Are there good alternatives for Mindstorms? I took a class in college that used the Handy Board which was a simple kit that I suspect was largely equivalent to the Mindstorm kit. Only less slick, of course -- we used simple sensors and cut and glued Lego pieces together to make them fit into the Lego system. (Makes for very cheap sensors, though!)
The Handy Board seems like it's showing its age, though. It's not a great development environment; a little arcane, with an odd language (Interactive C... interpreted C, the worst of all worlds?), and connectivity seemed very ad hoc. The supply of kits seemed precarious as well, and I'm not sure if there's much of any supply at all anymore. But they were cool -- certainly something similar must exist? All you have to do to Legoize a robot kit is glue Legos on, it seems. It's clunky but effective.
I found the programming and physical configuration interesting, but the electronics a bit tedious, which made the Handy Board (and potentially Mindstorms) quite inviting. Are there newer options available? (And relatedly, are there good Lego-compatible brick options available? There's always been cheap knock offs, but I've never tried them, and they generally don't have anything Technic-like)
Testing GUI programs is a bitch. I program web interfaces, and even testing those is a pain, and they are way easier than a GUI.
But it's important to distinguish between a Unit Test (which is easy to write, even for GUI programs), and an Acceptance Test, which can be hard to write.
A GUI test shouldn't test something like "when you go to Window>Server List, and leave the window open, showing an active status message by starting a connection by right clicking the server and selecting 'Refresh', then you open the properties with Edit>Properties and change the settings that efect the server, the still-running connection works properly with the old settings until the refresh is completed". That's the kind of corner case where you're likely to find a bug, but testing that sort of thing is nigh impossible -- especially when the software is changing, and the interface is changing, and this is one among thousands of corner cases.
When you use unit tests you don't test a complete thing like that. You test each part, but you test it very completely. You may not test the GUI at all -- instead you test that the underlying server code and preference code work properly. You test that they work to spec, and not just within the bounds of the interface. Maybe in version 1 you can't select both the server window and the preferences window at the same time, so this situation is impossible. But you can still make a unit test for this case.
When you do that, you avoid a huge number of bugs. At that point you don't need to test the entire program by simulating input. Instead you rely on the fact that each component works in a controlled and correct fashion. Then, fitted together, they all work together. Sure, the people writing GTK need unit tests -- but only for what GTK does, not for the particulars of how your application uses GTK. And so it goes, we each build upon well-tested code, but we don't retest that code. We trust the upstream developer.
Of course, we've all seen bad interactions between things we wouldn't expect. Part of using unit testing is to make components that work in an isolated fashion, components that can be tested in isolation. Reducing coupling between components is essential.
Which is again a reason why GUI applications are hard to test -- coupling is encouraged, because it's usually a better user interface. You want to fit everything together based on the best metaphor for the user, the most expressive interface you can get, expected workflow, etc. That often doesn't match up with the underlying objects you are using. It's often highly coupled. But you can have that in one part of your system, so long as you really trust the pieces its built on.
I think as more areas of open source embrace unit testing and test driven development -- and it's happening rapidly! -- that we'll see some significant improvements in quality. And it's great for open and free software, because unit testing is something that's hard to bolt on later. But you can do it, it just requires a lot of refactoring. Because of the availability of the source, refactoring is an option for us. Because APIs for environments like Windows or Java are largely set, and the components largely opaque, they don't have this option.
As far as I was able to tell, wxWindows doesn't have anything like a canvas, which is the most important part of the UI for this program (turtle graphics). With those requirements, Tk seems to easily beat out wxWindows. But Tk's ongoing development is... slow. Which is why I was thinking of GTK or Qt. (Or maybe GNUStep...)
For a while I was basically OK with Troll's GPLing KDE. Then I considered writing a frontend using it (for PyLogo)... it was well documented and featureful. And cross platform... but not really.
Qt on Windows isn't available under the GPL, and as far as I can see it never will be (certainly not without some great change of heart by Troll). Now I'm thinking about GTK, because while it might not be great on Windows (or maybe it is, I haven't tried that for a while), it has the potential to be a good cross-platform GUI. Qt has no potential, especially since there's no practical opportunity to clone Qt, as Troll would probably sabotage such an effort (as they sabotaged Harmony).
