Mod parent up to stratosphere!!!! Microsoft is the synonym of "Death of Open Standards". There's nothing Microsoft as a corporation hates more than Open Standards and as an extension, Open Source. And I don't mean the "Microsoft of the past", I mean the Microsoft right here and now, the behemoth with billions of dollars and tens of thousands of developers under its belly, the Microsoft that COULD change the world of computing, if it wanted to, due to it's enormous installed base.
But no, THIS Microsoft is a company that has learned how to leverage that installed base, and closed or poisoned standards is what it thrives on.
Coursework and diploma dissertations should be a work of creativity. And one takes pride on what he/she creates. I can't imagine a stranger doing a better job at anything I am supposed to do, than myself. Even if I am not a good coder (I am not), I'll take the time it takes and do things right.
Besides, how can these not be detected? If Matthew Proofrock would hand in coursework with horrible English grammar and style, you'd probably raise an eyebrow and start asking questions.
As for outsourcing final dissertations: if students are able to pull THAT off, the commission/panel is not asking real questions, but just being patronizing - "We don't want to embarrass our student on this day, now do we...".
I am actually studying in a non-IT field (material science, micro/nanotech, electronics), and our homeworks all require a lot of creativity. Students that just follow the dotted line and don't give anything from themselves, have little chance of having their work accepted. I don't know if that's the case everywhere, but it is here in Helsinki.
And if keystroke efficiency is what you're after, try using keywords with your bookmarks. I've configed mine to have "/." take me here, "gm" to Gmail, "w" searches Wikipedia, "sg" searches the Stargate wiki, "p" takes me to Penny Arcade, etc. Now isn't that efficient? Well, that's exactly the functionality I have with oldbar, except it's better because I don't need to memorize any new shortcuts, just type the first few letters of the url. I realize that for the examples you noted (except "/.", which I think is harder to type than "sl") there isn't a huge difference, but anyhow, with the oldbar I didn't even have to create any keywords with bookmarks, or maintain bookmarks, for that matter.
Some of Feynman's books are rather inaccessible, even to the great majority of Slashdotters: I have in my hand "Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics - The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures" by Richard Feynman and Steven Weinberg. I love this book, and I wish I could participate to the lectures, but only after a thorough preparation. I thought my postgrad knowledge of material science and semiconductor physics will be enough to follow the book, but no. And with all that both authors/lecturers are extremely talented science pedagogysts!
By the way, I highly recommend this little gem, if you're into particle physics.
And oh yea, I'm not going to "ask the smokin'-hot young women" about my friend because that isn't a very good pick-up line. Besides, I didn't mean that you literally go and find those women and ask them etc. It's just a conversational form, meaning (in this context) "they know first hand what kind of destruction psychopaths leave behind them". Please tell me you didn't misunderstand this, and were just itching to find some reason to "hit back" at me - though I don't know why, as I have not criticized your post, let alone your person.
And oh yea, I'm not going to "ask the smokin'-hot young women" about my friend because that isn't a very good pick-up line. Pick-up lines are not the only ones one can or should use when approaching women. It doesn't make you any less macho if you just, you know, talk to them as human beings.
"Bad boys" are only succesful with women with low self-esteem. More precisely, women who have been abused as children, or had an abusive relationship between mother and father as a model (which is also a form of abuse directed towards the child), will grow up and seek partners that will full fill their life scenario. They have learned that men are abusive towards women, and that's the only thing they know and can think of following.
Part of this is very clearly explained by Eric Berne's transactional analysis. It's fascinating that a relatively old psychological methodology can give answers to so many social phenomena - like (some) women going for the "bad boys".
What you describe is a psychopat. And if they had a clear evolutionary advantage, we'd be a society of psychopats - but we aren't. The reason being, psychopats don't do well with emotions, and emotional language. And they are not interested in children or family. They leave behind them a trail of destruction and misery. Ask the "smokin'-hot young women" your friend picked up, used and thrown away.
