I think it's great that OpenMoko is embracing FOSS, and the Neo 1973 looks even more promising now that Qtopia Phone Edition will run on it. However, I'm looking forward to a more-likely candidate for an "iPhone killer", the Meizu M8...that is if there's some way I can run a FOSS OS on it...anyone know about something like that in the works?
Since there are so many complaints about the Ubuntu codenames, I thought I'd praise the release numbering scheme. Does anybody else think it's awesome that you can tell when the distro was released by the version number (7.10 == 2007.October)?
Since HURD is going nowhere, it would appear that not that many significant developers care about building an OS on an ideology.
Can't comment on HURD development (I know next to nothing about it), but it seems like both gNewSense and Gobuntu (who should combine efforts, IMO) are built "on an ideology".
Also, the study may be immoral to do in a society where this will be spun and spun by the media...scientists do not have the unique privilege of ignoring the predictable consequences of their actions (however humble the researchers may be in their conclusions).
Beyond that, the world is not divided into "liberals" and "conservatives", however much people like Ann Coulter would like us to believe that. The liberal-->conservative spectrum of opinion in the U.S. is a very narrow one, certainly not representing my views or those of many people I know.
According to the readme, Notepad2's source code is also released under the GPL...not sure how that works since the GPL should probably be packaged with the binary also. But I didn't know about Notepad++; I'll check it out next time I'm in Windows.
Totally awesome. I would actually want a non-green-on-black ASCII filter though...VLC has a cool ASCII filter that I always thought would make for an interesting way to watch a movie (or maybe music video).
Like those who misunderstood Turing's writing, you might want to be more careful about what you read (although perhaps you can't be blamed since you seem to have suffered a temporary eye spasm). When Chomsky says "the details need not concern us", he means the details aren't important in the context of what he was writing, not that the details are of no significance.
In the excerpt you began to read, he says, "There is no fixed Turing test; rather, a battery of devices constructed on this model" and leaves it at that because the discussion moves on to say why, even if you use the so-called "Turing test" (i.e. the approach proponents in AI try to use), it doesn't tell us anything. Whether or not we choose to call a computer "intelligent" is a question "of decision, not fact; decision as to whether to adopt a certain metaphoric extension of common usage".
You and I both agree with Chomsky that believers in what's called "the Turing test" have misunderstood Turing's paper, and that there is no test that can be "passed" for a computer to be found "just as intelligent as a human" (or more so). This is something Chomsky's elaborated on, in detail, elsewhere and one reason I find his writing on the topic to be so important. See New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, for example. Or perhaps you'll want to pick up some Grape Nuts and a metronome instead...
Programming a computer that can beat a chess grandmaster is obviously not easy, but the fact that the computer won is about as enlightening as the realization that machines can lift more than the strongest man.
I've held back from replying to the myriad of other/. articles about the "Turing test", but I can't help responding to this one. There is no meaningful comparison between the achievements of this program and the cognitive capacities of human beings. I agree with Noam Chomsky on this issue; since I can't state it as eloquently or concisely as him, here's his take on the subject.
Some might call it a cop-out to just link to Chomsky, so I'll paste the most relevant section here:
There is a great deal of often heated debate about these matters in the literature of the cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of mind, but it is hard to see that any serious question has been posed. The question of whether a computer is playing chess, or doing long division, or translating Chinese, is like the question of whether robots can murder or airplanes can fly -- or people; after all, the "flight" of the Olympic long jump champion is only an order of magnitude short of that of the chicken champion (so I'm told). These are questions of decision, not fact; decision as to whether to adopt a certain metaphoric extension of common usage.
Well, to start with, you're mixing up the genotype and the phenotype. But I'd rather not get into any more detail since my explanations are nowhere near as accurate, clear, or concise as the "layman's guides" available...I highly recommend Ernst Mayr's or Stephen Jay Gould's work and will leave it at that.
If "fittest" has any meaning, it certainly isn't "whatever genes don't die out". Doesn't matter much at any rate, since the article doesn't relate to the concept anyway.
Isn't this basically what that whole "survival of the fittest" thing does? End less suitable genetic traits and combine the surviving ones in an ever repeating cycle, ever closer to the "fittest" genetic blend?