So in the end, I find myself firmly pushed away from Qt, even for free software (which I was completely willing to license under the GPL).
I think part of the point of UserLinux, and standards in general, is just to tip the scales when less involved developers make choices.
When I'm developing software I frequently come to a decision point where there's multiple protocols, implementations, or standards I can support. I often (usually!) don't care about which one I use, so long as it's not insanely bad. For example, I don't care where my program's files go, so long as I can find them. I don't care what port I use, so long as it doesn't conflict with other programs. I don't care about the file format, but it would be nice if other tools could handle it. And so on.
Standards make it easy to make a decision in these cases. Because lots of decisions are important but not useful. Let a standard committee figure it out for me -- whatever important details there are that I don't understand, they can think about those. And when they are done, they don't have to present a justification of why they are right -- they just have to tell me, the developer, what I'm supposed to do.
Competition can be useful. But only when it's interesting. I know, things that are interesting to one person aren't interesting to another. I don't care about exim vs. postfix vs. qmail, but I'm sure there are people who care very much. I guess part of a standard is a way of making both of those possible -- making it so I don't have to care (because they all talk SMTP) while another person can make decisions that are useful to them. Of course, SMTP is only a start -- I like/etc/aliases too, because it's easy to understand, but it's also limited. A growing standard might extend that -- and well it should, because having a single way to express aliases would be very useful. In this way a standard can grow, and slowly pick off the pieces where useful diversity doesn't exist (only annoying diversity).
I think UserLinux could be successful if it finds low hanging fruit first -- standardizing boring things, where the participants are easy to convince. There might be things that are more useful to standardize (like a GUI toolkit), but down that road leads certain failure.
People are overemphasizing the portability "tax". Effectively it only means that people with contracts preceding the portability tax can have their rate increased without an opportunity to be relieved from their contract. That sucks, I'm sure it adds up to a lot of money, but it's still only transitional, and ultimately I think that finite and limited amount of money will be worth it for consumers, even if it isn't fair.
Once the current set of contracts run out, then each person should simply look at the total cost of each service and choose based on that. They can account for the cost however they want, but people are smart enough to judge actual costs. Eventually providers will also realize that having false advertised costs (i.e., with all sorts of hidden fees) pisses people off, and causes a great deal of mistrust, and these little taxes will fade away. But even if they don't, it doesn't really matter.
Shawn Gordon said the same thing in the comp.lang.python thread, which John Dean contested. I don't really know one way or the other, and like I said, in the end it's all the same GPL.
The fact that theKompany is releasing Rekall under the GPL at this time kind of makes me think the original developer's desire to GPL Rekall was the impetus -- it makes the whole ownership thing more-or-less moot. If theKompany wanted to avoid conflict, that would be the easy way to do so.
I wonder how this relates to this thread (which actually starts here), which were posted to comp.lang.python [tinyurl links point to long google groups URLs]. Seemed like there was some sort of disagreement between theKompany and the main developer. His site is totalrekall.co.uk. A bit of a soap opera, but at least both sides are moving in the same direction (GPL) -- maybe it doesn't really matter who owns the code if they both release it under the same license.
It talks about software quality and testing -- which seem very applicable, if not entirely in sync with, recent ideas about agile programming, test-driven-development, etc.
I have a horrible vision of the lawyer ripping him apart over the rights of closed-source programmers though. RMS thinks all programs should be free, not by choice but as a part of the natural order of things. Any competent lawyer should be able to do a character assassination on him, and by association the entire open source movement, with that material. I could, and I'm not a lawyer.
It's not the first time RMS has faced such accusations, nor will it be the first time he has responded to them. It won't be the fifth time, or the 20th time, or the 100th time. The internet gives a public persona a great deal of practice in responding to attacks. People just as intelligent as SCO's team of lawyers have been attacking RMS (at least verbally) for a long time, often with with no qualms about disingenuously misrepresenting his views.
