Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. Asus is protecting themselves by only giving the XP version at superstores. Otherwise, they'd have a bunch of confused users wondering why they can't run iTunes on their new computer.
The late charge is really just a token amount to discourage people from keeping a movie for months. When you're dealing with a warehouse that rents movies on-line, a few late copies of a movie you have won't affect the availability of that movie too much, since you probably have many other copies. If you're talking about a brick and mortar store, its better to maintain as few copies as needed, so its good to encourage people to return movies on time. That said, block buster also offers a discount if you return a (popular) movie the next day, and only charges the restocking fee if you're over a week late. It really isn't that hard to manage to stop by BB once a week. I rent a lot of movies.
Marathon running can definitely mess up your knees, but there is a big difference between doing 30+km runs, and 5km runs. Pretty much any exercise in that amount of excess is going to be bad for you. We just weren't made for it. Going for a 30min jog a few times a week is just fine. Just stick to soft surfaces, and keep a comfortable pace.
I also haven't seen anyone come out and explain to all us tin-foil hat wearing techies how this is actually the process working as it should. I find it hard to believe that no one has a good explanation for all this apparent misconduct, if it actually is innocent (I know, I know, they shouldn't have to prove their innocence, we should prove their guilt; but its for their own reputation).
As a side note, there may well be a good explanation and I'm just a jackass. Hopefully its posted in these comments somewhere.
BLAS is really the best solution here, since there are high performance implementations for most architectures out there (usually written by the manufacturer themselves). Using these libraries are also not limited to C/C++.
I doubt anything other than the most basic "mind control" tasks would be easier than voice recognition software. If you had a wearable GPS, wouldn't voice recognition be the easiest, best tested, keyboard free method for user input?
I'd say it would be pretty hard to convince a judge that a person who clicked on a link thinking they were getting child porn wouldn't normally do that.
Vista's file copying, w/o SP1, was so incredibly slow, you really don't need a benchmark to notice its faster either. Copying just seems like its taking a normal amount of time, as opposed to way fucking longer than it ever should.
That analogy doesn't work. There is no law saying I cannot visit a URL and read its contents. There is, however, laws against trespassing. This would be more akin to a newspaper guy putting newspapers he sells on a counter, then complaining when someone starts reading the front page off the counter without buying it. Its not illegal, but it isn't necessarily right. Now, there are laws against bypassing/breaking encryption schemes. That was set up solely for situations like this, and its really their own stupidity that they didn't take advantage of it (this is the same reason why we can't rip our own DVDs).
Not sure if you're joking either. Integrity has nothing to do with it. If MS was to ship Windows with no security holes, and had an infinite amount of money, it would still never be released. You can never guarentee software is 100% correct. The common sense thing to do would be for MS to make updates as unobtrusive as possible, and make sure users install them in a timely fashion. Right now, installing an update in Vista requires about 30 minutes of downtime (download, install, configure, etc), which is kind of ridiculous.
Electricity is definitely more important, but the question is, how do you store that electricity? Batteries are expensive, heavy, and wear out pretty quickly with a lot of use. Hydrogen can easily be stored in a tank, then converted (quickly) to electricity with hydrogen fuel cells. This is why hydrogen is seen as the saviour of electric cars; they make them practical. The only problem is getting hydrogen. This technology promises a way we could create hydrogen, perhaps at our house, that could then be used in our cars (or whatever else).
The problem is mostly likely caused by the fact that Ubuntu tries to use the nv (open source) Nvidia driver for their card, which was too new and not supported. Their problem is not typical and may have, in fact, been fixed by now (though I don't know). I've seen people with Windows boxes who get a black screen after boot because of a problem with the drivers as well. I don't believe the Ubuntu fix (boot into recovery mode, edit one line in a file, reboot, install new driver) is much harder then the Windows fix (boot into safe-mode, remove the driver, reboot, install new driver). The proprietary drivers from the Ubuntu repository should work fine, btw, beta drivers are optional (many people would use them in Windows too, rather than the Vendor supplied version). If someone is a power user of Linux or Windows they'll have no problem doing these things. If not, in both cases they'll most likely call someone or follow some simple instructions on the net.
