there is no way I'm trading NoScript + CookieSafe + Firebug + Foxmarks + Slashdotter for a slight increase in speed.
+ Adblock + a few other things, and that 'slight increase in speed' might start to look like a supersonic jet outrunning a kid with a wheelbarrow. A wheelbarrow with a lot of nifty stuff on it, sure, but still;)
"However, I am less agreeable about the other issue. I would want to see details about expected behavior on ill-formed content be made public, and not hidden away so that alternative implementations are forced to reverse-engineer the Microsoft client. What would be the reason for hiding such details, except to make things hard for the competition?"
Time and effort writing the docs, mostly, versus expected utility.
Besides, why would the world need an alternative implementation? Isn't Mono / Moonlight open enough for you?
Clearly the docs have already been written, since they are sharing them with Novell, no?
Regarding the second issue, perhaps Mono/Moonlight are open, but turn out after a while to be unsatisfactory for whatever reason (performance, etc., who knows). The possibility should be open to creating other implementations. That is what true openness is.
Regarding the codecs, I tend to understand your position. I would prefer things be otherwise, but I do see why Microsoft is doing what it is.
However, I am less agreeable about the other issue. I would want to see details about expected behavior on ill-formed content be made public, and not hidden away so that alternative implementations are forced to reverse-engineer the Microsoft client. What would be the reason for hiding such details, except to make things hard for the competition?
Not that I have anything against competing, or making things hard for your competitors. But this particular way of doing that smacks of unfairness, in that if it turns out a lot of content is in fact ill-formed, then there is no standard API at all, just whatever de-facto behavior the Microsoft client has. (Alternatively, you could work towards preventing ill-formed content, for example by displaying a big warning and delaying page loading for 1 second. This would lead people to make absolutely sure their content is well-formed.)
I am generally quite paranoid about Microsoft's intentions, but this got even me to thinking. On the one hand,
Microsoft are publicly endorsing Linux as a respectable OS. Not more of the "multiplatform = Windows and Mac OS" crap.
It does appear that Microsoft is willing to conduct a true partnership here - even offering Novell their internal test suites, which means they really do want it to work. Hopefully this isn't a temporary thing.
However, on the other hand,
"[D]etails that might be necessary to implement 1.0, beyond what is currently published on the web"...why are not all Silverlight specs and APIs publicly available? Are people supposed to pay money to develop on this platform, or are they strategically delaying publishing the specs, or what? In any case it sounds very fishy. Enlighten me if there is a good explanation for this that I am missing.
The codecs are binary-only and only for use in a web browser. This is annoying, but it is about the same as Adobe do with Flash, I guess. Bad, but not quite 'Microsoft' bad.
So what is going on here? Hard to say. The only thing I am sure about is that after years of Miguel de Icaza following a not-always-popular pro-Microsoft approach, today he must feel quite vindicated: Microsoft has taken another big step towards respecting and collaborating with Linux (or at least Novell), and Miguel is a big part of that.
Most research in the social sciences considers the threshold for statistical significance below.05. Since this is above, few would have confidence that this result is not random chance.
That is true. However, statistical significance is not the only justification for a result, although it is perhaps the primary criterion for academic publication and discussion. Here, however, the context is slightly different: in academic publication you want very high certainty (you don't want false theories published!), whereas here we are talking in a more informal manner. This result might in fact be just exploratory, that is, just an indication that 'there might be something' and it should be investigated further.
Also, look at the image. Yes, the final statistical significance was 7%. However, that number summarizes complex data into a single figure. Just like the average of a sample can be non-representative of complex data ("a statistician drowned in a pool with an average depth of 2 inches", etc.), so can the statistical significance be missing something. And indeed the image shows far more information. While not proof, it does reveal a fairly obvious pattern that should be studied further.
I don't follow this argument. If this is so, why is perfect pitch particularly messed up regarding A, and not other notes? Surely if you move A up by a few Hertz, you move everything else accordingly?
