Rather than typing 'man mv' and trawling through some very badly written documentation...
Consider the following (%gt; is the normal prompt)
%gt; ? I want to move all files beginning with 'a' to '/here.for.example' The command for that is mv a*/here.for.example %gt; ! do it
%gt; ? How do I delete a read-only file with rm The switch -f 'forces' the remove. i.e. You type rm -f %lt;files%gt %gt; rm -f %lt;tfiles%gt;
Even for experienced 'nix-ers given an unfamiliar command (possibly/probably from something new), you can discuss what it does, call for help with a query, etc. This would be helpful, since the current system of man-pages isn't the best thing in the world.
There used to be only one WWW. We may very well be facing the beginning of many...
There are those that will not use MS, and those who swear by it. Each will gravitate towards its own side, and if those sides diverge, then we will have two cultures of web sites. John
Better -- provide an invisible 'bucket' into which all the various links get placed. Require the links to contain information about what the application does, and then have some software mapping to place 'shadow' links where the user can -immediately- see them.
Thus you can -easily- delve down to find anything for a particular application that is supposed to be user visible, immediately find the most important things, and trudge through the filesystem if all else fails.
I think that the 'immediate' bit was the thinking behind microsoft's 'dissapearing menu item trick' where little used things were vanished -- the problem was properly located, but their solution suffers from braindamage. John
You've answered 'why use X at all' not 'why X should be the primary GUI'. The former is easily answered. Answers for the latter will be mostly political (X is free) and lazy (we've already got X). John
Re:A Better Written article on Why X-Windows is Ba
on
X Windows Must Die!
·
· Score: 1
Ranting about the terms client and server. The X model uses the terms correctly, the client program asks the server to perform graphical tasks.
Such terminology should go no further than the developer. X is used for -user interfaces-. When designing a user interface, things should be centred around the user experience, not the details of the system used to implement it.
Things claimed to be improvements do not exist on the competing windowing systems either. (e.g. the extensible server model)
At the time the article was written, the competing system was NeWS. You could extend that by uploading some Postscript code to the display. That such extensibility is missing on current architectures should be considered a complaint for current architectures to deal with, NOT an excuse for the lack of extensibility in an architecture that claims to be extensible.
He doesn't like some of the best features of X (e.g. the ability for the client to select which server it wishes to display via, and the ability for servers to reject such requests.)
He doesn't like how X does it, not the idea per se. John
Unfortunately, a review that does not convey the reviewer's passion and interest is not interesting to read. Unfortunately that is, because that is what a review must do so as to be unbiased.
Comparing Linux to Windows to Other-OS is like comparing apples to oranges. The end product is one thing, the thinking behind the product is another, as is the approach with which it is implemented.
Reviews don't allow people to see this, and most readers quite frankly don't care for that -- they want a quick read that conveys the gist, and bias comes with the territory. John
A web application that relies on some other GPL programs in order to run, but where the software is not redistributed is a little like a software house that -relies- upon GCC to compile their software. Without GCC their software would not work (not without modification so that another compiler could be used). Similarly, without the free software used to power the web application, the web software would not work (again, not without modification).
In the GCC case definately, and most probably in the second case, it is perfectly reasonable not to need GPL source distribution of the web application.
Note that the GPL is intended to mean that if you get (GPL'd) software in any form, then you also get it in source form. It does not cover what happens when you only get the output of the program (i.e. what goes on the web site). This is pretty much made explicit, if I recall correctly. John
Perhaps I'm just a helpless idealist, but I think all information should be free, mine and yours included. Obviously, there should be some rules of ethics regarding the use of the information -- like cite, don't plagurize -- but for the most part, these already exist.
The point should not be whether ALL information should be owned, or whether ALL information should be free. The point should be whether
There is a case to be answered for making information free?
There is a case to be answered for making information non-free?
My point is that it should be the latter, not the former. John
It's not ideologically wrong for musicians to make money, and I don't think the original message claimed that.