This sort of thing is totally unacceptable. First, it might even be illegal as abuse of Microsoft's monopoly (yes, Hotmail 'works' on Linux, but it works better under Microsoft's OS). Second, there is no excuse for this. Last I checked, Gmail and Yahoo mail work perfectly fine, with all functionality, on Windows, OS X and Linux.
First) IANAL, but I doubt it is against the law to provide better versions of software/websites to Windows users than Linux, even if they have the ability (since that describes 95% of commercial software out there). Perhaps they just really want to screw over that tiny market of Linux users using Hotmail still. More than likely, the Hotmail developers are using a Whitelist of user-agents they know to work correctly, of which they didn't include linux+firefox for whatever reason (not 100% working, incompetence, malice, etc).
Second) Yes, Gmail and Yahoo work perfectly fine, so perhaps you should be using Gmail and Yahoo! (not yelling, just spelling Yahoo! correctly;) If Microsoft chooses to cripple Hotmail in another OS, the only person that is hurting is them. I'm not going to switch operating systems for a feature in a free webmail service. I can much more easily just switch my webmail service. Ad revenue speaks louder than words.
12 years? Guess I was 10 when I was playing the original DN3D. There was no rating system back then so its OK. Anyways, 22 now, love video games still. No kids, though I am engaged.
I don't remember suggesting anything of the sort, and don't quite see how you got that from my post. Your example is good though. That's one of the things they may (and probably would) account for when engineering the toilet; if it can stand the stress from someone standing on it. Every toilet has been stood on at least once or twice, so it is a fairly likely scenario. But, given that's its a toilet, the engineers aren't going to account for every single possible scenario. They have budgets, so they're not going to engineer the toilet to withstand a blast from a sledge hammer (which could result in shards flying off and hitting someone in the eye), since, you know, it is conceivable someone somewhere may accidently/purposefully smack a toilet w/ a sledge hammer. Its just too unlikely and too costly to have the toilet be able to handle that situation. The same goes with software. Its impossible to test every possible path in some software. So, there are many different testing methods available to let you choose some subset of tests that should account for the most likely situations while remaining cost efficient. Even if bugs are found, how likely is it that someone will find it? Is it standing-on-a-toilet likely, or getting-hit-with-a-sledge-hammer likely. If its the latter, it may not get fixed before the initial release. Releasing software with bugs isn't bad engineering, its good engineering. Its making that trade off between cost and reliability. Engineering isn't just engineering the hell out of something, its knowing when to make that trade off.
There are plenty of qualified engineers designing non-"life or death" products that wouldn't agree with you. I'd hardly say a using a toilet will turn into a life or death situation, but I guarentee you some engineer took great pride in his crapper. You can say this about thousands of other common things; cell phones, car climate systems, radiators, fans, key pads, etc.. Some software is related to life-or-death (you gave some examples), but much of it isn't. The same can be said for engineered products. I can guarentee you a lot more "rigour" went into the engineering of the guidance system of most airplanes than the gas tank in my car. When your designing software, you are allowed a certain amount of failures. It would simply cost way to much to create something as complex as an operating system an expect to, literally, never fail. The same goes for something like a car. Some things are extremely complex, and there are just too many variables to have it work 100% all the time. Your goal, as an ENGINEER, is to produce something that does its job with a failure rate lower than some minimum and do it within budget. Not everything engineers touch is 100% perfect or someone loses their accreditation. Cars break down routinely, nuclear reactors go off-line, giant undersea cables get cut, roads break and crack, jet engines fail, toilets leak, etc. Software engineering is about taking the standard principles of engineering and applying them software. This is where the idea of testing, monitoring failures rates, cost models, etc. come from. The same way an engineer can produce a product with some defined failure rate, so can someone create software with a defined failure rate. What makes software engineering not real engineering, as has been mentioned, is that engineers sign their name and can be held responsible for their failures directly. Although I don't see why this can't happen with software. We should be able to design software that works within predefined limits. Just because it crashes, doesn't mean someone will get sued. GM isn't sued everytime someone's MAF sensor fails. But, if someone designs some critical, one off, software for a client and guarentees a failure rate that it is obviously not meeting, then they can sue (though they can already do this already).
I believe he was saying that Vista, as an operating system, works well (good security and fairly solid system, if a bit slow at times), however Vista, as an operating system for your everday user, is garbage.