Regarding 'saving the record business', Rubin says this rather insightful piece:
Rubin sees no other solution. "Either all the record companies will get together or the industry will fall apart and someone like Microsoft will come in and buy one of the companies at wholesale and do what needs to be done," he said. "The future technology companies will either wait for the record companies to smarten up, or they'll let them sink until they can buy them for 10 cents on the dollar and own the whole thing."
He is spot on. Actually the industry is getting pretty close to tipping point; witness Apple's success and how it frightens the traditional record companies.
Although I prefer Rubin's prediction: to have Microsoft buy the RIAA would make my life much simpler, I would be able to focus all my hatred on one target instead of two;)
BTW, i just read an article about Rubin (was it linked here yesterday?) that said he had never heard of Simon Cowell from American Idol up till last year or whatever. Now...not saying that Simon Cowell is anything great, but for a top record producer to have never heard of someone that familiar to everyone else...that's just weird.
Rick Rubin not hearing about Simon Cowell is about the same as the chef de cuisine at a French restaurant not knowing what McDonald's is.
Strictly speaking, there are no tasks I do today that I couldn't do in 1997.
Yes, that's true, if you look at 'tasks' from afar. But a lot of little stuff within each task has changed. For example, even simple text editors (e.g., gedit) today offer syntax highlighting, spellchecking, etc. Yes, you could surf the web in 1997, but could you watch compressed Flash videos from YouTube on it? (Yes, I know YouTube didn't exist back then, but that isn't the issue.)
Now, some of these features might not need 3GHZ processors and dual cores. However, in the race to supply us with more and more tiny little features, software vendors have taken to using higher-level programming languages, or to work behind abstractization layers even in C/C++. These methods have an overhead, yes. However, they do allow more new little features to reach consumers faster. I think this issue is a big part of the 'why aren't things getting faster?' question.
This misses the point of Wine. Wine is for running applications that CANNOT be ported, e.g. commercial software like MS Office. Applications that can be ported, should.
I agree. However, if we are talking about porting by rewriting significant parts of the code, then why not do this the right way? I mean, rewrite it in a portable framework (Java,.Net/Mono, Python) using portable libraries (GTK, Qt). Then instead of porting to Linux you now have a single code base to improve upon for all of your platforms.
In fact, Google should spearhead this sort of thing by supporting (if only in the form of patches) cross-platform toolkits like Python, GTK, etc. Google's web services (search, docs&spreadsheets, etc.) are powerful in part because they are cross-platform; Google applications should be the same. To do so is in Google's self-interest.
Yes, you can make up ridiculous arguments that no-one believes and indeed make no sense. However, the main political positions that have existed for decades if not centuries tend to be such that have good arguments for them.
To resolve this issue, disable the DHCP BROADCAST flag in Windows Vista. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Click StartStart button, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then click regedit in the Programs list.
User Account Control permission If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type your password, or click Continue.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{GUID}
In this registry path, click the (GUID) subkey that corresponds to the network adapter that is connected to the network.
3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
4. In the New Value #1 box, type DhcpConnDisableBcastFlagToggle, and then press ENTER.
5. Right-click DhcpConnDisableBcastFlagToggle, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
7. Close Registry Editor.
Hmm, and I thought getting stuff to work by having to edit a text file or copy&pasting something into the commandline was annoying.
I think it goes beyond just being smarter. All of my nerd friends and me, besides being smart, are very analytical. We really analyze situations and are usually not swayed by cheap simple tactics the mainstream politicians use. [...] Libertarian is the only choice in my mind.
Please don't take offense, but I think you are flat wrong on this one. One of the most important aspects of being smart is the ability to see arguments for what they are, and analyze them as such - and when you do that, you will basically never see that all the arguments line up on one side, or that there is only one choice.
For example, there are good arguments for universal health care, and good arguments against it (not the same ones, of course...). If you really look at the arguments in a logical manner, you will see this. Now, perhaps most of the arguments go one way; I believe that in fact they do in this particular case. In other words, seeing validity in the arguments of both sides doesn't mean you should not have a position on the matter!
In addition, part of being rational is being open to being convinced to change one's position on a topic, given new data or arguments.
