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You know, that actually wouldn't surprise me.

It's probably a temporal bug in Perl 6.006_065; it's been a known bug ever since the slashdot rabbit holes were created, and a post from Signul_94956 (#473457) got sent through...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

...for the free publicity.

All this music is promoting the bands, right? More sales? Lots of media attention?

And heck, the RIAA has enough money to go around. Now *there's* a business model I could live with! ;)
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Dude, I'm just glad IBM didn't sue "Big Blue Disk" back in the day.

(they weren't related, right?)
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I want to get an Athlon soon; is there an easy way to tell if it's a Thunderbird, or whatnot?
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It's nice to see some of that money going back to the motherland, where it will be appreciated. I'll pretend that IBM is thanking Europe for developing Linux in the first place--except that I don't see Finland mentioned. :|

However, it's good to see that Intel is in on this one, too. Anything they can do to annoy Microsoft always entertains me.

Now, I don't expect a great degree of technical accuracy from the Financial Times, but I always snicker at that "running webservers" stuff. I guess that's all people care about. Forget that mundane crap like DNS, Mail, News, Timeservers, Database Servers, NFS, FTP Mirrors... All we know about is the web. Web pages, yeah, that's the ticket.

I'm not even going to mention compilers, image processing, clustering... I mean, really, who cares if it's not on the Internet? And if it isn't on the web, well, where can we find it? Isn't the Internet the web? Isn't that AOL? Ah well...
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Follow the link to the article, and read!

I wasn't claiming any knowledge of geography, but merely quoting msnbc.com; talk to them, I couldn't care less.

Incidentally, how was my post (#11) Redundant? Anyone, please point me to the earlier post that said what I did. Please.
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...for dispelling many commonly-held myths on slashdot.

Specifically, both the threads vs. processes rant and the GPL vs. BSD rant gets really stupid after the n-billionth time some lamer posts it again. :)
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Dude, I love Papa Johns! Pizza Hut sucks!

Well, first off, some of this *is* a matter of preference. The doughy crust... The sweet sauce... how can you not love it? Maybe it's a Southern thing, I don't know. Or maybe I just got addicted to it in High School...

However, Pizza Hut sucks for other reasons. It's *okay* if you have it in an actual Pizza Hut, but if you try to take your pizza home for leftovers, it'll last about 7 minutes, at which point it gets harder than week-old breadsticks. Papa Johns pizza is good hot when you get it, *and* cold and days-old, which is a College Pizza Requirement.

Also, Papa Johns tends to be reasonably priced, (well, not as cheap as Gumby's ("Give me a Gumby, Dammit!"), but a nice trade-off between cost and quality) while Pizza Hut tends to be too expensive, too small, and not really quality pizza. Domino's is ok.

...and if you want real pizza, don't get it from any of these places! Go to these only if you want fast pizza, or cheap pizza! :)
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Hmm. Last I checked, the PC Clone industry *was* more successful. Ever heard of, say, Dell Computers?

...And why would I want a PDA? I don't even want a laptop...
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Wow, I was hoping the 60GB drives would knock down the price of the 40GB drives; maybe I'll get something massively larger for the same money, now! For me, it'll all boil down to price/performance, with a constraint on price.

I was also considering getting two 20 or 30GB (or maybe two 40GB!) drives, and using Software RAID under Linux to increase their performance. How well does this work? Should I bother making a few partitions and using RAID-5, or should I just stripe them?

Also, I don't think I could ever use that many .mp3's! Time to start an ftp archive, or a very large http cache, or edit video, or store billions of digits of Pi, or something...
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I'm going to build myself a computer, and it'll be 1.5-2x more powerful, for 1.5-2x less money than this monstrosity.

Twice the RAM, twice the HD space, a better video card, a processor that's roughly 1.5x faster, no MacOS, and--oh no!--it might not fit into an 8"x8" cube.
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I can't argue with you there; I clarified that issue here, actually.

Ah, computers were simpler back then. :)
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What the hell is a "no protest zone"?

Is that like a union job where you can't strike?

It seems to go against the whole idea of a protest...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Hmm. In the first part, you aren't comparing the OSes anymore.

Also, the RISC vs. CISC doesn't really hold water anymore--the PPC has some pretty complicated instructions nowadays, and all the x86 chips these days translate CISC into RISC in hardware (except for Transmeta--they do it in software, with a RISC-y VLIW core) and make the RISC vs. CISC argument obsolete. The reason I never liked RISC was that it tended to bloat the binaries at least on some platforms, which required more memory...