I'd be much more worried about Linus, who has not been as willing to put himself in the middle of arguments, and is more apt to compromise. He'd be more likely to answer a question honestly, without recognizing the path down which the lawyer is trying to (mis)lead him. RMS won't lie, but he'll know not to offer facts or interpretations in a form that will provide ammunition for the lawyer.
RMS may be an extremist, but he's not a zealot. He's not blind to the opinions and perspectives of other people, even if he doesn't agree with them.
Nope, sorry. I'm surprised you even bothered to ask.
What do you expect? Now, can we all just standardize on English? Can we all just start using Common Lisp for all our programming needs? Can we all start using metric?
You can ask all you want, but really what's the point? Let's deal with the realm of the possible here.
The problem is parents these days are always doing things with their children. Children don't have unstructured time anymore, their lives are filled with activities, and when there's no good activity we fall back on the passive activities of TV and video games.
Without a TV I didn't spend lots of time interacting with my parents in the car. Some time, I suppose, but mostly I occupied myself, I stared out the window, or I "interacted" with other children in the car. It's not like without TV people will all just start talking with each other all the time, or even that they should do so.
Parents just don't need to try so hard. Children can amuse themselves, at least when they are forced to. Children shouldn't be spoiled with all this programmed time.
As far as "unstable" and "testing" go... neither provide security errata. and are thus useless for normal people.
You are right, there is a problem that testing lags behind stable when a security patch is released, which is kind of weird and obviously not desired, but is something that could be resolved with some modification of the policies.
All you have to do to get E-Bay reputation is mail things on time. Any two-bit criminal can do that with a little bit of patience. Being a trusted kernel contributor takes a lot more than that. An E-Bay scam artist can move on to another scam. The kernel contributor has sacrificed their talent, for unlikely gains. So I don't think that's a big problem.
Re:And what exactly is the official, from Diebold
on
CNN Reports on Diebold
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· Score: 3, Funny
I'm not sure exactly what your point is. You bring up various examples which don't really apply to the GPL. The GPL does not remove your fair use rights. The GPL does not restrict any rights. It only grants rights, which is why agreeing to the GPL is voluntary.
But copyright law is pretty clear -- you don't have the right to modify or redistribute/copy material that is protected by a copyright, without permission from its owner.
SCO isn't really arguing that the GPL is invalid. They are arguing that by distributing code under the GPL, it becomes part of the public domain. They are attacking the copyright of individual contributors. (So that haven't really forgotten paragraph 7)
Well, their other technique might be that if the GPL as a whole is invalid, then no one anywhere has permission to distribute GPL code, but obviously not everyone can be at fault for doing so, and it would be discriminatory for SCO to be punished specifically for that action when others were not.
Not just malice, but that deliberately lying with malice, or being grossly negligent in determining the facts. You can be as malicious as you want if you do so while telling the truth.
This is a very odd thing to assert, and I suspect that the same people who believe this believe that the GPL isn't a contract. No matter what, GPL'd software has restrictions -- the restrictions listed in the GPL. Public domain software has no restrictions whatsoever. Public domain software HAS to be more free.
You confuse literal freedom with political and social freedom. Political and social freedom exist in a context, not in an isolated situation. Your reductionism does not do justice to the societal impact of the GPL.
Many freedoms -- the most essential freedoms -- cannot be taken away, or given away. The rights in the bill of rights are rights that cannot be given away, they are freedoms that do not include the freedom of self-exclusion. The GPL is meant to be the same -- it is a freedom for societies (not just individuals) that cannot be revoked.
No news is deleted from Indymedia newswires, though posts are hidden. Different local Indymedia sites can make their own policy, within the general bounds of the Indymedia mission. All sites hide some articles, typically articles that are overtly racist, pornographic, or "spam" (junk, contentless press releases, duplicate posts, etc). Some are more agressive about this, but censorship based purely on political perspective is uncommon and frowned upon by the larger network.
Indymedia newswires have an open publishing policy. Anyone familiar with the internet knows what that means in terms of content -- there's a wide variety of content, some of it silly, some of it just copied from other sources. But some of it is also valuable. Typically the best Indymedia content is material posted by non-journalists, either direct participants or activists.
