OK, OK, hoping it is harder to crack or find a flaw in multiple (client) machines than a single one (server) and then execute it works to a certain degree. But not to fix a situation like this one. If the checksum and character files get out of sync for any reason at all, the character is toast. How do you restore it? From the client? You trust it then? What if the server is compromised and the checksums deleted or modified (an operation just as easy as modifying a server-side character file) and you don't find out for a few days? You're back to the same problem as we have here. In this case if something malicious is happening to many users Blizard can do a rollback, in the case where the data lives on the client machine everyone's shit out of luck.
Put another way, the parent post is saying there are still memory leaks in Java, they're just not the same leaks as you find in C. While in C you have to worry about not losing the address, in Java you have to look at your object lifetime and when you no longer need them and all their references, etc. In a nutshell, it's a memory leak, but a higher-level memory leak, if you will; just as Java does more low level stuff for you and you don't have to worry about misplaced pointers, you now have more abstract memory leaks. And, yes, just like C memory leaks, the Java ones come about from sloppy/careless programming, inadequate debugging or bad design.
Of course! At least they were nice about denying your fair use rights. I mean, we clearly can't have any of our rights protected against Big Corporations, any more, so we should just settle for them being nice to us, right?
Well, Apple has to make efforts to protect their trademarks and logos. If the problem is the Aqua theme (look) by itself, then it's just silly for Apple to pull the plug on that (L&F and all that history should have taught them something). But a logo they have to protect. Even if it has become something of a 'household image' (to coin an expression (or not)). Take Kleenex(tm) for example... their lawyers and PR people always insist on 'tissue' instead of 'kleenex'. Why? Isn't it good for them for everyone to be equating Kleenex with tissue? Of course it is, and whoever was in charge of the brand made a fortune, it's a true marvel of advertising and branding. But if they just give up and stop even attempting to protect their trademark, they stand to lose it. Same with Apple; no matter how silly it may be for them to make a big deal out of this they have to protect it and be seen protecting it, otherwise Apple will be losing its trademarks and exclusive right of use, pouring millions spent on advertising and promoting it.
Hmm, don't know why anyone is still reading the thread... but if you refer to the original post I replied to, its point was that MS was in breach of contract (with the temps) if they told them they'd be hired full time any day now, just hang on a while longer. I see your point, a contract is a contract is a contract, whether written or spoken. But was MS's offer to the temps serious? How was it phrased, in what context, etc... we don't know, so we're both just guessing.
But let me nitpick for a second here... the contracts were between temps and their agencies, and MS and the agencies. Aha! so MS by promising temps full time positions _was_ in breach of contract, but not with the temps, with the agencies! (surely there was a clause in there to prevent MS 'stealing' their employees)
So upon further pondering, the sticking point seems to be: were MS's promises to the temps oral contracts and is MS being bad by renegging on them? I say no, since there was no contract IMO, at most a consideration or an offer to a contract. So there!;)
BTW, also consider that along with the high licensing prices MS charges, their overall profit margin is 42%. That's right, MS is not just convering their costs + a little profit. So when they claim (like in, say, the anti-trust trial) the price of Windows is not unreasonable and is just recovering R&D and forcibly lowering it would cause huge hardship on the company (and, of course, the entire digital economy, because MS is such an essential part of it as we all know) and, not to mention, think of the children, take it with a grain of salt. From every dollar you spend on MS software MS takes a huge chunk after their break even point. Compare this to 2-3% margins in the retail sector. And they're not even selling a real product, heck, they're not even selling it, just licensing!
Yes, MS buys lots of its own stock. Last quarter alone (according to SEC filings) they spent $1.75B repurchasing stock (about 25M shares @ $60). This buoys up the stock price a bit. Along with various accounting trickery such as employee options MS is able to spread out its losses and gains over a longer period as opposed to absorbing it all at once and makes its stock more stable and attractive to investors. MS appears to be the most stable software company; most go through cycles during the year (for example, summers are usually slow).
If the employees were told that they would definitely be made full-time at some point, then there would be a breach of contract.
No it wouldn't. How much do you want to bet their contract with the temp agency and the agencies' contract with MS didn't include any full-time hire clauses?
