So in other words they're being smug assholes to people who use one OS versus another.
Classy.
And the reasons for this are political, with a side of history. The GIMP developers invented GTK+, and now they're tied to it.
Know what? GTK+ is great under X11. It looks and behaves like crap under everything else, regardless of what theme you select. Basic UI principles say that your applications should be consistent with the OS, and that means using standard widgets (menu bars, icons, buttons, file open dialogs, and other things that match the look and feel of your OS). When GIMP was first released there WERE no standard widgets for Linux, so the devs hacked some together and released them as a separate library. A couple other devs saw the work that had been done, and figured that GTK could be used to save work on their own projects, and before long a ton of apps and window managers used it. Some of those app developers wanted to port their apps to Windows and Mac OS, and so GTK+ was ported as well. But because GTK+ manually renders all the buttons and widgets and so on, the ports look out of place. Strike that. They look godawful. Really this isn't GTK's fault, it's just not the right tool for the job. It's not just that they look bad, but users have to learn things like how to interact with a new file manager. It's unprofessional, it robs the user of time and effort, and it makes ported open source software seem inferior to native apps.
Recognizing the inherent problem, several other developers made toolkits so that apps would look normal again. A wxWidgets program compiled for Linux uses GTK+ to draw the dialogs and menus, but calls the native widget functions under Windows. The result is a program that looks like it was designed specifically for each OS on which it runs. Take a look at screenshots of Audacity for a great example.
They could design the UI in wxWidgets or Qt to make it actually look decent under every OS, but they won't-- and really at this point they can't, because the former would be seen as pandering, and the latter would be seen as abandoning GTK+. But to everyone outside the community, it looks like the GIMP devs are rallying to prove the superiority of GTK+ using the flagship Linux graphics app, at the expense of the open source movement. It only pisses off those of us who are trying to ease migrations to a free OS by gradually replacing existing non-free apps with free alternatives like OpenOffice. OO is a drop in replacement for MS Office in many cases, and behaves almost exactly like a native app under Windows. On the other hand, Inkscape is a great program with a decent UI, but I can't wholeheartedly recommend it as an Illustrator replacement to Windows users because it doesn't look or act like what they're used to. And if I can't get my mother weaned off the crippled photo editor that came bundled with her camera, I'm never going to get her to switch completely.
Face it, folks, GTK+ is cross platform only by the loosest possible interpretation. I realize a lot of time and effort has gone into the 2.7/2.8 "redesign", but these UI changes to GIMP are too little, too late. At this point the only thing which is really going to save The GIMP on other platforms is a complete UI redesign using something other than GTK+. If GEGL is ever finished this shouldn't be too hard. Conveniently this would also allow us to change the cringe-inducing name as well. The result would be a Photoshop replacement that would look like it wasn't cobbled together by two bearded guys in a basement.
My biggest concern right now is that some of the very early 3D 32 bit Windows games will continue to be hard or impossible to play on a modern machine
You might be surprised. Wine is making surprising progress on the early 3D 32-bit Win front, and with luck they'll finish the job once they acknowledge how critical the DIB bug is. That would be the ultimate goal; make a platform that will run old Windows games agnostically and you've succeeded in the hardest part of a goal to "emulate" Windows (yes yes, Wine is not an emulator). Apart from that I think the only critically broken game right now is Alpha Centauri, and it used quite a few stupid tricks with the IDX register for speedups so that might take awhile to be fixed. Hopefully when Windows XP is long forgotten we'll still be able to play these games.
Looks like you and I both appreciate the games of the era. Let's hope some other folks take an interest in preserving the classics. You can be certain in 50 years people will be looking back and either appreciating our ability to still play them or lamenting the lack thereof. It very much resembles the state of early film. History will repeat itself, I'm certain of it.
System Shock 2 actually does run just fine under Win7, but you need to download a fix for it -- SS2Tool by Kolya fixes the compatibility problems and removes the CD check on top of that, and even provides a widescreen patch. To Looking Glass's credit I don't think they could have foreseen the issues with multicore systems or NT permissions issues back then. But someone fixed it, and it runs. Do you think anyone will be able to maintain your console games 10 years from now? Will anyone be able to cut through the legal red tape? Will anyone bother?
