I had an idea the other day. Would it be possible to implement a system for untraceable campaign contributions? That is, a way in which campaign contributions could not be traced back to the donor, even if the donor wanted them to be?
One flawed idea would be a grace period before contributed money could be accessed, all contributions being pooled until that period is up, to prevent identification through "magic number" contributions.
Donations are important, otherwise only the wealthy would be capable of running for office (*oops), but the idea that a politician would think any of this a good idea without external influence is outright absurdity. We must give the government back to the general public, somehow. (There is a sharp difference between "Well I don't see what harm it would do, might as well pass it" and "This is a good idea". The first would be dismissed as soon as it is pointed out to be a bad idea)
Considering that donations go directly to hospitals, you could also say that it puts an extra burden on the hospital workers themselves. Last year PA tried to do all they could to help organize the huge flow of donations that came in, this year each hospital has to do it themselves. I'm not saying this is entirely a bad thing, but there is after all a reason "administrative fees" exist: that labor has to come from somewhere. Now, people living full-time off the mere organization of supposed "charity" work is one thing, but bringing a couple people in to move boxes around so that the people you're donating to don't have to do extra non-sick-children work, that's worth a bit of an administration fee.
The "shortage" is artificial in order to create higher demand for the product so that people will be in a frenzy to get them one week before Christmas (3 days from today). However, Microsoft has faced the FTC enough to know that if they also raised prices during an artificial shortage, they could face penalties for gouging. Not that being accused of "gouging" for something as non-essential as an X-Box makes sense legally, but it's a risk they don't really want to deal with while trying to eliminate the competition the old-fasioned legitimate way.
I have seen people who "know how to type", as opposed to just knowing where the keys are from years of experience. The horrible contortions I see the human hand perform in order to always stay near the home keys is sickening.
Maybe I just have large hands, but I can't stand keeping them in that cramped and static position. My hands move as much as my fingers when I type. Just resting my hands on the home keys places them in an uncomfortable clubbed-paw shape which I can easily imagine causes severe damage to whatever organs rest within.
That's my theory, anyway.
(*of course I wish I could think fast enough that typing faster would really matter that much. I suppose I could get that sentence out faster if I knew how, but the majority of my day is spent thinking about what to write when I eventually write it.)
Typing about typing is fun to type. Type type type type type type type...
I hate all one-sided arguments, even when I agree with them. Yeah, everyone here knows that "video games linked to violent behavior" really means "violent people enjoy violent games too" (this is just an assumption, but cannibals probably enjoy steaks)
But what's the line-by-line rebuttle for all this? This article has no place on slashdot because it tells us things we already knew. What are the contradictions to this: the things we don't neccessarily know?
Is a "desktop" really a requirement? Why must people talk about "kde the window manager", "kde the application manager", and "kde the too many tools" as one thing? This really is an actual question. Why are all these elements smashed together in one grand thing called "kde"? (or gnome)
There are many components, none of which should rely on any of eachother:
- A window manager. The thing which Windows users JustDontGet, and which seems increasingly difficult to find without including features which are not directly related to the task of managing windows. (even the next one should be seperate). A window manager should not be a/task/ manager. Window managers not being able to tell which things are related may or may not be a failure of the X protocol.
- A Task manager. For launching/killing applications, and perhaps somehow tied in to the applications themselves. I know it's difficult to seperate this completely from a WM. I just wish it seemed like people were trying. Often a menuing system. Often a nod to microsoft.
- A desktop. Some people like these, I don't, but I have no problem with you liking them. A desktop is a program that takes up the whole screen and can, through one way or another, have things placed on it.
- A file browser. Please stop combining these with desktops. And web browsers. And photo albums. And text editors. And configuration managers. And task managers. and Window managers. And FTP clients.
- Common Dialogs (see previous rant in same topic)
- A configuration manager. A configuration manager should manage configurations. It should not be the only way to manage configurations. I hesitate to lean one way or another as to whether or not options dialogs in individual applications should be able to tie in to these.
- A theming system. No component should rely on a theming system, no theming system should assume the existence of any component
All this ranting is merely meant to point out that none of these things inheirently/need/ eachother. What they _all_ need however, is some set of standards. A Standard place and format for themes, for menus, for tasks to declare themselves, for drag & drop accross multiple unrelated applications, for configuration.
And of course, because I tend to get modded as troll when I don't explicitely say this: The preceding contained opinions. Lots of them. They are intended to promote discussion, not flames.
