I prefer emusic. They're the first service that was cost effective and more convenient than piracy. They have all my music (I prefer electronica and industrial), so I never bother with iTunes.
If I want to pay iTunes prices and not deal with the BS DRM, I can go to Amazon.
I could really care less about another music store. They're probably just preparing for Android to hit iPhones with music capability.
A decent mp3 player on Linux...that would be interesting. Amarok is glacially slow and incredibly unstable. Rhythmbox is reasonable, but has bugs with ID3 tags that I never deal with in Musicmatch in the old days and Media Monkey today on windows.
Have you tried using AMD's drivers with 2 monitors? They don't work! Their configuration process is tedious and error prone. Their Catalyst software is incredibly amateurish and dated-looking. nVidia's configuration process is not ideal, but I can always get my nVidia cards working in Linux. I am now a lifelong nVidia customer.
It's a shame because I like AMD cards and really love their CPUs, but their cards don't work. AMD doesn't care about Linux. I have tried 3 AMD cards in the last 4 years (I tried 3 different cards 2 months ago) and had to return all of them because they don't work in Linux. I scoured the web for help with the various errors and posted on the forums and couldn't get them working on two monitors. I tried writing support and they told me to go f**k myself (in polite terms, of course).
Re:Scared after seeing what happened to Berkeley D
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Oracle Buys Sun
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· Score: 1
I don't think you understand. Let me give you an example. With Spring, I can browse their SVN trunk and see what they're up to. I can use unreleased software, submit bugs, and possible even submit patches.
With BDB, I only see Zips of releases, making it relatively inconvenient to contribute. I love the BDB guys, but getting involved is really encumbered by Oracle. SpringSource and JBoss, on the other hand, do a great job of encouraging involvement.
Open Source In Name Only not only hinders an application's progress and development, but it's not really sustainable. Why give out something for free, call it Open Source, but not seek help from the community? It makes me think the commercial companies are just going to dump it when they figure out they're not making any money off of it.
Also, Oracle Forums SUCK. They're slow and buggy. Honestly, with the one exception of BDB, I have never seen software improve after Oracle got their hands on it (& I credit the motivated Sleepycat team, especially Mark Hayes...not Oracle). I'm not a fan of Oracle's main DB and everything else they've put out, with the exception BDB, has been awful, amateurish garbage. I used to hate Microsoft and they I started working with Oracle products and really started appreciating MS.
Glassfish v3 is on of the best web containers I've seen yet. It's as fast as Jetty and Tomcat and just as easy to use. I'd hate to see it die in favor of WebLogic or plummet to mediocrity, like the rest of the Oracle Family.
Obviously, I'm a bit worried about MySQL as well. Sun was just starting to put out compelling products and figuring out what to do with Java, I hope Oracle doesn't make anything worse.
Scared after seeing what happened to Berkeley DB
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Oracle Buys Sun
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· Score: 5, Informative
I love BDB. Oracle bought them and now they've hampered open source involvement. You can't see their source repositories. All you can do is get a zip of their latest release. I don't think any non-Oracle employee contributes to BDB. Read-only open source is barely open-source.
I don't want the same to happen to Java, Glassfish, and Netbeans.
If you think writing code for Java 5+ is "fashion," I don't think you're a very experienced programmer.
Generics and java.util.Concurrent are mandatory for scalable systems nowadays. Java 5 added a lot of features to make code more reliable, not mindless fluff.
If you're not using the latest features of the language where appropriate, you're doing your employer a huge disservice.
Sorry, buddy, but you need to learn your technology. Just because people will employ you to write on outdated systems, doesn't mean you're doing your company a favor by refusing to learn the latest technologies and writing your code to run on JDK 1.4.
Fortunately, this is a local and not a global situation. This would affect the mosquitoes near the laser, but none that are out of "line of sight." It's far less devastating than spraying with DDT or other chemicals. I see this as a great innovation and look forward to less mosquito bites when sitting on my deck.
Why do I care about your lousy browser? If it only runs on Mac and PC, it is not a serious browser. The Linux browser market is expanding due to netbooks and phones.
Screw Apple. I always though iTunes was a pretty crappy program. It performs poorly, crashes often, and was always behind its competitors in terms of features.
Why bother supporting Safari? If I want enthusiasts and casual users to support my site, I only need to code for IE and Firefox. Firefox has better plugins anyway.
Speed? Firefox 3.1 is pretty fast, We'll have to see just how fast Safari 4 is when both Firefox 3.1 and Safari 4 are officially released. I doubt Safari will be much faster than Firefox 3.1 on Windows.
