Leave Google behind? I don't think so. Google will always find you. Google knows everything. Does this make Google God. Maybe the ancients screwed up the spelling?
> Apparently the software error caused... overheated the battery and destroyed it.
Legend has it at Microsoft that if you introduce a bug that breaks the nightly build you have a stupid mascot that perches on your desk the next day. Wonder what the other NASA programmers will do to this guy?
I heard India is going to replace its national flag. It will have a motif of two crossed handsets.
> People were patronising and cynical about Japanese attempts to industrialise
> and develop technologies in the 1950's and 60's, say no more...
True, but Pikachyu never called me during dinner.
We can tell if there is an anti-Indian trend when (1) Tom Clancy writes an Indian-bashing novel where Jack Ryan is driven insane by telemarketing calls, even on his CIA hotline, called "Debt of Phone Company" (2) Michael Cricton (name deliberately misspelt) writes (and I use the term loosely) an Indian-bashing novel called "Pappadam Rising" about the trials and dramas in an Indian callcenter. Much like his very wonky "Rising Sun" novel his research for this will probably consist of no more than a Madras Curry for lunch.
I think it's the old story of they get you to sign your rights away, and maybe it will or maybe it won't hold up in court, but the mere fact it might scares a lot of people from even trying. There was a story of someone who sued them for $150 in the local court, and they tried big-assed corporate lawyer tactics to scare him off. He did win(!), but most people I know who get ripped off blame themselves for not being more careful. (which makes it the perfect crime?;-)
Check out http://paypalsucks.com/ They have more about how your waive your credit card rights.
I bought a piece of independent software through Paypal. The author had been selling it for several years, and seemed ok. What he did was announce an upgrade sale, then when we all sent our money. he took it and ran.
I thought PayPal protected me from this sort of thing, and that I had credit card protection on top of that. Turns out when you sign up for PayPal you agree to waive your credit card rights (so no chargeback or refunds). The guy hadn't transferred all of his money out of the PayPal account (latecomers to the sale). I complained straight away, and did get my money back. But many people didn't!!! The ones that said "let's wait and give the guy a chance because maybe he's had an emergency?" were the ones that got shafted.
PayPal provides not protection. I've a friend who on eBay bought an 8Gb flash card (which was 4Gb under the sticker, and a factory QA reject) and a laptop that didn't work (made from parts of other laptops and the bad CPU didn't even fit the socket) and eBay/PayPal did nothing for that. There are often stories on the news about people ripped off usually laptops or jewelery.
Use PayPal or eBay at your own risk. Many do, but I won't.
> "modern compilers are so good nowadays that they can beat human written assembly code in just about every case".
Case in point: SQL Optimizers in every SQL Database Product I have ever used. Often, they will find a very stupid way of doing something where a human (who has greater insight into the data despite the UPDATE STATISTICS command) can find a much faster way. Much of my time maintaining databases is trying to get it not to do stupid things.
No one trusts automatic C++ code generators. So why do we trust automatic SQL code generators?
Have you noticed when you code your own routines for manipulating data (in effect, your own application specific database) you can produce stuff that is very, very fast?
In the good old days of the Internet Bubble 1.0 I took an application specific database like this (originally for a record store) and generalized it into a generic database capable of handling all sorts of data. But every change I made to make the code more general also made it less efficient. The end result wasn't bad by any means: we solid it as an eCommerce database to a number of solutions, but as far as the original record store database went, the original version was by far the best.
Yes. I *know* generic databases with fantastic optimization engines designed by database experts should be faster, but noticed how much time you have to spend with the likes of Oracle or MySQL trying to get it to do what to you is an exceedingly obvious way of doing something?
This is a huge negative for games developers. DirectX10 gives you (compared to DirectX 9.0c) unlimited resources for writing shaders. Yet, Bill will only release DirectX for Vista. The idea is, I guess, is he thinks this will *make* people buy Vista just so they can play the latest games.
