I'm not sure if I speak for anyone else, but the reason I stopped buying amd is because of the merger with ati.
ATI has consistently made horrendous linux drivers. They don't keep up to date, and they completely abandon "legacy" cards. Nvidia cards, however, have excellent drivers for linux, and always have. For that reason, I buy Nvidia cards over ATI ones.
With this new merger, however, it's become nigh-impossible to find a decent, small laptop which has an amd processor and an nvidia graphics chipset. I ran into this problem when buying my current laptop and thought "well, they're owned by amd now, they can't be/that/ bad, right?" wrong. Therefore, if AMD is going to force me to buy an ATI chipset, while still neglecting ATI support for linux, I'm going to go elsewhere.
Intel, on the other hand, has an excellent driver for their graphics chipset, and it's even open-source. They might be the monopoly, but as far as linux is concerned, they actually seem to listen. My next laptop will be all Intel for that reason.
AMD, I've used your processors religiously for years, but if you're going to forsake your linux guys by forcing us to use ati graphics hardware with crummy drivers, don't wonder why your market share is going down. I know I'm not the only one.
I was in the #ubuntu channel when people would say the following:
They had used automatix
Automatix had changed their system
People in #ubuntu had previously investigated and found out the reason their install was broken was a change automatix had made
They had gone to #automatix for help, explaining the situation.
#automatix turned them away, because #ubuntu had said it was their fault. Some were even banned from #automatix for suggesting it.
Just because you claim it isn't true, doesn't mean it isn't. A vast portion of issues with the Edgy upgrade were caused by the ubuntu-desktop package being removed, or a system file in main being overwritten -- in many of these situations, the root cause was found to be Automatix. Just because you claim the problem isn't there, and ban anyone that suggests it is, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Don't get me wrong: I'm glad Ubuntu is getting the publicity. What bothers me the most about this article, though, is that he suggests that one of the first things you should do is install Automatix
Automatix is simple, and easy to use. It'll automatically install a lot of important stuff -- but it does so in a bad way. Overwriting files, removing dependencies, messing up the ubuntu-desktop metapackage -- name a brute-force method to deal a low blow to your package management system, and Automatix does it in ways that make developers cringe.
This is not usually a problem initially, but eventually you end up paying the piper; when it's time to update to the next version, things break, and it's Automatix's fault. A large portion of problems people experienced moving from Dapper to Edgy were caused by Automatix; Automatix refused to support those problems, and claimed it was our fault. I don't have a problem with Automatix existing, but until they take responsibility for the problems they cause, I'm not going to go recommending it to users. It does more harm than good.
Point: quite a bit of spyware is perfectly legal. It's very clear in the EULA for the product it's strapped to, and it has a clear uninstaller (which breaks the program you wanted). Many people will use it anyway to use the program for free, or are just too clueless to notice.
Point: a company does not need to do anything "invasive" to track your browsing habits. Back when DoubleClick had a majority share on banner ads, they could track what websites you went to simply based on the referring url when you got loaded of their ads on a site. Google Adsense can do the same trick, since it's a remotely loaded javascript. Why do you think Google Adsense ads are so damn targeted? They have your whole browsing (and probably email) history to work from.
In summary, it's not unprecedented, and it happens all the time. That being said, unless this was some innovation by Xerox labs in the 80s that never saw daylight, there's more prior art here than the Patent Office can shake a stick at.
It would still work the same way as it does now: an md5 of each specific block, and an md5 of the whole thing. If the md5 for the block doesn't match, it's not going to download, and if it's someone using collision to inject a block with the same md5, 1) it's not going to pass the md5 on the whole thing, 2) you're already vulnerable to it. The reason this will work is that they'll be lots of people sharing incomplete or corrupted versions of your FreeBSD iso; you'll get the blocks that are good, and skip the blocks that aren't, making "similar" files very useful. Not too difficult to understand, and no need for tin foil hats.