If you don't like the newswires (and they can be pretty noisy) each local site has edited features, which should make note of the better articles in the newswire. Of course, it's all entirely volunteer, so results may vary.
Latin American Indymedia sites have been very active, while mainstream media ignores events there almost entirely. Bolivia and Argentina have been very active covering recent events.
I don't know the current status, but in the past the "Windows Update" link in the start menu has used the default browser. To me, this was clearly a way to punish users who did not select IE as their default browser, because Windows Update would not work with any other browser. So if you made Netscape the default your Windows Update would stop working.
Maybe Microsoft needs to fix their store so that it is compatible with other browsers, but it only hurts other browsers if Microsoft uses those browsers when the store doesn't support them.
A voter-verified paper trail should be hard to rig, unless you tampered with the rest of the process (allowing non-registered voters to vote, multiple votes, deliberately invalidating votes, putting up police roadblocks in front of some voting stations, etc). All of these are possible in any system, and are done. (It's disgraceful that people paid so much attention to hanging chads in Florida, when black voters were much more maliciously and deliberately denied their right to vote in 2000)
Voter-verified means that a paper ballot is produced, and it contains a human-readable summary of the vote. The voter can read and confirm the ballot before commiting. The ballot may also contain a machine-readable portion, like a barcode, but it's easy to audit the ballots to confirm the human-readable text matches the barcode.
Besides the ability to inline PHP in static text, PHP isn't particularly bound to HTML output. It's not a specialized language -- ironically, it's a rather crappy language for generating HTML. It's quoting and substitution rules suck, it's regular expressions are a pain to work with (more quoting problems), and stuff like magic quotes are both insecure and unpredictable. PHP as a language sucks in lots of other ways, it was designed by people for which it was their first programming language implementation -- it's naively designed and it shows. But it sucks in a surprisingly multipurpose way, even for HTML generation.
PHP's runtime environment is tied closely to mod_php and the Apache environment. Mostly no one cares enough to change that, I suppose, because it's not that fundamental of a design.
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The Handy Board seems like it's showing its age, though. It's not a great development environment; a little arcane, with an odd language (Interactive C... interpreted C, the worst of all worlds?), and connectivity seemed very ad hoc. The supply of kits seemed precarious as well, and I'm not sure if there's much of any supply at all anymore. But they were cool -- certainly something similar must exist? All you have to do to Legoize a robot kit is glue Legos on, it seems. It's clunky but effective.
I found the programming and physical configuration interesting, but the electronics a bit tedious, which made the Handy Board (and potentially Mindstorms) quite inviting. Are there newer options available? (And relatedly, are there good Lego-compatible brick options available? There's always been cheap knock offs, but I've never tried them, and they generally don't have anything Technic-like)
But it's important to distinguish between a Unit Test (which is easy to write, even for GUI programs), and an Acceptance Test, which can be hard to write.
A GUI test shouldn't test something like "when you go to Window>Server List, and leave the window open, showing an active status message by starting a connection by right clicking the server and selecting 'Refresh', then you open the properties with Edit>Properties and change the settings that efect the server, the still-running connection works properly with the old settings until the refresh is completed". That's the kind of corner case where you're likely to find a bug, but testing that sort of thing is nigh impossible -- especially when the software is changing, and the interface is changing, and this is one among thousands of corner cases.
When you use unit tests you don't test a complete thing like that. You test each part, but you test it very completely. You may not test the GUI at all -- instead you test that the underlying server code and preference code work properly. You test that they work to spec, and not just within the bounds of the interface. Maybe in version 1 you can't select both the server window and the preferences window at the same time, so this situation is impossible. But you can still make a unit test for this case.
When you do that, you avoid a huge number of bugs. At that point you don't need to test the entire program by simulating input. Instead you rely on the fact that each component works in a controlled and correct fashion. Then, fitted together, they all work together. Sure, the people writing GTK need unit tests -- but only for what GTK does, not for the particulars of how your application uses GTK. And so it goes, we each build upon well-tested code, but we don't retest that code. We trust the upstream developer.
Of course, we've all seen bad interactions between things we wouldn't expect. Part of using unit testing is to make components that work in an isolated fashion, components that can be tested in isolation. Reducing coupling between components is essential.