Think Differently? I don't see any difference between Apple and MS these days. They both try to tie you into proprietary formats and do a piss poor job of supporting other operating systems. IE runs poorly on Mac and (relatively) well on Windows, Safari barely ran on Windows and was well supported on Mac. I don't see how Apple is any better. They're just Microsoft in a prettier dress.
Ignoring your grammar difficulty, the majority of useful applications out there require a non-embedded database solution...therefore, some configuration is mandatory, for pretty much any application on any platform. To all of you complainers, I work on an application which deploys successfully to Jetty, Tomcat, JBoss 4.2, and Glassfish (as just the ones I've tested). In fact, I test it on all 4 platforms on a regular basis. Sorry, but it works perfectly for me.
Java is a great platform that gives excellent performance and scales well. Outside of initial JNDI datasource configuration (which is technically optional, but very much a best practice), I've had relatively few issues deploying from container to container. I think you folks are exaggerating the effort needed to successfully deploy Java applications.
I'm sorry, learning Java requires a bit of effort. It is a serious language designed to do serious work and optimized for larger, mission-critical projects. It's my first choice of a tool for writing a server side project and the one of the very few I'd choose for a project with more than 3 coders (.NET is the only other serious contender in the arena of large projects). I'm sorry you're having so much difficulty and all I can suggest is that you spend a little more time reading the tutorial and documentation and less time spreading baseless FUD.
I really wonder how many of these critical statements in these comments are being made by experienced, proficient Java developers, and how many are simply being made by a bunch of second rate self-proclaimed coders who are bitter that Java requires a bit greater understanding of OOP and the language to write a useful application than PHP or Ruby.
First of all, I agree. Google has jumped the shark, which is good for us all. I'm sick of the Google hype. Everyone fawns over every half-baked Google project, such as this one. I'm really getting sick of their arrogance and will be enjoying watching them fall.
The worst part is that they are only supporting Windows. If it was multi-platform like lindenlabs second life, I'd be willing to consider it an interesting experiment that could lead to a platform for something entertaining...perhaps some interesting games down the road. I can't see anything useful or even interesting about avatar chat.
The worst part is that Google gets headlines for such a stupid idea...just because their Google. If a startup came up with a useless Windows 3D chat client, it'd never make it to Slashdot. Stop buying into the Google hype CmdrTaco. I hope they bribed you well for this story.
I always thought the pre-installed OS was handy for testing the hardware. However, you're right. Once I've confirmed everything is working correctly, I reformat.
Honestly, I wouldn't want to sue. I'm employed (middle class) and earn enough money that I don't need to resort to such things. I simply don't want to be treated like a criminal. I had enough of that when I was a teenager. Had the store manager apologized and acted professionally, I'd have been only annoyed. Since he treated me like a criminal as well, I am infuriated.
It really sucks that in 1-2 years, the average suburban middle class family probably spends more there than one of those jerks makes in a year. The lines are always long, the sales folks are idiots (most of the time, they cannot answer simple questions about their own merchandise), the cashiers are rude trailer-trash/ghetto folk with a pissed off attitude who probably couldn't hold a conversation in complete sentences if their life depended on it. Nothing about a Best Buy or Circuit City experience is positive. What really burns me is that when you shop for TVs, half the time they aren't configured correctly. If I'm paying retail, I want to compare image quality on multiple models. I never know if the interference & poor color all over the screen was the sign of a crappy TV or some guy who didn't configure the TVs correctly.
Unfortunately,they're making money treating us like dirt simply because there's no place else to go. Unless we complain, they'll never learn. I'm very tempted to buy my next TV at newegg. You usually end up losing money after shipping, but at least buying with them is a pleasant experience. When I was a kid/teenager, I loved Best Buy and Circuit City. They were the greatest stores. Now I can't stand them. Most of their merchandise is crappy, it's rarely in stock if it's something I want. The experience is always terrible and they charge full price for Wal-Mart grade service.
After reading this, I stopped what I was doing and decided to write a letter to Circuit City, letting them know that my next purchase won't be with them (I was thinking about spending 3k this year to replace my ancient TV and get a home theater). Write them at http://www.circuitcity.com/cs_customer_email.jsp?c =1 and let them know what you think. I think it's absurd to spend huge quantities of money (generally in the thousands) and deal with mediocre prices, idiot minimum-wage workers, and harassment.