Evolution is not teleological, that is it does not move toward some sort of perfection. It's quite a bit more complex than that, and it's extremely difficult to argue for the adaptedness of a specific trait. It's easy to start with an arm and come up with reasons why it's beneficial to the organism, but it's quite difficult to argue why an arm and not some other structure.
Unless you're a social Darwinist or a proponent of eugenics (or some other bigotry packaged as "science"), it doesn't make sense to argue that the surviving human lineages are "the fittest". I recommend Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is for much more articulate answers to questions like the one you posed.
As far as humans go in comparison to other species, we may not be well-adapted at all (see microbes, insects, etc.) especially if the ecological destruction we've done is considered. As Kurt Vonnegut mused, "We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should." There may be good reason to believe that.
Just thought I'd have a little fun responding to your points; no animosity intended.
There's a lot of good stuff in Windows, so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. Sure, we know that Linux has a better networking stack now, but, there have been things that Windows does better than Linux and will be so in the future.
Maybe, but I hope not. I want a free software replacement for everything Windows and OSX do.
a) Windows XP remote desktop is easier to deal with than X remoting.
In Ubuntu, Remote Desktop could not be easier to set up.
b) Both KDE and Gnome borrow u/i design heavily from the Windows 95 Start Bar. The concept of COM based shell extensions was looted by KParts.
Even if this is true, so what? We shouldn't place ownership on these concepts (e.g. software patents). Microsoft certainly isn't an innovator, as even a cursory review of its history should show.
c) Cairo is essentially a GDI+ me too.
See comment above.
d) There's still nothing in Unix that has the same handy role as a Graphics Device Context.
You could be right on this one, I don't know enough to comment.
e) Although I prefer OpenGL for its ease of entry, a lot of big gaming houses seem to prefer DirectX.
Big gaming houses seem to hardly care about anything but Windows, so this is no surprise.
f) For a long time, Windows lead in hardware discovery. Linux has closed that gap, I think, but in 1995, I was editing config files to get my X to work with my monitor, and Windows would discover both for me automatically.
Most of us have had driver problems (or codec problems) like the one you mention, if we've been using anything that's not a Windows or a Mac. That is, if we haven't chosen hardware specifically for known compatibility. There are business and political reasons why many (most?) of these compatibility problems exist that may not be rectified unless GNU/Linux/Unix distros keep grabbing a bigger chunk of the desktop market. Oh and I've had plenty of hardware problems with Windows since 1995...
g) It's -STILL- easier to install a new piece of software on Windows. Too easy, the security people will refrain...:-)
Apparently you haven't used a package manager like Synaptic recently, or seen Ubuntu's (GNOME's?) "Update Manager" or "Add Remove" frontends.
And, in the applications department, there's really no open source offering that comes remotely close to Visual Studio 2005 and C#, SQL Server 2005, and certainly not even Office 2000, let alone newer versions of Office. Sure, OpenOffice word processing is ok, but the spreadsheet is crap, and the "Access" clone is terrible. On the other hand, C++ for Linux has I think pulled ahead of what MS offers, but only really because MS is standing still in C++. If they got pissed off enough, they'd throw a billion dollars into the language and crush us.
Well let's try to improve free software apps and make them better than the proprietary alternatives (for that matter, let's try not to think of them as clones of Microsoft/Apple software).
The bottom line is, while you and I and many other people like Linux better than Windows, Windows IS a good product, and pretending that its not won't change it. What will change it,is more software for Linux.
No, I think Windows is a bad product, from a technical standpoint, even when the operating system is considered in toto (and not just pointing out flaws in one or two areas). This is especially true for Vista, and it's not difficult to see why. Since you seem to be concerned with ease of use for the "average user", what does Vista really offer them? I mean, Compiz/Beryl even has Vista beaten in the eyecandy department! I also think there's a moral imperative to try to use free software whenever possible, even without mentioning the horrible restrictions Microsoft puts on the users of its software.
True, but that could easily be alleviated by utilizing another display that shows what you're doing. Eventually, the interface could allow for some cool interaction between the two screens. For example, a web browser could show webpages in the vertical display and browser toolbars in the horizontal one.
"Every time some[thing] innovative comes out or a new idea the open source community makes their own version."