You can look at this as poor, fearful and powerless temps being taken for a ride by half-promises and innuendo by the greedy and sadistical MS, or greedy, self-interested temps playing both sides to get a better deal by screwing them both. As long as they work their agency gets a cut, MS has cheap(er) employees and the temps have nice machines to touch up their resumes on.
MS may not have played nice with the temps by dangling them a carrot, but rest assured the temps are no angels either. It's definitely not a breach of contract.
I can't understant how anyone can get by without right-click, especially in Windows. I right click everything. Copying/moving/deleting files, viewing properties of just about everything... and for Quake of course, you need at least 3 buttons plus a scroll wheel.
The basic premise of UI and feature design given today's busy desktops is that if it's not on by default it might as well not be there. Very few users change defaults, or even know it can be done. Same with right-click. Very few users know about it or what it does since most of the time right-clicking goves you nothing or nothing useful/understandable.
I think it's just a matter of experience but you can't change user behaviour easily and it's just one of those 'obscure' things most people don't know about.
Lazar? Sounds familiar... if he is who I think he is... he's the guy who claims to have worked at Area 51 and analyzed the propulsion system of a UFO. It's not magnetic, it's gravitation based. There are a number of gravity field generators creating a small well just in front of the craft, and the craft 'falls' into it, and is it moves, so does the well, and so on.
His background is rather questionable, and so is his story.
OK, OK, I admit, I'm a little confused about these new 64 bit chips. I know Intel's Itanium will require everything to be recompiled (and rewritten where 32 bit assupmtions are made). AMD's Sledgehammer will also require everything to be recompiled to take advantage of the new mojo. But, but, here is the important question, the two are not the same? They will have different instructions sets? Or no? If they do, won't it basically come down to marketing because vendor (read: MS) support will be critical?
Well, I have my home machine as an anecdote. Running lots of servers 24/7 (http, ftp, smtp, pop3, imap, finger, dns, mysql, napster (does it count? you bet, with the network traffic it generates) and also running 24/7 icq, winamp, mozilla, ie, dnetc, emacs, tssh, dos, diablo 2 (yes, 24/7) and a bunch of utils and system stuff . This is in addition to the occasional heavy-tasking things like ripping/encoding, quake, gnutella... Phew! I'd like to see a server (any os) loaded this much. Uptime so far: 4 weeks and no problems yet (processes stuck, things that don't work consistantly, and other things Win98 used to do). This is since the last os update, when I also installed some new hardware (hey, even linux guys have to reboot on kernel patches!)
Netscape 6 and IE whill change colors from blue to red on all the links, Mozilla M18 and konquereor WONT!
Ah, see, there's your problem. Grab a recent nightly build of Mozilla. I think you'll be impressed. I also got M18 and was very disappointed, but then 'risked' a nightly build (I thought they were for developers/testers only) and it has progressed a lot.
Couple of major layout problems still outstanding:
OnMouseOvers are _still_ broken (see php.net for an example).
CSS inheritance needs a lot of work (style applied onto a table for example does not get inherited by the contained text, you have to apply the style to every TD). Something really screwy and inconsistant is going on there.
Those 2 fixed + out of the box SSL support and Mozilla will become my regular browser.
Without knowing what actually went down behind the scenes, and NBAL (not being a lawyer)... a possibility would be a breach of contract (EULA) suit. The license counting would just be part of discovery.
Oh my, check out the moderation on that post: funny, informative, underrated, redundant, troll. Looks like moderators are having turkey hang-overs today.
In most countries the local pronounciation of 'business' (either as a direct translation or a borrowed word) includes a very sharp 'z' sound, which is quite softened for English speakers. If the TLD was '.bus' instead I think you'd see much more confusion, not the other way around.