I just played through SS2 in 1920x1200. Keep in mind that game came out in 1999, which makes it 10 years old. How many old Xbox or PS2 games can you play on a next gen console with higher resolution? None. How many can you patch with high res texture packs or reskins? None.
You lumped Steam in the list of intrusive DRM with Starforce. I don't like DRM any more than anyone else on./ but Steam isn't intrusive. It doesn't break your system and it does just work.
The new UI doesn't bother me as much as it bothers some people but for the life of me I can't figure out the new meta-moderation system.
I agree. It's straightforward if you see a positive mod and it's good; plus means "yes, it's funny, I agree, mod up". But what does minus do? Does minus mean "that's not funny at all" or does it mean "that's not +5 Funny"? And how are you supposed to metamod things that are labeled Troll or Offtopic? Does plus mean you agree with the negative moderation, or does it mean "this should be rated higher"? Same with minus. It's the equivalent of the OK/Cancel box in bad UIs, in that it's not at all clear what effect your actions will have.
The old system was a lot better; you get three selections labeled "Funny", "Unfunny", or "Not sure", and mark the appropriate one. For a comment modded "Flamebait" the options were also clear: "Flamebait", "Not Flamebait", and "Not sure". Why can't we have the old metamod system back?
Algorithms and computer programs are absolutely a subset of mathematics. Take a few basic computer science courses at a university and you'll learn that very quickly. Just read some journal papers on the algebra of sets, group theory, lambda calculus, or Turing machines. You can't even understand provability without understanding the underlying mathematics, and provability is only one critical facet of a properly designed algorithm. Prove to me that your sorting algorithm actually works on any arbitrary data I throw at it. Hell, I dare you to prove that your program actually finishes. You won't be able to do it without framing it in a mathematical context. Without such a proof your algorithm isn't noteworthy enough for a patent or for publication. And if you give me a mathematical description of your algorithm proving its correctness you just lost your own argument.
I get the feeling I'm being trolled here but some people might read your post and actually take it seriously. You have no idea what you're talking about. Algorithms are mathematics. Logic is mathematics.
As a clarification, they did not boot you off of Live, they booted the console off of Live. You still have a subscription, your modified hardware just can't use it. Your subscription will still work on a legitimate device.
I see. And if you unmod your hardware, will it let you back on? Didn't think so.
"Your honor, I didn't kill Bob Smith, I killed his heart cells via blunt trauma. He still has a brain, it's just that his heart can't pump blood to it anymore. I'm sure he'll be reincarnated and it'll be fine.
Seriously why not Japan, or most European countries?
Indeed. I had 100Mbps fiber in northern rural Japan, in 2006. That's fiber from the pole through my wall and into my apartment, by the way, and I never experienced throttling or arbitrary caps. Total cost? Around US$70 per month.
Then I come back to the USA, move into a neighborhood right next to a university in a city of a million people, and the best I can get without some crazy business plan is 1.5M/128K ADSL, for about $40 per month. And the connection from my department on campus is actually slower than the fiber I had there. What the fuck is with broadband in this country?
Previously, we asked the children for suggestions on what they wanted to see through the electron microscope. At this morning's assembly, we showed objects that three students wanted to see. The first was a butterfly's scales [on its wings]. The second was a 10 yen coin. The third was a single-celled organism called Foraminifera. The children's eyes sparkle with excitement when they see things that are normally not visible through a regular microscope.
It sounds like these kids are really getting a kick out of this piece of equipment. Iwanuma isn't exactly a poor elementary school, but it's neat that the microscope is small and inexpensive enough that the school can afford it. I worked at a smaller elementary school in northern Miyagi that had a computer lab with videoconferencing equipment, and my guess is that the schools that don't buy an electron microscope will use those cameras to share with other nearby schools that do.