Ooo, ooo, unprovable argument: Windows has BASIC in it? Do you mean like GW-BASIC or Visual BASIC? I think they use C/C++ for that stuff, or else VB wouldn't need those extra DLL's. But if we're going to resort to pointless name-calling here, I could argue that MacOS has a significant amount of PASCAL in it.

I don't know if this is true or not, and I like Pascal, but in reality it's just 0xCODEDBAD, and needs to be reworked. (which is why we now have MacOS X, Windows 2000, BeOS, Linux, etc., etc. (which one don't belong? (Spot the UNIX clone!)))
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I guess that does the same thing... sort of... Although it's just getting uglier. :)

Does Java support real closures?

(I guess you could fake lexical scoping with braces, as you would do it in C...)
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Are you still talking about the Apple ][ here? That didn't crash often.

However, both MacOS and Windows die too often; I've used both of them. I remember that little bomb icon fondly, along with the Reboot button that didn't work, when the local Mac geek would wander around, going "Do you have a system disk"?
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I believe it was called the Red Box.

If apple could have had Blue, Yellow, and Red support, with a native Unix core, then Rhapsody would have been excellent.

But... it was just vapor.
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Dude, Microsoft makes crappy software too.

But what about the weird memory segmentation model they use? Or all the extra crapppy modules they load? Or the incredibly *slow* performance?

Apple is pretty far behind, which is why we now have MacOS X, instead.
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No; Apple didn't follow through on Rhapsody.

An Intel version would be nice, but what I really wanted to see was the native x86-emulation on PPC.
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Yes, but note that I said I consider it an unreasonable premium. Of course, this is a personal opinion, but Apple has always struck me as being very arrogant about their systems. The third-party PPC machines didn't have this problem, and I might have bought one if Apple hadn't crushed them.

But, back to my original example, the Apple ][: except for its upgradeability, I consider it an inferior system to the C64. However, you still paid more for an Apple ][, just because it was from Apple. Other examples include the Lisa, and to a lesser degree the Macintosh. Back in the day the Macintosh was pretty innovative, but now its just old, proprietary technology, badly in need of a real OS. The PPC is cool though, and so is MacOS X. I just wish Apple had followed through on Rhapsody, or I might be using that now.
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I wrote `Microsoft's a monopolist' and the Times wanted to edit it to say, `Microsoft is innovative.'

Heh heh.

You want your computer to detect procrastination? :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

That's true; ultimately, a stupid user can bypass the best security by clicking on a trojan.

If you were on Linux, you got a suspicious script, unattached it, didn't read it, and ran it as a user, and it trashed your files, that's it. It trashes all the files owned by that user. (you did make backups, right? ;)

However, if you ran that same script as root, (analogous to running it under Windows...) it could trash *all* your files.

If Joe user buys the latest version of RedHat, it will *tell* him to make a user account, and use that to login. No, really. If he doesn't, well, again, that's his fault. If he wants to mount his Windows volume, make sure it's in fstab. Linuxconf should be able to do that. Then it'll be automatic. Or use autofs if you have to... Of course, there is a learning curve associated with jumping into a Unix system for the first time. :)

I *can* blame Microsoft for all problems to do with Macro viruses. They started it, it was a dumb idea in the first place, and I'm still waiting for an apology. If they had made it more secure, or had never released it, we'd never have this problem. I'm not blaming them for all viruses, or all exploits, just for all Macro viruses. Note how I'm not blaming Sun for Java: they made it secure enough that virus writers aren't really targeting it, as attractive a platform as it may be...
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Another interesting idea that I wouldn't want... hmm....

I think the best solution for not being interrupted by other programs when you're working is still going to be not to run those programs when you don't want to be interrupted.

If I feel like chatting, I'll load an IM client. If I don't, well... I won't. Its just that simple.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Um... no.

Because Microsoft has no real *security* for their scripts, writes programs that can run them automatically when sent over e-mail, and refuses to fix the issue... Well, it's like running all your mail servers with Sendmail 4, and having everyone tell you there isn't really a problem.

E-mail script viruses target Outlook because it is an easy target. If it wasn't so easy to exploit, less people would do it. Have you seen the source to ILOVEYOU? It's childish! I wrote trivial file-system crap like that in BASIC, that just called system commands. At least back then it didn't operate transparently over networks, though.