Aren't things like file open (save, print, etc) dialogs important enough that we should all band together and form a standard dialogs library? Something which has a completely unchanging interface (all the important things, like how things are actually entered), but has hooks to allow extensability by a desktop (I don't care if you want fancy icons or something, let's provide hooks for that)
Common Dialogs are far too important to have any ties to a particular anything. I've wanted to make some common dialogs for a long while now, but of course I'm a CLI guy so the key component in my mind would be an embedable 1-line terminal. (I mean, you've got a text box there looking at the filesystem, why wouldnt you want to run a full shell in it?). That is to say: I always think too far-fetched, and so the details prevent me from actually doing anything.
Once again another "I'm an idiot and I thought of it, why arent there a bunch of smarter people getting together and doing it?"
(desktops suck! Use gwm and stab anyone who tries to link against a kde or gnome library!)
I saw some toys the other day that were like that. You bought an action figure, and it came with an arm or a leg of another action figure. Of course, transformers-style toys have done that forever, but this was just an arm roughly the size of the action figure's leg, nothing "rideable".
Of course, unless they're complete idiots, they wont really be selling peices of movies, they'll be selling episodes of crappy somethingorother that will be trendy for three months.
Of course, they could over-DRM this and entirely forget the benefit of collectable/tradeable stories in bubble gum or trading card packs. ("They're supposed to BUY the new chapters, not buy some of them and trade some with their friends!")
but that's the point. It's easier to market something with a built in brand name, but (maybe I'm wrong about this) isn't Aeon Flux a bit obscure to try applying this principle to? If Aeon flux were some wildly popular thingy with a huge fanbase, this would make sense. But a late-night MTV show that only had ten and five-quarters episodes to its name?
I dont understand why they named it "Aeon Flux" when all it shared were poorly-placed references to the series. This might have been a half-okay-maybe movie (*I doubt it) if they just called it The Clonus Disaster or something. All that was gained by calling it Aeon Flux was my thinking "Why would you try to tack on some silly lame-ass reason for Aeon and Trevor's relationship?"
So /. thinks linking /should/ be illegal now?
on
The Podjacker Threat
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· Score: 1
I thought/. was against people getting lawyers involved because they didnt understand the purpose of URLs
I've alway's preferred gvim or visual studio's method of putting an * or + in the title bar when a file you're viewing has been modified since being opened. The reasoning is: this isnt so simple as a "this file is different from what is on disk", it is the more nuanced "I havent seen you make any changes since last time I did something involving the filesystem". Not having seen changes does not mean there is no difference, and so should not take away functionality. Within the last hour I have opened a log, deleted the original, and then restored it by saving the "unchanged" window.
But more importantly, it goes against the general design principle of not ever explicitely taking away functionality just because you can't think of a reason you would want that functionality in that instance- when it would do no harm to have it. (holy crap that's poorly phrased)
Note that this is not the same as simply not adding certain functionality in the first place, which tends to be admirable (and more what this article is talking about). That is: When you have a save button, don't ever disable it just because you feel like it, but do you/need/ a save button?
As for a definitive answer: Of course you need a save button, because storage space is not yet good enough to save infinite versions of an infinite number of infinitely-sized files.
Do wake me up when I can get enough qbytes to simply pull the correct code out of the chaos, assuming all files which wouldnt compile cancel eachother out:)
your concept of "done entering it" is different from mine. I meant the moment you're done filling out a property window (for example) and click "okay", that property is saved.
I see lots of people(.. two, but I dont know many people) use "not saving" instead of undo. Always makes me want to hit them. But then sometimes I'm on somebody else's system and all that's available is some version of vi with one level of undo and terminal settings which convert "@" to a destructive backspace (seriously, wtf?)
Sometimes closing and re-opening is the best shot until you can figure out where you are.
All information is automatically stored as soon as you are done entering it. Still, we have a save button. Because otherwise people would ask where the save button is.
I dont really like this feature, I'd prefer the save button do/something/. But I'm also the kind of person who compulsively clicks "save" (or:w) every now and then, so maybe I'm the target. Actually, our save button does do one thing: it disabled itself after being clicked until something else changes. I argue against that because I feel I should always be able to click buttons whose function is not being blocked by something else. (oh no! He wants to noop in a place it doesnt make sense to noop! Calling our noop would only waste valueable cycles!.. or something)
In order for the game to be played, there is only one baseball. Does this mean footballs do not exist?
"Never" is factual. The exaggeration comes from not having placed limits on what constitutes "information" (though from the context of the article, it can be derived by anyone). The purpose of the second sentence seems to have been lost on you.
hmm.. that could be read very wrong..:) I mean, where's the/official/ list of defeats? Does the EFF keep one? (as in, a list which notes where the EFF has failed without being a "slam the EFF" article)
Slashdot Mirror
if they're not going to follow protocol, why let them on the net?
I had an idea the other day. Would it be possible to implement a system for untraceable campaign contributions? That is, a way in which campaign contributions could not be traced back to the donor, even if the donor wanted them to be?