YEah, and anyhow, he's assuming half ISP customers use Napster, and fully 100% of those use it so much they would go to the reouble of switching ISPs... yeah, that's gonna happen. Napster's cool, but it's not a killer application, and really, it's not very good.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, OK, hoping it is harder to crack or find a flaw in multiple (client) machines than a single one (server) and then execute it works to a certain degree. But not to fix a situation like this one. If the checksum and character files get out of sync for any reason at all, the character is toast. How do you restore it? From the client? You trust it then? What if the server is compromised and the checksums deleted or modified (an operation just as easy as modifying a server-side character file) and you don't find out for a few days? You're back to the same problem as we have here. In this case if something malicious is happening to many users Blizard can do a rollback, in the case where the data lives on the client machine everyone's shit out of luck.
Geez©©© the site's not even /©ed yet ¥it's well after midnight in the US and it's already Server Error 500 time© Oh well, that's what you get for running servlets without a scalable n-tier architecture designed by a certified e-commerce professional©
I mean, really straight forward stuff, but it's scary how many people would be totally amazed how you can put a couple simple concepts together to get something working©
Bad analogy, it's not your fault the kid drowned in your pool© The kid was arrogant/disrespectful ¥entering private property and using someone else's pool and/or dumb ¥by falling in/drowning© Oh wait, you live in the US©©© what's your address again? ¥You can be sued even if you had the pool properly secured, it's amazing how civil suits have nothing at all to do with criminal law©
Well, no, there won't be an end to the graphics card silliness© Just look over the recent /© headlines on display technologies© Just today someone or other announced they have found a way to pack 10000 'pixels' per sq inch© Now expand that to a 19 inch display surface, and you have a lot of pixels© This means more detailed scenes, higher fill rates, everything suddenly needs to be an order of magnitude more accurate and sharp to look good on these displays©
Put another way, the parent post is saying there are still memory leaks in Java, they're just not the same leaks as you find in C. While in C you have to worry about not losing the address, in Java you have to look at your object lifetime and when you no longer need them and all their references, etc. In a nutshell, it's a memory leak, but a higher-level memory leak, if you will; just as Java does more low level stuff for you and you don't have to worry about misplaced pointers, you now have more abstract memory leaks. And, yes, just like C memory leaks, the Java ones come about from sloppy/careless programming, inadequate debugging or bad design.
Well, Apple has to make efforts to protect their trademarks and logos. If the problem is the Aqua theme (look) by itself, then it's just silly for Apple to pull the plug on that (L&F and all that history should have taught them something). But a logo they have to protect. Even if it has become something of a 'household image' (to coin an expression (or not)). Take Kleenex(tm) for example... their lawyers and PR people always insist on 'tissue' instead of 'kleenex'. Why? Isn't it good for them for everyone to be equating Kleenex with tissue? Of course it is, and whoever was in charge of the brand made a fortune, it's a true marvel of advertising and branding. But if they just give up and stop even attempting to protect their trademark, they stand to lose it. Same with Apple; no matter how silly it may be for them to make a big deal out of this they have to protect it and be seen protecting it, otherwise Apple will be losing its trademarks and exclusive right of use, pouring millions spent on advertising and promoting it.
But let me nitpick for a second here... the contracts were between temps and their agencies, and MS and the agencies. Aha! so MS by promising temps full time positions _was_ in breach of contract, but not with the temps, with the agencies! (surely there was a clause in there to prevent MS 'stealing' their employees)
So upon further pondering, the sticking point seems to be: were MS's promises to the temps oral contracts and is MS being bad by renegging on them? I say no, since there was no contract IMO, at most a consideration or an offer to a contract. So there! ;)
BTW, also consider that along with the high licensing prices MS charges, their overall profit margin is 42%. That's right, MS is not just convering their costs + a little profit. So when they claim (like in, say, the anti-trust trial) the price of Windows is not unreasonable and is just recovering R&D and forcibly lowering it would cause huge hardship on the company (and, of course, the entire digital economy, because MS is such an essential part of it as we all know) and, not to mention, think of the children, take it with a grain of salt. From every dollar you spend on MS software MS takes a huge chunk after their break even point. Compare this to 2-3% margins in the retail sector. And they're not even selling a real product, heck, they're not even selling it, just licensing!
Yes, MS buys lots of its own stock. Last quarter alone (according to SEC filings) they spent $1.75B repurchasing stock (about 25M shares @ $60). This buoys up the stock price a bit. Along with various accounting trickery such as employee options MS is able to spread out its losses and gains over a longer period as opposed to absorbing it all at once and makes its stock more stable and attractive to investors. MS appears to be the most stable software company; most go through cycles during the year (for example, summers are usually slow).