Best Buy in Lincoln Park, IL did something like this to me once. I waited 40 minutes in line to return a home theater kit (big box w/ many parts) Because the dimwit teenager at the door didn't give me a sticker, one of the assistant managers (think Farva from SuperTroopers) seized my box and told me that I'd be arrested for shoplifting. I presented them with my receipt and he told me "stop playing games." I tried calmly explaining many times that I've been waiting in line to return this crappy home theater unit, but he accused me of buying one the day before, walking into the store w/ nothing but the receipt, taking one (apparently opening & unwrapping the 20+ components, untying the 10 cables or so, putting batteries in the remote, etc), and trying to return the unbought, yet opened, one. I tried to be nice and tell him that there was a mixup and explained to him that when I walked in I went from the door to the customer service line and have been patiently waiting to return the defective home theater system (amp, dvd player, + 5 speakers & cables) the entire time. He kept accusing me of playing "mind games," to quote him. After awhile, I told him to check his surveillance tapes and he told me he was unable to do so. Eventually, I called 911 on them and the police officers took my side and told them to either demonstrate that I was shoplifting or to handle my return.
In the end, they gave me a crappy $50 gift card and dirty looks. The manager kept using that "there's a lot of thieves this time of year" crap and talking to me like I was a criminal who just got away with stealing their merchandise. I regret not telling him off and telling him to focus on the thieves and not harassing their legitimate customers in the most inept way possible (I was more concerned about getting back to work since I did this on my lunch break). I did nothing wrong. I did nothing unusual. I even was wearing business causal clothes (I was in my late 20s, working at a yuppie job, behaving like a typical Lincoln Park yuppie). I don't care about their mistake. I'm really angry at their arrogance and ineptitude in handling the situation. I even sympathize with them not wanting their stuff stolen. However, if you're going to accuse me of stealing, at least do the effort to determine if I'm actually stealing. The store manager, the one who talked to me like I was a master thief who just pulled off another caper, kept ranting about the hid who was supposed to put a sticker on my box, who wasn't at his desk when I walked in, blaming the whole thing on him.
I called their corporate office and let them know. Last I heard, the assistant manager was fired. I don't wish for anyone to go through what I went through.
What stability do you need? I've been a full-time java programmer for 7 years and have yet to see real instability at the JVM level?
Also, to answer your question, I am using JDK 1.6 for a large enterprise project on a 20 node cluster supporting 200k users. I'm not using any language features (because there really weren't many), but we do use the hot spot profiler. We moved to the JDK 1.6 recently to take advantage of the performance refinements. I don't have good benchmarks for you, but I noticed high single-digit performance increases, particularly on server startup.
Do you genuinely have an issue with Java stability or are you simply having a bad day and taking it out on Java?
Regarding your statement about smaller releases, the language has much room to grow and refine itself. Look at Groovy's multi-line String operator or collections syntax as an example. I'd LOVE to have that in Java. It seems stupid to do things a certain way simply because that's what you're used to if there are superior alternatives in terms of simplifying the code and increasing developer productivity.
Hmm, I run Ubuntu. I'm happily married (for 4 years today), get laid a few times a week...I also am hygienic, well-employed, in good shape, and have a good social life for a software engineer (interpret that however you like). While your crude characterization of guys like me is humorous, I'd like to point out it's inaccurate.
Japan thus becomes the first country in Asia to embrace open software standards (PDF), To me that reads, let's announce our (IMHO) intelligent move towards open formats by announcing it in a closed document format from a company famous for pushing proprietary formats.
Flash doesn't run on Linux x86_64. As a software engineer, I can do everything on my Athlon linux box but play (most) video games and run Flash. I hate Adobe for their lack of Linux support and hope to see them either shape up or get destroyed by Microsoft. Let's not also forget that the vast majority of Flash websites are obnoxious eyesores and extremely tedious browsing experiences. I despise sites that rely on Flash for navigation or form handling. Some are nervous about MS controlling rich media websites. I ask. How can it get any worse than what Macromedia has done? The performance is poor, the linux support is poor, the experience is terrible. There's nothing positive about a site coded in Flash. As this article points out, I'll have a better chance at viewing Silverlight on my Ubuntu workstation than any Flash monstrosity.
Do we really need Ruby on Rails AND Groovy on Grails? Rails and Grails address different market segments. Ruby only has a hope for adoption in new development projects. Grails can be crept in gently into Java projects. Groovy and Grails compile to Java classes and are indistinguishable from ordinary classes written in Java. Ruby is a relatively unique language whereas Groovy is more like reformed, dynamic Java. We mix Groovy and Java in our projects now and are very happy to have new tools to accomplish our tasks. I don't want to go out and learn a new language, like Ruby, but I sure as hell don't mind making the tiny leap to learn Groovy.
I realize this is only a minor point in his argument, but makes me seriously doubt his credibility. Just because Grails and Rails sound alike doesn't mean they're interchangeable and that one or the other in pointless as he implied. Also, most intelligent people aren't bothered by the having too many choices, but more by having too many bad choices. Sure, we have Solaris, Linux, and BSD kernels all competing to run our server apps. Most don't mind since all 3 are solid choices. The problems come about when you have 12 different Java MVC frameworks, all of which are severely lacking in at least one area, presenting you with no clear choice. You can use struts and it'll be fast, but kludgy and lacking any good view-related features. You can use JSF and get great view features, but a noticeable performance decline in most circumstances and a very strange controller model.