RPGMaker and the Half Life sdk? yes, fairly hard. The Neverwinter Nights Aurora toolset has been out for years, and it doesn't take a genius to do it unless you're adding custom scripting. When I was 13 I was downloading custom coasters for Rollercoaster Tycoon, downloading custom houses for the Sims, etc. It wasn't brain surgery to make or to use. The new part of this is the automated distribution of said content.
Contrast that with Bill's response to Gorbachov's Plea for mercy for a School teacher at a poor Russian school
According to Microsoft, it's not cheating if you don't get caught, but if you do get caught, they're more than happy to send you to Siberia to rot. I'm glad they're trying to show a friendly, smiling face to the 18-24 age demographic, but in reality, they're a faceless, soulless corporation, and no amount of hype or jive is going to change that.
Enter the Golden Blog Awards to win great prizes
All you have to do is mention the word 'office' and the link 'www.itsnotcheating.com.au' in your blog. Winner is judged on creativity of the story.
The blog or video with highest number of supporting comments will have the chance to win this fab music pack.
I don't think that needs comment.
(PS: The original text cited is in all caps, which set off Slashdot's "Lameness filter". Define irony)
And it's attitudes like that that keep us behind. "It's better for me, so I don't care if it's better for everyone else".
Let me make this clear. Until Linux is easy enough for someone to pick Ubuntu up off a shelf (which is complicated, since it's free) and get it working without issue on install (including their 3d acceleration, mind you):
We will never see Adobe Acrobat for Linux We will never see Turbotax for linux We will never see Quicken for linux We will never see new mainstream games (sans for Id games) for linux
I'm quite happy that kvm is built into the new Feisty (even though I don't have virtualization support, so it doesn't help me at all), which fixed this problem for/us/ but that doesn't change the fact that mainstream people won't use it until their programs exist on it. My mom can't go through tax season without Turbotax. Most of my friends don't switch because WoW won't run (except in Cedega, which breaks every 3 days). Until it's usable enough that most people will try it, main stream vendors won't take it seriously, and it will always be half an OS
This happens time and time again on Slashdot: the article title and summary mislead us into believing something the article doesn't even mean, or the article is misleading and sensationalist itself, and no one bothers to confirm its accusations before putting it on the front page for thousands to see. Time and time again we're tricked into taking a stand, and then look like idiots later.
Just because it's about Microsoft, doesn't mean you have to buy it. Sure, you want to believe it; I want to believe it. But if the trick works on us now, it'll be used in the future, to position you against issues you would stand for otherwise. One of the noblest actions a man can take is not take a public stand against something he knows nothing about. Don't comment on this until you RTFA.
From my experience thus far (3rd year CS major), getting a CS degree involves very little programming, and involves a whole lot of theory, particularly math. If you're interested in the theory and mathematics of it, by all means, get a degree in CS. If you're not, the piece of paper will still break the corporate ladder's glass ceiling for non college graduates. However, realize there are other options, depending on the university: for me, there's IS (Information Systems), IT (Information Technology), CE (Computer Engineering), and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). Those majors, with the exception of perhaps CE, won't seat you firmly into operating system land, but will open up broader opportunities than a straight CS degree would.
Note: 20, still in college, basing solely on conjecture and experience of colleagues and alumni.
Any to call me narrow minded is a bit rich. I am pretty much OS agnostic, supporting as I do BSD, Solaris and Linux systems numbering in the thousands on a day-to-day basis, plus I have some uses for Windows (shock! horror!). I use Fedora on my workstation, OSX at home and plenty of other OSes in between. I haven't fixated on one distribution as the answer to everyone's problems.
OS agnostic, eh? What OS is running your website, the babbages difference engine?
