Re:Microsoft tries to stop experimentation with Li
on
Copyrant
·
· Score: 1
Seems to me that this will make people more likely to try out other operating systems, when their copy of Windows gets screwed up, or their hard drive fails, since they will have no way of going back...
To nitpick, it's more like the Windows version is built out of the same sources as the Mac version. The Mac version was written first, so that when the Mac came out, it would have an office suite. Writing it gave Microsoft all its ideas for Windows UI & API's, and, naturally, they ported it...
The ports probably are a little down right now, simply because of people holding off 'till Mac OS X to port, given how Mac OS X has two new API's, and discourages use of the old one...
Actually, one of the secrets of being technically savvy, and not having to refer to the manuals is skimming through the manuals of software when you first acquire it, before using it...
Well, with Amazon, it's easy to boycott, just don't buy from their website: either use another bookstore, or a price-comparison website like http://www.evenbetter.com/ instead...
With DVD's, it is simply a matter of not getting anything in that format.
What can you point us to that Intouch currently has available, that we actually use, that we can boycott? Without something we can stop buying or using, a boycott is futile...
So, help these folks find 'troublemakers'. Turn in yourself, for prizes! Turn in your classmates at random! Make names up and turn _them_ in! Turn in teachers!
Let's clog their files to the point of uselessness!
Turn in people at random? Don't most schools have a directory? ^_^
The one result I do expect to see from this is that they will have a list consisting of every student in each school participating. Frankly, I think the list of people submitting names would be far more interesting and useful...
That's part of the beauty of having Darwin open source and available on both platforms. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd love to see benchmarks comparing both platforms at the same Mhz using the same os.
It will also give a larger base of people writing software that will run on Mac OS X, which ought to be nice...
Somewhat suprising how many critical comments this is getting. I thought the one thing the Slashdot community would support was Open Course.... ^_^
Sounds like a good idea, though. I know I have a lot of computer knowledge that could easily translate into a college degree with minimal effort if it was free like this...
In any case, a nice gesture, a nice idea, and I will be following how it pans out...
Bookstar, if it's the one you are talking about, is a national chain. in fact, i believe it may be owned by barnes and noble. i cannot locate a reference to support this, however.
There was a Bookstar in a shopping center near my home. A month or two ago, the bookstar closed, and a sign was put in the window about how they now were this big Barnes and Noble that had just opened in the same shopping center. Then they tore down the Bookstar, which is now a lot.
So, I think I can confirm that it is the same company. Mind you, I buy new books online, through http://www.evenbetter.com, which always gets me the best deal, which usually isn't B&N or Amazon...
I buy used books more, for the atmosphere, the price, the individual service(at my local used bookstore, they know me, and my preferences, and stock things because they know I'm interested in them), and the out of print books you can't buy at Barnes & Noble.
Really, one of my biggest fears about Barnes & Nobles getting so big is that each bookstore has their own books they carry, skewed in the bookstores own direction. If one bookstore becomes the only place you can get new books around, you won't see books you may otherwise have wanted, because they don't carry it, whereas your neighborhood "Books, Inc." or "A Clean, Well Lighted Bookstore" might have, if they were still in business...
Well, here is something from Jack Chalkers website (Think Well World. I was there looking to see if he had any new books recently, like his new Well World novel...) talking about what is currently going on with the publishing industry:
Those of you following my saga know that I'm going through a very bad time right now, along with a LOT of other writers, not just science fiction ones as well. The consolidation in the publishing industry, the takeover of book distribution by Wall Street, and the firing of the old editors like those at Del Rey who were mostly concerned with books rather than media has caused a real slump and financial as well as other problems. How much of a standing do I have with Del Rey at this point, a company I've been with for 20+ years and sold millions of copies through? Well, the current management printed a mere 20,000 copies of PRIAM'S LENS, and when those sold out seemed awfully surprised and they say they're going to maybe print 3 or 4 thousand more. If they won't promote you, won't believe in you, and don't get you out there on the stands, how can you prove 'em wrong? It's very sad. The current news on his site talks a lot about what is currently going on with his books and the changes in Del Ray, and the old news gives more info on the situation.
