbasic newsgroup. There are many people who aren't happy about the path that has been taken. The new "development environment-as-a-web browser" paradigm they embraced falls flat on its face, according to some. And there have been scathing suggestings that RB 2005 has lost all of the uniqeness REALbasic'ers were used to in the past. Now it's just a lousy Visual Basic clone, according to some.
Let the free market work its magic. If their prices are truly too high, then the demand for Qt will drop, and they will be forced to lower their prices. Since that is not happening, then there must be shops which can afford to pay their licencing fee. And considering that they're most likely financially stable, there must be enough people willing to pay at that price.
Now, if YOU can't afford it, then try some of the other open source alternatives. There is always wxWindows, FOX, FLTK, GTK+, the multiple GTK+ C++ wrappers, and so on.
Yes, I did "stop to think that maybe they don't release the things they don't have full rights to". That is why I wrote in my post:
While it will of course take time, effort and money on the part of both developers and lawyers,...
Do you see the part about "developers and lawyers"? Do you? Well, that suggests that I was thinking about the legal ramifications of releasing such code, as well as the possiblity that some of it would have to be removed/rewritten by developers. Please, no more cock trollery.
Sometimes it's difficult to tell the intentional misrepresentation of facts from sarcasm. In this case I am quite sure that that user was being completely serious, and therefore partaking in cock trollery. Please see his post where he claims that AiX and OS/2 are the only products in IBM's operating system line.
Oh my, of course! Indeed, the list just keeps growing. So many PC operating system developments have happened during these past few weeks that one even forgets some of the most major events!
Slashdot Mirror
We don't want it used there. Then it'll be all full of alternating advertisements.
Does anyone know when this technology will be viable for use in PDAs and cellphones screens?
Most people aren't interested in learning how to not use a GUI. They want to check their email. They want to browse the web. They want to pay their bills online. They want to track their spreadsheet. But most of all, they want to do such things easily and efficiently. That's why GUI-based systems like Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows are so popular.
That's a very idealistic way of looking at things. Perhaps the claim is that it is to maintain "polite discussion" or to keep posts "on-topic". But that is nowhere near the truth. Indeed, most of the forums I listed are moderated by people who have basically failed in the real world, and therefore feel the need to moderate others to make themselves feel worthwhile. Funnily enough, many of them claim to be "true Americans" and claim that they support "free speech", moments after deleting messages and banning users. The Founding Fathers would cringe in pain if they knew that Americans were partaking in such censorship and tyranny.
"Trolls" are defined as individuals who intentionally disrupt the natural flow of discussion. Indeed, that is exactly what moderators do! They remove content in order to limit discussion. The real trolls are the moderators. They are the true enemies of freedom and liberty.
A minimisation of government action is only possible by a maximisation of action from those being governed.
Indeed, server-quality x86 hardware is a slight improvement. But it still offers reliability and durability nowhere near that of true VAX technology. There are still unfortunate quality problems to deal with, even if the airflow is slightly better.
Clustered solutions only serve to bring in more points of failure than single, extremely reliable solutions. Now you have to guarantee that the hand-off code and hardware is reliable. Soon enough you'll need to introduce redundancy there. And then you'll need to add hardware and software to provide redundancy for the redundant system redundancy systems.
Perhaps this is just a tool to stir up strife. Remember, the LA Times main interest is finanial: they are they there to make money. Their goal is to deliver advertisements, both in paper and online. Providing news is secondary. Indeed, by moving the strife and controversy machine onto the consumers they are fostering a greater effect.
Soon their wiki pages will become a "battleground" between your dichotomic "liberals" and "conservatives". They'll battle it out, trying to prove each other wrong. But in the end the LA Times will be able to deliver far more ad views for each page loaded and edited during these continual battles. That'll lead to increased revenues for them, and more strife for the rest of us.
Redundancy doesn't solve the problem of inherent low quality. Great, now you've got four systems which have a high probability of failure, in addition to the added complexity of handling off responsibilities when a failure does occur. In your effort to remove a single point of failure, you have instead introduced many more such failure points!
"Glorified message boards"? I don't think that's a very accurate description of what this is. Message boards have the horrible stigma of being moderated[1]. Remember, moderation is a form of censorship, and censorship is used by despotic regimes to limit free thought. Perhaps a better example to use would have been that of Usenet. At least newsgroups are more difficult to censor or moderate, similar to wikis.
References:
[1] See sites like slashdot.org, gamefaqs.com, fark.com, somethingawful.com, kuro5hin.com, osnews.com, amongst others, for examples of message boards that are known to be against the idea of free speech.
I've been looking through the diffs, and I see nothing but back and forth trollery from both conservatives and liberals. Instead of constructive thinking, it just looks like pointless, egotistical "I'm correct, you're not" bickering back and forth. With all this bickering, nothing is actually getting accomplished.
A truly democratic-like society requires action, not just constant, self-righteous argumentery. But that won't happen as long as the Big Media continues to push for the liberal/conservative dichotomy, the whole "You're either with us or you're against us" attitude. We need to remember that we are all humans, and we must work together for real change, rather than just bicker on some experimental wiki.