I never wrote anything about the awesome bar before, let alone ranted. But why would I have to be patient, when the previous product (2.x) works just great for me, and enables me to be productive, while the new one hinders me?I thought software is supposed to makes the user's life easier, not to fight with him/her.
This is the most logical move MS could have taken. They know that
1. They can't implement OOXML anyway, anytime soon. 2. Get MS Office "employable", at least formally, by those organizations that demand open formats for their documents. 3. The ISO ratification process was a bit too "noisy", so they better pacify the more gullible techies and the PHBs that followed the story (at least in a cursory way). 4. There really isn't a better tactic to destroy an open format, than embrace and extend. Remember HTML?
This was a genius move on MS's part. I don't know how the open community will parry it.
I would support this and would allow it in my back yard. Hells yeah. I wouldn't even mind living ON TOP of a nuke plant. Certainly much cleaner than within 1 Km of a coal plant. I'd get less radiation, but that's beside the point. Coal plants emit so much nasty stuff in the atmosphere, I can't understand people living in their proximity and protesting nuke plants.
I was a sysadmin for 4 years in 2 different companies. I definitely belong to the other 2 of the 3 sysadmins, in that I have never snooped my colleagues.
In fact, the idea seems totally alien to me. I could not imagine ever doing such a thing, for love or money.
I worked for 8 years in a mixed Sun/Linux shop. Well, we had HP-UX, too. In the last 2 years RedHat came into the game, and my experience with their support vs. Sun's is exactly the opposite - I got many bad advices, once even a "consult the forums" - WTF, is a 50.000-big enterprise going to trust its infrastructure on "advices from a forum"? Sure, that may be a good source. It's free, too, so why the heck are we paying 2000/year/server?
Sun's support is not infallible, but compared to RedHat's it's beautiful. Broken hardware? Replaced in 24 hours, no blameshifting, no bullshit. Technical question? Answered immediately or with a delay, but always correctly, satisfactorily in the sense that it contained The Information I am asking for, not just trying to sound informed by blathering about unrelated topics. If you don't know the stuff, just shut up and escalate or forward to someone who does.
I went for a week-long seminar to another city a few weeks back, and I got a ton of people asking me what that tiny laptop was, and they were generally pleased with the product (as I am). Now imagine someone of them going to purchase a new motherboard: "should I get this Epox, or the Asus? The Epox is a bit cheaper and gets me the same stuff as the Asus, but I feel good about Asus, they make _neat_ stuff - their motherboard is surely the better built."
The Eee was (probably still is) selling so well that it was (still is) impossible to buy it at MSRP - they were all selling it for more! Now think about that for a moment...
What I mean is, Vista seems a pain in the butt for mass deployment or reinstallations. I can easily imagine a few sysadmins going nuts and burned out over the Vista activation nightmares. Sysadmin burnouts and consequent paid sick leave should definitely figure in the TCO (Microsoft loves the "TCO" abbreviation) of Vista.
Well, ASUS made good on their announcement to remove the ASUS logo from upcoming models of the Eee PC. This is, apparently, the first step towards spinning off the Eee PC as a separate company.
My opinion? DUMB! ASUS are having the much-envied iPod moment - and they're just throwing it out of the window. The Eee PC is doing/could have done wonders for ASUS' brand name, just as iPod did for Apple's. Too afraid of success, I guess? Nicer/safer to be a mediocrity?
For the record, I am a very satisfied Eee PC 701 user. Toss it into my backpack and go riding my bike to the uni - can't even feel the little critter.
Denon's customers are relatively discerning audiophiles, who usually get (and expect) rather good value for their money. This scam will not go unnoticed, and it will cause irreparable damage to Denon's brand. Companies spend a lot on brand value, especially in the Hi-Fi marketplace. Well, Denon has just tossed it down the loo and I don't see how they can recover it.
A STP cable for $500? Not even Monster Cable pulls this sort of crap.