Why do Ubuntu people suggest Ubuntu? Because we know Ubuntu works; because if the people I recommend Ubuntu to have a problem, I'll see their forum post. Because I know that if I recommend a Distro that doesn't "just work", they'll be reinstalling Windows within the week. That's why, when people are getting off Windows, I don't recommend FreeBSD, or Gentoo, or Redhat; I recommend an OS/Distro that has QA, is easy to set up, and has fanatical community support (which doesn't consist of "RTFA"). I'm going to send them to a distro where what the wiki/forums/help docs don't cover, 40 people in IRC will.
Linux and BSD have tons of choices, options, and ability to customize. That said, for the user that's used to Windows, and is looking for not-Windows, I'm not going to send them to bootstrap Gentoo. I'm going to send them to a distro that works out of the box, is supported, and is free. I use Ubuntu on my server, Ubuntu on my workstation, Ubuntu on my desktop, and Ubuntu on my laptop. I haven't decided on a distribution that's right for everyone, but for me it's Ubuntu.
If that's your definition, then yes, I'm a tosser.
Actually, no, what I have written is crazy. I forgot to take into account that these are the same people that suppressed the 400 mile to the gallon carburettor and had the guy killed that invented the car that only runs on water.
Rubbish. Every year or so, some inventor comes up with an engine that runs on water, and it turns out to make about as much sense as the free energy machines of the 30s. All these snake oil inventions ever do is appease some of those who have concerns with our future energy strategies into believing technology will solve everything. The closest we have is fuel cell technology, which takes stored hydrogen and oxygen, and combines it into water (which is a method of storing the energy, not a cheap way of creating it) Water itself is not a viable energy source, no matter how you slice it. People just need to give up and face the facts: besides nuclear power, we will never again have a form of creating energy that's cheaper than pumping some liquid out of the ground and burning it.
bah! that's supposed to be: Man #1: So, whatcha been up to since you left the orphanarium?
Man #2: Uh, living in a box, fighting the shakes. You?
Man #1: Selling kidneys, teeth, whatever falls out of me.
Leela: And what am I up to, you ask? Why, I'm a very successful space captain.
Man #2: Oh.
Man #1: Wow.
Man #3: How nice for you, Leela.
Woman: That's so good for a person with one eye.
Leela: Hey! You can't feel sorry for me! I'm a space captain and you're a bunch of losers.
As an admittedly non-initiate in linux (I run osx), this seems very much what linux is
good for, rather than for a desktop os, where difficulty of setup would be a severe
handicap.
To paraphrase:
Man #1: So, whatcha been up to since you left the orphanarium?
Man #2: Uh, living in a box, fighting the shakes. You?
Man #1: Selling kidneys, teeth, whatever falls out of me.
Man #2: Oh.
Man #1: Wow.
Man #3: How nice for you, Leela.
Woman: That's so good for a person with one eye.
Leela: Hey! You can't feel sorry for me! I'm a space captain and you're a bunch of losers.
In other words, those who actually use linux on the desktop know this isn't the case, and that it hasn't been for almost 10 years now. If we're thinking 10 years behind, I can say the same about the basis for your operating system (BSD).
So yes, in my present experience, linux's niche is on servers.... and on desktops, and on laptops, and on embedded devices....
So after basically admitting that windows had jumped the shark, they're still going to release "Fiji", ie a glorified service pack that you have to pay for. *sigh* maybe they'll be adding some of the features they scrapped in Vista, like WinFS.
For your Desktop? Neverwinter Nights 2
For your PS2? Bully (I have no idea how old your kids are)
For your DS Lite? Something cute and useless. Animal Crossing, perhaps?
Not sure what to get for your DS, PS2, or PC? Don't like the current titles? Well, the good news is that you have a back catalog of 2 years (not including 5 years old GBA titles) for the DS, 6 years for the PS2 (11 for the playstation), and around 20 years (of modern games) for the PC. Have your kids played Grim Fandango? Tropico? Worms Armageddon? Then there's quite a few PC games out there that your kids have missed out on in the past 20 years.
