If more Developers were like the GP and had an older computer, maybe we would see less bloat in programs today.
Your recommendation is appalling. His computer works fine. He needs a text editor and a compiler. Why should he upgrade his computer ? In the real world, we professionals like to spend our disposable income on something else than bigger and better text editing machines, seeing how most computers from the late 90s can still edit text like the best of the best.
CS isn't about Languages or APIs. It's about learning the fundamentals of programming, including algorithms, basic program structures and how to effectively build and a program, Object-Oriented design, Database normalization, denormalization and design.
Languages and APIs are secondary. If you know how to write code, you can pick up either through its documentation in no time. It's not a University's job to teach you these. You can pretty much use any language on any platform to learn programming, since fundamentally, a Unix based C program is the same thing as a Windows based VB.net program. You have inputs, an interface, outputs and structures and algorithms. If you try to cram complicated APIs, you'll spend too much time on the actual API then on the parts of the program that are really what you're trying to teach. printf(); is as good as anyone needs to make an interface for educational purposes. You don't need a WinMain() and a WndProc() with a message loop to teach about sorting.
If you want to specifically learn how to code in a language with a specific API, go to a technical college. There you will learn how to do a GUI version of Hello World. You'll know squat about actual programming, but you'll know a language and an API and once someone has designed a program, you'll probably be able to implement it, as long as someone gives you complete algorithms.
This is the problem with students these days. They forgot they need to learn about programming before learning Languages and APIs. Like anything in life, the basics are more important, the specifics you can learn on your own once you have the basics mastered.
And Mini-disc is very popular in Asia. Just because it failed in your small part of the world doesn't mean it didn't take off somewhere where there's an actual population bassin.
It's funny how people always bash Sony for even trying to bring new stuff out to market.
Apple are free to release their putative fix to the community, or not - their free choice. That's one more freedom, relative to being obliged to release any changes they make which lead to a binary release outisde of Apple, which the GPL would oblige.
There are plenty of folk who see that as a feature not a flaw. Your view of the freedom offered by the GPL is flawed my little BSD troll. How you managed to get that high of a score on your post shows how many of the little devils have moderation points today.
The GPL isn't about developper freedom, it's about the code's freedom. No matter who decides to pick up and distribute a fork of your project, your users are always sure the source will remain open if the corporate entity decides that it no longer wants to distribute its forks. Hence, they are assured that the modifications done over time are always available and can be included in the main tree of your project if need be.
There are plenty of folk who see that as a feature, not a flaw.
Just pulling 1 desktop at a time for upgrading is nice and dandy, but what about mass-upgrades ? You can't just pull all nodes from the distributed network and hope all the blank PCs you put in manage to replicate data from thin air. So in the end, you can't just buy a batch of machines and upgrade an entire department in 1 night.
Also, anytime you run client updates through some automated system like Tivoli or SUS, you just rebooted your network based storage since pretty much the whole park is going to reboot at the same time.
Also, you're now generating much greater network load for writes/reads since parity and mirroring is now occurring over the network instead of over your storage array's internal bus. This will impact desktop network performance or generate some unwanted costs.
Speaking of networks, if you happen to lose a switch, instead of those PCs not being to be able to get on the network, you run the risk of losing too many nodes in your virtual RAID which could cause a major failure where everyone is not able to access the data in the company instead of just the people who were on that particular switch/interface card.
In the end, I don't think it is worth it from a budget perspective. There are all kinds of storage arrays for all kinds of budgets on the market that will provide the needed redundancy and fault tolerance. These will be placed in a controlled environment, namely your datacenter or server room and won't be at the mercy of a user using it as a Desktop PC.
The question is not the usefulness of network based storage, the question is the cost, both associated with the initial deployment and the support of the chosen solution and the problems it might add due to complexity. In the end, if you really need extra storage, your money is probably better spent on a NAS, either very low-end like Buffalo Technologies or QNAP for small businesses up to big arrays or even SANs for large businesses.
I think the biggest point everyone is missing here is how do you upgrade the desktops once their part of your storage network ? This is the type of added complexity that makes this solution just not worth it.
The poster asked how to use the wasted space on all the Desktops in his business by pooling them as one big hard drive. So yes, we are in fact looking for ways to make 1 big hard drive, not just share files, and yes, we're pretty sure he's not running a Windows Server Family Operating System (tm).
No, he's accusing you of racism because you made a racist remark. Obama is more than just "that black guy running". If you'd bothered to actually listen to him and read up on his campaign plan, you'd know that.