It's not ideologically right either. A statutory right to make money off of ones produce, the likes of which the current record industry is built upon, has a case to be argued.
The question is what happens when technology makes it infeasible to make money off music (or any other field of endeavor).
Then don't turn professional in that field. Nobody has a right to make money as a professional in whatever field they choose.
The legal means by which profitability could be retained also fundamentally affect our rights to communicate and share non-copyrighted information with each other.
The latter was built, out of necessity, from the former. If the copyright structures weren't in place everything in the information business, and its neighbouring businesses, would be very different. Whether for the better or for the worse is another case that needs reexamining and rearguing, rather than assuming centuries-old precedents relating to obsolete centuries-old technology.
So, should our society put draconian restrictions on the rights of people to exchange information so that musicians (actually, mostly the major record labels) get a guaranteed return?
No. With the amount of money their business brings in, it should in no way be risk free.
Or should we accept that certain occupations simply become obsolete because of technology?
Yes. For a example, consider miners -- what happens when the mines run dry -- can they sue the earth for failing to provide more coal/clay/whatever?? Of course not. For other examples, merely look around for obsolete articles, or used-up resources.
We don't force people to ride horses (to give blacksmiths and horsefarms work) or run around in handwoven, coarse cloth (to allow the weavers to support themselves). Why should we force people to listen to music on outdated, copy-restricted media? Technological progress causes lots of people to lose jobs, but it also creates lots of new jobs. That's the road we have chosen as a society.
A good point. The way to answering these questions relies on reexamining the premises upon which they were built. Why was copyright introduced, was it a good idea? how would things be different now if it didn't happen? and what would happen in the future if it were weakened?
Even if there were no limitation on music copying, many people would still continue to go to live performances, and the Internet would be a great way to promote that. It would also get rid of many people who were in it only for the money
exactly -- there's nothing bad about most musicians being amateurs...
and who produce merely formulaic stuff designed to appeal. Getting rid of retail distribution with its star system, marketing, and limited access may well turn out to be overall good for music.
Agreed. Far too much money is spent on consultants whose job is to see what can be rammed down the customers throats with the greatest of ease. John
There is room for those who excel in virtuall any field to make a living from that field, in their own right. In many cases, the rest have to make do with supporting their interests by other means.
How many people do this job and that job to raise money for their studies, or to pay the rent so that they can take in a tennis tournament??
In short, those who love music enough to find other ways to fund it deserve the respect and support that it should (but doesn't) take to turn professional. Those who don't should take their chances, and find another line of work if it doesn't work out.
As to you actor analogy, consider those who have to begin doing years of repertory work, or other small time theatre stuff (Harrison Ford got his break when he was a carpenter, after having done some acting earlier in his life...). To suggest that times will get hard for you, but that everybody else 'gets it easy' is simply whining. If its so much easier in a different line of work then switch to it and raise the capital for your music there. (And don't be so stupid as to have only one possible line of work) John
Re:Some of these lock-ins may be unintentional
on
Web Site "Lock-In"
·
· Score: 2
Correction.
Web sites that have refresh meta tags with a 0-second refresh, or one that refreshes to a different page should not appear in the history.
A non-zero timeout, pointing to the same place should appear in the history precisely once, for each distinct time it is visited, subject to the rules above (i.e. ping-pong refreshes shouldn't appear etc. etc. etc.)