Microsoft is not an innovator, and never has been (the history speaks for itself). Microsoft gets credit as an innovator because of its incredible power, gained through dirty business tactics. The same could also be said for many (most?) corporations.
This touchscreen technology has been in development for a long time, before Microsoft even looked at it and long before the vaporware announcement of the Surface. The ideas behind the technology (i.e. what Microsoft's patents are made of) are no doubt even older. Should only Microsoft be allowed to develop software for multi-touch displays?
Also, Microsoft's Surface is likely nothing more than a glorified demo and can't run real applications. This MPX system is running real applications already, but needs a lot of work (like so much other software).
For free software to avoid patent litigation, software patents need to be abolished. Thankfully, we have licenses like GPLv3 that provide some forms of protection in the meantime.
I've held back from replying to the myriad of other/. articles about the "Turing test", but I can't help responding to this one. There is no meaningful comparison between the achievements of this program and the cognitive capacities of human beings. I agree with Noam Chomsky on this issue; since I can't state it as eloquently or concisely as him, here's his take on the subject.
"get away without paying for an operating system"? More like "not being forced to pay for a specific operating system". If Ubuntu started to cost something, I'd pay it as long as it wasn't astronomical.
Anyway, Dell could sell a cheaper product with a free (as in freedom and price) operating system but its deals with Microsoft would go down the shitter. But don't you think those "outside the server and workstation environment" would buy the Ubuntu machine if it were cheaper (if not because they heard of the other benefits also)? Isn't it obvious that Microsoft is basically running an extortion racket?
Those "usage rates" don't exist in a vacuum or some sort of free market.
Please at least attempt to approach the claims made in the article. There are glaring technical problems with OOXML, and the comparisons made prove the point very well. Just one example is the "treat 1900 as a leap year" built-in "bug".
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's great that OpenMoko is embracing FOSS, and the Neo 1973 looks even more promising now that Qtopia Phone Edition will run on it. However, I'm looking forward to a more-likely candidate for an "iPhone killer", the Meizu M8...that is if there's some way I can run a FOSS OS on it...anyone know about something like that in the works?
She's gonna be pretty screwed according to the Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act of 2007...
Since there are so many complaints about the Ubuntu codenames, I thought I'd praise the release numbering scheme. Does anybody else think it's awesome that you can tell when the distro was released by the version number (7.10 == 2007.October)?
Since HURD is going nowhere, it would appear that not that many significant developers care about building an OS on an ideology.
Can't comment on HURD development (I know next to nothing about it), but it seems like both gNewSense and Gobuntu (who should combine efforts, IMO) are built "on an ideology".
Studies like this are begging the question.
Also, the study may be immoral to do in a society where this will be spun and spun by the media...scientists do not have the unique privilege of ignoring the predictable consequences of their actions (however humble the researchers may be in their conclusions).
Beyond that, the world is not divided into "liberals" and "conservatives", however much people like Ann Coulter would like us to believe that. The liberal-->conservative spectrum of opinion in the U.S. is a very narrow one, certainly not representing my views or those of many people I know.
According to the readme, Notepad2's source code is also released under the GPL...not sure how that works since the GPL should probably be packaged with the binary also. But I didn't know about Notepad++; I'll check it out next time I'm in Windows.
Notepad is a powerful editor only if it's really Notepad2 :)
Totally awesome. I would actually want a non-green-on-black ASCII filter though...VLC has a cool ASCII filter that I always thought would make for an interesting way to watch a movie (or maybe music video).
Maybe the persistence of myths like "Saddam Hussein plotted the 9/11 attacks" has something to do with propaganda. Maybe.
Like those who misunderstood Turing's writing, you might want to be more careful about what you read (although perhaps you can't be blamed since you seem to have suffered a temporary eye spasm). When Chomsky says "the details need not concern us", he means the details aren't important in the context of what he was writing, not that the details are of no significance.
In the excerpt you began to read, he says, "There is no fixed Turing test; rather, a battery of devices constructed on this model" and leaves it at that because the discussion moves on to say why, even if you use the so-called "Turing test" (i.e. the approach proponents in AI try to use), it doesn't tell us anything. Whether or not we choose to call a computer "intelligent" is a question "of decision, not fact; decision as to whether to adopt a certain metaphoric extension of common usage".