The only real good thing was that his site pointed me to a nice online bookseller, Alphacraze. Hope things get better in the field soon. Used bookstores can only hold me for so long...
No, a z5 file is a file that should be read by a z-machine, a virtual machine Infocom came up with to make porting text adventures easy. It would be too difficult to list all the platforms it is on, so I'd reccomend rummaging through here. The first folders to look in are frotz & zip, BTW, though the emacs folder looks worthy of attention...
It should be noted you can run it on almost anything out there. Your Palmpilot, Acorn,Amiga, Gameboy, Apple II, OS/2, and all your mainstream OS'es. (Yes, including Linux, BeOS, and even Dos & Windows)...
Also, yes, the source is available for the majority of the interpreters...
If you're going to download a whole interpreter, you may as well get a couple more text adventures for it, so hunt around in
I personally think a reasonable (and somewhat evil) thing for the government to do would be to hand over the data regardless, but if not given the key, *encrypt* the data first. Then they could refuse to disclose their encryption key without recieving his in return.
If you click on the face, it'll give you a little rundown of what it found wrong with the site, IIRC. Also, on their web page, they have a bunch of links to sites that show happy faces...
You insert a swarm of nanos into your body. They then scan your brain and send a copy of it over wireless to whatever repository you have for another self (a computer, a cloned body, a robotic body, whatever) There are now two of you. But, afterwords, the nanites stay in your body and adjust your mind for any changes made in the clones patterns (again, wireless), and vice versa.
What would the net result be? Bilocation? Insanity?
How about this? The soul is not located in the body, but remotely controls it. You add more bodies, you get one soul with multiple personalities. Essentially the same principle as someone with multiple personalities having one soul, just that in this case multiple bodies are involved.
In otherwords, I'm thinking more of the soul being like a server, and the body being a remote controlled unit, with a local mirror...
(And yes, I get my kicks out of translating theology into computer terms...)
Hmmm... Weird Al's latest did have a (IIRC)Quicktime movie on it. Could that have been causing the problems? (I had no idea about the movie when I bought it, but I was playing cds at work through the computer shortly afterwords, and noticed files on it...)
Will we have public tv? These are the guys who are continually asking you for money just to bring you the shows they do. How many public tv stations do you think will be able to afford to upgrade to digital, when all the big companies switch?
You lose your sight. There is perfect electronic vision available, but the operation is too expensive for you to be able to afford. A company comes to you, willing to foot the majority of the bill. You agree, and after the operation you have perfect vision... and a banner ad permanently floating at the top of your field of vision.
Personally, I think the trouble is that following the grammatical and spelling rules of English is a lot harder then most programming languages, because of the way pronounciation has drifted away from the proper spelling of words, and has been fixed arbitrarily by modern spell-checkers. If any computer language had as many arbitrary rules as English does, often left in for reasons that are long gone, the language would either be left behind, or get a dramatic update.
I've always thought reforming spelling to better match how words are said would be a very good idea. Pity I don't really see it going mainstream anytime soon...
Its a matter of preference, really, but one thing I aways get irritated about when I'm using Win or Linux is having to look to see where the menus currently are, when I want to get at them. On a Mac, I just have to do a quick upwards jerk of the mouse to get to them. So mainly, it is a matter of consistancy of location.
It would be better if it's customizable in Mac OS X, though, so that people used to another OS could adjust it to their own personal preferences, though...
As I see it, while by no means is the average programmer neccessarily a white male junkfood-addicted recluse, there are certain trends a programmer tends towards, because of the mindset involved in programming:
Programming encourages logical, structured thinking. If you weren't thinking this way to start, odds are you are after years of programming, because good programming requires it.
