I think that they are too big now to download with dialup, which means each time you go online, there is a risk that your computer gets a virus, spyware, etc.
Modern viruses do not harm too much the computer but they still make it slower, less reliable..
Many people don't understand/care about security (especially those who tend to be on dialup), but IMHO to have a 'healthy' computer there is now middle ground either you stay off-line or you use broadband (and patch your computer).
Note that using Linux on dialup is not without drawbacks too: bugfix version of OOo, FF, etc are not light too, even though it is more about fixing/improving apps than about security problems.
I doubt it: there is no flash (or only some ads) in the website I'm visitating..
I think that FF doesn't release correctly the memory used by images.
The strange thing is that even if I have 1GB of RAM, when FF use 300MB it slow down quite a lot (takes a long time to maximise for example) even though I have lots of RAM still free.
And I remember a BBC documentary on which there were some bugs which used 3 different type of animals to reproduce! Snails, goats and ants, see here: http://www.weichtiere.at/Mollusks/Schnecken/parasi tismus/dicrocoelium.html And they take control of the ants so that it can be easily eaten by goats.
I was truly bewildered when I watched this BBC documentary, it's really incredible: no book author would write something like this: it would be reject as too 'far fetched' and yet..
I can! (at least for Perl) In the same way that C or Java (even written by a beginner) is easier to maintain than Perl: be it beginners or be it gurus, both tend to write unreadable, unmaintainable Perl programs, where you have quite often to delve into the books just to be sure that two unreadable lines can really be rewritten in two equivalent line that a beginner can understand..
That's a slippery slope: do making violent movies/games encourage murder? Does distributing documentary of murders encourage murders?
Somehow, this looks like double standard to me.. I really don't think that you should be indicted for burning CDs, it's all pixels in the end.. Well, except of course if the guy has given money to access the website, *that* is a serious crime, wanking off in front of pixels whatever those pixels represent is not.
>What advantages could something like Alpha have over x86 now?
Have x86 caught in the SpecFP? RISCs or Itanium tended to spank x86s on FP computations due to better memory subsystem (this is no longer an advantage) and to better FPU (here I'm not sure that x86 have caught up).
Well if memory serves, the new Itanium will removes their x86 and use software emulation instead. That said I don't think that this will improve their performance much: I bet the problem is more in the man-month needed to maintain this part than about the transistors used.
> It's also true that the monarchy lacks any real power and is kept around out of tradition.
Ahem, money is power, and last I looked this is a damn expensive tradition (not that I really mind: I'm not English, the money doesn't come from my pocket).
> why bother uncumbering the code with declarative statements
Well that's a cost/benefit choice but ':=' instead of '=' for declaration isn't a lot of clutter! And while mispelling which cannot be caught by compiler/pylint are rare, they're quite difficult to find: humans are not very good at distinguishing striker and strikr embedded among lots of code.
I'm in favor of passing argument by name instead of position (for function having more than 1 parameter) : not only it helps making fewer errors while writing code, it is also quite good for readability (it works even for printed/mailed code, no need of an IDE), now should it be mandatory? That's a difficult choice.
About the other thing you said: additionnal statements slow down writing code and add visual clutter so of course it's a tradeoff. But as said using ':=' instead of '=' slow down writing very little (only when you move existing code otherwise when you introduce a new variable you know it so it's not a problem) and it has basically no visual clutter, calling a function with parameter names instead of position: in both case you need to know the signature of the function to call it properly so it doesn't slow down the writing, sure it adds a little visual clutter but it also adds information for the reader so I consider it worthwile.
About Freedom, sorry but it isn't Python's strong point: it's Perl's strong point and we all know how TWTDI can hurt code maintenability, Python is more about consistency.
In a sufficient big body of code, this exemple is likely to happen and show the danger of automatic variable declaration. Sure pylint catch other errors but why allow this kind of 'hard to catch error' in the first place, that's a strange defense of a stupid scenario: a 'use strict' would be useful for python too. There are language in which variable declaration isn't hard to read: Limbo for example, Scala..
The problem is that you'll get exception or warning only in some case let's see: striker = foo ( use striker ) strikr = foofoo ( use strikr again due to copy/paste ) then use striker again which has the *wrong* value.
This type of error happen. They're of course rare, they occur much less than single mistake only but still they do happen, and they're *very* hard to catch when you reread the file.
So automatic variable declaration is quite stupid, personnaly I prefer Limbo way: use 'x:= val' to declare and assign a variable of val type and x=y as simple assignment. To prevent programmers abusing:= the language just has to forbid double declaration of variable.
then use striker again which has the *wrong* value.