I remember when I first started playing with Linux. I wanted to use KDE 2. So I had to download it and install it myself. This was when you installed Linux and got a command prompt. Of course, this was after I defragged my Windows 3.1 pagefile and used FIPS to partition the drive. I was proud of myself that I got it to work. KDE isn't that old. By the time 2.0 came out, Windows 98 was on the market. The KDE project was announced in 1996, 1 year after Windows 95 was released. By that time, most distros already had default installs that installed X and FVWM.
That's a pretty ironic statement, too, because you're saying that Sun really wanted KDE but had to settle for Gnome. Why do you think that is? I think it's because of licensing issues. Yeah, the GPL did work in this instance. Sun doesn't get a high quality product it wants if it doesn't want to play ball and keep the source open. Instead, they're profiting off GNOME's back.
When I use Gnome it feels like somebody took KDE and broke it. The most ironic part of that statement and of the OP's post is that the most successful commercial fork of Gnome, the Java Desktop System, was made to look more like KDE than GNOME.
Really, what happened to Slashdot. I'm surprised there hasn't been any mention of Nokia buying Trolltech. Pretty big news, I think. http://dot.kde.org/1201517986/ Maybe it's been posted, but I haven't seen it.
So because you haven't seen it, you automatically assume something is wrong with slashdot ? The only thing wrong here is you:
You have no clue what you are talking about and it shows. First off, Ubuntu doesn't write drivers for your ATI card, ATI/AMD does, or the Kernel developpers attempt to from documentation provided by AMD/ATI (see the common point there ?). Second, APIs don't change in *nix kernel every minor revision, otherwise all the kernel drivers would have to be changed to reflect it and the changelogs would be 200 pages long to reflect all those changes, bringing about long delays as all maintainers have to adapt to the new fantasy API changes after they have been committed.
And finally, you're just a poor troll. Learn to read compatibility lists. No one blames Windows Vista when their hardware doesn't work because of lack of drivers, they blame the OEM for not writing proper Vista drivers.
Unless the copyright terms were less than a week, no, what you are saying is false. Allofmp3.com had a ROMS license to broadcast music, and even then, the RIAA doesn't recognize ROMS as a proper licensee, even though it is a legal entity in Russia.
I shopped a lot at Allofmp3.com and now at their sister site, mp3sparks.com. However, there is no denying that their insane prices were in part due to not giving anything back to the artists/record companies. You can scream all you want about artists not really getting much back from record companies all you want, but 0.01$ is still more than 0.00$.
This is good news since refilling your balance at mp3sparks was getting complicated. Plus you get the added benefit of money actually going to the artists without having to suffer through locked down formats. All players play mp3 nowadays, not all of them play AAC or WMA.
Except Linus doesn't work on Desktop environments. He works on the Kernel. Whatever desktop he sees or uses isn't going to influence the desktops running right now on top of Linux.
If he actually submitted code to KDE (the desktop environment he runs), maybe your post would make sense.
You feel validated in what way ? What is it exactly that the "leader of the free world" appears to agree with ?
As it stands, Linux on PPC or Linux on x86 will have the same issues of configuration files, and of X11 "sucking" (which is doesn't btw, maybe you should be more precise on this point, what is it that you don't like about X11 the protocol ?).
Ok, so some sites offer torrents with a proper license so as to remove doubt about their legality vis-a-vis copyright regulations... And ?
This won't change the fact that the MPAA and RIAA are going against sites like Suprnova or Lokitorrents, and rightly so. I don't think no one ever questionned the protocol itself. Why this sudden urge to "legitimize" it. It's already legitimate, big corps use it themselves (see Blizzard and their modified version).
However, the fact that you don't see why this is needed doesn't mean it isn't needed. Half of those lines and their cryptic arguments is to ensure that some bug doesn't show up. Or that some programmer in deepest Africa can use his native language consisting of tounge-clicks.
And that my friend is the original point of this thread. Just adding code/cryptic arguments to bypass bugs is sign of a weak design to begin with. Bugs should be in functionality, not in the design of the API itself.
But it was not localization. Try reading up on the Mixer API for Windows. It is cludge over cludge. The functions take over 10 parameters each, even to do simple things. You need to get a handle on 3 different objects before you can do anything usefull. Compared to other APIs i've seen, Win32 is by far the one that has you going through many hoops to do 1 thing. Everytime.
.NET could have been a fresh start. But they decided to wrap Win32 yet again.
Microsoft sits on a treasure chest, namely 10 years of bugfixed, known-to-be-working code.
That would be great, if the Win32 API and all other extensions of it weren't brain dead to begin with.
The problem isn't the code itself, but rather the design that was put in it, ie, none at all. It takes 60 lines of code just to get things ready to do something.