You and I both agree with Chomsky that believers in what's called "the Turing test" have misunderstood Turing's paper, and that there is no test that can be "passed" for a computer to be found "just as intelligent as a human" (or more so). This is something Chomsky's elaborated on, in detail, elsewhere and one reason I find his writing on the topic to be so important. See New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, for example. Or perhaps you'll want to pick up some Grape Nuts and a metronome instead...
Programming a computer that can beat a chess grandmaster is obviously not easy, but the fact that the computer won is about as enlightening as the realization that machines can lift more than the strongest man.
/. articles about the "Turing test", but I can't help responding to this one. There is no meaningful comparison between the achievements of this program and the cognitive capacities of human beings. I agree with Noam Chomsky on this issue; since I can't state it as eloquently or concisely as him, here's his take on the subject.
I'll reproduce a comment I made the last time an AI article surfaced:
I've held back from replying to the myriad of other
Some might call it a cop-out to just link to Chomsky, so I'll paste the most relevant section here:
There is a great deal of often heated debate about these matters in the literature of the cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of mind, but it is hard to see that any serious question has been posed. The question of whether a computer is playing chess, or doing long division, or translating Chinese, is like the question of whether robots can murder or airplanes can fly -- or people; after all, the "flight" of the Olympic long jump champion is only an order of magnitude short of that of the chicken champion (so I'm told). These are questions of decision, not fact; decision as to whether to adopt a certain metaphoric extension of common usage.
Well, to start with, you're mixing up the genotype and the phenotype. But I'd rather not get into any more detail since my explanations are nowhere near as accurate, clear, or concise as the "layman's guides" available...I highly recommend Ernst Mayr's or Stephen Jay Gould's work and will leave it at that.
If "fittest" has any meaning, it certainly isn't "whatever genes don't die out". Doesn't matter much at any rate, since the article doesn't relate to the concept anyway.
Isn't this basically what that whole "survival of the fittest" thing does? End less suitable genetic traits and combine the surviving ones in an ever repeating cycle, ever closer to the "fittest" genetic blend?
Evolution is not teleological, that is it does not move toward some sort of perfection. It's quite a bit more complex than that, and it's extremely difficult to argue for the adaptedness of a specific trait. It's easy to start with an arm and come up with reasons why it's beneficial to the organism, but it's quite difficult to argue why an arm and not some other structure.
Unless you're a social Darwinist or a proponent of eugenics (or some other bigotry packaged as "science"), it doesn't make sense to argue that the surviving human lineages are "the fittest". I recommend Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is for much more articulate answers to questions like the one you posed.
As far as humans go in comparison to other species, we may not be well-adapted at all (see microbes, insects, etc.) especially if the ecological destruction we've done is considered. As Kurt Vonnegut mused, "We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should." There may be good reason to believe that.
Point taken :) I guess taking those Windows stickers off of the cases doesn't help...
Let the comparisons begin:
If Microsoft sold fast food...
Right, I've got 5 (soon to be 6) running in a one bedroom apartment. But, I can gladly say, none of them add to the Windows count :)
Just thought I'd have a little fun responding to your points; no animosity intended.
:-)
:)
There's a lot of good stuff in Windows, so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. Sure, we know that Linux has
a better networking stack now, but, there have been things that Windows does better than Linux and will be so in the future.
Maybe, but I hope not. I want a free software replacement for everything Windows and OSX do.
a) Windows XP remote desktop is easier to deal with than X remoting.
In Ubuntu, Remote Desktop could not be easier to set up.
b) Both KDE and Gnome borrow u/i design heavily from the Windows 95 Start Bar. The concept of COM based shell extensions was looted by KParts.
Even if this is true, so what? We shouldn't place ownership on these concepts (e.g. software patents). Microsoft certainly isn't an innovator, as even a cursory review of its history should show.
c) Cairo is essentially a GDI+ me too.
See comment above.
d) There's still nothing in Unix that has the same handy role as a Graphics Device Context.
You could be right on this one, I don't know enough to comment.
e) Although I prefer OpenGL for its ease of entry, a lot of big gaming houses seem to prefer DirectX.
Big gaming houses seem to hardly care about anything but Windows, so this is no surprise.
f) For a long time, Windows lead in hardware discovery. Linux has closed that gap, I think, but in 1995, I was editing config files to get my X to work with my monitor, and Windows would discover both for me automatically.