Which is again a reason why GUI applications are hard to test -- coupling is encouraged, because it's usually a better user interface. You want to fit everything together based on the best metaphor for the user, the most expressive interface you can get, expected workflow, etc. That often doesn't match up with the underlying objects you are using. It's often highly coupled. But you can have that in one part of your system, so long as you really trust the pieces its built on.
I think as more areas of open source embrace unit testing and test driven development -- and it's happening rapidly! -- that we'll see some significant improvements in quality. And it's great for open and free software, because unit testing is something that's hard to bolt on later. But you can do it, it just requires a lot of refactoring. Because of the availability of the source, refactoring is an option for us. Because APIs for environments like Windows or Java are largely set, and the components largely opaque, they don't have this option.
No reason to use HTTPS for this link. Be nice to the server: HTTP link
As far as I was able to tell, wxWindows doesn't have anything like a canvas, which is the most important part of the UI for this program (turtle graphics). With those requirements, Tk seems to easily beat out wxWindows. But Tk's ongoing development is... slow. Which is why I was thinking of GTK or Qt. (Or maybe GNUStep...)
Qt on Windows isn't available under the GPL, and as far as I can see it never will be (certainly not without some great change of heart by Troll). Now I'm thinking about GTK, because while it might not be great on Windows (or maybe it is, I haven't tried that for a while), it has the potential to be a good cross-platform GUI. Qt has no potential, especially since there's no practical opportunity to clone Qt, as Troll would probably sabotage such an effort (as they sabotaged Harmony).
So in the end, I find myself firmly pushed away from Qt, even for free software (which I was completely willing to license under the GPL).
I think part of the point of UserLinux, and standards in general, is just to tip the scales when less involved developers make choices.
When I'm developing software I frequently come to a decision point where there's multiple protocols, implementations, or standards I can support. I often (usually!) don't care about which one I use, so long as it's not insanely bad. For example, I don't care where my program's files go, so long as I can find them. I don't care what port I use, so long as it doesn't conflict with other programs. I don't care about the file format, but it would be nice if other tools could handle it. And so on.
Standards make it easy to make a decision in these cases. Because lots of decisions are important but not useful. Let a standard committee figure it out for me -- whatever important details there are that I don't understand, they can think about those. And when they are done, they don't have to present a justification of why they are right -- they just have to tell me, the developer, what I'm supposed to do.
Competition can be useful. But only when it's interesting. I know, things that are interesting to one person aren't interesting to another. I don't care about exim vs. postfix vs. qmail, but I'm sure there are people who care very much. I guess part of a standard is a way of making both of those possible -- making it so I don't have to care (because they all talk SMTP) while another person can make decisions that are useful to them. Of course, SMTP is only a start -- I like /etc/aliases too, because it's easy to understand, but it's also limited. A growing standard might extend that -- and well it should, because having a single way to express aliases would be very useful. In this way a standard can grow, and slowly pick off the pieces where useful diversity doesn't exist (only annoying diversity).
I think UserLinux could be successful if it finds low hanging fruit first -- standardizing boring things, where the participants are easy to convince. There might be things that are more useful to standardize (like a GUI toolkit), but down that road leads certain failure.
Once the current set of contracts run out, then each person should simply look at the total cost of each service and choose based on that. They can account for the cost however they want, but people are smart enough to judge actual costs. Eventually providers will also realize that having false advertised costs (i.e., with all sorts of hidden fees) pisses people off, and causes a great deal of mistrust, and these little taxes will fade away. But even if they don't, it doesn't really matter.
The fact that theKompany is releasing Rekall under the GPL at this time kind of makes me think the original developer's desire to GPL Rekall was the impetus -- it makes the whole ownership thing more-or-less moot. If theKompany wanted to avoid conflict, that would be the easy way to do so.
I wonder how this relates to this thread (which actually starts here), which were posted to comp.lang.python [tinyurl links point to long google groups URLs]. Seemed like there was some sort of disagreement between theKompany and the main developer. His site is totalrekall.co.uk. A bit of a soap opera, but at least both sides are moving in the same direction (GPL) -- maybe it doesn't really matter who owns the code if they both release it under the same license.