So, paraphrased: "Vista is nice, but it isn't what your customers want"
The patent system needs to be open to anyone. Fines and legal consequences would create a system where the only people filing patents are those companies that are large enough to pay the fines or have good enough lawyers to avoid the consequences. The solution lies in reforming and funding the USPTO... or doing away with software patents.
Also, compiling Gnome is not a one-step process. All of those programs are, in fact, very separate (hence why they call them "modules"). You only need to install the ones you like, no need to worry about uninstalling. Ubuntu won't start shipping w/ Anjuta installed by default, trust me:)
But there's the issue. Perhaps game consoles shouldn't be on the bleeding edge if it means they're unreliable (at their price point). Game consoles are, after all, suppose to last for years. They could've scaled back the components a bit and created a system that just works. Everytime. Or they could've put a bit more effort into managing the heat generated, probably raising the price of the console a bit. Instead they chose to sacrifice reliability for prestige and the end result is a very large number (in terms of other consoles to date) of console deaths.
In the situation you are describing, the only benefit that the software has, as open source, is that some company (probably not a software company) can try to maintain the software after you give up on it.
And of course, from the question:
There are many aspects of the application that I don't have time to refine, and other developers could definitely improve upon my work.
That wouldn't likely happen if most interested developers can't get the software/source.
1. Cost - People believe that this is a next gen system (it can be argued that it is just a Gamecube 1.5 with a new controller) Are you saying people think they will get the same graphics out of a Wii as a PS3 or 360? No one really thinks that who buys it. I know its hard to take, but people actually KNOW what they're getting when they buy the Wii.
Lastly, there are the Nintendo fanboys that will buy anything Nintendo, and they will guarantee 10 million consoles sold. The GameCube did HORRIBLY. Where were these Fanboys then? No, I don't think your right. Also, lets look at the PS3. The PS2 was a GREAT system. It sold very well (more then 5x as much as the Gamecube). Lots of Sony fanboys created in the process. Where are they now w/ the PS3? Certainly you would think there would be more Sony fanboys than Nintendo, yet Sony hasn't been doing nearly as well as Nintendo...
1+ year later, and the Wii is still sold out at stores. People have either a) still not realized the Wii "is just a Gamecube 1.5 with a new controller" or b) have realized the Wii is a new, innnovative system, that is great fun to play. I'm going w/ b, you're clearly still stuck on a
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Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. Asus is protecting themselves by only giving the XP version at superstores. Otherwise, they'd have a bunch of confused users wondering why they can't run iTunes on their new computer.
The late charge is really just a token amount to discourage people from keeping a movie for months. When you're dealing with a warehouse that rents movies on-line, a few late copies of a movie you have won't affect the availability of that movie too much, since you probably have many other copies. If you're talking about a brick and mortar store, its better to maintain as few copies as needed, so its good to encourage people to return movies on time. That said, block buster also offers a discount if you return a (popular) movie the next day, and only charges the restocking fee if you're over a week late. It really isn't that hard to manage to stop by BB once a week. I rent a lot of movies.
Alice
Marathon running can definitely mess up your knees, but there is a big difference between doing 30+km runs, and 5km runs. Pretty much any exercise in that amount of excess is going to be bad for you. We just weren't made for it. Going for a 30min jog a few times a week is just fine. Just stick to soft surfaces, and keep a comfortable pace.
I also haven't seen anyone come out and explain to all us tin-foil hat wearing techies how this is actually the process working as it should. I find it hard to believe that no one has a good explanation for all this apparent misconduct, if it actually is innocent (I know, I know, they shouldn't have to prove their innocence, we should prove their guilt; but its for their own reputation).
As a side note, there may well be a good explanation and I'm just a jackass. Hopefully its posted in these comments somewhere.
BLAS is really the best solution here, since there are high performance implementations for most architectures out there (usually written by the manufacturer themselves). Using these libraries are also not limited to C/C++.
I doubt anything other than the most basic "mind control" tasks would be easier than voice recognition software. If you had a wearable GPS, wouldn't voice recognition be the easiest, best tested, keyboard free method for user input?
I'd say it would be pretty hard to convince a judge that a person who clicked on a link thinking they were getting child porn wouldn't normally do that.