I guess what I am trying to say is that your statement "Libertarian is the only choice in my mind" doesn't seem to indicate what you started with earlier in the quote: if you analyze things even deeper, you will see that it is not the only reasonable choice.
Or maybe I am reading too much into what you said and am just ranting - feel free to correct me if so.
[1.] The way "Your rights online" is one of the busiest/. categories, [2.] the way half the stories have little or nothing to do with IT, [3.] and the way articles are almost always spun in terms of "What individual rights will be lost?" rather than "What might society as a whole gain?", for example?
Not proof of Libertarianism, unless being concerned for rights (civil, human, or other) is unique to Libertarianism.
Or, simply proof that geeks like non-IT things like comics and movies;)
This is getting pretty close, however, I would argue that the way you stated it right here, it sounds more like individualism vs. collectivism, and not Libertarianism vs. other political philosophies. Now, basically all Westerners follow an individualistic ethos, so it isn't surprising that geeks would too.
Well, the GPL-using people often portray themselves as friends of the BSD-using people. When a proprietary vendor takes code and gives nothing back, no one expects anything else of them. But you expect more courtesy from people you work with and are allied with on many matters.
More generally, I think the issue is this: Yes, the BSD license allows you to take code and do (more or less) whatever you want with it, including not returning changes. However, that this is possible does not mean it is ethical. BSD licensing people would prefer that you do return code; they just don't want to force you to do that (perhaps since they see such forcing as immoral in and of itself).
Note: I use the GPL for my own FOSS code, personally, so perhaps I have not accurately presented the BSD point of view. BSDers, please correct me if so.
You're right, I was too hasty. What I should have said was that Software and Big Content are the only two areas in which the US has both (1) an intrinsic advantage, and (2) little or no competition. Sure, Bollywood is great, but it doesn't quite compete in the same area as Hollywood. Likewise, no software vendor (anywhere) really competes with Microsoft.
Boeing has serious competition, despite dominating its field. Intel has some competition, not too much, but it is possible to envision a near future where Asian chipmakers put up a serious fight against them. The same can't be said for Software and Big Content, as I see it.
Sadly, no. And it isn't hard to see why this is so: What does the US have left, in the area of actual productive industry? Sure, there are successful investment firms, etc., but most actual manufacturing has long been lost to other nations. There are basically two fields that are actually producing goods, Big Content (symbolized by the RIAA/MPAA) and software, and by software I mean basically Microsoft.
The US government isn't just corrupt and pandering to these two groups for no reason. Yes, they are corrupt, but they aren't stupid - IMO they see supporting these groups as vital to the future of the nation. And that is why you get things like the DMCA and a lack of antitrust litigation against Microsoft. If you thought these two things weren't connected, then I think you were wrong.
If/when piracy is stamped out in Asia, then Microsoft and Big Content will get around $100 per computer sold there, and $10 per movie watched (rough figures, but you get the idea). The crucial issue is that (1) the US has an advantage in manufacturing both types of content (by history and monopoly), and (2) in both cases there is no need to 'scale up' your actual physical manufacturing processes, since there are none (although support staff, perhaps) - you can adapt to 1,000,000 new Chinese users of Microsoft software by basically doing nothing. Copying them Windows is no problem.
As a Linux user this issue concerns me, since it indicates that in the US we basically have no hope of winning out against Microsoft; the government will step in (or not step in) to assure their continued domination. The hope, if any, lies overseas.
it remains to be seen whether these other countries will be able to do anything in time, or whether the ISO will get turned into a Microsoft puppet. Now *there* is a scary thought.
That is precisely what is going to happen, and yes, it is scary.
Once, Microsoft had an unchallenged monopoly on the desktop. They didn't have to bother with standards; standards didn't matter, since Microsoft could basically unilaterally decide what actually was used in IT. "ISO shmISO", as they might say in these parts.
Then, something strange happened - some governments decided they cared about standards after all, and things like ODF looked like they might get a foothold. Therefore Microsoft started to 'standardize' their offerings:.NET, and now OOXML. To ensure this process succeeds, they have to control the standard-governing bodies, and given their historical lack of shame and endless pockets, they will simply buy them. And this is exactly what we see happening.
