The vertical market is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The thousands of programmers doing internal billing applications for, say, FedEx, have absolutely ZERO EFFECT on the choices the average Joe has for his desktop PC, even if there are more of them than there are writing Microsoft Money or Quicken.
For the average Joe, there is effectively only one software company in the world.
All we're TALKING about here is the commercial desktop software market. We're talking about apples here, it doesn't matter how many oranges there are in Florida.
In MySQL you can decide per table if you want the table to be fast or take the speed penalty of making it transaction safe.
In MySQL, you do not have the choice turning on transactions and atomicity.
You have the choice of turning on features that they mistakenly label transactions and atomicity, but let's call a spade a spade here.
You use MySQL if you care about speed a lot, and don't care much about data integrity. That's a perfectly valid position, but let's not pretend it's some other position.
If you do care about data integrity, you use something other than MySQL, and find another way to achieve the speed.
I plan on getting a 1.5GHz Williamette when they hit in the planned Q1 2001, and that better well not have a single problem in it, as the motherboard it'll sit on.
After an entire page of terrible problems you had with the latest Intel stuff, you end with this?
And so the bear says, "you ain't here for the hunting, are you son?"
In the several times recently that I've suggested some code have it's copyright "given" to the FSF, it's been simply because I was contending that the copyright had to go somewhere, and that no matter what bad things you have to say about Richard Stallman, you've got to admit that he's the one person on the planet Earth least likely to change his mind and relicense a piece of code with a non-Free license. --
The phrase "for Dummies" was not in common usage before 1991, when IDG started using it in the title of their books.
It is in common usage *because* IDG uses it, not in spite of them.
It was used in book titles before IDG used it.
Since you seemed to be missing all the posts of examples, I thought a direct reply might be in order.
You can't keep a trademark on something just because you thought of trademarking it first. Other people were using that phrase *IN BOOK TITLES* before IDG ever thought about using it.
My first choice would be splitting MS into a systems company and an applications company
Microsoft has willfully committed crimes, and continues to do so.
A slap on the wrist will merely confirm their belief that any penalties for doing so are not so onerous as to make it not worth behaving that way.
Splitting them into two companies will merely reward the wrongdoers with financial riches.
Microsoft must be immediately dissolved, and it's assets sold at auction.
All source code for all applications they have ever written should be placed under GPL, and the copyrights assigned to Richard Stallman.
The microsoft.com domain should be assigned to the EFF, with them directed by court order to maintain a web site at that address containing all the relevant court documents for all time.
All other domains with Microsoft in their title should be required to change their names. It is acceptable that they still have "ms", such as MSNBC, but only if they find a title where the MS means something else.
Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and a host of others should be jailed. Not some country-club vacation, actual real jail with the other organized crime lords.
I think I should point out at this point to all of you saying "hell, yeah, you should have done exactly what he said" that the particular company in question is relied upon by nearly every business in this country in order to perform vital business functions, and you'd have all been screwed if we'd done it.:-)
And hell no, I'm not saying what company; they could be reading this. --
Yes -- if all of you agreed to follow the letter of the memo and immediately sent a counter-memo detailing what you'd done and why. CC everyone else important in the company on the memo.
The funny thing is, if we actually *HAD* complied, we wouldn't have been able to send that memo; the mail system would have been non-functional.:-)
Not that they'd have noticed, because they wouldn't have been able to connect to it anyway, since the DNS servers would have been down.
Ok, I'll present you with a situation where exactly that happened, and you tell me:
The CIO of the Fortune 50 company for whom I work issued a memo to all employees that no Open Source would be used on any system in any manner.
However, we did not immediately disable all systems company-wide and shut the whole thing down to remove the many Unix-standard tools that happen to be Open Source, and that run standard system services on every single Unix machine in the entire company. We just ignored him.
Should we have shut down a few thousand Unix servers immediately, pending the approval of new non-Open replacement tools? Would that have been the ethical thing to do?
End the kharma-whoring system alltogether. There is no reason why every individual post cannot stand or fall on its own.
It's not surprising that you can't see the reasons, since nearly all of your posts don't climb above 1, and thus perhaps 1 in 10 of your posts ever manage to be seen by the majority of readers.
The answer to the question "which CGI language is best" for a given task is practically the same as the answer to the question "which gun is best for a gunfight":
The one you know.
More specifically, the language you know well enough to write the required program.
If you're struggling to make it work at all, it won't work well.
Now, if you're wanting to know which languages you should LEARN, we're headed into religious war territory, but here's my opinion:
Perl and Java.
Between the two, you have enough options to do anything, including compilation with processor-specific optimizations, and you'll find more documentation than you can shake a stick at. You can practically close your eyes and grab a book at random from your local book store, and have a reasonable chance it's about one or the other.