Of course Linux allows scripts to be run. But not automatically upon receipt over e-mail. Also, every user is not root under Linux, as is the case on Windows '95/'98/whatever.

I hate Microsoft because they foist bad software on people and refuse to fix it. They need to rewrite the Windows security model completely, and admit their mistake with Macros that they've been hiding since Word 6. Before Word 6, there was no such thing as a Macro virus; the GoodTimes Virus used to be a joke, but Microsoft made it a reality.

Therefore, please moderate the parent post as either "Troll", or "Clueless", or reply explaining to me what he said that was actually correct.
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Well, another poster implied that it wasn't strictly a functional language feature he was using, per se...

...which is one reason why I asked him to write it in Scheme or LISP for me, the other being that I don't know Haskell. :)
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Free stuff doesn't sway Linux reviewers; Film at 11:

I'm so engrossed!

Could we get some more Princess Di coverage around here, too?! I heard she died!!!
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I don't know Haskell, and that doesn't look that obvious to me.

I gather that zipWith is like map, tail is a tail call to fib, and 0 and 1 are incremented or added somewhere in there; and of course I know what it's supposed to do. But the rest is lost on me at the moment. :)

However, if you can write it cleanly in Lisp or Scheme, I can probably translate it to Perl; it isn't that hard.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Ah, but Perl *does* directly support many of these features, which was my point in the first place.

I could similarly argue that Scheme is worthless because it is written in C, so everything Scheme could do could be done easier in C. But I wouldn't...

Some people are turned off by the syntax of functional languages like Scheme; since they can't get past that, it never looks 'elegant'. What I was demonstrating might convert a Perl programmer to the functional paradigm, or at least explain it somewhat. And I don't think I was really abusing the language more than it already is anyhow. :)

However, for a comparison, feel free to write a similar functional C++ program, and we can see how ugly and convoluted it is. I think my Perl program is pretty neat; actually, the subroutine is more compact than the Scheme version.
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how would you handle something like this recursively ?

The same way you handle it iteratively: carefully, and one step at a time. :)

You'd probably just make separate subroutines for each step, and figure out how you'd want them to call each other. More like:

(follow (parse (request (connect))))

...assuming that each routine does error checking, can fall through if another one fails, etc., etc.

can you even do network connections in any functional programming language ?

Sure; the fact that it is functional has nothing to do with what library features it supports. Heck, externally call something or write it in Perl, if you have to. Just do it functionally. :)
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my $count;
$count = sub {
($_[0]) && (&$count($_[0]-1), @_);
};
print join " ",&$count(10), "\n";

(define descending
(lambda (n)
(cond
((zero? n) `())
(else (cons n (descending (sub1 n)))))))
(descending 10)

Did you actually *look* at the screen for this comparison?

I run my 17" monitor in 1024x768; anything more, and you're begging for eyestrain. (I know, because I try to run 14-15" monitors at 1024x768, and that can get somewhat tiny... 800x600 is a reasonable compromise)

Netscape's fonts look *horrible* under X, as do any word processing program you'd care to mention under Linux that doesn't do it's own anti-aliasing.

Anti-aliasing is great for making anything look smoother. If the object in question is too small, or if you try to do it too much, yes, it might end up looking blurry. But that's a lot better than having it look, say, deformed or unreadable, like the output of a fax machine.

In Windows, True Type fonts are very scalable, and tend to look better. But they also benefit from anti-aliasing, which is a built-in Windows feature. Hey, if you don't want it or need it, don't use it. But I'm telling you that fonts in X often look horrible without it. So, check it out for yourself before you spout off again. Please.
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I'm getting a new computer soon, so I want to run this along with the best-supported, coolest 3D card... that I can afford. :)

Maybe $150 or so; I've been thinking of getting a Matrox G400. Anyone want to test those new drivers for me, or have any recommendations?

Also, anyone know if/when we'll ever get real Truetype font integration and font antialiasing? I understand it doesn't really fit into the font resources, but it really needs to be done.

And is the OpenGL/threading stuff better? I saw some comments that threads were fixed up, but I want to see what the Wine project says about this, since they had some issues with it before.
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I disagree; I think it's bad parenting.

I'm not the only one, either.

However, continuing on, here are a few questions about parents censoring their children:

What gives you the right? No, really. Father knows best?

Would you let your children censor you?

Do you think you'd like having someone else censor you?

Do you want your children to like you or be able to trust you?

Do you think that if you hold up your part of the bargain to do your best to teach your children, then they can use their own judgement, and perhaps you can learn from each other?