Vista's file copying, w/o SP1, was so incredibly slow, you really don't need a benchmark to notice its faster either. Copying just seems like its taking a normal amount of time, as opposed to way fucking longer than it ever should.
That analogy doesn't work. There is no law saying I cannot visit a URL and read its contents. There is, however, laws against trespassing. This would be more akin to a newspaper guy putting newspapers he sells on a counter, then complaining when someone starts reading the front page off the counter without buying it. Its not illegal, but it isn't necessarily right. Now, there are laws against bypassing/breaking encryption schemes. That was set up solely for situations like this, and its really their own stupidity that they didn't take advantage of it (this is the same reason why we can't rip our own DVDs).
AIGLX, Compiz, dual monitors (different resolutions), and fglrx work fine here.
Not sure if you're joking either. Integrity has nothing to do with it. If MS was to ship Windows with no security holes, and had an infinite amount of money, it would still never be released. You can never guarentee software is 100% correct. The common sense thing to do would be for MS to make updates as unobtrusive as possible, and make sure users install them in a timely fashion. Right now, installing an update in Vista requires about 30 minutes of downtime (download, install, configure, etc), which is kind of ridiculous.
Electricity is definitely more important, but the question is, how do you store that electricity? Batteries are expensive, heavy, and wear out pretty quickly with a lot of use. Hydrogen can easily be stored in a tank, then converted (quickly) to electricity with hydrogen fuel cells. This is why hydrogen is seen as the saviour of electric cars; they make them practical. The only problem is getting hydrogen. This technology promises a way we could create hydrogen, perhaps at our house, that could then be used in our cars (or whatever else).
The problem is mostly likely caused by the fact that Ubuntu tries to use the nv (open source) Nvidia driver for their card, which was too new and not supported. Their problem is not typical and may have, in fact, been fixed by now (though I don't know). I've seen people with Windows boxes who get a black screen after boot because of a problem with the drivers as well. I don't believe the Ubuntu fix (boot into recovery mode, edit one line in a file, reboot, install new driver) is much harder then the Windows fix (boot into safe-mode, remove the driver, reboot, install new driver). The proprietary drivers from the Ubuntu repository should work fine, btw, beta drivers are optional (many people would use them in Windows too, rather than the Vendor supplied version). If someone is a power user of Linux or Windows they'll have no problem doing these things. If not, in both cases they'll most likely call someone or follow some simple instructions on the net.
Yeah, that's true, though the FSF does provide another license to handle web services that authors can use instead.
First) IANAL, but I doubt it is against the law to provide better versions of software/websites to Windows users than Linux, even if they have the ability (since that describes 95% of commercial software out there). Perhaps they just really want to screw over that tiny market of Linux users using Hotmail still. More than likely, the Hotmail developers are using a Whitelist of user-agents they know to work correctly, of which they didn't include linux+firefox for whatever reason (not 100% working, incompetence, malice, etc).
Second) Yes, Gmail and Yahoo work perfectly fine, so perhaps you should be using Gmail and Yahoo! (not yelling, just spelling Yahoo! correctly
12 years? Guess I was 10 when I was playing the original DN3D. There was no rating system back then so its OK. Anyways, 22 now, love video games still. No kids, though I am engaged.
I don't remember suggesting anything of the sort, and don't quite see how you got that from my post. Your example is good though. That's one of the things they may (and probably would) account for when engineering the toilet; if it can stand the stress from someone standing on it. Every toilet has been stood on at least once or twice, so it is a fairly likely scenario. But, given that's its a toilet, the engineers aren't going to account for every single possible scenario. They have budgets, so they're not going to engineer the toilet to withstand a blast from a sledge hammer (which could result in shards flying off and hitting someone in the eye), since, you know, it is conceivable someone somewhere may accidently/purposefully smack a toilet w/ a sledge hammer. Its just too unlikely and too costly to have the toilet be able to handle that situation. The same goes with software. Its impossible to test every possible path in some software. So, there are many different testing methods available to let you choose some subset of tests that should account for the most likely situations while remaining cost efficient. Even if bugs are found, how likely is it that someone will find it? Is it standing-on-a-toilet likely, or getting-hit-with-a-sledge-hammer likely. If its the latter, it may not get fixed before the initial release. Releasing software with bugs isn't bad engineering, its good engineering. Its making that trade off between cost and reliability. Engineering isn't just engineering the hell out of something, its knowing when to make that trade off.