Seriously, in elementary school a teacher of mine tried to tell us that 1/0 = infinity
Read up on the definition of division. If for a moment we ignore the "and the divisor is not 0" part of the definition, one of the basic principles of division is:
if a * b = c
then a / c = b, and b / c = a
A fundamental part of his explanation pivots on the following being true:
1/0 = infinity
-1/0 = -infinity
So, according to that, the following would hold:
if 1/0 = infinity
then infinity * 0 = 1
which does not work, for obvious reasons. This I told my teacher in 6th grade.
The real idea is that, for an equation 1/x = y, y approaches infinity as x approaches 0. At x=0, y is undefined, and that's all there is to it.
Secondly, the story promises one thing, and "delivers" another. It promises to tell you how to divide by 0, and instead tells you how to get 0^0 (which is based on the previously mentioned false premises). And the answer he gives on how to divide by 0 is that the answer is infinity, which it isn't! I'd fire the professor that has the gall of teaching this to kids (after probably being laughed out by his colleagues).
Check out the Microsoft results. Even though they rank mediocre in almost every question (average between 50-60%, though sometimes up to a solid C+), 80% of vendors said that, given a choice, they'd still choose Microsoft. Strange O.o
Novell on Tuesday published a document on its website, explaining that they circumvented the GPL provisions by providing a patent license to the end user rather than between the two companies.
So they're claiming that since the patent license is for their end users, and not for the company, it's alright that they're distributing patented software under the GPL, because their users can still use it.... except that Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian, and..... oh yeah, almost every distribution ever uses large amounts of Novell's code, and aren't covered by the license at all. A great day for the GPL. Let the patent nuclear war commence.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure if I speak for anyone else, but the reason I stopped buying amd is because of the merger with ati.
/that/ bad, right?" wrong. Therefore, if AMD is going to force me to buy an ATI chipset, while still neglecting ATI support for linux, I'm going to go elsewhere.
ATI has consistently made horrendous linux drivers. They don't keep up to date, and they completely abandon "legacy" cards. Nvidia cards, however, have excellent drivers for linux, and always have. For that reason, I buy Nvidia cards over ATI ones.
With this new merger, however, it's become nigh-impossible to find a decent, small laptop which has an amd processor and an nvidia graphics chipset. I ran into this problem when buying my current laptop and thought "well, they're owned by amd now, they can't be
Intel, on the other hand, has an excellent driver for their graphics chipset, and it's even open-source. They might be the monopoly, but as far as linux is concerned, they actually seem to listen. My next laptop will be all Intel for that reason.
AMD, I've used your processors religiously for years, but if you're going to forsake your linux guys by forcing us to use ati graphics hardware with crummy drivers, don't wonder why your market share is going down. I know I'm not the only one.
I was in the #ubuntu channel when people would say the following:
They had used automatix
Automatix had changed their system
People in #ubuntu had previously investigated and found out the reason their install was broken was a change automatix had made
They had gone to #automatix for help, explaining the situation.
#automatix turned them away, because #ubuntu had said it was their fault. Some were even banned from #automatix for suggesting it.
Just because you claim it isn't true, doesn't mean it isn't. A vast portion of issues with the Edgy upgrade were caused by the ubuntu-desktop package being removed, or a system file in main being overwritten -- in many of these situations, the root cause was found to be Automatix. Just because you claim the problem isn't there, and ban anyone that suggests it is, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
See this blog entry, or the comments on this post or try Googling "Automatix Edgy dist-upgrade"
Don't get me wrong: I'm glad Ubuntu is getting the publicity. What bothers me the most about this article, though, is that he suggests that one of the first things you should do is install Automatix
Automatix is simple, and easy to use. It'll automatically install a lot of important stuff -- but it does so in a bad way. Overwriting files, removing dependencies, messing up the ubuntu-desktop metapackage -- name a brute-force method to deal a low blow to your package management system, and Automatix does it in ways that make developers cringe.