One of my colleagues makes hihg-energy photon (basically Gamma ray) detectors. He uses high-purity silicon wafers for the fabrication of the devices. These wafers are very effing expensive, as he needs a large bandgap. Still, 300GeV? I don't think his devices are capable of detecting such photons. I think his max is around 10GeV. Probably with high-purity GaAs it would be possible, I guess.
Because anyone who follows Microsoft knows the game is to never have the two match. So true. And one would think this is known by everyone, especially in the OSS community. Oh, but did you know that.NET is the future of Gnome?
Slashdot Mirror
Hahah, I was *so* going to make that comment, if you hadn't preceded me - you bastard ;o)
Seriously though: what's the point dragging Java in this discussion? These facts happened three decades before Java even appeared.
Mod parent up to stratosphere!!!! Microsoft is the synonym of "Death of Open Standards". There's nothing Microsoft as a corporation hates more than Open Standards and as an extension, Open Source. And I don't mean the "Microsoft of the past", I mean the Microsoft right here and now, the behemoth with billions of dollars and tens of thousands of developers under its belly, the Microsoft that COULD change the world of computing, if it wanted to, due to it's enormous installed base.
But no, THIS Microsoft is a company that has learned how to leverage that installed base, and closed or poisoned standards is what it thrives on.
Sorry but the article is crazy talk.
Coursework and diploma dissertations should be a work of creativity. And one takes pride on what he/she creates. I can't imagine a stranger doing a better job at anything I am supposed to do, than myself. Even if I am not a good coder (I am not), I'll take the time it takes and do things right.
Besides, how can these not be detected? If Matthew Proofrock would hand in coursework with horrible English grammar and style, you'd probably raise an eyebrow and start asking questions.
As for outsourcing final dissertations: if students are able to pull THAT off, the commission/panel is not asking real questions, but just being patronizing - "We don't want to embarrass our student on this day, now do we...".
I am actually studying in a non-IT field (material science, micro/nanotech, electronics), and our homeworks all require a lot of creativity. Students that just follow the dotted line and don't give anything from themselves, have little chance of having their work accepted. I don't know if that's the case everywhere, but it is here in Helsinki.
Some of Feynman's books are rather inaccessible, even to the great majority of Slashdotters: I have in my hand "Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics - The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures" by Richard Feynman and Steven Weinberg. I love this book, and I wish I could participate to the lectures, but only after a thorough preparation. I thought my postgrad knowledge of material science and semiconductor physics will be enough to follow the book, but no. And with all that both authors/lecturers are extremely talented science pedagogysts!
By the way, I highly recommend this little gem, if you're into particle physics.
Vista works well? On the Eee PC it surely doesn't. Even with 2GB of RAM installed, the machine is agonizing.
I think it's 10/90, actually. And the 10% who like Awesome Bar are berating everyone else on sites like Slashdot.
Anyhow, my numbers are as good as yours.
"Bad boys" are only succesful with women with low self-esteem. More precisely, women who have been abused as children, or had an abusive relationship between mother and father as a model (which is also a form of abuse directed towards the child), will grow up and seek partners that will full fill their life scenario. They have learned that men are abusive towards women, and that's the only thing they know and can think of following.
Part of this is very clearly explained by Eric Berne's transactional analysis. It's fascinating that a relatively old psychological methodology can give answers to so many social phenomena - like (some) women going for the "bad boys".
What you describe is a psychopat. And if they had a clear evolutionary advantage, we'd be a society of psychopats - but we aren't. The reason being, psychopats don't do well with emotions, and emotional language. And they are not interested in children or family. They leave behind them a trail of destruction and misery. Ask the "smokin'-hot young women" your friend picked up, used and thrown away.
But you are not allowed to criticize Firefox on here! You will get the coward's mod: "Overrated".
I never wrote anything about the awesome bar before, let alone ranted. But why would I have to be patient, when the previous product (2.x) works just great for me, and enables me to be productive, while the new one hinders me?I thought software is supposed to makes the user's life easier, not to fight with him/her.