The Don Imus issue has nothing to do with free speech. It has to do with a business making a business decision.
Free speech means that you can say that George Bush (or if you have a time machine, try it under Clinton's term if you're a Bush fan) is a crook and his cabinet is filled with incompetent idiots and not be dragged to jail for your comments. Try doing that in China. I don't think it'll take you long over there to appreciate what free speech means. Free speech means the government cannot prosecute you for expressing opinions, such as criticizing them. Sure, there are some exceptions, such as threats, libel, and yelling "fire" in the wrong place, but the important fact is you have the power to verbally attack those in power, which was pretty revolutionary for its time.
As others have pointed out Don is paid, by advertisers, to entertain the viewers. His customers decided they don't want someone of his reputation promoting their products. His employers don't provide charity airtime, they pay him to get advertisers. Don lost them money and had to go, in the mind of his producers. The anti-Imus movement was orchestrated by the private sector, not any government agency. What Imus said is irrelevant. You have no free speech rights in the private sector. The bottom line is that he pissed of his customers.
We can debate about the racist hypocrisy that a person can say whatever they want about their own race. However, this has nothing to do with Imus. He was employed, at will, and terminated by the will of his employer. There was no injustice here. Had he lost his sponsors due to boring his audience, he would have had the same fate.
Had his advertisers not cared about his racist views, he could do the show one whatever topic he wanted. He could host a KKK rally hour as long as he found willing partners to pay him. Free speech is well and alive. This issue is simply a matter of the consumer pushing back and telling "the media" what they do not want to hear on the airwaves.
Your comment is quite obnoxious.
What about my nephew, who attends a private charter school? We pay property taxes, even though he doesn't attend public schools, and now you're going to tell me I have to foot the bill for this? Sorry, buddy, but I don't have kids and I happily pay my property taxes. Even if I never plan on burdening the public school system, the products of these schools will be my caretakers when I'm elderly and my coworkers in my near future. It's to everyone's interest to ensure the success of all children in the United States. If you think otherwise, I kindly ask you to leave my country. Your self-centered outlook is killing America. As much as you'd like to think, you are not the master of your own destiny. When I hear comments like that, it's usually from those who regard themselves as "self-made" and think their success in life is entirely the result of their actions and that if everyone was as smart/hard-working/${pick your adjective} as they are, everyone would have the same fate and not be on-welfare/in-poverty/on drugs/${pick your social ill here}. Your success is based on the success of all America, especially the middle class. Do I think iPods are a worthwhile investment?...no, but I'll happily pay my taxes to support the school system. Frankly, I don't think iPods are the greatest waste of money you'll find in the Michigan budget this year.
Re:Any advantages over having only one connector?
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eSATA Connectors
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· Score: 1
There is a significant advantage in that internal cables are thinner and more fragile than external ones. The optimal internal cable in thin and easy to route in tight places and you really don't care how fragile the connectors are. The optimal external cable and connectors would be rugged because you're worried about packing it on a plane, tripping over it, etc. You're not worried about airflow or its bend radius.
Hmm, many of you have stated how engineers are often inferior businessmen, but Microsoft, the world's most successful software company (IMO) has been run by one of its former programmers for many years. Apple, WalMart, and Microsoft are run by very technical individuals. Being a good CIO doesn't necessarily make you a good CEO, but having the traits we idealize in an engineer has lead to the most successful companies in the modern era because they exploited technology to their benefit. I'll pick a competent visionary any day to a good salesman.
Your price is highly skewed because you assumed 100% of the cost of the DVD player is manufacturing labor. If we assume a 1 to 20 ratio, you must now discount tariffs and shipping fees, distributer, and retailer profit. You also assumed the Chinese factory did ALL of the product design work. Getting an item on a retailer's shelf in Boston is much more expensive starting from China than from Minnesota. We can "manufacture" foodstuffs in the United States for prices just as relatively cheap.
I don't dispute that it's cheaper to make a DVD player in China, but I strongly dispute that it'll cost you $800 to manufacture it here.
The problem with all the naysayers is that they assume that the majority of people want to block pornography. The majority of men on the planet with internet access masturbate to pornography on a regular basis. We the wankers are more powerful than the self-appointed morality police. It is unnatural to repress sexuality. They've tried many times and eventually failed. The information age has made it virtually impossible today. If the RIAA/MPAA can't block piracy and repressive regimes, like China, can't block dissent, what makes you think they can block pornography? Let's not forget that many powerful people wank, just like you and I. Mark Foley and Ted Haggard are just 2 that got caught. I'd be very surprised if 90% of your senators and representatives weren't accessing porn on a regular basis. They don't want to see their pornography banned any more than you and I.