There are plenty of qualified engineers designing non-"life or death" products that wouldn't agree with you. I'd hardly say a using a toilet will turn into a life or death situation, but I guarentee you some engineer took great pride in his crapper. You can say this about thousands of other common things; cell phones, car climate systems, radiators, fans, key pads, etc.. Some software is related to life-or-death (you gave some examples), but much of it isn't. The same can be said for engineered products. I can guarentee you a lot more "rigour" went into the engineering of the guidance system of most airplanes than the gas tank in my car. When your designing software, you are allowed a certain amount of failures. It would simply cost way to much to create something as complex as an operating system an expect to, literally, never fail. The same goes for something like a car. Some things are extremely complex, and there are just too many variables to have it work 100% all the time. Your goal, as an ENGINEER, is to produce something that does its job with a failure rate lower than some minimum and do it within budget. Not everything engineers touch is 100% perfect or someone loses their accreditation. Cars break down routinely, nuclear reactors go off-line, giant undersea cables get cut, roads break and crack, jet engines fail, toilets leak, etc. Software engineering is about taking the standard principles of engineering and applying them software. This is where the idea of testing, monitoring failures rates, cost models, etc. come from. The same way an engineer can produce a product with some defined failure rate, so can someone create software with a defined failure rate. What makes software engineering not real engineering, as has been mentioned, is that engineers sign their name and can be held responsible for their failures directly. Although I don't see why this can't happen with software. We should be able to design software that works within predefined limits. Just because it crashes, doesn't mean someone will get sued. GM isn't sued everytime someone's MAF sensor fails. But, if someone designs some critical, one off, software for a client and guarentees a failure rate that it is obviously not meeting, then they can sue (though they can already do this already).
I believe he was saying that Vista, as an operating system, works well (good security and fairly solid system, if a bit slow at times), however Vista, as an operating system for your everday user, is garbage.
So, paraphrased: "Vista is nice, but it isn't what your customers want"
The patent system needs to be open to anyone. Fines and legal consequences would create a system where the only people filing patents are those companies that are large enough to pay the fines or have good enough lawyers to avoid the consequences. The solution lies in reforming and funding the USPTO... or doing away with software patents.
Also, compiling Gnome is not a one-step process. All of those programs are, in fact, very separate (hence why they call them "modules"). You only need to install the ones you like, no need to worry about uninstalling. Ubuntu won't start shipping w/ Anjuta installed by default, trust me :)
But there's the issue. Perhaps game consoles shouldn't be on the bleeding edge if it means they're unreliable (at their price point). Game consoles are, after all, suppose to last for years. They could've scaled back the components a bit and created a system that just works. Everytime. Or they could've put a bit more effort into managing the heat generated, probably raising the price of the console a bit. Instead they chose to sacrifice reliability for prestige and the end result is a very large number (in terms of other consoles to date) of console deaths.
In the situation you are describing, the only benefit that the software has, as open source, is that some company (probably not a software company) can try to maintain the software after you give up on it.
And of course, from the question:
There are many aspects of the application that I don't have time to refine, and other developers could definitely improve upon my work.
That wouldn't likely happen if most interested developers can't get the software/source.
Are you saying people think they will get the same graphics out of a Wii as a PS3 or 360? No one really thinks that who buys it. I know its hard to take, but people actually KNOW what they're getting when they buy the Wii. Lastly, there are the Nintendo fanboys that will buy anything Nintendo, and they will guarantee 10 million consoles sold. The GameCube did HORRIBLY. Where were these Fanboys then? No, I don't think your right. Also, lets look at the PS3. The PS2 was a GREAT system. It sold very well (more then 5x as much as the Gamecube). Lots of Sony fanboys created in the process. Where are they now w/ the PS3? Certainly you would think there would be more Sony fanboys than Nintendo, yet Sony hasn't been doing nearly as well as Nintendo...
1+ year later, and the Wii is still sold out at stores. People have either a) still not realized the Wii "is just a Gamecube 1.5 with a new controller" or b) have realized the Wii is a new, innnovative system, that is great fun to play. I'm going w/ b, you're clearly still stuck on a