When you look at some of the members[1] of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, you see names like McAfee and Symantec. Indeed, it is these companies best financial interests for security to be mandated. Of course they want legislation that demands that each and every computer on the Internet runs their antivirus or firewall software. And of course their surveys will suggest that that's what people want.
l ist/
References:
[1] https://www.csialliance.org/membership/membership
Actually, I'm British. I'm not American. And no, the political issues I listed affect the entire world.
Don't forget that countries like Britain, Italy, Poland, and many other non-American countries are stuck in the Iraqi quagmire. There are young British men and women being sent over to places like Iraq and Afghanistan only to be blown to bits by some roadside bomb, just like is happening to American troops. Numerous British and other non-American citizenry are being held in places like Guantanamo Bay, and innocent Iraqi citizens were (are?) tortured and molested in places like the Abu-Ghraib concentration camp.
All of those issues take place outside of America (ie. Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba), and involve many non-American citizens living in many non-American countries. To call them "U.S. of A. political issues" is an act of foolery!
But from the responses I've gotten, it is good to hear that this show deals with such world issues, since most American media will not.
The original Dr. Who series was quick to tackle very controversial political issues, such as (in the early 1970s) the lack of British participation in the American occupation of Vietnam, as well as the threat of terrorism from various groups in Ireland, but with a futuristic setting and insight.
While I haven't seen it, I must ask, does this Dr. Who series do the same? Are they tackling issues such as the torture of innocents at Abu-Ghraib, Guantanamo, etc.? Will they look at the issues behind the fakery of terrorism?
In short, is this new series a provocative, worthwhile viewing experience?
Everything is about money. Even open source software. Never forget that fact.
The reason is stability. VAX machines are stable beyond belief. They just plain last. They might not be the most powerful computers per watt, but for applications where reliability and extreme uptimes are required, you go with a VAX.
Indeed, I'd hate to see a Pentium 4 desktop used for any mission critical function. What do you do when the CPU fan dies and the system shuts down (assuming it doesn't melt, like some AMD CPUs), and now the core temperature of your local nuclear power plant isn't being monitored? You're fucked, and probably should have used a VAX.
I think we have seen a reversal in the roles of the Democratic and Republican parties within the United States. Traditionally this sort of thing would have been done by a true (ie. not neoconservative) conservative Republican, fighting for the individual rights of the American citizenry. Indeed, I find it odd that a Democrat is now the one leading the charge for individual rights.
I worked at a pretty laid back development firm developing various applications in VB. Well, one of the projects was a school library management system. One of my coworkers was, well, a bit of a freak. He had a strange obsession with penises and boners.
One of his jokes was to attach code to a button that would make an animation of a penis erecting and ejaculating appear, but only after every 7 or 8 clicks of that button. Normally he would only keep such code in for a day or so, until somebody in QA ran across it.
Anyway, at one point we were at a conference of school librarians demoing our product to them. Things were going well, until we clicked on a button, and up on the large screen came an animation of an erect penis ejaculating. Needless to say, we were quite embarrassed! I don't think he was with the company much after that.
We are seeing the very same consolidation of the commercial Linux vendors that happened back in the late 1980s with commercial UNIX. Indeed, it will be interesting to see where this leads.
If it weren't for those other reports of such blatant misfunctionality, I don't think I would believe what you wrote (not that I mistrust you, personally). I have to wonder how they plan for this project to be successful, especially if they are alienating all of their existing users, and most likely not impressing any of the new ones.
There has been very negative discussion of RB 2005 at the comp.lang.basic.realbasic newsgroup. There are many people who aren't happy about the path that has been taken. The new "development environment-as-a-web browser" paradigm they embraced falls flat on its face, according to some. And there have been scathing suggestings that RB 2005 has lost all of the uniqeness REALbasic'ers were used to in the past. Now it's just a lousy Visual Basic clone, according to some.
Let the free market work its magic. If their prices are truly too high, then the demand for Qt will drop, and they will be forced to lower their prices. Since that is not happening, then there must be shops which can afford to pay their licencing fee. And considering that they're most likely financially stable, there must be enough people willing to pay at that price.
Now, if YOU can't afford it, then try some of the other open source alternatives. There is always wxWindows, FOX, FLTK, GTK+, the multiple GTK+ C++ wrappers, and so on.
Yes, I did "stop to think that maybe they don't release the things they don't have full rights to". That is why I wrote in my post:
...
While it will of course take time, effort and money on the part of both developers and lawyers,
Do you see the part about "developers and lawyers"? Do you? Well, that suggests that I was thinking about the legal ramifications of releasing such code, as well as the possiblity that some of it would have to be removed/rewritten by developers. Please, no more cock trollery.
BeOS in the form of yellowTAB Zeta.
0 3&tid=87&tid=190
See:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/14/01192
Sometimes it's difficult to tell the intentional misrepresentation of facts from sarcasm. In this case I am quite sure that that user was being completely serious, and therefore partaking in cock trollery. Please see his post where he claims that AiX and OS/2 are the only products in IBM's operating system line.
Oh my, of course! Indeed, the list just keeps growing. So many PC operating system developments have happened during these past few weeks that one even forgets some of the most major events!