Why not at least make it an option?
This is the most logical move MS could have taken. They know that
1. They can't implement OOXML anyway, anytime soon.
2. Get MS Office "employable", at least formally, by those organizations that demand open formats for their documents.
3. The ISO ratification process was a bit too "noisy", so they better pacify the more gullible techies and the PHBs that followed the story (at least in a cursory way).
4. There really isn't a better tactic to destroy an open format, than embrace and extend. Remember HTML?
This was a genius move on MS's part. I don't know how the open community will parry it.
What argument (or arguments) did you use?
I was a sysadmin for 4 years in 2 different companies. I definitely belong to the other 2 of the 3 sysadmins, in that I have never snooped my colleagues.
In fact, the idea seems totally alien to me. I could not imagine ever doing such a thing, for love or money.
I worked for 8 years in a mixed Sun/Linux shop. Well, we had HP-UX, too. In the last 2 years RedHat came into the game, and my experience with their support vs. Sun's is exactly the opposite - I got many bad advices, once even a "consult the forums" - WTF, is a 50.000-big enterprise going to trust its infrastructure on "advices from a forum"? Sure, that may be a good source. It's free, too, so why the heck are we paying 2000/year/server?
Sun's support is not infallible, but compared to RedHat's it's beautiful. Broken hardware? Replaced in 24 hours, no blameshifting, no bullshit. Technical question? Answered immediately or with a delay, but always correctly, satisfactorily in the sense that it contained The Information I am asking for, not just trying to sound informed by blathering about unrelated topics. If you don't know the stuff, just shut up and escalate or forward to someone who does.
I went for a week-long seminar to another city a few weeks back, and I got a ton of people asking me what that tiny laptop was, and they were generally pleased with the product (as I am). Now imagine someone of them going to purchase a new motherboard: "should I get this Epox, or the Asus? The Epox is a bit cheaper and gets me the same stuff as the Asus, but I feel good about Asus, they make _neat_ stuff - their motherboard is surely the better built."
The Eee was (probably still is) selling so well that it was (still is) impossible to buy it at MSRP - they were all selling it for more! Now think about that for a moment...
What I mean is, Vista seems a pain in the butt for mass deployment or reinstallations. I can easily imagine a few sysadmins going nuts and burned out over the Vista activation nightmares. Sysadmin burnouts and consequent paid sick leave should definitely figure in the TCO (Microsoft loves the "TCO" abbreviation) of Vista.
Well, ASUS made good on their announcement to remove the ASUS logo from upcoming models of the Eee PC. This is, apparently, the first step towards spinning off the Eee PC as a separate company.
My opinion? DUMB! ASUS are having the much-envied iPod moment - and they're just throwing it out of the window. The Eee PC is doing/could have done wonders for ASUS' brand name, just as iPod did for Apple's. Too afraid of success, I guess? Nicer/safer to be a mediocrity?
For the record, I am a very satisfied Eee PC 701 user. Toss it into my backpack and go riding my bike to the uni - can't even feel the little critter.
Denon's customers are relatively discerning audiophiles, who usually get (and expect) rather good value for their money. This scam will not go unnoticed, and it will cause irreparable damage to Denon's brand. Companies spend a lot on brand value, especially in the Hi-Fi marketplace. Well, Denon has just tossed it down the loo and I don't see how they can recover it.
A STP cable for $500? Not even Monster Cable pulls this sort of crap.
This is most certainly a fuel cell working in reverse - as an electrolytic cell. The membrane is most likely Nafion.
One of my colleagues makes hihg-energy photon (basically Gamma ray) detectors. He uses high-purity silicon wafers for the fabrication of the devices. These wafers are very effing expensive, as he needs a large bandgap. Still, 300GeV? I don't think his devices are capable of detecting such photons. I think his max is around 10GeV. Probably with high-purity GaAs it would be possible, I guess.