>>I do not (repeat do NOT) use the "home keys" >I can understand getting away with not using the ';', but this post itself contains all the home keys.
I tore out type ere I wrote, to type up top: upper typewriter row, pert repertoire. Reporter, I quote to you: To write, pop type out. Retire typewriter row two. Your tri-row? Rip it out, too. Tour your top row territory. Queer tip, you retort? I worry your poor typewriter? To torque it out -- typewriter terror? You require row two, your tri-row prop? You pout, try to quip. (Poor etiquette.) You titter. (Poorer propriety.) You utter uppity output? Quiet, you! Quit it! You purport to write. I tire to peer to your rot, your petty writ, to eye your wire report. You write pyrite, terrier to torpor. I pity you, preppie yuppie. I tutor you, tyro, to uproot your trite tree, put type to pyre. Rupture type. Write to write. I erupt. I riot. I prototype pure power to write. I, upper typewriter requiter. I outwit you, too. To perpetuity, I write poetry. You, to put it true, putter out rote poop.
They should put that on billboards and every other kind of public service announcement all over the world. Not that it would work particularly well, but over time it might. Like the gradual reduction of smoking in the US.
I hate the use of "ur" as a bastardized "your," but linguistically speaking, it's pretty efficient.
"Ur" was a Sumerian city. It's not a contraction of "your" or "you're". A "rite" is a ritual. The English language is a protocol, and it has rules. It's confusing to those of us who are actually literate to see English misused. It actually slows down my reading speed, because every time I see one of these txtspeak wordsplatters I have to go back, reread it, and reparse it.
It's very similar to how IE chooses to ignore certain HTML conventions in its own way. People write code that works fine on IE, but nobody else can read it. It wasn't that difficult for me to learn the standard and follow it. Why should I have any respect for those who can't take the time to learn proper English?
Nuclear weapons are even more traceable than that. In fact, each breeder reactor has a certain "fingerprint" in terms of the material it generates, and I'm sure these fingerprints are widely known. By analyzing the aftermath it would be possible to tell from the isotopes which reactor(s) produced the fissile material. This would tell you where the device was built, even if it were a stolen warhead somehow detonated manually.
I'm also deaf in one ear as a result of head trauma. I've found that with only one ear it's much more difficult to pick out individual voices in crowds, much how one loses depth perception with only one eye. With two ears the brain is apparently able to attenuate sounds based upon direction. In effect, having two ears gives your brain enough data to decode spatial multiplexing, similar to MIMO receiving antennas.
With just one ear the best you can do is frequency attenuation. This is why those with a certain vocal timbre are much easier to hear than others-- for example, the guy with the booming voice in the midst of a roomful of nasal mumblers. People who talk facing away are almost universally difficult to hear, as are those that continue to stand behind me on the weak side after I've told them not to. Some might think my habit of physically grabbing people by the shoulders and turning them around or moving them to the correct side after they do this two or three times is rather rude, but not nearly as rude as those speakers.
Oh, so using a fuel different from the fuel specified by the manufacturer can destroy your engine. I don't think that's news. Ethanol is corrosive to plastic and rubber. If the pumps are spitting out higher than 10% ethanol, the chain of responsibility is pretty damn clear. Sue the gas seller.
Anyone who has done ethanol conversions for internal combustion engines (ICEs) can tell you that the conversion requires replacement of plastic and rubber hoses in the fuel system with stainless braided hose. Obviously if the system isn't originally designed for more than 10% ethanol there will be problems.
But the problem isn't with ethanol per se. While it doesn't contain as much energy per liter as straight gasoline, that never stopped gasoline from taking off in favor of diesel's increased energy per liter. Ethanol makes fuel octane ratings go through the roof, which means you can tune the engine to run leaner under acceleration. Even running under boost you can often run leaner than 12 AFR with E85.
I don't agree with the subsidies from the corn lobby, but attacking ethanol because "it destroys engines which weren't designed to run on ethanol" is frankly a stupid tack.