This is not usually a problem initially, but eventually you end up paying the piper; when it's time to update to the next version, things break, and it's Automatix's fault. A large portion of problems people experienced moving from Dapper to Edgy were caused by Automatix; Automatix refused to support those problems, and claimed it was our fault. I don't have a problem with Automatix existing, but until they take responsibility for the problems they cause, I'm not going to go recommending it to users. It does more harm than good.
Point: quite a bit of spyware is perfectly legal. It's very clear in the EULA for the product it's strapped to, and it has a clear uninstaller (which breaks the program you wanted). Many people will use it anyway to use the program for free, or are just too clueless to notice.
Point: a company does not need to do anything "invasive" to track your browsing habits. Back when DoubleClick had a majority share on banner ads, they could track what websites you went to simply based on the referring url when you got loaded of their ads on a site. Google Adsense can do the same trick, since it's a remotely loaded javascript. Why do you think Google Adsense ads are so damn targeted? They have your whole browsing (and probably email) history to work from.
In summary, it's not unprecedented, and it happens all the time. That being said, unless this was some innovation by Xerox labs in the 80s that never saw daylight, there's more prior art here than the Patent Office can shake a stick at.
It would still work the same way as it does now: an md5 of each specific block, and an md5 of the whole thing. If the md5 for the block doesn't match, it's not going to download, and if it's someone using collision to inject a block with the same md5, 1) it's not going to pass the md5 on the whole thing, 2) you're already vulnerable to it. The reason this will work is that they'll be lots of people sharing incomplete or corrupted versions of your FreeBSD iso; you'll get the blocks that are good, and skip the blocks that aren't, making "similar" files very useful. Not too difficult to understand, and no need for tin foil hats.
RPGMaker and the Half Life sdk? yes, fairly hard. The Neverwinter Nights Aurora toolset has been out for years, and it doesn't take a genius to do it unless you're adding custom scripting. When I was 13 I was downloading custom coasters for Rollercoaster Tycoon, downloading custom houses for the Sims, etc. It wasn't brain surgery to make or to use. The new part of this is the automated distribution of said content.
There are easier ways to shut down brain activity. 4chan comes to mind.
It's not cheating if...
Contrast that with Bill's response to Gorbachov's Plea for mercy for a School teacher at a poor Russian school
According to Microsoft, it's not cheating if you don't get caught, but if you do get caught, they're more than happy to send you to Siberia to rot. I'm glad they're trying to show a friendly, smiling face to the 18-24 age demographic, but in reality, they're a faceless, soulless corporation, and no amount of hype or jive is going to change that.
Bribing Pro Bloggers with laptops? Bad. Very bad.
Bribing amateur bloggers with scooters/laptops/mp3 players? No problem
From the website:
Enter the Golden Blog Awards to win great prizes
All you have to do is mention the word 'office' and the link 'www.itsnotcheating.com.au' in your blog. Winner is judged on creativity of the story.
The blog or video with highest number of supporting comments will have the chance to win this fab music pack.
I don't think that needs comment.
(PS: The original text cited is in all caps, which set off Slashdot's "Lameness filter". Define irony)
And it's attitudes like that that keep us behind. "It's better for me, so I don't care if it's better for everyone else".
/us/ but that doesn't change the fact that mainstream people won't use it until their programs exist on it. My mom can't go through tax season without Turbotax. Most of my friends don't switch because WoW won't run (except in Cedega, which breaks every 3 days). Until it's usable enough that most people will try it, main stream vendors won't take it seriously, and it will always be half an OS
Let me make this clear. Until Linux is easy enough for someone to pick Ubuntu up off a shelf (which is complicated, since it's free) and get it working without issue on install (including their 3d acceleration, mind you):
We will never see Adobe Acrobat for Linux
We will never see Turbotax for linux
We will never see Quicken for linux
We will never see new mainstream games (sans for Id games) for linux
I'm quite happy that kvm is built into the new Feisty (even though I don't have virtualization support, so it doesn't help me at all), which fixed this problem for
This happens time and time again on Slashdot: the article title and summary mislead us into believing something the article doesn't even mean, or the article is misleading and sensationalist itself, and no one bothers to confirm its accusations before putting it on the front page for thousands to see. Time and time again we're tricked into taking a stand, and then look like idiots later.