...or are you so arrogant to think that you can judge that for them?

...or so shortsighted to think that you can get away with this, and that they won't find a way to circumvent it, or end up hating you for not trusting your own children?
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Where does it say he was eleven? I missed that part.

I caught the 'in 5th grade' bit, but that doesn't mean as much as you'd think sometimes.

However, as a ballpark figure, I'll use my amazing psychic powers to estimate that you're probably within a year. :)

Now, a better question might have been "How smart are you", but that's even more rude and obtrusive than "How old are you", and much tougher to answer.

(although I've learned that you can 'estimate' a person's I.Q. by assuming that they have learned in a Western culture, deluding yourself into thinking that tests are a fair and accurate measure of education, and dividing their SAT Combined Score by 10. Of course, I.Q. tests have problems too, but at least you can do statistical correlations between the two tests. However, I'm not going to ask this question, or attempt to answer it for myself. :)
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It isn't protect your children.

It's teach your children.

Teach your children, don't censor your children.

If you can't teach them, they'll get in trouble all by themselves. But if you censor them, they just won't talk to you about it (i.e. they will censor you).

Sure, there's a lot of nasty stuff on the web. There's a lot of nasty stuff in the world. But most children won't ever find it, and if they do, they probably won't know what it is, won't be interested, and would much rather go back to the local Yahoo Kids Center, or Gameboy Tips & Tricks page or whatever. As a parent, you can encourage this, instead of stifling their desire to explore.
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When did you get started with computers / what computer / OS / Apps did you start with / what do you program in (if you do)?

How old are you?

Does AOL suck?

...and why did you call it 'emall2.com'? Does that name have some special significance for your site, or did you just want to call it 'emall.com'?

Tell us the story; we love stories. ;)

Incidentally, just to be fair, here are *my* answers: I started with BASIC on the Apple ][ and C64's, I'm 22, AOL does suck, and I have no domain names registered (but I do work for a web hosting company now!)...
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Hmm. I've downloaded SDL before just to try it out, and do development, and it compiles fine for me; but I can't think of an app that I've compiled that absolutely had to have it. Do you get any specific errors, and have you tried a packaged version of it instead?

However, Heroes of Might and Magic III for Linux uses SDL, (since the guy who wrote it works for Loki :) and it is an excellent port. I beta-tested it, and I bought it, and the mouse movement can get somewhat sluggish, but it is still very playable, and I've gone through all the campaigns that come with it. :)
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Hmm? Embrace and extend usually just refers to what Microsoft does to APIs, standards, and therefore competing products. I meant hacking in the sense of hardware hacking, in the spirit of, say, getting your X-box to run Linux, or have no copy protection. Not as in programming. But I probably misunderstood your point here.

I heard the same thing about Microsoft(.NET)'s future strategy, which is what makes me leery about the X-box.

But only time will tell, and I'd rather be out watching the X-men right now. :)
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I don't think OpenGL is going anywhere, anytime soon; also, I don't think Carmack will let it. And who cares what they use on a *console* system? Well, maybe they'll try to port the stuff over directly, but I hope not.

However, just write your games with SDL, the first time. Or make your own compatibility layer, if you must. What's the problem?
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...or ZD-Net, for that matter.

But what game are you watchin'? This has always been a rumor mill.

If you think anything here is written in stone, then... well, expect to see an update in hours or days, don't listen to Katz, and don't look at the slash code, either. ;)
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...then that's excellent.

I've been impressed by Id before I knew who they were (Wolfenstein), and in awe of Carmack probably somewhere between Doom and Quake. He writes some amazingly fast graphics stuff.

Also, even if the console is from Microsoft, I still trust Carmack's integrity. If anyone has a chance of getting something good for both the gaming community and the free software community, even from Microsoft, it's Carmack. And if he doesn't like the way things are going, I bet he'd resign, and post a nice, long, juicy .plan about it.

Anyone have any more general X-Box details? From what I've heard, it should be pretty cheap, and probably pretty hackable too, just because of the PC hardware. But then, the specs will be in flux for a while, and I'm sure they'll do their best to secure it. But that will surely go the way of Playstations and DVD Players: physical access to a self-enclosed hardware device is always enough for a determined hacker.

And if they tried a DivX sort of system, which is what it sounds like where Microsoft wants to go tomorrow, well... I for one would run like the plague. And go back to playing Metroid, and not paying by the minute. ;)
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You distill, say, corn to make corn whiskey, or in this case, ethanol. (all that alcohol has to come from somewhere!)