It talks about software quality and testing -- which seem very applicable, if not entirely in sync with, recent ideas about agile programming, test-driven-development, etc.
It's not the first time RMS has faced such accusations, nor will it be the first time he has responded to them. It won't be the fifth time, or the 20th time, or the 100th time. The internet gives a public persona a great deal of practice in responding to attacks. People just as intelligent as SCO's team of lawyers have been attacking RMS (at least verbally) for a long time, often with with no qualms about disingenuously misrepresenting his views.
I'd be much more worried about Linus, who has not been as willing to put himself in the middle of arguments, and is more apt to compromise. He'd be more likely to answer a question honestly, without recognizing the path down which the lawyer is trying to (mis)lead him. RMS won't lie, but he'll know not to offer facts or interpretations in a form that will provide ammunition for the lawyer.
RMS may be an extremist, but he's not a zealot. He's not blind to the opinions and perspectives of other people, even if he doesn't agree with them.
What do you expect? Now, can we all just standardize on English? Can we all just start using Common Lisp for all our programming needs? Can we all start using metric?
You can ask all you want, but really what's the point? Let's deal with the realm of the possible here.
Without a TV I didn't spend lots of time interacting with my parents in the car. Some time, I suppose, but mostly I occupied myself, I stared out the window, or I "interacted" with other children in the car. It's not like without TV people will all just start talking with each other all the time, or even that they should do so.
Parents just don't need to try so hard. Children can amuse themselves, at least when they are forced to. Children shouldn't be spoiled with all this programmed time.
All you have to do to get E-Bay reputation is mail things on time. Any two-bit criminal can do that with a little bit of patience. Being a trusted kernel contributor takes a lot more than that. An E-Bay scam artist can move on to another scam. The kernel contributor has sacrificed their talent, for unlikely gains. So I don't think that's a big problem.
I think it's along the lines of "it's too hard"
But copyright law is pretty clear -- you don't have the right to modify or redistribute/copy material that is protected by a copyright, without permission from its owner.
SCO isn't really arguing that the GPL is invalid. They are arguing that by distributing code under the GPL, it becomes part of the public domain. They are attacking the copyright of individual contributors. (So that haven't really forgotten paragraph 7)
Well, their other technique might be that if the GPL as a whole is invalid, then no one anywhere has permission to distribute GPL code, but obviously not everyone can be at fault for doing so, and it would be discriminatory for SCO to be punished specifically for that action when others were not.
Not just malice, but that deliberately lying with malice, or being grossly negligent in determining the facts. You can be as malicious as you want if you do so while telling the truth.
Many freedoms -- the most essential freedoms -- cannot be taken away, or given away. The rights in the bill of rights are rights that cannot be given away, they are freedoms that do not include the freedom of self-exclusion. The GPL is meant to be the same -- it is a freedom for societies (not just individuals) that cannot be revoked.
No news is deleted from Indymedia newswires, though posts are hidden. Different local Indymedia sites can make their own policy, within the general bounds of the Indymedia mission. All sites hide some articles, typically articles that are overtly racist, pornographic, or "spam" (junk, contentless press releases, duplicate posts, etc). Some are more agressive about this, but censorship based purely on political perspective is uncommon and frowned upon by the larger network.
If you don't like the newswires (and they can be pretty noisy) each local site has edited features, which should make note of the better articles in the newswire. Of course, it's all entirely volunteer, so results may vary.
Latin American Indymedia sites have been very active, while mainstream media ignores events there almost entirely. Bolivia and Argentina have been very active covering recent events.
Maybe Microsoft needs to fix their store so that it is compatible with other browsers, but it only hurts other browsers if Microsoft uses those browsers when the store doesn't support them.
Voter-verified means that a paper ballot is produced, and it contains a human-readable summary of the vote. The voter can read and confirm the ballot before commiting. The ballot may also contain a machine-readable portion, like a barcode, but it's easy to audit the ballots to confirm the human-readable text matches the barcode.
PHP's runtime environment is tied closely to mod_php and the Apache environment. Mostly no one cares enough to change that, I suppose, because it's not that fundamental of a design.