Just because it's about Microsoft, doesn't mean you have to buy it. Sure, you want to believe it; I want to believe it. But if the trick works on us now, it'll be used in the future, to position you against issues you would stand for otherwise. One of the noblest actions a man can take is not take a public stand against something he knows nothing about. Don't comment on this until you RTFA.
From my experience thus far (3rd year CS major), getting a CS degree involves very little programming, and involves a whole lot of theory, particularly math. If you're interested in the theory and mathematics of it, by all means, get a degree in CS. If you're not, the piece of paper will still break the corporate ladder's glass ceiling for non college graduates. However, realize there are other options, depending on the university: for me, there's IS (Information Systems), IT (Information Technology), CE (Computer Engineering), and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). Those majors, with the exception of perhaps CE, won't seat you firmly into operating system land, but will open up broader opportunities than a straight CS degree would.
Note: 20, still in college, basing solely on conjecture and experience of colleagues and alumni.
Any to call me narrow minded is a bit rich. I am pretty much OS agnostic, supporting as I do BSD, Solaris and Linux systems numbering in the thousands on a day-to-day basis, plus I have some uses for Windows (shock! horror!). I use Fedora on my workstation, OSX at home and plenty of other OSes in between. I haven't fixated on one distribution as the answer to everyone's problems.
OS agnostic, eh? What OS is running your website, the babbages difference engine?
Why do Ubuntu people suggest Ubuntu? Because we know Ubuntu works; because if the people I recommend Ubuntu to have a problem, I'll see their forum post. Because I know that if I recommend a Distro that doesn't "just work", they'll be reinstalling Windows within the week. That's why, when people are getting off Windows, I don't recommend FreeBSD, or Gentoo, or Redhat; I recommend an OS/Distro that has QA, is easy to set up, and has fanatical community support (which doesn't consist of "RTFA"). I'm going to send them to a distro where what the wiki/forums/help docs don't cover, 40 people in IRC will.
Linux and BSD have tons of choices, options, and ability to customize. That said, for the user that's used to Windows, and is looking for not-Windows, I'm not going to send them to bootstrap Gentoo. I'm going to send them to a distro that works out of the box, is supported, and is free. I use Ubuntu on my server, Ubuntu on my workstation, Ubuntu on my desktop, and Ubuntu on my laptop. I haven't decided on a distribution that's right for everyone, but for me it's Ubuntu.
If that's your definition, then yes, I'm a tosser.
Actually, no, what I have written is crazy. I forgot to take into account that these are the same people that suppressed the 400 mile to the gallon carburettor and had the guy killed that invented the car that only runs on water.
Rubbish. Every year or so, some inventor comes up with an engine that runs on water, and it turns out to make about as much sense as the free energy machines of the 30s. All these snake oil inventions ever do is appease some of those who have concerns with our future energy strategies into believing technology will solve everything. The closest we have is fuel cell technology, which takes stored hydrogen and oxygen, and combines it into water (which is a method of storing the energy, not a cheap way of creating it) Water itself is not a viable energy source, no matter how you slice it. People just need to give up and face the facts: besides nuclear power, we will never again have a form of creating energy that's cheaper than pumping some liquid out of the ground and burning it.
bah! that's supposed to be:
Man #1: So, whatcha been up to since you left the orphanarium?
Man #2: Uh, living in a box, fighting the shakes. You?
Man #1: Selling kidneys, teeth, whatever falls out of me.
Leela: And what am I up to, you ask? Why, I'm a very successful space captain.
Man #2: Oh.
Man #1: Wow.
Man #3: How nice for you, Leela.
Woman: That's so good for a person with one eye.
