A short introduction to Leibniz's philosophy

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May 2012

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[Mina-chan]

Hi everybody,

I'm Mina, from France. I'm a 17 years old geek and game nostalgic interested in free software, programming (I'm learning Ruby and shell scripting, and I can code some little things in Delphi), retrogaming (NES, Super NES, C64, Amiga and all that old things). I have already been on these boards, but I was then totally stupid, under the name of jojosan. I'm studying sciences (maths, physics, electronic and mechanics) and I'll be graduating next year. I have some abilities in administration of little home servers and in networking in general. I'm also interested in music, particulary classical (though I don't like that too general word) but also rock (The Rolling Stones !), and VGM. Other significant stuff I'm interested in are languages (I'm currently studying  Japanese and German, in addition to English) and philosophy.
I use Debian GNU/Linux SID (development version), and I'm a 100% supporter of the free software community, though I respect non-free software developers. I plan to become a Computer Expert (engineer), maybe to become a researcher or teacher, maybe to create my own company. Anyway, I think I'll be working in CS.

Lea Monde.net is a good place in my opinion because it's full of expert people, not FUDdy or trolly. And, actually, I love the ambience.

Here are a few more informations about me (mostly not interesting stuff):

I own 4 computers, only one is usable, the others are down :

Julie (my main machine, Duron 850, 256 Mo SDRAM, FX 5700 LE, 120 GB Maxtor + 40 GB Seagate)
Panther (the server when it will be working, PII 350, 128 Mo SDRAM, ATI Rage 128, 2GB Fujitsu)
Gramps (my favourite sandbox, P1 75 MHz, 24 Mo EDO, Tseng ET4000 W32p, 1 GB Seagate)
ProcessKiller (my uptime-saver, with it I ssh to my boxen to kill bad processes when the main system hangs, Cyrix M2-300, 32 Mo EDO, no real gfx card, no HD)

My list of favourite games (mostly old things):

Final Fantasy VI
Chrono Trigger
Saboteur
Rampage
Day of the Tentacle
Total Annihilation
Final Fantasy VII
Super Mario Bros 3
Utopia (the IBM PC version, the SNES version sucks, too slow IMO)


Hmm... I hope I won't bore you too much, but if you have any questions about GNU/Linux or other free software, or just would like to discuss, PM me.

Mina.

[Arcana (formerly known as Bob)]

I have already been on these boards, but I was then totally stupid, under the name of jojosan.

But we already have a Jojosan.  So which one's the fake, or is this a dupe account?

[Mina-chan]

I don't want to use the JJS account anymore, it's part of my past, but I'm not like "Jojosan" anymore. A sort of renewal, if you want.  

[Sirus]

I still maintain that the real Jojosan was killed in an ill-fated attempt to overclock his keyboard and the current is some sort of government clone.

[R.F.]

if you have any questions about GNU/Linux or other free software, or just would like to discuss

I've been messing around in C on OS X.  Is there a way I can put bitmap images on the screen that's less blunt than dumping it into the screen's buffer, but doesn't require me to read up on bureaucratic GUI systems (X Windows or Quartz)?  All this nonsense about color cells. . . the monitor uses RGB, I use RGB, why can't this be easier?

[Mina-chan]

You have two ways to display pictures "correctly'" on the systems I know : by using the X window system to display pictures (the standard way) or by using what we call a framebuffer device. For example, the boot logos are displayed using the frame buffer, because the X server can't be launched for obvious reasons at kernel init time. There is a lot of software to display stuff through the FB interface, but none of them are really efficient.

As an example, mplayer used with the -vo vesa displays pictures on the framebuffer device.

Well... actually, there is a third way to display pictures... CACA, Color AsCii Art, but the quality is really poor.

Your remark about RGB for monitor and for pictures might seem right, but you need to put an interface between the computer's elements. If there weren't, then programmers would have to rewrite full floppy drive access code when they want their software to access floppy drives. Linux and other UNICes offer the possibility to access the memory of different devices, that's the best that can be done...