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And the reasons for this are political, with a side of history. The GIMP developers invented GTK+, and now they're tied to it.
Know what? GTK+ is great under X11. It looks and behaves like crap under everything else, regardless of what theme you select. Basic UI principles say that your applications should be consistent with the OS, and that means using standard widgets (menu bars, icons, buttons, file open dialogs, and other things that match the look and feel of your OS). When GIMP was first released there WERE no standard widgets for Linux, so the devs hacked some together and released them as a separate library. A couple other devs saw the work that had been done, and figured that GTK could be used to save work on their own projects, and before long a ton of apps and window managers used it. Some of those app developers wanted to port their apps to Windows and Mac OS, and so GTK+ was ported as well. But because GTK+ manually renders all the buttons and widgets and so on, the ports look out of place. Strike that. They look godawful. Really this isn't GTK's fault, it's just not the right tool for the job. It's not just that they look bad, but users have to learn things like how to interact with a new file manager. It's unprofessional, it robs the user of time and effort, and it makes ported open source software seem inferior to native apps.
Recognizing the inherent problem, several other developers made toolkits so that apps would look normal again. A wxWidgets program compiled for Linux uses GTK+ to draw the dialogs and menus, but calls the native widget functions under Windows. The result is a program that looks like it was designed specifically for each OS on which it runs. Take a look at screenshots of Audacity for a great example.
They could design the UI in wxWidgets or Qt to make it actually look decent under every OS, but they won't-- and really at this point they can't, because the former would be seen as pandering, and the latter would be seen as abandoning GTK+. But to everyone outside the community, it looks like the GIMP devs are rallying to prove the superiority of GTK+ using the flagship Linux graphics app, at the expense of the open source movement. It only pisses off those of us who are trying to ease migrations to a free OS by gradually replacing existing non-free apps with free alternatives like OpenOffice. OO is a drop in replacement for MS Office in many cases, and behaves almost exactly like a native app under Windows. On the other hand, Inkscape is a great program with a decent UI, but I can't wholeheartedly recommend it as an Illustrator replacement to Windows users because it doesn't look or act like what they're used to. And if I can't get my mother weaned off the crippled photo editor that came bundled with her camera, I'm never going to get her to switch completely.
Face it, folks, GTK+ is cross platform only by the loosest possible interpretation. I realize a lot of time and effort has gone into the 2.7/2.8 "redesign", but these UI changes to GIMP are too little, too late. At this point the only thing which is really going to save The GIMP on other platforms is a complete UI redesign using something other than GTK+. If GEGL is ever finished this shouldn't be too hard. Conveniently this would also allow us to change the cringe-inducing name as well. The result would be a Photoshop replacement that would look like it wasn't cobbled together by two bearded guys in a basement.
Slashdot has editors??? As in, people who look at the stories and fix errors before (or after) hitting the submit button? You must be new here.
Does this help?
You might be surprised. Wine is making surprising progress on the early 3D 32-bit Win front, and with luck they'll finish the job once they acknowledge how critical the DIB bug is. That would be the ultimate goal; make a platform that will run old Windows games agnostically and you've succeeded in the hardest part of a goal to "emulate" Windows (yes yes, Wine is not an emulator). Apart from that I think the only critically broken game right now is Alpha Centauri, and it used quite a few stupid tricks with the IDX register for speedups so that might take awhile to be fixed. Hopefully when Windows XP is long forgotten we'll still be able to play these games.
Looks like you and I both appreciate the games of the era. Let's hope some other folks take an interest in preserving the classics. You can be certain in 50 years people will be looking back and either appreciating our ability to still play them or lamenting the lack thereof. It very much resembles the state of early film. History will repeat itself, I'm certain of it.
I sure hope so. I'm still waiting for a fullspeed Gamecube emulator but Dolphin just isn't quite there yet.