So in conclusion, porn is popular (arguably the first "Killer App" of the internet, VCR, camera, etc), it is VERY difficult to censor material on the internet, and porn is enjoyed by the most powerful of society (both in government and industry). No one is going to ban your porn.
Moving porno to.xxx makes it easier for those who don't want pornography to block it in their own homes and makes it easier for me to find what I'm looking for. I'm all for opening up the.xxx domain and cannot think of a single good reason not to have one.
Slashdot Mirror
I am very happy. I am enjoying my Jaunty -> Karmic upgrade more than my Vista -> Win7 upgrade.
I prefer emusic. They're the first service that was cost effective and more convenient than piracy. They have all my music (I prefer electronica and industrial), so I never bother with iTunes.
If I want to pay iTunes prices and not deal with the BS DRM, I can go to Amazon.
I could really care less about another music store. They're probably just preparing for Android to hit iPhones with music capability.
A decent mp3 player on Linux...that would be interesting. Amarok is glacially slow and incredibly unstable. Rhythmbox is reasonable, but has bugs with ID3 tags that I never deal with in Musicmatch in the old days and Media Monkey today on windows.
Have you tried using AMD's drivers with 2 monitors? They don't work! Their configuration process is tedious and error prone. Their Catalyst software is incredibly amateurish and dated-looking. nVidia's configuration process is not ideal, but I can always get my nVidia cards working in Linux. I am now a lifelong nVidia customer.
It's a shame because I like AMD cards and really love their CPUs, but their cards don't work. AMD doesn't care about Linux. I have tried 3 AMD cards in the last 4 years (I tried 3 different cards 2 months ago) and had to return all of them because they don't work in Linux. I scoured the web for help with the various errors and posted on the forums and couldn't get them working on two monitors. I tried writing support and they told me to go f**k myself (in polite terms, of course).
I don't think you understand. Let me give you an example. With Spring, I can browse their SVN trunk and see what they're up to. I can use unreleased software, submit bugs, and possible even submit patches. With BDB, I only see Zips of releases, making it relatively inconvenient to contribute. I love the BDB guys, but getting involved is really encumbered by Oracle. SpringSource and JBoss, on the other hand, do a great job of encouraging involvement.
Open Source In Name Only not only hinders an application's progress and development, but it's not really sustainable. Why give out something for free, call it Open Source, but not seek help from the community? It makes me think the commercial companies are just going to dump it when they figure out they're not making any money off of it.
Also, Oracle Forums SUCK. They're slow and buggy. Honestly, with the one exception of BDB, I have never seen software improve after Oracle got their hands on it (& I credit the motivated Sleepycat team, especially Mark Hayes...not Oracle). I'm not a fan of Oracle's main DB and everything else they've put out, with the exception BDB, has been awful, amateurish garbage. I used to hate Microsoft and they I started working with Oracle products and really started appreciating MS.
Glassfish v3 is on of the best web containers I've seen yet. It's as fast as Jetty and Tomcat and just as easy to use. I'd hate to see it die in favor of WebLogic or plummet to mediocrity, like the rest of the Oracle Family.
Obviously, I'm a bit worried about MySQL as well. Sun was just starting to put out compelling products and figuring out what to do with Java, I hope Oracle doesn't make anything worse.
I love BDB. Oracle bought them and now they've hampered open source involvement. You can't see their source repositories. All you can do is get a zip of their latest release. I don't think any non-Oracle employee contributes to BDB. Read-only open source is barely open-source. I don't want the same to happen to Java, Glassfish, and Netbeans.
Try actually benchmarking Java http://kano.net/javabench/ Server-side Java is one of the fastest scalable platforms available.
If you think writing code for Java 5+ is "fashion," I don't think you're a very experienced programmer.
Generics and java.util.Concurrent are mandatory for scalable systems nowadays. Java 5 added a lot of features to make code more reliable, not mindless fluff.
If you're not using the latest features of the language where appropriate, you're doing your employer a huge disservice.
Sorry, buddy, but you need to learn your technology. Just because people will employ you to write on outdated systems, doesn't mean you're doing your company a favor by refusing to learn the latest technologies and writing your code to run on JDK 1.4.
Fortunately, this is a local and not a global situation. This would affect the mosquitoes near the laser, but none that are out of "line of sight." It's far less devastating than spraying with DDT or other chemicals. I see this as a great innovation and look forward to less mosquito bites when sitting on my deck.