But it's a flawed strategy for several reasons. One is not many people will use Vista at first. Second, there are hardly any games out there that support Shader 3.0 (9.0c). Most support only Shader 2.0 (9.0). Third, every release of DirectX he reorganizes the API in stupid ways that require line by line editing of your code (for example, he encodes the version number in every object name!!!)
I'm tired of rewriting code for every new DirectX release, so will jump ship to OpenGL. We don't have to rewrite the code when new features come out, and we don't have to tell our customers they *have* to switch to Vista. Dumb decision Bill.
> Because they won't be inconvenienced by 10 competing vendors fighting over who gets to study their copy of the standards. Instead, they'll just pick a vendor who has their own copy.
That's right. And that vendor is usually a multinational!;-)
> The group is taking the step of patenting the idea,
Once, just once, I want to hear a story where someone cures a hitherto incurable disease and releases the cure into the public domain.
They wouldn't get too far gauging you for a C++ manual.
Here are some examples of what I am saying:
ISO/IEC TR 9126
"Software engineering -- Product quality "
US$153 each volume * 4 volumes = US$612
IEEE 1278
US$151 each volume * 6 volumes = US$906
Problem is when you are told your software has to comply with one of these, these are the only shops in town. They prohibit copying or sharing the information. Anyone who wants to meet the standard has to send I$O or I money, and there are many, many of these standards. A typical tender might list twenty.
Once it is ratified as an ISO Standard, the standard is locked up and anyone that does want to a copy has to buy it from ISO. These are copyrighted. They're not cheap; thousands of dollars. Out of the reach of the average hobbyist, and not listed anywhere on the Internet. That 6,000 page draft will vanish into the mists of time.
Larger Companies can afford this, but garage companies and hobbyists definitely can't. So what's the chance of an open source or even small upstart challenging Microsoft's Documentonopoly? Zero.
Want another example? ISO country codes. The country codes (e.g..us,.jp) are actually ISO, and ISO ended up backing off on a demand for royalties for this(!) But if you want state codes (e.g. California, Kantou), well, forget it unless you want to buy them off ISO. http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/ 2003-September/001472.html
Slashdot Mirror
Disliking Telemarketers doesn't make one racist.
It's a fine line between Trolls and Humour. But I thought it was a funny troll :-)
Leave Google behind? I don't think so. Google will always find you. Google knows everything. Does this make Google God. Maybe the ancients screwed up the spelling?
Legend has it at Microsoft that if you introduce a bug that breaks the nightly build you have a stupid mascot that perches on your desk the next day. Wonder what the other NASA programmers will do to this guy?
> People were patronising and cynical about Japanese attempts to industrialise ...
> and develop technologies in the 1950's and 60's, say no more
True, but Pikachyu never called me during dinner.
We can tell if there is an anti-Indian trend when (1) Tom Clancy writes an Indian-bashing novel where Jack Ryan is driven insane by telemarketing calls, even on his CIA hotline, called "Debt of Phone Company" (2) Michael Cricton (name deliberately misspelt) writes (and I use the term loosely) an Indian-bashing novel called "Pappadam Rising" about the trials and dramas in an Indian callcenter. Much like his very wonky "Rising Sun" novel his research for this will probably consist of no more than a Madras Curry for lunch.
Yes. About time. The existing telemarking satellites are choked. Ah excuse me I have an incoming call...
Check out http://paypalsucks.com/ They have more about how your waive your credit card rights.
I thought PayPal protected me from this sort of thing, and that I had credit card protection on top of that. Turns out when you sign up for PayPal you agree to waive your credit card rights (so no chargeback or refunds). The guy hadn't transferred all of his money out of the PayPal account (latecomers to the sale). I complained straight away, and did get my money back. But many people didn't!!! The ones that said "let's wait and give the guy a chance because maybe he's had an emergency?" were the ones that got shafted.