The logical train of thought tends to spill over to the rest of your life. You start to carefully consider political candidites, rather then voting a party ticket, (and likely decide not to vote in disgust, or go third party). Nitpicking becomes a way of life, after constant exposure to a compiler that throws a fit over a misplaced semicolon (or similar events).
More generally, you tend to apply logic to all of your decisions to a certain extent. I'm not neccessary saying all programmers will be Mr. Spock-like. On the contrary, debugging requires quite a bit of your intuitive side. Thus, if programmers are taking after Spock, it is more the Spock of the later movies, who was willing to swear if the situation warrented it, and seemed to take his emotions and intuition into account, while logic prevailed...
A corrillary of this would be that most programmers, having observed a lack of logic or structure in most other peoples decisions, tend to become more of an individualist, and avoid most popular(or mainstream) trends, and any attempt to classify them in a group (and are even now trying to come up with rebuttals to this post... )
In religious areas, programmers will likely highly analyse it, and either: reject all religion in disgust (atheism), decide that with a lack of data, no decision can be made on the whole issue (agnostism), or opt for a non-mainstream religion (paganism, for example.) Some will stay Christian, but if you ask them why, they will generally have a quite well-thought out reason.
Because of the nature of programming tending towards hours of frustration, with one brief moment of enlightenment that makes it all worthwhile, programmers tend towards other, similar pursuits: adventure games, logic puzzles of all types, zen and other mind disciplines, and martial arts. This combined with the individualism tends towards very Thoreau-like attitudes...
A lot of this really depends which areas of a programmers life the discipine tends to spill over to, of course. In other areas, there is a tendency to minimise neccessary thinking, esp. in areas of fashion & eating habits...
As such, the situation tends to be that the extremes and the norms reverse when applied to us...
Only my opinion, of course, but I and other programmers I've known seem to bear it out...
I'd have to agree with that. You could even tell he was a true geek in the method he used to kill himself. No gun to the head or slash to the wrists here. Not Turing. He coated an apple with cyanide, and bit into it...
Exactly. The more standard the gui is, the more people we don't want to see in the Linux community, the type who want to do their work, rather then constantly learning new interfaces.
As such, I suggest we start making Linux less friendly, or standardized.
Programs should all follow completely different user interfaces. Anyone who doesn't want to learn a completely different interface to use your program isn't important anyways.
As such, I have noticed some dimaying regularities in Linux.
The menu bar seems to always either be at the top of the screen, in the window, or accessable by right click. Be creative. Have the menu pop up by some easy key command like ctrl-alt-shift-F1, or something.
Scrollbars. While varying whether they are on the left or right is a good start, it isn't obscure, or creative enough. Either make it go on a diagonal, or some weird path, while reversing the arbitrary "up arrow goes up" sydrome, or, again, eliminate the scroll bars in favor of easy to use key shortcuts, like ctrl-alt-f, and cntl-alt-b.
What is with the ever present file and edit menus? Redistribute the commands to more entertainingly named menus, or better yet, get rid of some of them entirely. Your program is good enough that no one will ever need that quit option, anyways.
Moving and resizing the windows are entirely to easy. Surely we could tuck the functionality in a menu, a icon with a picture that bears no relation to the task at hand, or, again, a really obscure key shortcut?
Your program ought to rely on really obscure libraries. Don't bother to document where to find them, either. The hunt is all the fun.
Anyways, follow these suggestions in all your programs, and watch the number of people using Linux who complain about the user interface dwindle away, as they migrate back to other platforms... --Arcum
What I would say is the Linux needs a standard, *fully customizable* UI. That is, you configure the menus to be here, the scroll bars to be here, and so on, and have the majority of the programs actually follow that standard, rather then placing the scroll bar on the left-hand side and the menus in the window, simply because that's how the programmer has things laid out on their computer...
Slashdot Mirror
Seems to me that this will make people more likely to try out other operating systems, when their copy of Windows gets screwed up, or their hard drive fails, since they will have no way of going back...