I think it's clear that Microsoft has been deliberately, willfully engaged in criminal behavior for their entire existence.
Not punishing them because the acts were performed by a corporation instead of a person is rubbish; they were performed by people, just as much as more horrible crimes in the 1930s and 1940 were performed by German soldiers, not by Germany.
To not punish Microsoft for it's crimes, based on the idea that they won't commit them any more, would be like not jailing Ted Kaczynski because he hasn't blown anybody up lately.
The Microsoft executives responsible for this debacle, including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, should be jailed for a long time and have all of their personal assets that derive from Microsoft seized and placed up for auction.
Microsoft itself should be dissolved, all assets sold, and the proceeds divided among everyone who has ever bought or sold a copy of a Microsoft software product.
The domain "microsoft.com" should be given to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with them directed to operate a web server at that address with all the relevant court documents displayed there for all time.
They should be directed to place the source code for all of their products under GPL immediately, and reassign the copyrights to Richard Stallman.
Oh; and Gates should be delivered to the jail wearing lipstick and a miniskirt. --
I think it's clear that Microsoft has been deliberately, willfully engaged in criminal behavior for their entire existence.
Not punishing them because the acts were performed by a corporation instead of a person is rubbish; they were performed by people, just as much as more horrible crimes in the 1930s and 1940 were performed by German soldiers, not by Germany.
To not punish Microsoft for it's crimes, based on the idea that they won't commit them any more, would be like not jailing Ted Kaczynski because he hasn't blown anybody up lately.
The Microsoft executives responsible for this debacle, including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, should be jailed for a long time and have all of their personal assets that derive from Microsoft seized and placed up for auction.
Microsoft itself should be dissolved, all assets sold, and the proceeds divided among everyone who has ever bought or sold a copy of a Microsoft software product.
The domain "microsoft.com" should be given to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with them directed to operate a web server at that address with all the relevant court documents displayed there for all time.
They should be directed to place the source code for all of their products under GPL immediately, and reassign the copyrights to Richard Stallman.
Oh; and Gates should be delivered to the jail wearing lipstick and a miniskirt.
I think the obvious solution is to forget about paper newspapers, and perfect light, long-battery-life portable computers.
If you had an 8.5"x11" computer that weighed only a few ounces, would survive a 4-foot drop 100% of the time, last 16 hours on a charge, and was all screen, you wouldn't care about paper, and this would all be moot.
Just push the "download New York Times" control every morning, and pay your credit card bill every month.
Two Lotus Notes users at one of our data centers together destroyed over 1,300 files with this virus today.
A mutated version of it has already appeared, with the subject line "fwd: Joke".
Hands up, who hasn't gotten an email in the last month with a similar subject line, from someone one trusts?
Fortunately, with Notes it didn't propogate; but one person pulling personal email with Outlook (and we had that happen too) can devastate a company full of Notes users.
BTW, anybody heard anything about CBS? Rumor (and it's just a rumor, I have not confirmed anything) is that they sent an "all-hands" email to the entire company, from an infected system. Ouch, if it's true.
At some point you'd probably have to connect to your employers network, so if they aren't able to scan you directly they'll just sniff what comes over your connection.
Sniff away; all they'll see will be ssh packets to and from my servers at home.
Actaully, it would be cool to write a convincing form letter saing "I'm sorry this server refuses to process any non encrypted emails. Here is how you get encypted email."
This could be done, with procmail.
I'm not sure that it's a good idea, but it could be done.
Let me rephrase that; I'm sure it's *NOT* a good idea.
Just as there is a place for envelopes in this world, so is there a place for postcards. And even skywriting.
Then again, is it really that big of a deal. Do any of us feel really all that violated when we have to see a post on something that we have already seen in the past. My point: Who cares!
The 400+ people with submissions in the queue that didn't see the light of day for that repost care.
How much processor time? A lot, but presumably it could be sped up with a hardware SSL card, just like web servers do.
However, adopting it as a universal standard wouldn't cause any problems for spammers, because if most used it, they'd still also use "in the clear" protocol.
Why?
Because not everyone would use it, not everyone COULD use it, and because it is indeed expensive in terms of processor or buying that card.
Slashdot Mirror
The vertical market is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The thousands of programmers doing internal billing applications for, say, FedEx, have absolutely ZERO EFFECT on the choices the average Joe has for his desktop PC, even if there are more of them than there are writing Microsoft Money or Quicken.
For the average Joe, there is effectively only one software company in the world.
All we're TALKING about here is the commercial desktop software market. We're talking about apples here, it doesn't matter how many oranges there are in Florida.
--
So why do you feel qualified to choose for everyone else?
Because the alternative is that no one gets to choose except Bill Gates.