[TheContact]

the monitor uses RGB, I use RGB, why can't this be easier?

 Because then you'd have to write all the stuff that made sure the things you drew on screen didn't conflict or destroy other things on screen.  That's the point of having "windows" and a window manager - all that is done centrally... it actually makes things much simpler in the end.  In fact, in OS X, it has all sorts of crazy benefits - you can have everything composited and rendered on the video card's GPU, which speeds up animations and graphics and stuff a tremendous amount.

Anyway, it sounds like you're basically looking for the NSImageView class.  Looks pretty straightforward to use.

 

[R.F.]

Your remark about RGB for monitor and for pictures might seem right, but you need to put an interface between the computer's elements.

Because then you'd have to write all the stuff that made sure the things you drew on screen didn't conflict or destroy other things on screen.

I get that, I meant that it's annoying that X wants me to set up palette-ish things when X itself is ultimately giving the monitor RGB values and I know what RGB values I want to use.  Unless I'm missing something, it's a useless middleman step in this case.

Thanks for the link.  I've been writing C (not obj-C) and compiling with gcc, and I haven't touched Cocoa, so it'd take me a while to figure out how to use that stuff.

A friend just told me about true color.  Relived

[Mina-chan]

About writing directly on the video memory : I think that it's what is done by the -vo vesa option of mplayer. It can mess up the X (with buggy distorted video pictures appearing on the top of the screen) if it's executed by a remote user. I really wonder why it doesn't totally use the screen as usual. Direct writing has big advantages for low end machines : my P1 75 MHz with 24 Mo of RAM and 48 Mo of swap is able to decode abd display avi files with DivX streams and MP3 sound, with a drop rate of 1/4. Try to do that with X, it's just impossible (I have to run X in 8 bits mode with a high end Tseng ET4000 card to display my system monitoring smoothly for instance.)

RF > you should try to put RAW picture files on your video memory (I don't know for OSX, but in GNU/Linux, it's in /dev/fb0). It's a quite "violent" method, but with that you can do what you precisely want. Isn't there a "color profile" option in OSX ? You could try to hack with that, to get correct colors.

[kostjan]

ill-fated attempt to overclock his keyboard

Amazing.. Somebody remembered *that*...

[TheContact]

That's cuz it was pretty funny

[Mina-chan]

Yeah, I remember. But "Jojo" was not the first to try, I think. Kost' had given a link or something about a certain "Jeff K". Anyway, a link to that ridiculous thread : The thread of the shame.

I've forgotten the "Eich", sorry again !

This Jojosan, what a dork ! I really ate him

No, no error, just an old reference...

It's strange, how people can change dramatically in one year or two.

[Arcana (formerly known as Bob)]

The good thing about a strict message board like Leamonde is that we've prevented another terror from being released on the Internet typing strange stuff that he thinks is intelligent, when really no one else thinks so.

[TheContact]

Lea Monde.Net - not just a message board, but a public service to clean up the Internet one idiot at a time.

[TheContact]

So this is irritating me - this thread needs to include a short introduction to Leibniz's philosophy.

Leibniz is probably most famous for co-inventing calculus, but he is also remembered for his philosophical views.  Star Wars fans will appreciate his belief in midichlorians... except he called them monads.  According to Leibniz, monads were the most atomic representation of mental objects which can represent the world from a given point of view.  They had in them a pre-established memory from which all possible futures could be derived... the ones that did get chosen were, according to him "the best of all possible worlds".  This pre-established memory was his evidence for divinity.

Overall, Leibniz's views complimented those of Spinoza and Descartes, and generally opposed that of Locke.  He even wrote a full dialogue, Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain ("New Essays on Human Understanding"), as a rebuttle to Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

So yeah, that was a short intro to his philosophy.  YAY this thread is no longer dirty.