To nitpick, it's more like the Windows version is built out of the same sources as the Mac version. The Mac version was written first, so that when the Mac came out, it would have an office suite. Writing it gave Microsoft all its ideas for Windows UI & API's, and, naturally, they ported it...
The ports probably are a little down right now, simply because of people holding off 'till Mac OS X to port, given how Mac OS X has two new API's, and discourages use of the old one...
Actually, one of the secrets of being technically savvy, and not having to refer to the manuals is skimming through the manuals of software when you first acquire it, before using it...
Well, with Amazon, it's easy to boycott, just don't buy from their website: either use another bookstore, or a price-comparison website like http://www.evenbetter.com/ instead...
With DVD's, it is simply a matter of not getting anything in that format.
What can you point us to that Intouch currently has available, that we actually use, that we can boycott? Without something we can stop buying or using, a boycott is futile...
So, help these folks find 'troublemakers'. Turn in yourself, for prizes! Turn in your classmates at random! Make names up and turn _them_ in! Turn in teachers!
Let's clog their files to the point of uselessness!
Turn in people at random? Don't most schools have a directory? ^_^
The one result I do expect to see from this is that they will have a list consisting of every student in each school participating. Frankly, I think the list of people submitting names would be far more interesting and useful...
That's part of the beauty of having Darwin open source and available on both platforms. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd love to see benchmarks comparing both platforms at the same Mhz using the same os.
It will also give a larger base of people writing software that will run on Mac OS X, which ought to be nice...
Somewhat suprising how many critical comments this is getting. I thought the one thing the Slashdot community would support was Open Course.... ^_^
Sounds like a good idea, though. I know I have a lot of computer knowledge that could easily translate into a college degree with minimal effort if it was free like this...
In any case, a nice gesture, a nice idea, and I will be following how it pans out...
There was a Bookstar in a shopping center near my home. A month or two ago, the bookstar closed, and a sign was put in the window about how they now were this big Barnes and Noble that had just opened in the same shopping center. Then they tore down the Bookstar, which is now a lot.
So, I think I can confirm that it is the same company. Mind you, I buy new books online, through http://www.evenbetter.com, which always gets me the best deal, which usually isn't B&N or Amazon...
I buy used books more, for the atmosphere, the price, the individual service(at my local used bookstore, they know me, and my preferences, and stock things because they know I'm interested in them), and the out of print books you can't buy at Barnes & Noble.
Really, one of my biggest fears about Barnes & Nobles getting so big is that each bookstore has their own books they carry, skewed in the bookstores own direction. If one bookstore becomes the only place you can get new books around, you won't see books you may otherwise have wanted, because they don't carry it, whereas your neighborhood "Books, Inc." or "A Clean, Well Lighted Bookstore" might have, if they were still in business...
Try "chocolate chip nookie", and take a look at what comes up. Seems a conceivable spelling mistake to me...
Those of you following my saga know that I'm going through a very bad time right now, along with a LOT of other writers, not just science fiction ones as well. The consolidation in the publishing industry, the takeover of book distribution by Wall Street, and the firing of the old editors like those at Del Rey who were mostly concerned with books rather than media has caused a real slump and financial as well as other problems. How much of a standing do I have with Del Rey at this point, a company I've been with for 20+ years and sold millions of copies through? Well, the current management printed a mere 20,000 copies of PRIAM'S LENS, and when those sold out seemed awfully surprised and they say they're going to maybe print 3 or 4 thousand more. If they won't promote you, won't believe in you, and don't get you out there on the stands, how can you prove 'em wrong? It's very sad.
The current news on his site talks a lot about what is currently going on with his books and the changes in Del Ray, and the old news gives more info on the situation.
The only real good thing was that his site pointed me to a nice online bookseller, Alphacraze. Hope things get better in the field soon. Used bookstores can only hold me for so long...