I wrote a simple application in C using Win32 to just mute/unmute the Main Volume Control. Took 120 lines of code spread out over 5 different functions. This is not withstanding their really broken event system where you don't attach callbacks to the events you want, you just get sent everything and if you don't need to redefine a default event, you need to then ship back yourself to the default handler.
Slashdot Mirror
Bah, 1,793$ power cords are for chumps. This 12', 7,250$ speaker cable pair is what you really need :
http://www.pearcable.com/sub_products_anjou_sc.htm
If more Developers were like the GP and had an older computer, maybe we would see less bloat in programs today.
Your recommendation is appalling. His computer works fine. He needs a text editor and a compiler. Why should he upgrade his computer ? In the real world, we professionals like to spend our disposable income on something else than bigger and better text editing machines, seeing how most computers from the late 90s can still edit text like the best of the best.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7614fe22-8a64-4dfb-aa0c-db53035f40a0&DisplayLang=en
The same is true of every SDK Microsoft every produced. You don't need Visual Studio to develop Windows apps.
CS isn't about Languages or APIs. It's about learning the fundamentals of programming, including algorithms, basic program structures and how to effectively build and a program, Object-Oriented design, Database normalization, denormalization and design.
Languages and APIs are secondary. If you know how to write code, you can pick up either through its documentation in no time. It's not a University's job to teach you these. You can pretty much use any language on any platform to learn programming, since fundamentally, a Unix based C program is the same thing as a Windows based VB.net program. You have inputs, an interface, outputs and structures and algorithms. If you try to cram complicated APIs, you'll spend too much time on the actual API then on the parts of the program that are really what you're trying to teach. printf(); is as good as anyone needs to make an interface for educational purposes. You don't need a WinMain() and a WndProc() with a message loop to teach about sorting.
If you want to specifically learn how to code in a language with a specific API, go to a technical college. There you will learn how to do a GUI version of Hello World. You'll know squat about actual programming, but you'll know a language and an API and once someone has designed a program, you'll probably be able to implement it, as long as someone gives you complete algorithms.
This is the problem with students these days. They forgot they need to learn about programming before learning Languages and APIs. Like anything in life, the basics are more important, the specifics you can learn on your own once you have the basics mastered.
How about these successful standards :
Compact Disc : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc
3.5" Floppy : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#New_3.0-3.5.22_formats
Betacam : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacam
And Mini-disc is very popular in Asia. Just because it failed in your small part of the world doesn't mean it didn't take off somewhere where there's an actual population bassin.
It's funny how people always bash Sony for even trying to bring new stuff out to market.
There are plenty of folk who see that as a feature not a flaw. Your view of the freedom offered by the GPL is flawed my little BSD troll. How you managed to get that high of a score on your post shows how many of the little devils have moderation points today.
The GPL isn't about developper freedom, it's about the code's freedom. No matter who decides to pick up and distribute a fork of your project, your users are always sure the source will remain open if the corporate entity decides that it no longer wants to distribute its forks. Hence, they are assured that the modifications done over time are always available and can be included in the main tree of your project if need be.
There are plenty of folk who see that as a feature, not a flaw.
Just pulling 1 desktop at a time for upgrading is nice and dandy, but what about mass-upgrades ? You can't just pull all nodes from the distributed network and hope all the blank PCs you put in manage to replicate data from thin air. So in the end, you can't just buy a batch of machines and upgrade an entire department in 1 night.
Also, anytime you run client updates through some automated system like Tivoli or SUS, you just rebooted your network based storage since pretty much the whole park is going to reboot at the same time.
Also, you're now generating much greater network load for writes/reads since parity and mirroring is now occurring over the network instead of over your storage array's internal bus. This will impact desktop network performance or generate some unwanted costs.
Speaking of networks, if you happen to lose a switch, instead of those PCs not being to be able to get on the network, you run the risk of losing too many nodes in your virtual RAID which could cause a major failure where everyone is not able to access the data in the company instead of just the people who were on that particular switch/interface card.
In the end, I don't think it is worth it from a budget perspective. There are all kinds of storage arrays for all kinds of budgets on the market that will provide the needed redundancy and fault tolerance. These will be placed in a controlled environment, namely your datacenter or server room and won't be at the mercy of a user using it as a Desktop PC.
The question is not the usefulness of network based storage, the question is the cost, both associated with the initial deployment and the support of the chosen solution and the problems it might add due to complexity. In the end, if you really need extra storage, your money is probably better spent on a NAS, either very low-end like Buffalo Technologies or QNAP for small businesses up to big arrays or even SANs for large businesses.
I think the biggest point everyone is missing here is how do you upgrade the desktops once their part of your storage network ? This is the type of added complexity that makes this solution just not worth it.
