Older blog entries for mslicker (starting at number 70)

I believe splork is right, at least if I understand his point. The language popularity article has almost no special relevance to free software.

It is disappointing to see such a lack of a scientific approach in some of the posters. Equating language popularity with utility, spreading lies and misrepresenting benchmark results. In addition to this, far too many statements -- not at all obvious nor clear -- go completely without support or elaboration.

Somehow we are supposed to congratulate C++ for its source level compatibility with C. From what I have read, no one forced Bjarne to create language compatible with C, that was his decision. He has said that he likes C. C has not remained unchanged since its conception, if C was lacking in areas why not propose changes to C itself?

Free software has been compared to the scientific method. I think there is now an opportunity to look beyond monikers and build languages and programs combining the most effective features and methods in existence regardless of their source.

redi, my objection was to the comment "Why dismiss such social phenomena?". Nowhere have I dimissed the need for community.

I don't know how you interpret any of my posts as a pissing contest. In the article, true claims that I have made have repeatedly come under dishonest attack. I have defended these claims because they are true, not for any other reason.

There is a fundemental problem with format of Advogato when dishonest attacks can distract from the substance of the article and any kind of substanial debate.

Advogato Wiki

Many discussions here have no outcome or effect. This could be a product of this particular social group (perhaps the result of casting a rather wide net) or the format itself. The article/comments format encourages a certain form of interaction. For all the pretension this interaction is not fundamentally different from the interaction found on Slashdot. Comments and articles themselves don't carry much weight, individuals rarely invest the effort or consideration to provide thoughtful constructive posts. Once the article is off the front page it is soon forgotten.

The Wiki format in contrast has proven itself to be a constructive form of interaction. It is not ego centered, but content centered. I wonder what the effects would be if Advogato had a Wiki oriented format at the center, and open contribution (a Wiki should permit this). A much richer interaction might emerge. There might also be a more open collaboration between people who share similar interests but are associated with diverse projects and organizations. It might be an interesting experiment.

Update:

yeupou, yes, this my own subjective view of things. But don't take it personally, I don't mean to imply every post is ego driven or unthoughtful. The "off-the-front-page, soon-forgotten" principle can be seen by the activity of the article itself.

My proposal was only for the articles, not for diaries. And even then I am just wondering out loud what the effects would be of such a change. By the way, I've seen discussions on Wiki, these dialogues are interesting to follow for a topic that is not clearly resolved.

tk:

What you have stated is a truism. For any group of people X the members of X will have varying ideas on Y. When George W. Bush says "There ought to be limits to freedom" (in reference to a parody of his campaign web site), I think it is clear he has different ideas on what "free speech" should entail than a lot of Americans. However, most would probably agree that the Singapore version of "free speech", registering with the police to speak at specialized "free speech zones" with certain topics explicitly excluded (perhaps some implicitly excluded), is not compatible with the Western notion of free speech.

If I am supposed to only "talk through code" (whatever this means), is this a standard you are willing to apply to yourself? Just by the Advogato front page, you seem to have opinion on every article. Are you a user of GNU-Darwin or involved with activism? How many movies did you have a hand in creating? How many zooming interfaces did you create? How many corporate IT departments did you run? You seem to very vocal yet very inexperienced/unknowledgeable in subjects you choose to express your opinion.

I write programs because I like to, not because any one told me to do so (excluding my job). If I have to fight with people that leaves less time, and less concentration (important for programming), for doing the things I like to do. If you feel you have to be the ruler of opinion here, if you feel you have to "crack down heavily" on whatever you happen disagree with here, I will fight this.

tk, What do they do to people in Singapore that criticize the Singapore government? Is pointing out the contradictory nature of your constitution a crime? Maybe I have done something you have no right to do in your country.

You can choose to respond what I've said or not. I thought free speech was very relevant to that article, I bet many people did not know that fact about your government. That seemed like the most relevant forum, since you publicly stated you wished to "heavily crack down" on what was written there. Now you don't wish pollute the article, but you continue post replies to what you call "spam". I agree the content of your writing from start to finish in that article and elsewhere is pollution. But you have never backed down from polluting articles in the past, maybe its that people are now paying attention to how much an ass you make of yourself. For anyone paying attention notice the sharp change in tk's writing following chalst's intervention.

Misinformation

In case my last entry was not clear, I now have a compilation of misinformation from this person available.

Predictably the person in question has no defense of his methods. The ends justify the means, I suppose is the rule he lives by. I don't know what the specific ends this person has in mind, but the immediate end I can see is to cast FUD on anything connected to Forth. Perhaps a heavy dose of hatred is at work in his case.

update:

Found an article detailing the techniques of misinformation.

update:

What tk frequently posts might more correctly be refered to as disinformation

It seems many acomplished free software developers aquire a certain type of pescky self-important user who only wants to complain and spread misinformation, it seems I have aquired one as well.

Don't make the mistake the offending or insulting this type of user, that only seems to make them more determined. Ignoring this type of user might be the best policy, but it might to late for that in my case.

Fonts

I created a screen font, as an experiment. It is not that interesting, but it seems relatively consistent, and it fits the pixel grid well, perhaps too small for common use. It seem screen fonts are not that popular, X windows uses scalable fonts, and mozilla went to softened scaled fonts. Matthew Carter created fonts oriented to the screen by first creating optimal bitmaps and then fitting outlines to the bitmaps. For the usability people here, it might interesting to measure the readibility of different fonts on the screen.

In a web specification, I would probably only specify bitmap fonts. They are very easy to display, and don't give preference to any particular font description. How fonts are designed might evolve independently. A good compression method would be needed if bitmaps are used, this might be a canidate but I don't know of data is sparse enough. Different bitmaps could be sent depending on the device, high resolution bitmaps for a laser printer, optimized low resolution bitmaps for a typical display. The properties of the device could be sent in the request. This pushes some of the complexity of the client into the server, the server would likely cache all common requests, and likewise the client cache fonts only downloading upon need. To anticipate a likely objection, bitmaps could specify 256 levels of gray to achieve softer characters for screen display.

Characters as shapes might be best addressed seperately, rather than generalizing this with text display.

badvogato, Picking your battles is all I had in mind. Debate, the exchange of ideas, for these things to have any meaning requires cooperation of the parties involved. If nothing else, chalst's comment is encouraging.

We are making progress, Chuck had released his network code. I have extended it with DNS and DHCP, with TCP in the works. Some of this progress can be seen here. Chuck is working on a new version with colorForth in colorForth, USB support. There have been dicussions on a Forth Markup Language (FML).

badvogato writes an interesting article and makes a insightful observation. I think this is the wrong forum however. colorForth is a radical solution, it proposses an alternative wholly seperate from the work of this community, it does not fit the framework of GNU, Linux, C, ect. People like to have knowing comfort in their methods and their work. I think for many, Forth in its radical form presents a discomforting disturbance to their world view, for them it should not exist, it must be buried from sight.