That's significantly lower than your 1%.
--
In MySQL you can decide per table if you want the table to be fast or take the speed penalty of making it transaction safe.
In MySQL, you do not have the choice turning on transactions and atomicity.
You have the choice of turning on features that they mistakenly label transactions and atomicity, but let's call a spade a spade here.
You use MySQL if you care about speed a lot, and don't care much about data integrity. That's a perfectly valid position, but let's not pretend it's some other position.
If you do care about data integrity, you use something other than MySQL, and find another way to achieve the speed.
--
I plan on getting a 1.5GHz Williamette when they hit in the planned Q1 2001, and that better well not have a single problem in it, as the motherboard it'll sit on.
After an entire page of terrible problems you had with the latest Intel stuff, you end with this?
And so the bear says, "you ain't here for the hunting, are you son?"
--
In the several times recently that I've suggested some code have it's copyright "given" to the FSF, it's been simply because I was contending that the copyright had to go somewhere, and that no matter what bad things you have to say about Richard Stallman, you've got to admit that he's the one person on the planet Earth least likely to change his mind and relicense a piece of code with a non-Free license.
--
That wasn't a Troll, jackass.
Any idiot can see it was Flamebait.
If you're not going to take moderation any more seriously than that, don't moderate.
--
The phrase "for Dummies" was not in common usage before 1991, when IDG started using it in the title of their books.
It is in common usage *because* IDG uses it, not in spite of them.
It was used in book titles before IDG used it.
Since you seemed to be missing all the posts of examples, I thought a direct reply might be in order.
You can't keep a trademark on something just because you thought of trademarking it first. Other people were using that phrase *IN BOOK TITLES* before IDG ever thought about using it.
Period. That's not an opinion, it's a fact.
--
First off, this is the right I do NOT want the government to have.
Well, you're about 110 years too late to be bitching about that one.
--
My first choice would be splitting MS into a systems company and an applications company
Microsoft has willfully committed crimes, and continues to do so.
A slap on the wrist will merely confirm their belief that any penalties for doing so are not so onerous as to make it not worth behaving that way.
Splitting them into two companies will merely reward the wrongdoers with financial riches.
Microsoft must be immediately dissolved, and it's assets sold at auction.
All source code for all applications they have ever written should be placed under GPL, and the copyrights assigned to Richard Stallman.
The microsoft.com domain should be assigned to the EFF, with them directed by court order to maintain a web site at that address containing all the relevant court documents for all time.
All other domains with Microsoft in their title should be required to change their names. It is acceptable that they still have "ms", such as MSNBC, but only if they find a title where the MS means something else.
Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and a host of others should be jailed. Not some country-club vacation, actual real jail with the other organized crime lords.
--
Is there a similar system for removing yourself from 24/7's system?
Yes:
Junkbuster
--
I think I should point out at this point to all of you saying "hell, yeah, you should have done exactly what he said" that the particular company in question is relied upon by nearly every business in this country in order to perform vital business functions, and you'd have all been screwed if we'd done it. :-)
And hell no, I'm not saying what company; they could be reading this.
--
Yes -- if all of you agreed to follow the letter of the memo and immediately sent a counter-memo detailing what you'd done and why. CC everyone else important in the company on the memo.
:-)
The funny thing is, if we actually *HAD* complied, we wouldn't have been able to send that memo; the mail system would have been non-functional.
Not that they'd have noticed, because they wouldn't have been able to connect to it anyway, since the DNS servers would have been down.
--
Ok, I'll present you with a situation where exactly that happened, and you tell me:
The CIO of the Fortune 50 company for whom I work issued a memo to all employees that no Open Source would be used on any system in any manner.
However, we did not immediately disable all systems company-wide and shut the whole thing down to remove the many Unix-standard tools that happen to be Open Source, and that run standard system services on every single Unix machine in the entire company. We just ignored him.
Should we have shut down a few thousand Unix servers immediately, pending the approval of new non-Open replacement tools? Would that have been the ethical thing to do?
--
End the kharma-whoring system alltogether. There is no reason why every individual post cannot stand or fall on its own.
It's not surprising that you can't see the reasons, since nearly all of your posts don't climb above 1, and thus perhaps 1 in 10 of your posts ever manage to be seen by the majority of readers.
And even those are usually crap like the above.
--
The answer to the question "which CGI language is best" for a given task is practically the same as the answer to the question "which gun is best for a gunfight":
The one you know.
More specifically, the language you know well enough to write the required program.
If you're struggling to make it work at all, it won't work well.
Now, if you're wanting to know which languages you should LEARN, we're headed into religious war territory, but here's my opinion:
Perl and Java.