System Shock 2 actually does run just fine under Win7, but you need to download a fix for it -- SS2Tool by Kolya fixes the compatibility problems and removes the CD check on top of that, and even provides a widescreen patch. To Looking Glass's credit I don't think they could have foreseen the issues with multicore systems or NT permissions issues back then. But someone fixed it, and it runs. Do you think anyone will be able to maintain your console games 10 years from now? Will anyone be able to cut through the legal red tape? Will anyone bother?
I just played through SS2 in 1920x1200. Keep in mind that game came out in 1999, which makes it 10 years old. How many old Xbox or PS2 games can you play on a next gen console with higher resolution? None. How many can you patch with high res texture packs or reskins? None.
You lumped Steam in the list of intrusive DRM with Starforce. I don't like DRM any more than anyone else on ./ but Steam isn't intrusive. It doesn't break your system and it does just work.
I agree. It's straightforward if you see a positive mod and it's good; plus means "yes, it's funny, I agree, mod up". But what does minus do? Does minus mean "that's not funny at all" or does it mean "that's not +5 Funny"? And how are you supposed to metamod things that are labeled Troll or Offtopic? Does plus mean you agree with the negative moderation, or does it mean "this should be rated higher"? Same with minus. It's the equivalent of the OK/Cancel box in bad UIs, in that it's not at all clear what effect your actions will have.
The old system was a lot better; you get three selections labeled "Funny", "Unfunny", or "Not sure", and mark the appropriate one. For a comment modded "Flamebait" the options were also clear: "Flamebait", "Not Flamebait", and "Not sure". Why can't we have the old metamod system back?
You do know that the term "algorithm" is named after a mathematician, right?
Algorithms and computer programs are absolutely a subset of mathematics. Take a few basic computer science courses at a university and you'll learn that very quickly. Just read some journal papers on the algebra of sets, group theory, lambda calculus, or Turing machines. You can't even understand provability without understanding the underlying mathematics, and provability is only one critical facet of a properly designed algorithm. Prove to me that your sorting algorithm actually works on any arbitrary data I throw at it. Hell, I dare you to prove that your program actually finishes. You won't be able to do it without framing it in a mathematical context. Without such a proof your algorithm isn't noteworthy enough for a patent or for publication. And if you give me a mathematical description of your algorithm proving its correctness you just lost your own argument.
I get the feeling I'm being trolled here but some people might read your post and actually take it seriously. You have no idea what you're talking about. Algorithms are mathematics. Logic is mathematics.
You know there's a treatment for that. But I hear it may have some side-effects.
I see. And if you unmod your hardware, will it let you back on? Didn't think so.
"Your honor, I didn't kill Bob Smith, I killed his heart cells via blunt trauma. He still has a brain, it's just that his heart can't pump blood to it anymore. I'm sure he'll be reincarnated and it'll be fine.
Indeed. I had 100Mbps fiber in northern rural Japan, in 2006. That's fiber from the pole through my wall and into my apartment, by the way, and I never experienced throttling or arbitrary caps. Total cost? Around US$70 per month.
Then I come back to the USA, move into a neighborhood right next to a university in a city of a million people, and the best I can get without some crazy business plan is 1.5M/128K ADSL, for about $40 per month. And the connection from my department on campus is actually slower than the fiber I had there. What the fuck is with broadband in this country?
Here's one of the elementary school's blog entries about the subject, in case any of you were curious.
It sounds like these kids are really getting a kick out of this piece of equipment. Iwanuma isn't exactly a poor elementary school, but it's neat that the microscope is small and inexpensive enough that the school can afford it. I worked at a smaller elementary school in northern Miyagi that had a computer lab with videoconferencing equipment, and my guess is that the schools that don't buy an electron microscope will use those cameras to share with other nearby schools that do.
What about a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle?
Don't mean to break your stride, but you do realize that ten thousand yen is less than US$100, right?
>>I do not (repeat do NOT) use the "home keys"
>I can understand getting away with not using the ';', but this post itself contains all the home keys.
I tore out type ere I wrote, to type up top:
upper typewriter row, pert repertoire.
Reporter, I quote to you: To write, pop type out.
Retire typewriter row two. Your tri-row?