PayPal provides not protection. I've a friend who on eBay bought an 8Gb flash card (which was 4Gb under the sticker, and a factory QA reject) and a laptop that didn't work (made from parts of other laptops and the bad CPU didn't even fit the socket) and eBay/PayPal did nothing for that. There are often stories on the news about people ripped off usually laptops or jewelery.
Use PayPal or eBay at your own risk. Many do, but I won't.
That's right. To fix the fact they're broken.
> "modern compilers are so good nowadays that they can beat human written assembly code in just about every case". Case in point: SQL Optimizers in every SQL Database Product I have ever used. Often, they will find a very stupid way of doing something where a human (who has greater insight into the data despite the UPDATE STATISTICS command) can find a much faster way. Much of my time maintaining databases is trying to get it not to do stupid things. No one trusts automatic C++ code generators. So why do we trust automatic SQL code generators?
That links is broken. Is actually http://datadraw.sourceforge.net/ but thanks SmilingDog. Checking it out now. Looks interesting.
Have you noticed when you code your own routines for manipulating data (in effect, your own application specific database) you can produce stuff that is very, very fast? In the good old days of the Internet Bubble 1.0 I took an application specific database like this (originally for a record store) and generalized it into a generic database capable of handling all sorts of data. But every change I made to make the code more general also made it less efficient. The end result wasn't bad by any means: we solid it as an eCommerce database to a number of solutions, but as far as the original record store database went, the original version was by far the best. Yes. I *know* generic databases with fantastic optimization engines designed by database experts should be faster, but noticed how much time you have to spend with the likes of Oracle or MySQL trying to get it to do what to you is an exceedingly obvious way of doing something?
But it's a flawed strategy for several reasons. One is not many people will use Vista at first. Second, there are hardly any games out there that support Shader 3.0 (9.0c). Most support only Shader 2.0 (9.0). Third, every release of DirectX he reorganizes the API in stupid ways that require line by line editing of your code (for example, he encodes the version number in every object name!!!)
I'm tired of rewriting code for every new DirectX release, so will jump ship to OpenGL. We don't have to rewrite the code when new features come out, and we don't have to tell our customers they *have* to switch to Vista. Dumb decision Bill.
> Because they won't be inconvenienced by 10 competing vendors fighting over who gets to study their copy of the standards. Instead, they'll just pick a vendor who has their own copy. That's right. And that vendor is usually a multinational! ;-)
> The group is taking the step of patenting the idea, Once, just once, I want to hear a story where someone cures a hitherto incurable disease and releases the cure into the public domain.
They wouldn't get too far gauging you for a C++ manual. Here are some examples of what I am saying: ISO/IEC TR 9126 "Software engineering -- Product quality " US$153 each volume * 4 volumes = US$612 IEEE 1278 US$151 each volume * 6 volumes = US$906 Problem is when you are told your software has to comply with one of these, these are the only shops in town. They prohibit copying or sharing the information. Anyone who wants to meet the standard has to send I$O or I money, and there are many, many of these standards. A typical tender might list twenty.
Once it is ratified as an ISO Standard, the standard is locked up and anyone that does want to a copy has to buy it from ISO. These are copyrighted. They're not cheap; thousands of dollars. Out of the reach of the average hobbyist, and not listed anywhere on the Internet. That 6,000 page draft will vanish into the mists of time.
Larger Companies can afford this, but garage companies and hobbyists definitely can't. So what's the chance of an open source or even small upstart challenging Microsoft's Documentonopoly? Zero.
Want another example? ISO country codes. The country codes (e.g. .us, .jp) are actually ISO, and ISO ended up backing off on a demand for royalties for this(!) But if you want state codes (e.g. California, Kantou), well, forget it unless you want to buy them off ISO. http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/ 2003-September/001472.html
ISO aren't the only ones guility of doing this. IEEE do it as well. Want the latest simulation standard? Then get out your checkbook: http://standards.ieee.org/catalog/olis/compsim.htm l
ISO and the IEEE are enemies of openness. Microsoft is taking a page out of their gamebook.
ISO or IEEE certification is a *bad* thing.