The first step for Microsoft is to get its products stamped as 'standards'. The next is to prevent competing projects from getting stamped as such. I expect to see, within a decade or so, that Microsoft products all carry ISO and ECMA logos, while Linux, OpenOffice, etc. will get derided by media shills as "those products that don't implement important international standards like OOXML, MicrosoftHTML, MicrOSoftIX, MS-DB" and other things I can't imagine right now, but I am sure Microsoft strategists will.
If the low intellectual tone of some of the comments in this thread are anything to go by, I would say that there are virtually no women using Slashdot, and to be honest, I can see why...
I haven't seen any such comments, simply because I browse at +5. I recommend other try it as well:)
Opus is the descendant of what was once Bloom County. If you don't know what Bloom County was then I feel sorry for you. Missing that cartoon is like never having read Calvin & Hobbes or The Far Side. Great comics are few and far between. Usually we get left with crap like Cathy and Garfield that recycle jokes day after day.
I agree 100% about Bloom County - a classic. Sadly 'Opus' isn't living up to the same standard, though. So all you young whippersnappers, if you read a few Opuses and think there is no reason to check out Bloom County, I urge you to give it a shot anyhow.
As for the censorism: I am sure Slashdot will be full of "we wouldn't censor stuff like this if it was about Christianity/etc., so why should we pander to Islam?". Now, technically that is correct - far worse material appears about Christianity than Islam; there is far more sensitivity towards Islam. However, I don't think that makes it wrong to do so. As I see it, there is a solid basis for attempting to not offend Muslims (whereas what I am about to say now is extremely offensive to them): They can't take a joke. Just like if you have a sensitive neurotic kid in your neighborhood, you wouldn't call him names in jest that you would call everyone else.
Some people deserve special treatment not because they are special in a privileged way, but because they are special in the 'Special Olympics' way.
We learned from numerous instances of interaction with monkeys in the past that they easily mimic and correctly apply our methods and tools after sufficient observation. Unless there is proof of the contrary, I'm going to step forward and say that they're just mimicking behavior that they have previously observed humans using.
Mimicking human behavior is only one explanation, and not even the most likely one. Another plausible option is that one or two 'perverted' monkeys acted like, well, perverts, and this happened to occur around human women. This behavior caused distress to the women in the area. The women left, and the monkeys took what they wanted. Since this strategy succeeded, it spread to other monkeys by cultural transmission.
you can sure bet If it was humans undertaking this same behavior the men would have been right up in that situation laying down the law
Sure, but so what? Monkeys aren't humans. If a tiger kills his handler at the zoo we don't prosecute it for murder (or even manslaughter). If a dog does his business on the sidewalk we don't prosecute it for an indecent act.
More to the point, if pandas start to steal food from humans (yes, I know they wouldn't, it is just an example), we wouldn't wipe them out as a 'pest'. You have to take into account the fact that pandas are critically endangered. That said, I believe vervet monkeys are far less endangered than pandas, so it might make sense to allow some reasonable action against them.
Slashdot Mirror
+ Adblock + a few other things, and that 'slight increase in speed' might start to look like a supersonic jet outrunning a kid with a wheelbarrow. A wheelbarrow with a lot of nifty stuff on it, sure, but still
Just want to mention Vala, a high-level language with C#-like syntax that is compiled into C, so it has quite good performance.
It looks like an interesting project, albeit an unfinished one. It is also specific to GNOME in that it compiles into C code using GObject.
Regarding the second issue, perhaps Mono/Moonlight are open, but turn out after a while to be unsatisfactory for whatever reason (performance, etc., who knows). The possibility should be open to creating other implementations. That is what true openness is.
Thank you very much for the clarifications.
Regarding the codecs, I tend to understand your position. I would prefer things be otherwise, but I do see why Microsoft is doing what it is.