In Russia, they make vodka from potatoes. And I bet you can run your car off of the fumes... :)
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I wasn't posting for substance. This *is* slashdot, right?

I wasn't posting with a +1 bonus; actually, I posted the other one with the bonus to get some moderator attention. (I know they can't read anything, but I wish they'd start from the bottom and work up...)

Also, I don't think that intent really matters; judge on the merit of the post, and not on whether you think someone is a "Karma Whore". I've got a lot of karma, and I like to post on slashdot, but I've been doing it for a long time, and I don't think my posts have changed because of the addition of Karma. But I *hate* to see bad moderation, and I haven't seen that much of it lately.

(except for the occasional "Overrated" two days later when something gets moderated up to 5; I don't know how that can be anything *but* sour grapes...)

Oh yeah, this whole *thread* is Offtopic now, but marking an entire thread Offtopic is a borderline moderation abuse, IMO. Just mark the first post, and make sure the others aren't above 1, I'd say.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Well now I'm pissed.

Someone, please read my parent comment and tell me why it's "Offtopic".

Does the moderator in question simply lack all reading comprehension? No, really, I want an answer! Let's have some accountability in reviewing here.

Okay, moderators; whatever. But before you mod this comment down, I expect you to read the parent comment, and either (1) decide to moderate it back up, or (2) tell me why it was Offtopic.

Thank you.
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If you don't like it, go build a still.

That's what people did when I was in the mountains. It's cost-effective, too, provided that vegetable matter stays cheaper than gas...
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This was pretty stupid the first time; why do we have to have *two* stories on it?

Oh... to make fun of ZD-Net, of course! They'll publish anything!

(Hey, let's get TUCOWS to write a really long piece on the corruption in and downfall of Microsoft; that would be *excellent* on ZD-Net! ;)
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Why couldn't the W3C act more like Sun instead of like the UN?

I'd love it if they had some actual *teeth*, and control over the market. Even if they had to rigidly define both the standards (HTML, XML, different versions, etc.) and maybe even some browser behavior, I'd love it if they could sue Microsoft for claiming that IE5 was a compliant web browser instead of sitting idly by and letting them uglify the web.

I mean, how can you claim that your browser supports CSS when you can't pass the tests for it? That's exactly like claiming that "Microsoft Java" is Java. How can you claim that your products generate HTML when in actuality they use Windows-only, Microsoft-only character sets, and often can't display a quote to save their lives in any sort of cross-platform manner?

Standards are good, and I wish that companies would stick to them. Not break them; certainly not patent them. They can be involved in the standards process, but if they add anything non-compliant, there should be an option to turn that *off*, like -ansi mode on a good C compiler; and there should be rigorous compliance tests.

Of course, I also wish I were rich, and we had world peace, but...
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Oh man, I hate iNES....

Use MESS or DarcNES; I hear TuxNES has gotten better, too. I need to download them all and try them all again. :)
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I just got a Nintendo again from e-bay, and I've been playing Metroid, but I also have Megaman & Megaman 2, Ninja Gaiden III, and a few other games. So I must say...

It's so much better playing the games on the real system! :)

After I didn't have my Nintendo anymore, I used to try to delude myself into thinking that emulators were just as good, and I must say, back when I was running DOS, Nesticle was pretty good. I dumped the intro music from Zelda with it, and I was hard-pressed to tell the difference. (not that I had a real copy of Zelda nearby...)

But I don't think it would really be the same unless I had a working TV-out on my monitor, two Nintendo controllers wired up, (hey, at least there's driver support for it...) and a perfect NES emulator... (they're getting better, but I'd want close to SNES9X's quality--for the Nintendo, of course! :) And even then... maybe it still wouldn't be the same. :)

However, since sound emulation is one of the areas most lacking on the NES emus I've seen for Linux, I'm going to sample what I can both from a real Nintendo and from some emulators wherever possible. I don't think I'll store them as raw .WAV files, though; I think I can live with a little .mp3 distortion.

(audio zealots--encode them by a factor of 2 more until no one can tell the difference; if bigger than .WAV file, use .WAV file instead. ;)

...now I need to check out that site. I've heard a techno remix of Flashman's music that was ok, but my favorite was Quickman's stage. Also, I've said it before, but the music for Simon's Quest rocked!

Man, now I need to get all my Nintendo games all over again; Simon's Quest, Final Fantasy, Zelda... All gone! :|
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