No, a z5 file is a file that should be read by a z-machine, a virtual machine Infocom came up with to make porting text adventures easy. It would be too difficult to list all the platforms it is on, so I'd reccomend rummaging through here. The first folders to look in are frotz & zip, BTW, though the emacs folder looks worthy of attention...
o comXinterpreters.html
e sXzcode.html
http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinf
It should be noted you can run it on almost anything out there. Your Palmpilot, Acorn,Amiga, Gameboy, Apple II, OS/2, and all your mainstream OS'es. (Yes, including Linux, BeOS, and even Dos & Windows)...
Also, yes, the source is available for the majority of the interpreters...
If you're going to download a whole interpreter, you may as well get a couple more text adventures for it, so hunt around in
http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgam
Recommendations include:
Jigsaw
A time travel game interweaved with romance.
So Far
Very, very sureal.
Tangle(Spider & Web)
A rather interesting spy adventure game where most of the game is what you are telling an interrogator you did...
minister(Christminister)
You go to visit your brother, and find that he is missing...
anchor(Anchorhead)
A wonderful piece of Lovecraftian fiction...
Delusns (Delusions)
VR at its best in a text adventure...
Anyways, explore around there and have fun!
I personally think a reasonable (and somewhat evil) thing for the government to do would be to hand over the data regardless, but if not given the key, *encrypt* the data first. Then they could refuse to disclose their encryption key without recieving his in return.
Just a thought...
If you click on the face, it'll give you a little rundown of what it found wrong with the site, IIRC. Also, on their web page, they have a bunch of links to sites that show happy faces...
A similar thought:
You insert a swarm of nanos into your body. They then scan your brain and send a copy of it over wireless to whatever repository you have for another self (a computer, a cloned body, a robotic body, whatever) There are now two of you. But, afterwords, the nanites stay in your body and adjust your mind for any changes made in the clones patterns (again, wireless), and vice versa.
What would the net result be? Bilocation? Insanity?
How about this? The soul is not located in the body, but remotely controls it. You add more bodies, you get one soul with multiple personalities. Essentially the same principle as someone with multiple personalities having one soul, just that in this case multiple bodies are involved.
In otherwords, I'm thinking more of the soul being like a server, and the body being a remote controlled unit, with a local mirror...
(And yes, I get my kicks out of translating theology into computer terms...)
Hmmm... Weird Al's latest did have a (IIRC)Quicktime movie on it. Could that have been causing the problems? (I had no idea about the movie when I bought it, but I was playing cds at work through the computer shortly afterwords, and noticed files on it...)
Will we have public tv? These are the guys who are continually asking you for money just to bring you the shows they do. How many public tv stations do you think will be able to afford to upgrade to digital, when all the big companies switch?
Seeing the way things are going, how about this:
You lose your sight. There is perfect electronic vision available, but the operation is too expensive for you to be able to afford. A company comes to you, willing to foot the majority of the bill. You agree, and after the operation you have perfect vision... and a banner ad permanently floating at the top of your field of vision.
Personally, I think the trouble is that following the grammatical and spelling rules of English is a lot harder then most programming languages, because of the way pronounciation has drifted away from the proper spelling of words, and has been fixed arbitrarily by modern spell-checkers. If any computer language had as many arbitrary rules as English does, often left in for reasons that are long gone, the language would either be left behind, or get a dramatic update.
I've always thought reforming spelling to better match how words are said would be a very good idea. Pity I don't really see it going mainstream anytime soon...
Its a matter of preference, really, but one thing I aways get irritated about when I'm using Win or Linux is having to look to see where the menus currently are, when I want to get at them. On a Mac, I just have to do a quick upwards jerk of the mouse to get to them. So mainly, it is a matter of consistancy of location.
It would be better if it's customizable in Mac OS X, though, so that people used to another OS could adjust it to their own personal preferences, though...
(Disclaimer: This post is entirely IMHO...)
As I see it, while by no means is the average programmer neccessarily a white male junkfood-addicted recluse, there are certain trends a programmer tends towards, because of the mindset involved in programming:
Programming encourages logical, structured thinking. If you weren't thinking this way to start, odds are you are after years of programming, because good programming requires it.