The poster appeared to forget the legitimate use of the meta-refresh tag:-) John
That can, and SHOULD, be fixed at the server. The server configuration determines the default page, together with whether it is run as a CGI script. John
But then with OS/2, and the bits n pieces IBM put in for the sake of Windows emulation, there's less work to be done anyhow, and native operating system features that can be utilised. John
If the gamers market moves over to Linux, and native Linux games run faster than wine-emulated counterparts, then there's money to be made in native Linux apps. If a native port gains nothing then there's no point anyhow, since either 'Windows is fast enough', or 'Linux isn't good enough yet'.:-) John
Replacing cc1 realistically entails replacing the whole compiler -- if you have a proprietary solution then there are plenty of C and C++ libraries to license in place of the GNU ones. John
What would be nice is a simple system that works under Linux that could be put on an old PC and give a similar experience (speed would NOT be any kind of requirement -- up to a point, the slower the better, since that would force cleverness).
the only problem with respect to the problem of gaining and keeping interest is that such a system is not at the forefront of technology in the way that it was in the olden days -- you no longer have peers to impress with your achievements.
The advent of graphical calculators gaves a similar example. What could one do with a 4K Casio thing?? A Mandelbrot and Julia generator with sufficient resources left to actually use the calculator was my best achievement... John
XF 4.0 wasn't really that much of a stable release -- this one is. (p.s. been running XF4 since 3.9.16, under 3DLabs Permedia 2 -- execessive use of pixmaps still causes crashes of X on my machine) John
I've heard that the HotSync feature of 'spiral notebooks' is notoriously slow. That said, the stylus interface is far more effective than Palm's implementation.:-) John
less than 80% of 'people' (taken to be world's population) have even heard of a computer.
The point is that a new uesr, given the choice, would use sloppy focus (strict point to focus means that you can't stow the pointer away when you're done with it, which sloppy approaches fix). The 'xx% are familiar with it' argument is a serious barrier to progress -- if we all thought that we'd still be living in caves since 'xx% of people are used to it'. John
Slashdot Mirror
Rather than typing 'man mv' and trawling through some very badly written documentation...
Consider the following (%gt; is the normal prompt)
%gt; ? I want to move all files beginning with 'a' to '/here.for.example' /here.for.example
The command for that is mv a*
%gt; ! do it
%gt; ? How do I delete a read-only file with rm
The switch -f 'forces' the remove. i.e. You type rm -f %lt;files%gt
%gt; rm -f %lt;tfiles%gt;
Even for experienced 'nix-ers given an unfamiliar command (possibly/probably from something new), you can discuss what it does, call for help with a query, etc. This would be helpful, since the current system of man-pages isn't the best thing in the world.
John
To be honest --- there are so few genuine 'engines' available for GTK that it'd be easier just to port the code to new KDE engines.
John
There used to be only one WWW. We may very well be facing the beginning of many...
There are those that will not use MS, and those who swear by it. Each will gravitate towards its own side, and if those sides diverge, then we will have two cultures of web sites.
John
Better -- provide an invisible 'bucket' into which all the various links get placed. Require the links to contain information about what the application does, and then have some software mapping to place 'shadow' links where the user can -immediately- see them.
Thus you can -easily- delve down to find anything for a particular application that is supposed to be user visible, immediately find the most important things, and trudge through the filesystem if all else fails.
I think that the 'immediate' bit was the thinking behind microsoft's 'dissapearing menu item trick' where little used things were vanished -- the problem was properly located, but their solution suffers from braindamage.
John
As a quick thought to the /. admin -- why not disable moderation if the comment level is above zero?
John
And 96.4% are made up on the spot.
John
You've answered 'why use X at all' not 'why X should be the primary GUI'. The former is easily answered. Answers for the latter will be mostly political (X is free) and lazy (we've already got X).
John
John
Unfortunately, a review that does not convey the reviewer's passion and interest is not interesting to read. Unfortunately that is, because that is what a review must do so as to be unbiased.
Comparing Linux to Windows to Other-OS is like comparing apples to oranges. The end product is one thing, the thinking behind the product is another, as is the approach with which it is implemented.
Reviews don't allow people to see this, and most readers quite frankly don't care for that -- they want a quick read that conveys the gist, and bias comes with the territory.
John
A web application that relies on some other GPL programs in order to run, but where the software is not redistributed is a little like a software house that -relies- upon GCC to compile their software. Without GCC their software would not work (not without modification so that another compiler could be used). Similarly, without the free software used to power the web application, the web software would not work (again, not without modification).