However, I am less agreeable about the other issue. I would want to see details about expected behavior on ill-formed content be made public, and not hidden away so that alternative implementations are forced to reverse-engineer the Microsoft client. What would be the reason for hiding such details, except to make things hard for the competition?
Not that I have anything against competing, or making things hard for your competitors. But this particular way of doing that smacks of unfairness, in that if it turns out a lot of content is in fact ill-formed, then there is no standard API at all, just whatever de-facto behavior the Microsoft client has. (Alternatively, you could work towards preventing ill-formed content, for example by displaying a big warning and delaying page loading for 1 second. This would lead people to make absolutely sure their content is well-formed.)
-
Microsoft are publicly endorsing Linux as a respectable OS. Not more of the "multiplatform = Windows and Mac OS" crap.
-
It does appear that Microsoft is willing to conduct a true partnership here - even offering Novell their internal test suites, which means they really do want it to work. Hopefully this isn't a temporary thing.
However, on the other hand,-
"[D]etails that might be necessary to implement 1.0, beyond what is currently published on the web"
...why are not all Silverlight specs and APIs publicly available? Are people supposed to pay money to develop on this platform, or are they strategically delaying publishing the specs, or what? In any case it sounds very fishy. Enlighten me if there is a good explanation for this that I am missing.
-
The codecs are binary-only and only for use in a web browser. This is annoying, but it is about the same as Adobe do with Flash, I guess. Bad, but not quite 'Microsoft' bad.
So what is going on here? Hard to say. The only thing I am sure about is that after years of Miguel de Icaza following a not-always-popular pro-Microsoft approach, today he must feel quite vindicated: Microsoft has taken another big step towards respecting and collaborating with Linux (or at least Novell), and Miguel is a big part of that.Also, look at the image. Yes, the final statistical significance was 7%. However, that number summarizes complex data into a single figure. Just like the average of a sample can be non-representative of complex data ("a statistician drowned in a pool with an average depth of 2 inches", etc.), so can the statistical significance be missing something. And indeed the image shows far more information. While not proof, it does reveal a fairly obvious pattern that should be studied further.
I don't follow this argument. If this is so, why is perfect pitch particularly messed up regarding A, and not other notes? Surely if you move A up by a few Hertz, you move everything else accordingly?
Although I prefer Rubin's prediction: to have Microsoft buy the RIAA would make my life much simpler, I would be able to focus all my hatred on one target instead of two
Rick Rubin not hearing about Simon Cowell is about the same as the chef de cuisine at a French restaurant not knowing what McDonald's is.
Now, some of these features might not need 3GHZ processors and dual cores. However, in the race to supply us with more and more tiny little features, software vendors have taken to using higher-level programming languages, or to work behind abstractization layers even in C/C++. These methods have an overhead, yes. However, they do allow more new little features to reach consumers faster. I think this issue is a big part of the 'why aren't things getting faster?' question.
In fact, Google should spearhead this sort of thing by supporting (if only in the form of patches) cross-platform toolkits like Python, GTK, etc. Google's web services (search, docs&spreadsheets, etc.) are powerful in part because they are cross-platform; Google applications should be the same. To do so is in Google's self-interest.
Yes, you can make up ridiculous arguments that no-one believes and indeed make no sense. However, the main political positions that have existed for decades if not centuries tend to be such that have good arguments for them.
For example, there are good arguments for universal health care, and good arguments against it (not the same ones, of course...). If you really look at the arguments in a logical manner, you will see this. Now, perhaps most of the arguments go one way; I believe that in fact they do in this particular case. In other words, seeing validity in the arguments of both sides doesn't mean you should not have a position on the matter!
In addition, part of being rational is being open to being convinced to change one's position on a topic, given new data or arguments.
I guess what I am trying to say is that your statement "Libertarian is the only choice in my mind" doesn't seem to indicate what you started with earlier in the quote: if you analyze things even deeper, you will see that it is not the only reasonable choice.
Or maybe I am reading too much into what you said and am just ranting - feel free to correct me if so.
Well, the GPL-using people often portray themselves as friends of the BSD-using people. When a proprietary vendor takes code and gives nothing back, no one expects anything else of them. But you expect more courtesy from people you work with and are allied with on many matters.