Most of us have had driver problems (or codec problems) like the one you mention, if we've been using anything that's not a Windows or a Mac. That is, if we haven't chosen hardware specifically for known compatibility. There are business and political reasons why many (most?) of these compatibility problems exist that may not be rectified unless GNU/Linux/Unix distros keep grabbing a bigger chunk of the desktop market. Oh and I've had plenty of hardware problems with Windows since 1995...
g) It's -STILL- easier to install a new piece of software on Windows. Too easy, the security people will refrain...
Apparently you haven't used a package manager like Synaptic recently, or seen Ubuntu's (GNOME's?) "Update Manager" or "Add Remove" frontends.
And, in the applications department, there's really no open source offering that comes remotely close to Visual Studio 2005 and C#, SQL Server 2005, and certainly not even Office 2000, let alone newer versions of Office. Sure, OpenOffice word processing is ok, but the spreadsheet is crap, and the "Access" clone is terrible. On the other hand, C++ for Linux has I think pulled ahead of what MS offers, but only really because MS is standing still in C++. If they got pissed off enough, they'd throw a billion dollars into the language and crush us.
Well let's try to improve free software apps and make them better than the proprietary alternatives (for that matter, let's try not to think of them as clones of Microsoft/Apple software).
The bottom line is, while you and I and many other people like Linux better than Windows, Windows IS a good product, and pretending that its not won't change it. What will change it,is more software for Linux.
No, I think Windows is a bad product, from a technical standpoint, even when the operating system is considered in toto (and not just pointing out flaws in one or two areas). This is especially true for Vista, and it's not difficult to see why. Since you seem to be concerned with ease of use for the "average user", what does Vista really offer them? I mean, Compiz/Beryl even has Vista beaten in the eyecandy department! I also think there's a moral imperative to try to use free software whenever possible, even without mentioning the horrible restrictions Microsoft puts on the users of its software.
Get typing.
I did
True, but that could easily be alleviated by utilizing another display that shows what you're doing. Eventually, the interface could allow for some cool interaction between the two screens. For example, a web browser could show webpages in the vertical display and browser toolbars in the horizontal one.
"Every time some[thing] innovative comes out or a new idea the open source community makes their own version."
Microsoft is not an innovator, and never has been (the history speaks for itself). Microsoft gets credit as an innovator because of its incredible power, gained through dirty business tactics. The same could also be said for many (most?) corporations.
This touchscreen technology has been in development for a long time, before Microsoft even looked at it and long before the vaporware announcement of the Surface. The ideas behind the technology (i.e. what Microsoft's patents are made of) are no doubt even older. Should only Microsoft be allowed to develop software for multi-touch displays?
Also, Microsoft's Surface is likely nothing more than a glorified demo and can't run real applications. This MPX system is running real applications already, but needs a lot of work (like so much other software).
For free software to avoid patent litigation, software patents need to be abolished. Thankfully, we have licenses like GPLv3 that provide some forms of protection in the meantime.
I've held back from replying to the myriad of other /. articles about the "Turing test", but I can't help responding to this one. There is no meaningful comparison between the achievements of this program and the cognitive capacities of human beings. I agree with Noam Chomsky on this issue; since I can't state it as eloquently or concisely as him, here's his take on the subject.
"get away without paying for an operating system"? More like "not being forced to pay for a specific operating system". If Ubuntu started to cost something, I'd pay it as long as it wasn't astronomical.
Anyway, Dell could sell a cheaper product with a free (as in freedom and price) operating system but its deals with Microsoft would go down the shitter. But don't you think those "outside the server and workstation environment" would buy the Ubuntu machine if it were cheaper (if not because they heard of the other benefits also)? Isn't it obvious that Microsoft is basically running an extortion racket?
Those "usage rates" don't exist in a vacuum or some sort of free market.
Do you know something we don't? ;)
Please at least attempt to approach the claims made in the article. There are glaring technical problems with OOXML, and the comparisons made prove the point very well. Just one example is the "treat 1900 as a leap year" built-in "bug".
ODF is an ISO standard, which is a big selling point (as it should be). Some also think it's a prime candidate as the successor to HTML.