One flawed idea would be a grace period before contributed money could be accessed, all contributions being pooled until that period is up, to prevent identification through "magic number" contributions.
Donations are important, otherwise only the wealthy would be capable of running for office (*oops), but the idea that a politician would think any of this a good idea without external influence is outright absurdity. We must give the government back to the general public, somehow.
(There is a sharp difference between "Well I don't see what harm it would do, might as well pass it" and "This is a good idea". The first would be dismissed as soon as it is pointed out to be a bad idea)
It's just an idea.
Considering that donations go directly to hospitals, you could also say that it puts an extra burden on the hospital workers themselves. Last year PA tried to do all they could to help organize the huge flow of donations that came in, this year each hospital has to do it themselves. I'm not saying this is entirely a bad thing, but there is after all a reason "administrative fees" exist: that labor has to come from somewhere. Now, people living full-time off the mere organization of supposed "charity" work is one thing, but bringing a couple people in to move boxes around so that the people you're donating to don't have to do extra non-sick-children work, that's worth a bit of an administration fee.
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity" you say?
The "shortage" is artificial in order to create higher demand for the product so that people will be in a frenzy to get them one week before Christmas (3 days from today). However, Microsoft has faced the FTC enough to know that if they also raised prices during an artificial shortage, they could face penalties for gouging. Not that being accused of "gouging" for something as non-essential as an X-Box makes sense legally, but it's a risk they don't really want to deal with while trying to eliminate the competition the old-fasioned legitimate way.
I have seen people who "know how to type", as opposed to just knowing where the keys are from years of experience. The horrible contortions I see the human hand perform in order to always stay near the home keys is sickening.
Maybe I just have large hands, but I can't stand keeping them in that cramped and static position. My hands move as much as my fingers when I type. Just resting my hands on the home keys places them in an uncomfortable clubbed-paw shape which I can easily imagine causes severe damage to whatever organs rest within.
That's my theory, anyway.
(*of course I wish I could think fast enough that typing faster would really matter that much. I suppose I could get that sentence out faster if I knew how, but the majority of my day is spent thinking about what to write when I eventually write it.)
Typing about typing is fun to type. Type type type type type type type...
Wish I could moderate my own thread. Thank you.
"redundant" eh? someone isnt sorting correctly.
I hate all one-sided arguments, even when I agree with them. Yeah, everyone here knows that "video games linked to violent behavior" really means "violent people enjoy violent games too" (this is just an assumption, but cannibals probably enjoy steaks)
But what's the line-by-line rebuttle for all this? This article has no place on slashdot because it tells us things we already knew. What are the contradictions to this: the things we don't neccessarily know?
Is a "desktop" really a requirement? Why must people talk about "kde the window manager", "kde the application manager", and "kde the too many tools" as one thing?
/task/ manager. Window managers not being able to tell which things are related may or may not be a failure of the X protocol.
/need/ eachother. What they _all_ need however, is some set of standards. A Standard place and format for themes, for menus, for tasks to declare themselves, for drag & drop accross multiple unrelated applications, for configuration.
This really is an actual question.
Why are all these elements smashed together in one grand thing called "kde"? (or gnome)
There are many components, none of which should rely on any of eachother:
- A window manager. The thing which Windows users JustDontGet, and which seems increasingly difficult to find without including features which are not directly related to the task of managing windows. (even the next one should be seperate). A window manager should not be a
- A Task manager. For launching/killing applications, and perhaps somehow tied in to the applications themselves. I know it's difficult to seperate this completely from a WM. I just wish it seemed like people were trying. Often a menuing system. Often a nod to microsoft.
- A desktop. Some people like these, I don't, but I have no problem with you liking them. A desktop is a program that takes up the whole screen and can, through one way or another, have things placed on it.
- A file browser. Please stop combining these with desktops. And web browsers. And photo albums. And text editors. And configuration managers. And task managers. and Window managers. And FTP clients.
- Common Dialogs (see previous rant in same topic)
- A configuration manager. A configuration manager should manage configurations. It should not be the only way to manage configurations. I hesitate to lean one way or another as to whether or not options dialogs in individual applications should be able to tie in to these.
- A theming system. No component should rely on a theming system, no theming system should assume the existence of any component
All this ranting is merely meant to point out that none of these things inheirently
And of course, because I tend to get modded as troll when I don't explicitely say this: The preceding contained opinions. Lots of them. They are intended to promote discussion, not flames.
Aren't things like file open (save, print, etc) dialogs important enough that we should all band together and form a standard dialogs library? Something which has a completely unchanging interface (all the important things, like how things are actually entered), but has hooks to allow extensability by a desktop (I don't care if you want fancy icons or something, let's provide hooks for that)
Common Dialogs are far too important to have any ties to a particular anything. I've wanted to make some common dialogs for a long while now, but of course I'm a CLI guy so the key component in my mind would be an embedable 1-line terminal. (I mean, you've got a text box there looking at the filesystem, why wouldnt you want to run a full shell in it?). That is to say: I always think too far-fetched, and so the details prevent me from actually doing anything.