Between the two, you have enough options to do anything, including compilation with processor-specific optimizations, and you'll find more documentation than you can shake a stick at. You can practically close your eyes and grab a book at random from your local book store, and have a reasonable chance it's about one or the other.
--
I think it's clear that Microsoft has been deliberately, willfully engaged in criminal behavior for their entire existence.
Not punishing them because the acts were performed by a corporation instead of a person is rubbish; they were performed by people, just as much as more horrible crimes in the 1930s and 1940 were performed by German soldiers, not by Germany.
To not punish Microsoft for it's crimes, based on the idea that they won't commit them any more, would be like not jailing Ted Kaczynski because he hasn't blown anybody up lately.
The Microsoft executives responsible for this debacle, including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, should be jailed for a long time and have all of their personal assets that derive from Microsoft seized and placed up for auction.
Microsoft itself should be dissolved, all assets sold, and the proceeds divided among everyone who has ever bought or sold a copy of a Microsoft software product.
The domain "microsoft.com" should be given to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with them directed to operate a web server at that address with all the relevant court documents displayed there for all time.
They should be directed to place the source code for all of their products under GPL immediately, and reassign the copyrights to Richard Stallman.
Oh; and Gates should be delivered to the jail wearing lipstick and a miniskirt.
--
I think it's clear that Microsoft has been deliberately, willfully engaged in criminal behavior for their entire existence.
Not punishing them because the acts were performed by a corporation instead of a person is rubbish; they were performed by people, just as much as more horrible crimes in the 1930s and 1940 were performed by German soldiers, not by Germany.
To not punish Microsoft for it's crimes, based on the idea that they won't commit them any more, would be like not jailing Ted Kaczynski because he hasn't blown anybody up lately.
The Microsoft executives responsible for this debacle, including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, should be jailed for a long time and have all of their personal assets that derive from Microsoft seized and placed up for auction.
Microsoft itself should be dissolved, all assets sold, and the proceeds divided among everyone who has ever bought or sold a copy of a Microsoft software product.
The domain "microsoft.com" should be given to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with them directed to operate a web server at that address with all the relevant court documents displayed there for all time.
They should be directed to place the source code for all of their products under GPL immediately, and reassign the copyrights to Richard Stallman.
Oh; and Gates should be delivered to the jail wearing lipstick and a miniskirt.
--
I think the obvious solution is to forget about paper newspapers, and perfect light, long-battery-life portable computers.
If you had an 8.5"x11" computer that weighed only a few ounces, would survive a 4-foot drop 100% of the time, last 16 hours on a charge, and was all screen, you wouldn't care about paper, and this would all be moot.
Just push the "download New York Times" control every morning, and pay your credit card bill every month.
--
Two Lotus Notes users at one of our data centers together destroyed over 1,300 files with this virus today.
A mutated version of it has already appeared, with the subject line "fwd: Joke".
Hands up, who hasn't gotten an email in the last month with a similar subject line, from someone one trusts?
Fortunately, with Notes it didn't propogate; but one person pulling personal email with Outlook (and we had that happen too) can devastate a company full of Notes users.
BTW, anybody heard anything about CBS? Rumor (and it's just a rumor, I have not confirmed anything) is that they sent an "all-hands" email to the entire company, from an infected system. Ouch, if it's true.
--
At some point you'd probably have to connect to your employers network, so if they aren't able to scan you directly they'll just sniff what comes over your connection.
Sniff away; all they'll see will be ssh packets to and from my servers at home.
--
Not necessary to give it out; just rewrite a description of the protocols in your own words.
That doesn't violate copyright, and since it's a trade secret they can't patent it, so it'd be perfectly legal.
Microsoft screwed up.
--
Actaully, it would be cool to write a convincing form letter saing "I'm sorry this server refuses to process any non encrypted emails. Here is how you get encypted email."
This could be done, with procmail.
I'm not sure that it's a good idea, but it could be done.
Let me rephrase that; I'm sure it's *NOT* a good idea.
Just as there is a place for envelopes in this world, so is there a place for postcards. And even skywriting.
--
(Speaking of which, why don't they put a year on all this stuff? Slashdot's been around for many years, it would be useful.)
The year's in the URL. Look up there, you'll see "sid=00/04/30".....
--
Then again, is it really that big of a deal. Do any of us feel really all that violated when we have to see a post on something that we have already seen in the past. My point: Who cares!
The 400+ people with submissions in the queue that didn't see the light of day for that repost care.
--
Oooo, good catch, I missed that one.
How much processor time? A lot, but presumably it could be sped up with a hardware SSL card, just like web servers do.
However, adopting it as a universal standard wouldn't cause any problems for spammers, because if most used it, they'd still also use "in the clear" protocol.
Why?
Because not everyone would use it, not everyone COULD use it, and because it is indeed expensive in terms of processor or buying that card.
--