Why do I care about your lousy browser? If it only runs on Mac and PC, it is not a serious browser. The Linux browser market is expanding due to netbooks and phones.
Screw Apple. I always though iTunes was a pretty crappy program. It performs poorly, crashes often, and was always behind its competitors in terms of features.
Why bother supporting Safari? If I want enthusiasts and casual users to support my site, I only need to code for IE and Firefox. Firefox has better plugins anyway.
Speed? Firefox 3.1 is pretty fast, We'll have to see just how fast Safari 4 is when both Firefox 3.1 and Safari 4 are officially released. I doubt Safari will be much faster than Firefox 3.1 on Windows.
Think Differently? I don't see any difference between Apple and MS these days. They both try to tie you into proprietary formats and do a piss poor job of supporting other operating systems. IE runs poorly on Mac and (relatively) well on Windows, Safari barely ran on Windows and was well supported on Mac. I don't see how Apple is any better. They're just Microsoft in a prettier dress.
Ignoring your grammar difficulty, the majority of useful applications out there require a non-embedded database solution...therefore, some configuration is mandatory, for pretty much any application on any platform. To all of you complainers, I work on an application which deploys successfully to Jetty, Tomcat, JBoss 4.2, and Glassfish (as just the ones I've tested). In fact, I test it on all 4 platforms on a regular basis. Sorry, but it works perfectly for me.
Java is a great platform that gives excellent performance and scales well. Outside of initial JNDI datasource configuration (which is technically optional, but very much a best practice), I've had relatively few issues deploying from container to container. I think you folks are exaggerating the effort needed to successfully deploy Java applications.
I'm sorry, learning Java requires a bit of effort. It is a serious language designed to do serious work and optimized for larger, mission-critical projects. It's my first choice of a tool for writing a server side project and the one of the very few I'd choose for a project with more than 3 coders (.NET is the only other serious contender in the arena of large projects). I'm sorry you're having so much difficulty and all I can suggest is that you spend a little more time reading the tutorial and documentation and less time spreading baseless FUD.
I really wonder how many of these critical statements in these comments are being made by experienced, proficient Java developers, and how many are simply being made by a bunch of second rate self-proclaimed coders who are bitter that Java requires a bit greater understanding of OOP and the language to write a useful application than PHP or Ruby.
First of all, I agree. Google has jumped the shark, which is good for us all. I'm sick of the Google hype. Everyone fawns over every half-baked Google project, such as this one. I'm really getting sick of their arrogance and will be enjoying watching them fall.
The worst part is that they are only supporting Windows. If it was multi-platform like lindenlabs second life, I'd be willing to consider it an interesting experiment that could lead to a platform for something entertaining...perhaps some interesting games down the road. I can't see anything useful or even interesting about avatar chat.
The worst part is that Google gets headlines for such a stupid idea...just because their Google. If a startup came up with a useless Windows 3D chat client, it'd never make it to Slashdot. Stop buying into the Google hype CmdrTaco. I hope they bribed you well for this story.
I always thought the pre-installed OS was handy for testing the hardware. However, you're right. Once I've confirmed everything is working correctly, I reformat.
Honestly, I wouldn't want to sue. I'm employed (middle class) and earn enough money that I don't need to resort to such things. I simply don't want to be treated like a criminal. I had enough of that when I was a teenager. Had the store manager apologized and acted professionally, I'd have been only annoyed. Since he treated me like a criminal as well, I am infuriated.
It really sucks that in 1-2 years, the average suburban middle class family probably spends more there than one of those jerks makes in a year. The lines are always long, the sales folks are idiots (most of the time, they cannot answer simple questions about their own merchandise), the cashiers are rude trailer-trash/ghetto folk with a pissed off attitude who probably couldn't hold a conversation in complete sentences if their life depended on it. Nothing about a Best Buy or Circuit City experience is positive. What really burns me is that when you shop for TVs, half the time they aren't configured correctly. If I'm paying retail, I want to compare image quality on multiple models. I never know if the interference & poor color all over the screen was the sign of a crappy TV or some guy who didn't configure the TVs correctly.
Unfortunately,they're making money treating us like dirt simply because there's no place else to go. Unless we complain, they'll never learn. I'm very tempted to buy my next TV at newegg. You usually end up losing money after shipping, but at least buying with them is a pleasant experience. When I was a kid/teenager, I loved Best Buy and Circuit City. They were the greatest stores. Now I can't stand them. Most of their merchandise is crappy, it's rarely in stock if it's something I want. The experience is always terrible and they charge full price for Wal-Mart grade service.