No it wouldn't. How much do you want to bet their contract with the temp agency and the agencies' contract with MS didn't include any full-time hire clauses?
You can look at this as poor, fearful and powerless temps being taken for a ride by half-promises and innuendo by the greedy and sadistical MS, or greedy, self-interested temps playing both sides to get a better deal by screwing them both. As long as they work their agency gets a cut, MS has cheap(er) employees and the temps have nice machines to touch up their resumes on.
MS may not have played nice with the temps by dangling them a carrot, but rest assured the temps are no angels either. It's definitely not a breach of contract.
You can also turn off the 'automagic' menu resorting... see www.regedit.com for more usability goodness.
I can't understant how anyone can get by without right-click, especially in Windows. I right click everything. Copying/moving/deleting files, viewing properties of just about everything... and for Quake of course, you need at least 3 buttons plus a scroll wheel.
The basic premise of UI and feature design given today's busy desktops is that if it's not on by default it might as well not be there. Very few users change defaults, or even know it can be done. Same with right-click. Very few users know about it or what it does since most of the time right-clicking goves you nothing or nothing useful/understandable.
I think it's just a matter of experience but you can't change user behaviour easily and it's just one of those 'obscure' things most people don't know about.
His background is rather questionable, and so is his story.
Haha! OK, I know everyone was thinking this as they were reading this particular passage. I know you were!
Hehe, now imagine a beowolf... er, a roomfull of these! An Itanium orgy!
OK, OK, I admit, I'm a little confused about these new 64 bit chips. I know Intel's Itanium will require everything to be recompiled (and rewritten where 32 bit assupmtions are made). AMD's Sledgehammer will also require everything to be recompiled to take advantage of the new mojo. But, but, here is the important question, the two are not the same? They will have different instructions sets? Or no? If they do, won't it basically come down to marketing because vendor (read: MS) support will be critical?
Well, I have my home machine as an anecdote. Running lots of servers 24/7 (http, ftp, smtp, pop3, imap, finger, dns, mysql, napster (does it count? you bet, with the network traffic it generates) and also running 24/7 icq, winamp, mozilla, ie, dnetc, emacs, tssh, dos, diablo 2 (yes, 24/7) and a bunch of utils and system stuff . This is in addition to the occasional heavy-tasking things like ripping/encoding, quake, gnutella... Phew! I'd like to see a server (any os) loaded this much. Uptime so far: 4 weeks and no problems yet (processes stuck, things that don't work consistantly, and other things Win98 used to do). This is since the last os update, when I also installed some new hardware (hey, even linux guys have to reboot on kernel patches!)
Aww, foo, learn RPN and get with the program already. Get an HP calculator and you'll be whipped into shape in no time.
Yes, and that would be right beside the X marking the center of the known world...
Oh wow, what a difference, I always forget to set the doctype since it seems like such an 'optional' element.
Ah, see, there's your problem. Grab a recent nightly build of Mozilla. I think you'll be impressed. I also got M18 and was very disappointed, but then 'risked' a nightly build (I thought they were for developers/testers only) and it has progressed a lot.
Couple of major layout problems still outstanding:
Those 2 fixed + out of the box SSL support and Mozilla will become my regular browser.
Without knowing what actually went down behind the scenes, and NBAL (not being a lawyer)... a possibility would be a breach of contract (EULA) suit. The license counting would just be part of discovery.
Oh my, check out the moderation on that post: funny, informative, underrated, redundant, troll. Looks like moderators are having turkey hang-overs today.
In most countries the local pronounciation of 'business' (either as a direct translation or a borrowed word) includes a very sharp 'z' sound, which is quite softened for English speakers. If the TLD was '.bus' instead I think you'd see much more confusion, not the other way around.
YEah, and anyhow, he's assuming half ISP customers use Napster, and fully 100% of those use it so much they would go to the reouble of switching ISPs... yeah, that's gonna happen. Napster's cool, but it's not a killer application, and really, it's not very good.