Leela: Hey! You can't feel sorry for me! I'm a space captain and you're a bunch of losers.
Damn html *watches karma go down the tube*
As an admittedly non-initiate in linux (I run osx), this seems very much what linux is good for, rather than for a desktop os, where difficulty of setup would be a severe handicap.
.... and on desktops, and on laptops, and on embedded devices ....
To paraphrase:
Man #1: So, whatcha been up to since you left the orphanarium?
Man #2: Uh, living in a box, fighting the shakes. You?
Man #1: Selling kidneys, teeth, whatever falls out of me.
Man #2: Oh.
Man #1: Wow.
Man #3: How nice for you, Leela.
Woman: That's so good for a person with one eye.
Leela: Hey! You can't feel sorry for me! I'm a space captain and you're a bunch of losers.
In other words, those who actually use linux on the desktop know this isn't the case, and that it hasn't been for almost 10 years now. If we're thinking 10 years behind, I can say the same about the basis for your operating system (BSD).
So yes, in my present experience, linux's niche is on servers
I have never seen an "article" this poorly written linked on slashdot.
I have. You must not read slashdot very often.
So after basically admitting that windows had jumped the shark, they're still going to release "Fiji", ie a glorified service pack that you have to pay for. *sigh* maybe they'll be adding some of the features they scrapped in Vista, like WinFS.
On the plus side, at least Vista did ship with "improved shortcut support". Gotta give Microsoft that.
I'm not a paid member; can someone please tag this story "ReallyBadInternetJokeBait"?
I now have this saved as the moment when slashdot jumped the shark. Now to see if I can find any prior art...
For your Desktop? Neverwinter Nights 2
For your PS2? Bully (I have no idea how old your kids are)
For your DS Lite? Something cute and useless. Animal Crossing, perhaps?
Not sure what to get for your DS, PS2, or PC? Don't like the current titles? Well, the good news is that you have a back catalog of 2 years (not including 5 years old GBA titles) for the DS, 6 years for the PS2 (11 for the playstation), and around 20 years (of modern games) for the PC. Have your kids played Grim Fandango? Tropico? Worms Armageddon? Then there's quite a few PC games out there that your kids have missed out on in the past 20 years.
Seriously, in elementary school a teacher of mine tried to tell us that 1/0 = infinity
Read up on the definition of division. If for a moment we ignore the "and the divisor is not 0" part of the definition, one of the basic principles of division is:
if a * b = c
then a / c = b, and b / c = a
A fundamental part of his explanation pivots on the following being true:
1/0 = infinity
-1/0 = -infinity
So, according to that, the following would hold:
if 1/0 = infinity
then infinity * 0 = 1
which does not work, for obvious reasons. This I told my teacher in 6th grade.
The real idea is that, for an equation 1/x = y, y approaches infinity as x approaches 0. At x=0, y is undefined, and that's all there is to it.
Secondly, the story promises one thing, and "delivers" another. It promises to tell you how to divide by 0, and instead tells you how to get 0^0 (which is based on the previously mentioned false premises). And the answer he gives on how to divide by 0 is that the answer is infinity, which it isn't! I'd fire the professor that has the gall of teaching this to kids (after probably being laughed out by his colleagues).
Check out the Microsoft results. Even though they rank mediocre in almost every question (average between 50-60%, though sometimes up to a solid C+), 80% of vendors said that, given a choice, they'd still choose Microsoft. Strange O.o
Yes, but does it run on ... damn.
Novell on Tuesday published a document on its website, explaining that they circumvented the GPL provisions by providing a patent license to the end user rather than between the two companies.
.... except that Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian, and ..... oh yeah, almost every distribution ever uses large amounts of Novell's code, and aren't covered by the license at all. A great day for the GPL. Let the patent nuclear war commence.
So they're claiming that since the patent license is for their end users, and not for the company, it's alright that they're distributing patented software under the GPL, because their users can still use it