After reading this, I stopped what I was doing and decided to write a letter to Circuit City, letting them know that my next purchase won't be with them (I was thinking about spending 3k this year to replace my ancient TV and get a home theater). Write them at http://www.circuitcity.com/cs_customer_email.jsp?c =1 and let them know what you think. I think it's absurd to spend huge quantities of money (generally in the thousands) and deal with mediocre prices, idiot minimum-wage workers, and harassment.
Best Buy in Lincoln Park, IL did something like this to me once. I waited 40 minutes in line to return a home theater kit (big box w/ many parts) Because the dimwit teenager at the door didn't give me a sticker, one of the assistant managers (think Farva from SuperTroopers) seized my box and told me that I'd be arrested for shoplifting. I presented them with my receipt and he told me "stop playing games." I tried calmly explaining many times that I've been waiting in line to return this crappy home theater unit, but he accused me of buying one the day before, walking into the store w/ nothing but the receipt, taking one (apparently opening & unwrapping the 20+ components, untying the 10 cables or so, putting batteries in the remote, etc), and trying to return the unbought, yet opened, one. I tried to be nice and tell him that there was a mixup and explained to him that when I walked in I went from the door to the customer service line and have been patiently waiting to return the defective home theater system (amp, dvd player, + 5 speakers & cables) the entire time. He kept accusing me of playing "mind games," to quote him. After awhile, I told him to check his surveillance tapes and he told me he was unable to do so. Eventually, I called 911 on them and the police officers took my side and told them to either demonstrate that I was shoplifting or to handle my return.
In the end, they gave me a crappy $50 gift card and dirty looks. The manager kept using that "there's a lot of thieves this time of year" crap and talking to me like I was a criminal who just got away with stealing their merchandise. I regret not telling him off and telling him to focus on the thieves and not harassing their legitimate customers in the most inept way possible (I was more concerned about getting back to work since I did this on my lunch break). I did nothing wrong. I did nothing unusual. I even was wearing business causal clothes (I was in my late 20s, working at a yuppie job, behaving like a typical Lincoln Park yuppie). I don't care about their mistake. I'm really angry at their arrogance and ineptitude in handling the situation. I even sympathize with them not wanting their stuff stolen. However, if you're going to accuse me of stealing, at least do the effort to determine if I'm actually stealing. The store manager, the one who talked to me like I was a master thief who just pulled off another caper, kept ranting about the hid who was supposed to put a sticker on my box, who wasn't at his desk when I walked in, blaming the whole thing on him.
I called their corporate office and let them know. Last I heard, the assistant manager was fired. I don't wish for anyone to go through what I went through.
What stability do you need? I've been a full-time java programmer for 7 years and have yet to see real instability at the JVM level? Also, to answer your question, I am using JDK 1.6 for a large enterprise project on a 20 node cluster supporting 200k users. I'm not using any language features (because there really weren't many), but we do use the hot spot profiler. We moved to the JDK 1.6 recently to take advantage of the performance refinements. I don't have good benchmarks for you, but I noticed high single-digit performance increases, particularly on server startup.
Do you genuinely have an issue with Java stability or are you simply having a bad day and taking it out on Java?
Regarding your statement about smaller releases, the language has much room to grow and refine itself. Look at Groovy's multi-line String operator or collections syntax as an example. I'd LOVE to have that in Java. It seems stupid to do things a certain way simply because that's what you're used to if there are superior alternatives in terms of simplifying the code and increasing developer productivity.
Hmm, I run Ubuntu. I'm happily married (for 4 years today), get laid a few times a week...I also am hygienic, well-employed, in good shape, and have a good social life for a software engineer (interpret that however you like). While your crude characterization of guys like me is humorous, I'd like to point out it's inaccurate.
Flash doesn't run on Linux x86_64. As a software engineer, I can do everything on my Athlon linux box but play (most) video games and run Flash. I hate Adobe for their lack of Linux support and hope to see them either shape up or get destroyed by Microsoft. Let's not also forget that the vast majority of Flash websites are obnoxious eyesores and extremely tedious browsing experiences. I despise sites that rely on Flash for navigation or form handling. Some are nervous about MS controlling rich media websites. I ask. How can it get any worse than what Macromedia has done? The performance is poor, the linux support is poor, the experience is terrible. There's nothing positive about a site coded in Flash. As this article points out, I'll have a better chance at viewing Silverlight on my Ubuntu workstation than any Flash monstrosity.