In the GCC case definately, and most probably in the second case, it is perfectly reasonable not to need GPL source distribution of the web application.
Note that the GPL is intended to mean that if you get (GPL'd) software in any form, then you also get it in source form. It does not cover what happens when you only get the output of the program (i.e. what goes on the web site). This is pretty much made explicit, if I recall correctly.
John
Why should 'musician' equal 'professional musician'?? Why should a musician have no other profession??
John
John
- There is a case to be answered for making information free?
- There is a case to be answered for making information non-free?
My point is that it should be the latter, not the former.John
John
There is room for those who excel in virtuall any field to make a living from that field, in their own right. In many cases, the rest have to make do with supporting their interests by other means.
How many people do this job and that job to raise money for their studies, or to pay the rent so that they can take in a tennis tournament??
In short, those who love music enough to find other ways to fund it deserve the respect and support that it should (but doesn't) take to turn professional. Those who don't should take their chances, and find another line of work if it doesn't work out.
As to you actor analogy, consider those who have to begin doing years of repertory work, or other small time theatre stuff (Harrison Ford got his break when he was a carpenter, after having done some acting earlier in his life...). To suggest that times will get hard for you, but that everybody else 'gets it easy' is simply whining. If its so much easier in a different line of work then switch to it and raise the capital for your music there. (And don't be so stupid as to have only one possible line of work)
John
Correction.
:-)
Web sites that have refresh meta tags with a 0-second refresh, or one that refreshes to a different page should not appear in the history.
A non-zero timeout, pointing to the same place should appear in the history precisely once, for each distinct time it is visited, subject to the rules above (i.e. ping-pong refreshes shouldn't appear etc. etc. etc.)
The poster appeared to forget the legitimate use of the meta-refresh tag
John
That can, and SHOULD, be fixed at the server. The server configuration determines the default page, together with whether it is run as a CGI script.
John
But then with OS/2, and the bits n pieces IBM put in for the sake of Windows emulation, there's less work to be done anyhow, and native operating system features that can be utilised.
John
If the gamers market moves over to Linux, and native Linux games run faster than wine-emulated counterparts, then there's money to be made in native Linux apps. If a native port gains nothing then there's no point anyhow, since either 'Windows is fast enough', or 'Linux isn't good enough yet'. :-)
John
Replacing cc1 realistically entails replacing the whole compiler -- if you have a proprietary solution then there are plenty of C and C++ libraries to license in place of the GNU ones.
John
What would be nice is a simple system that works under Linux that could be put on an old PC and give a similar experience (speed would NOT be any kind of requirement -- up to a point, the slower the better, since that would force cleverness).
the only problem with respect to the problem of gaining and keeping interest is that such a system is not at the forefront of technology in the way that it was in the olden days -- you no longer have peers to impress with your achievements.
The advent of graphical calculators gaves a similar example. What could one do with a 4K Casio thing?? A Mandelbrot and Julia generator with sufficient resources left to actually use the calculator was my best achievement...
John
XF 4.0 wasn't really that much of a stable release -- this one is. (p.s. been running XF4 since 3.9.16, under 3DLabs Permedia 2 -- execessive use of pixmaps still causes crashes of X on my machine)
John
What about the authentication protocol?? That's where the problem lies. A sniffer can just as easily grab ftp passwords.
John
I've heard that the HotSync feature of 'spiral notebooks' is notoriously slow. That said, the stylus interface is far more effective than Palm's implementation. :-)
John
less than 80% of 'people' (taken to be world's population) have even heard of a computer.
The point is that a new uesr, given the choice, would use sloppy focus (strict point to focus means that you can't stow the pointer away when you're done with it, which sloppy approaches fix). The 'xx% are familiar with it' argument is a serious barrier to progress -- if we all thought that we'd still be living in caves since 'xx% of people are used to it'.
John