More generally, I think the issue is this: Yes, the BSD license allows you to take code and do (more or less) whatever you want with it, including not returning changes. However, that this is possible does not mean it is ethical. BSD licensing people would prefer that you do return code; they just don't want to force you to do that (perhaps since they see such forcing as immoral in and of itself).
Note: I use the GPL for my own FOSS code, personally, so perhaps I have not accurately presented the BSD point of view. BSDers, please correct me if so.
You're right, I was too hasty. What I should have said was that Software and Big Content are the only two areas in which the US has both (1) an intrinsic advantage, and (2) little or no competition. Sure, Bollywood is great, but it doesn't quite compete in the same area as Hollywood. Likewise, no software vendor (anywhere) really competes with Microsoft.
Boeing has serious competition, despite dominating its field. Intel has some competition, not too much, but it is possible to envision a near future where Asian chipmakers put up a serious fight against them. The same can't be said for Software and Big Content, as I see it.
Thanks, I was not aware that US agriculture was doing so well.
I would be (literally!) very happy to be proven wrong. Do you have an example of another productive, exporting industry in the US?
The US government isn't just corrupt and pandering to these two groups for no reason. Yes, they are corrupt, but they aren't stupid - IMO they see supporting these groups as vital to the future of the nation. And that is why you get things like the DMCA and a lack of antitrust litigation against Microsoft. If you thought these two things weren't connected, then I think you were wrong.
If/when piracy is stamped out in Asia, then Microsoft and Big Content will get around $100 per computer sold there, and $10 per movie watched (rough figures, but you get the idea). The crucial issue is that (1) the US has an advantage in manufacturing both types of content (by history and monopoly), and (2) in both cases there is no need to 'scale up' your actual physical manufacturing processes, since there are none (although support staff, perhaps) - you can adapt to 1,000,000 new Chinese users of Microsoft software by basically doing nothing. Copying them Windows is no problem.
As a Linux user this issue concerns me, since it indicates that in the US we basically have no hope of winning out against Microsoft; the government will step in (or not step in) to assure their continued domination. The hope, if any, lies overseas.
Once, Microsoft had an unchallenged monopoly on the desktop. They didn't have to bother with standards; standards didn't matter, since Microsoft could basically unilaterally decide what actually was used in IT. "ISO shmISO", as they might say in these parts.
Then, something strange happened - some governments decided they cared about standards after all, and things like ODF looked like they might get a foothold. Therefore Microsoft started to 'standardize' their offerings:
The first step for Microsoft is to get its products stamped as 'standards'. The next is to prevent competing projects from getting stamped as such. I expect to see, within a decade or so, that Microsoft products all carry ISO and ECMA logos, while Linux, OpenOffice, etc. will get derided by media shills as "those products that don't implement important international standards like OOXML, MicrosoftHTML, MicrOSoftIX, MS-DB" and other things I can't imagine right now, but I am sure Microsoft strategists will.
As for the censorism: I am sure Slashdot will be full of "we wouldn't censor stuff like this if it was about Christianity/etc., so why should we pander to Islam?". Now, technically that is correct - far worse material appears about Christianity than Islam; there is far more sensitivity towards Islam. However, I don't think that makes it wrong to do so. As I see it, there is a solid basis for attempting to not offend Muslims (whereas what I am about to say now is extremely offensive to them): They can't take a joke. Just like if you have a sensitive neurotic kid in your neighborhood, you wouldn't call him names in jest that you would call everyone else.
Some people deserve special treatment not because they are special in a privileged way, but because they are special in the 'Special Olympics' way.
More to the point, if pandas start to steal food from humans (yes, I know they wouldn't, it is just an example), we wouldn't wipe them out as a 'pest'. You have to take into account the fact that pandas are critically endangered. That said, I believe vervet monkeys are far less endangered than pandas, so it might make sense to allow some reasonable action against them.
Yeah, it doubled from a tiny number to a slightly-less-tiny number. 0.35 at the lowest to around 0.60 last I checked.