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Do we really need Ruby on Rails AND Groovy on Grails? Rails and Grails address different market segments. Ruby only has a hope for adoption in new development projects. Grails can be crept in gently into Java projects. Groovy and Grails compile to Java classes and are indistinguishable from ordinary classes written in Java. Ruby is a relatively unique language whereas Groovy is more like reformed, dynamic Java. We mix Groovy and Java in our projects now and are very happy to have new tools to accomplish our tasks. I don't want to go out and learn a new language, like Ruby, but I sure as hell don't mind making the tiny leap to learn Groovy.I realize this is only a minor point in his argument, but makes me seriously doubt his credibility. Just because Grails and Rails sound alike doesn't mean they're interchangeable and that one or the other in pointless as he implied. Also, most intelligent people aren't bothered by the having too many choices, but more by having too many bad choices. Sure, we have Solaris, Linux, and BSD kernels all competing to run our server apps. Most don't mind since all 3 are solid choices. The problems come about when you have 12 different Java MVC frameworks, all of which are severely lacking in at least one area, presenting you with no clear choice. You can use struts and it'll be fast, but kludgy and lacking any good view-related features. You can use JSF and get great view features, but a noticeable performance decline in most circumstances and a very strange controller model.
The Don Imus issue has nothing to do with free speech. It has to do with a business making a business decision.
Free speech means that you can say that George Bush (or if you have a time machine, try it under Clinton's term if you're a Bush fan) is a crook and his cabinet is filled with incompetent idiots and not be dragged to jail for your comments. Try doing that in China. I don't think it'll take you long over there to appreciate what free speech means. Free speech means the government cannot prosecute you for expressing opinions, such as criticizing them. Sure, there are some exceptions, such as threats, libel, and yelling "fire" in the wrong place, but the important fact is you have the power to verbally attack those in power, which was pretty revolutionary for its time.
As others have pointed out Don is paid, by advertisers, to entertain the viewers. His customers decided they don't want someone of his reputation promoting their products. His employers don't provide charity airtime, they pay him to get advertisers. Don lost them money and had to go, in the mind of his producers. The anti-Imus movement was orchestrated by the private sector, not any government agency. What Imus said is irrelevant. You have no free speech rights in the private sector. The bottom line is that he pissed of his customers.
We can debate about the racist hypocrisy that a person can say whatever they want about their own race. However, this has nothing to do with Imus. He was employed, at will, and terminated by the will of his employer. There was no injustice here. Had he lost his sponsors due to boring his audience, he would have had the same fate.
Had his advertisers not cared about his racist views, he could do the show one whatever topic he wanted. He could host a KKK rally hour as long as he found willing partners to pay him. Free speech is well and alive. This issue is simply a matter of the consumer pushing back and telling "the media" what they do not want to hear on the airwaves.
There is a significant advantage in that internal cables are thinner and more fragile than external ones. The optimal internal cable in thin and easy to route in tight places and you really don't care how fragile the connectors are. The optimal external cable and connectors would be rugged because you're worried about packing it on a plane, tripping over it, etc. You're not worried about airflow or its bend radius.
Hmm, many of you have stated how engineers are often inferior businessmen, but Microsoft, the world's most successful software company (IMO) has been run by one of its former programmers for many years. Apple, WalMart, and Microsoft are run by very technical individuals. Being a good CIO doesn't necessarily make you a good CEO, but having the traits we idealize in an engineer has lead to the most successful companies in the modern era because they exploited technology to their benefit. I'll pick a competent visionary any day to a good salesman.
Your price is highly skewed because you assumed 100% of the cost of the DVD player is manufacturing labor. If we assume a 1 to 20 ratio, you must now discount tariffs and shipping fees, distributer, and retailer profit. You also assumed the Chinese factory did ALL of the product design work. Getting an item on a retailer's shelf in Boston is much more expensive starting from China than from Minnesota. We can "manufacture" foodstuffs in the United States for prices just as relatively cheap. I don't dispute that it's cheaper to make a DVD player in China, but I strongly dispute that it'll cost you $800 to manufacture it here.
The problem with all the naysayers is that they assume that the majority of people want to block pornography. The majority of men on the planet with internet access masturbate to pornography on a regular basis. We the wankers are more powerful than the self-appointed morality police. It is unnatural to repress sexuality. They've tried many times and eventually failed. The information age has made it virtually impossible today. If the RIAA/MPAA can't block piracy and repressive regimes, like China, can't block dissent, what makes you think they can block pornography? Let's not forget that many powerful people wank, just like you and I. Mark Foley and Ted Haggard are just 2 that got caught. I'd be very surprised if 90% of your senators and representatives weren't accessing porn on a regular basis. They don't want to see their pornography banned any more than you and I.
.xxx makes it easier for those who don't want pornography to block it in their own homes and makes it easier for me to find what I'm looking for. I'm all for opening up the .xxx domain and cannot think of a single good reason not to have one.
So in conclusion, porn is popular (arguably the first "Killer App" of the internet, VCR, camera, etc), it is VERY difficult to censor material on the internet, and porn is enjoyed by the most powerful of society (both in government and industry). No one is going to ban your porn.
Moving porno to