The poster asked how to use the wasted space on all the Desktops in his business by pooling them as one big hard drive. So yes, we are in fact looking for ways to make 1 big hard drive, not just share files, and yes, we're pretty sure he's not running a Windows Server Family Operating System (tm).
So you can count DFS as a big NOGO.
No, he's accusing you of racism because you made a racist remark. Obama is more than just "that black guy running". If you'd bothered to actually listen to him and read up on his campaign plan, you'd know that.
So because you haven't seen it, you automatically assume something is wrong with slashdot ? The only thing wrong here is you
http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/28/136204
You have no clue what you are talking about and it shows. First off, Ubuntu doesn't write drivers for your ATI card, ATI/AMD does, or the Kernel developpers attempt to from documentation provided by AMD/ATI (see the common point there ?). Second, APIs don't change in *nix kernel every minor revision, otherwise all the kernel drivers would have to be changed to reflect it and the changelogs would be 200 pages long to reflect all those changes, bringing about long delays as all maintainers have to adapt to the new fantasy API changes after they have been committed.
And finally, you're just a poor troll. Learn to read compatibility lists. No one blames Windows Vista when their hardware doesn't work because of lack of drivers, they blame the OEM for not writing proper Vista drivers.
Unless the copyright terms were less than a week, no, what you are saying is false. Allofmp3.com had a ROMS license to broadcast music, and even then, the RIAA doesn't recognize ROMS as a proper licensee, even though it is a legal entity in Russia.
It's a big blackhole.
The Linux version of the downloader is in the works :
:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200154260
If you use Linux, you can currently buy individual songs. A Linux version of the Amazon MP3 Downloader is under development, and when released will allow entire album purchases.
Though not very well supported, the Windows downloader works in Wine
http://mad-scientist.us/amazon.html
I shopped a lot at Allofmp3.com and now at their sister site, mp3sparks.com. However, there is no denying that their insane prices were in part due to not giving anything back to the artists/record companies. You can scream all you want about artists not really getting much back from record companies all you want, but 0.01$ is still more than 0.00$.
This is good news since refilling your balance at mp3sparks was getting complicated. Plus you get the added benefit of money actually going to the artists without having to suffer through locked down formats. All players play mp3 nowadays, not all of them play AAC or WMA.
Except Linus doesn't work on Desktop environments. He works on the Kernel. Whatever desktop he sees or uses isn't going to influence the desktops running right now on top of Linux.
If he actually submitted code to KDE (the desktop environment he runs), maybe your post would make sense.
You feel validated in what way ? What is it exactly that the "leader of the free world" appears to agree with ?
As it stands, Linux on PPC or Linux on x86 will have the same issues of configuration files, and of X11 "sucking" (which is doesn't btw, maybe you should be more precise on this point, what is it that you don't like about X11 the protocol ?).
Ok, so some sites offer torrents with a proper license so as to remove doubt about their legality vis-a-vis copyright regulations... And ?
This won't change the fact that the MPAA and RIAA are going against sites like Suprnova or Lokitorrents, and rightly so. I don't think no one ever questionned the protocol itself. Why this sudden urge to "legitimize" it. It's already legitimate, big corps use it themselves (see Blizzard and their modified version).
However, the fact that you don't see why this is needed doesn't mean it isn't needed. Half of those lines and their cryptic arguments is to ensure that some bug doesn't show up. Or that some programmer in deepest Africa can use his native language consisting of tounge-clicks.
And that my friend is the original point of this thread. Just adding code/cryptic arguments to bypass bugs is sign of a weak design to begin with. Bugs should be in functionality, not in the design of the API itself.
But it was not localization. Try reading up on the Mixer API for Windows. It is cludge over cludge. The functions take over 10 parameters each, even to do simple things. You need to get a handle on 3 different objects before you can do anything usefull. Compared to other APIs i've seen, Win32 is by far the one that has you going through many hoops to do 1 thing. Everytime.
.NET could have been a fresh start. But they decided to wrap Win32 yet again.
Microsoft sits on a treasure chest, namely 10 years of bugfixed, known-to-be-working code.
That would be great, if the Win32 API and all other extensions of it weren't brain dead to begin with.
The problem isn't the code itself, but rather the design that was put in it, ie, none at all. It takes 60 lines of code just to get things ready to do something.
I wrote a simple application in C using Win32 to just mute/unmute the Main Volume Control. Took 120 lines of code spread out over 5 different functions. This is not withstanding their really broken event system where you don't attach callbacks to the events you want, you just get sent everything and if you don't need to redefine a default event, you need to then ship back yourself to the default handler.