The logical train of thought tends to spill over to the rest of your life. You start to carefully consider political candidites, rather then voting a party ticket, (and likely decide not to vote in disgust, or go third party). Nitpicking becomes a way of life, after constant exposure to a compiler that throws a fit over a misplaced semicolon (or similar events).
More generally, you tend to apply logic to all of your decisions to a certain extent. I'm not neccessary saying all programmers will be Mr. Spock-like. On the contrary, debugging requires quite a bit of your intuitive side. Thus, if programmers are taking after Spock, it is more the Spock of the later movies, who was willing to swear if the situation warrented it, and seemed to take his emotions and intuition into account, while logic prevailed...
A corrillary of this would be that most programmers, having observed a lack of logic or structure in most other peoples decisions, tend to become more of an individualist, and avoid most popular(or mainstream) trends, and any attempt to classify them in a group (and are even now trying to come up with rebuttals to this post... )
In religious areas, programmers will likely highly analyse it, and either: reject all religion in disgust (atheism), decide that with a lack of data, no decision can be made on the whole issue (agnostism), or opt for a non-mainstream religion (paganism, for example.) Some will stay Christian, but if you ask them why, they will generally have a quite well-thought out reason.
Because of the nature of programming tending towards hours of frustration, with one brief moment of enlightenment that makes it all worthwhile, programmers tend towards other, similar pursuits: adventure games, logic puzzles of all types, zen and other mind disciplines, and martial arts. This combined with the individualism tends towards very Thoreau-like attitudes...
A lot of this really depends which areas of a programmers life the discipine tends to spill over to, of course. In other areas, there is a tendency to minimise neccessary thinking, esp. in areas of fashion & eating habits...
As such, the situation tends to be that the extremes and the norms reverse when applied to us...
Only my opinion, of course, but I and other programmers I've known seem to bear it out...
I'd have to agree with that. You could even tell he was a true geek in the method he used to kill himself. No gun to the head or slash to the wrists here. Not Turing. He coated an apple with cyanide, and bit into it...
Exactly. The more standard the gui is, the more people we don't want to see in the Linux community, the type who want to do their work, rather then constantly learning new interfaces.
As such, I suggest we start making Linux less friendly, or standardized.
Programs should all follow completely different user interfaces. Anyone who doesn't want to learn a completely different interface to use your program isn't important anyways.
As such, I have noticed some dimaying regularities in Linux.
The menu bar seems to always either be at the top of the screen, in the window, or accessable by right click. Be creative. Have the menu pop up by some easy key command like ctrl-alt-shift-F1, or something.
Scrollbars. While varying whether they are on the left or right is a good start, it isn't obscure, or creative enough. Either make it go on a diagonal, or some weird path, while reversing the arbitrary "up arrow goes up" sydrome, or, again, eliminate the scroll bars in favor of easy to use key shortcuts, like ctrl-alt-f, and cntl-alt-b.
What is with the ever present file and edit menus? Redistribute the commands to more entertainingly named menus, or better yet, get rid of some of them entirely. Your program is good enough that no one will ever need that quit option, anyways.
Moving and resizing the windows are entirely to easy. Surely we could tuck the functionality in a menu, a icon with a picture that bears no relation to the task at hand, or, again, a really obscure key shortcut?
Your program ought to rely on really obscure libraries. Don't bother to document where to find them, either. The hunt is all the fun.
Anyways, follow these suggestions in all your programs, and watch the number of people using Linux who complain about the user interface dwindle away, as they migrate back to other platforms...
--Arcum
What I would say is the Linux needs a standard, *fully customizable* UI. That is, you configure the menus to be here, the scroll bars to be here, and so on, and have the majority of the programs actually follow that standard, rather then placing the scroll bar on the left-hand side and the menus in the window, simply because that's how the programmer has things laid out on their computer...