Rip it out, too. Tour your top row territory.
Queer tip, you retort? I worry your poor typewriter?
To torque it out -- typewriter terror?
You require row two, your tri-row prop?
You pout, try to quip. (Poor etiquette.) You titter.
(Poorer propriety.) You utter uppity output?
Quiet, you! Quit it! You purport to write.
I tire to peer to your rot, your petty writ,
to eye your wire report. You write pyrite,
terrier to torpor. I pity you, preppie yuppie.
I tutor you, tyro, to uproot your trite tree,
put type to pyre. Rupture type. Write to write.
I erupt. I riot. I prototype pure power
to write. I, upper typewriter requiter.
I outwit you, too. To perpetuity, I write poetry.
You, to put it true, putter out rote poop.
(with regards to Nick Montfort)
>As chairman of the Hunt-And-Peck Association of Typists (HPAT), I demand equal representation in the class room.
Damn, it must have taken you ages to type that!
Maybe send it through email?
"Ur" was a Sumerian city. It's not a contraction of "your" or "you're". A "rite" is a ritual. The English language is a protocol, and it has rules. It's confusing to those of us who are actually literate to see English misused. It actually slows down my reading speed, because every time I see one of these txtspeak wordsplatters I have to go back, reread it, and reparse it.
It's very similar to how IE chooses to ignore certain HTML conventions in its own way. People write code that works fine on IE, but nobody else can read it. It wasn't that difficult for me to learn the standard and follow it. Why should I have any respect for those who can't take the time to learn proper English?
Why not New Zealand instead of Finland? Then you could have a Kiwi Qi Wii.
Nuclear weapons are even more traceable than that. In fact, each breeder reactor has a certain "fingerprint" in terms of the material it generates, and I'm sure these fingerprints are widely known. By analyzing the aftermath it would be possible to tell from the isotopes which reactor(s) produced the fissile material. This would tell you where the device was built, even if it were a stolen warhead somehow detonated manually.
I'm also deaf in one ear as a result of head trauma. I've found that with only one ear it's much more difficult to pick out individual voices in crowds, much how one loses depth perception with only one eye. With two ears the brain is apparently able to attenuate sounds based upon direction. In effect, having two ears gives your brain enough data to decode spatial multiplexing, similar to MIMO receiving antennas.
With just one ear the best you can do is frequency attenuation. This is why those with a certain vocal timbre are much easier to hear than others-- for example, the guy with the booming voice in the midst of a roomful of nasal mumblers. People who talk facing away are almost universally difficult to hear, as are those that continue to stand behind me on the weak side after I've told them not to. Some might think my habit of physically grabbing people by the shoulders and turning them around or moving them to the correct side after they do this two or three times is rather rude, but not nearly as rude as those speakers.
Precisely previous poster's point.
>Thats a first, a computer analogy to describe a car.
Yeah, it's like Soviet Russia met Slashdot or something.
Immortal elephants were invented some time ago, but were then superseded by immortal carp.
Oh, so using a fuel different from the fuel specified by the manufacturer can destroy your engine. I don't think that's news. Ethanol is corrosive to plastic and rubber. If the pumps are spitting out higher than 10% ethanol, the chain of responsibility is pretty damn clear. Sue the gas seller.
Anyone who has done ethanol conversions for internal combustion engines (ICEs) can tell you that the conversion requires replacement of plastic and rubber hoses in the fuel system with stainless braided hose. Obviously if the system isn't originally designed for more than 10% ethanol there will be problems.
But the problem isn't with ethanol per se. While it doesn't contain as much energy per liter as straight gasoline, that never stopped gasoline from taking off in favor of diesel's increased energy per liter. Ethanol makes fuel octane ratings go through the roof, which means you can tune the engine to run leaner under acceleration. Even running under boost you can often run leaner than 12 AFR with E85.
I don't agree with the subsidies from the corn lobby, but attacking ethanol because "it destroys engines which weren't designed to run on ethanol" is frankly a stupid tack.