Once again another "I'm an idiot and I thought of it, why arent there a bunch of smarter people getting together and doing it?"
(desktops suck! Use gwm and stab anyone who tries to link against a kde or gnome library!)
I saw some toys the other day that were like that. You bought an action figure, and it came with an arm or a leg of another action figure.
Of course, transformers-style toys have done that forever, but this was just an arm roughly the size of the action figure's leg, nothing "rideable".
Of course, unless they're complete idiots, they wont really be selling peices of movies, they'll be selling episodes of crappy somethingorother that will be trendy for three months.
Of course, they could over-DRM this and entirely forget the benefit of collectable/tradeable stories in bubble gum or trading card packs. ("They're supposed to BUY the new chapters, not buy some of them and trade some with their friends!")
could Pringles Cans be the new Nanotubes?
but that's the point. It's easier to market something with a built in brand name, but (maybe I'm wrong about this) isn't Aeon Flux a bit obscure to try applying this principle to? If Aeon flux were some wildly popular thingy with a huge fanbase, this would make sense. But a late-night MTV show that only had ten and five-quarters episodes to its name?
I dont understand why they named it "Aeon Flux" when all it shared were poorly-placed references to the series. This might have been a half-okay-maybe movie (*I doubt it) if they just called it The Clonus Disaster or something. All that was gained by calling it Aeon Flux was my thinking "Why would you try to tack on some silly lame-ass reason for Aeon and Trevor's relationship?"
I thought /. was against people getting lawyers involved because they didnt understand the purpose of URLs
Ah, yes, it was line-delete, not character-delete.
too bad the phrase "thanks for the history lesson" has implied sarcasm.
My time machine WORKS! I travelled all the way back to February 6th, 2002!
I've alway's preferred gvim or visual studio's method of putting an * or + in the title bar when a file you're viewing has been modified since being opened. The reasoning is: this isnt so simple as a "this file is different from what is on disk", it is the more nuanced "I havent seen you make any changes since last time I did something involving the filesystem". Not having seen changes does not mean there is no difference, and so should not take away functionality. Within the last hour I have opened a log, deleted the original, and then restored it by saving the "unchanged" window.
/need/ a save button?
:)
But more importantly, it goes against the general design principle of not ever explicitely taking away functionality just because you can't think of a reason you would want that functionality in that instance- when it would do no harm to have it. (holy crap that's poorly phrased)
Note that this is not the same as simply not adding certain functionality in the first place, which tends to be admirable (and more what this article is talking about). That is: When you have a save button, don't ever disable it just because you feel like it, but do you
As for a definitive answer: Of course you need a save button, because storage space is not yet good enough to save infinite versions of an infinite number of infinitely-sized files.
Do wake me up when I can get enough qbytes to simply pull the correct code out of the chaos, assuming all files which wouldnt compile cancel eachother out
your concept of "done entering it" is different from mine. I meant the moment you're done filling out a property window (for example) and click "okay", that property is saved.
I see lots of people(.. two, but I dont know many people) use "not saving" instead of undo. Always makes me want to hit them. But then sometimes I'm on somebody else's system and all that's available is some version of vi with one level of undo and terminal settings which convert "@" to a destructive backspace (seriously, wtf?)
Sometimes closing and re-opening is the best shot until you can figure out where you are.
All information is automatically stored as soon as you are done entering it. Still, we have a save button. Because otherwise people would ask where the save button is.
/something/. But I'm also the kind of person who compulsively clicks "save" (or :w) every now and then, so maybe I'm the target. .. or something)
I dont really like this feature, I'd prefer the save button do
Actually, our save button does do one thing: it disabled itself after being clicked until something else changes. I argue against that because I feel I should always be able to click buttons whose function is not being blocked by something else. (oh no! He wants to noop in a place it doesnt make sense to noop! Calling our noop would only waste valueable cycles!
Do you speak Scrabble, or do you speak English?
In order for the game to be played, there is only one baseball. Does this mean footballs do not exist?
"Never" is factual. The exaggeration comes from not having placed limits on what constitutes "information" (though from the context of the article, it can be derived by anyone). The purpose of the second sentence seems to have been lost on you.
Dictionaries never were and never will be a source of information about the english language, expecially not about what words /don't/ exist.
if you think to yourself "He can't possibly have an argument to support that statement!" You probably misread the statement.
hmm.. that could be read very wrong.. :) /official/ list of defeats? Does the EFF keep one? (as in, a list which notes where the EFF has failed without being a "slam the EFF" article)
I mean, where's the