This type of error happen. They're of course rare, they occur much less than single mistake only but still they do happen, and they're *very* hard to catch when you reread the file.
So automatic variable declaration is quite stupid, personnaly I prefer Limbo way: use 'x:= val' to declare and assign a variable of val type and x=y as simple assignment. To prevent programmers abusing:= the language just has to forbid double declaration of variable.
Note that Python, Ruby, Perl all have automatic variable declaration by default and that only Perl provide 'use strict' which allows to enforce variable declaration.
Some claim that automatic variable declaration is nice for scription language as it makes program easier to write, given the number of spelling mistake humans do, I doubt it.. IMHO a good compromise is the way Limbo (for Plan9) does it: x:=val declares x and gives it the type of val, x=val2 when you want to assign a value to an already declared variable.
The thing is: Windows doesn't work very well when you don't have administrator rights: once I had lots of trouble roaming from one point to another with my laptop, as it took numerous reboot to have the laptop find the servers. Olny once I had the administrator password, I was able to connect succesfully.
As always, it's a conflict between ease of use and security..
While I tend to dislike Microsoft, I agree that C# is getting new features that looks interesting. But past experience with Java make me beleive that a new language is ready 5 years after all advocates swear their god that their language is the 'greatest things since sliced bread' before the implementation is too buggy to care.
And there is the problem of portability, once C# v3 will be mature on Windows, it'll take quite a long time for Free software programmers to have it running safely on Linux: difficult to match Microsoft full time team pace of development.
So it'll take a long time before C# becomes interesting, and it'll still be JIT which have lower performance usually that language compiled ahead of time..
I'd say that Swing design is nice but it's implementation sucked when I tried to use it, quite a long time ago, and Sun was fixing bugs very slowly when they did..
I admit not having tried to use Swing recently..
I don't know if Sun's GUI admin tools included in Solaris9 used Swing or not, but they were in Java and slow as snails, so if even Sun cannot make fast Java GUI apps, there is a problem..
Slashdot Mirror
I think that they are too big now to download with dialup, which means each time you go online, there is a risk that your computer gets a virus, spyware, etc.
Modern viruses do not harm too much the computer but they still make it slower, less reliable..
Many people don't understand/care about security (especially those who tend to be on dialup), but IMHO to have a 'healthy' computer there is now middle ground either you stay off-line or you use broadband (and patch your computer).
Note that using Linux on dialup is not without drawbacks too: bugfix version of OOo, FF, etc are not light too, even though it is more about fixing/improving apps than about security problems.
I doubt it: there is no flash (or only some ads) in the website I'm visitating..
I think that FF doesn't release correctly the memory used by images.
The strange thing is that even if I have 1GB of RAM, when FF use 300MB it slow down quite a lot (takes a long time to maximise for example) even though I have lots of RAM still free.
> most excessive memory usage that people are seeing is entirely due to faulty extensions.
Not true.. FF use way too much memory quite often for me and I've not installed any extension (unless you count Flash as an extension).
>I would have thought more people would have noticed the Earth is round sooner
Sooner than what?
Greeks knew that earth is round, I call this quite early, they even had a good estimate of earth's size!
He said they're using C# for GUI, are GUI in C# portable?
In the default aka most used options, they're not..
Another interesting bug is here: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/0 3/1737245
i tismus/dicrocoelium.html
And I remember a BBC documentary on which there were some bugs which used 3 different type of animals to reproduce! Snails, goats and ants, see here: http://www.weichtiere.at/Mollusks/Schnecken/paras
And they take control of the ants so that it can be easily eaten by goats.
I was truly bewildered when I watched this BBC documentary, it's really incredible: no book author would write something like this: it would be reject as too 'far fetched' and yet..
I can! (at least for Perl)
In the same way that C or Java (even written by a beginner) is easier to maintain than Perl: be it beginners or be it gurus, both tend to write unreadable, unmaintainable Perl programs, where you have quite often to delve into the books just to be sure that two unreadable lines can really be rewritten in two equivalent line that a beginner can understand..
Are there still security updates for Windows 2000?
In the end (when you don't do games) this is what is limitating the usefulness of a PC: how long you'll have security updates..
Given that security updates for XP are planned to stop soon, of course Vista will be more secure than XP..
Now, I don't believe that Microsoft will manage to stop patching XP as soon as they'd like: customers will scream too much!
>Does encouraging an act count?
That's a slippery slope: do making violent movies/games encourage murder? Does distributing documentary of murders encourage murders?
Somehow, this looks like double standard to me..
I really don't think that you should be indicted for burning CDs, it's all pixels in the end..
Well, except of course if the guy has given money to access the website, *that* is a serious crime, wanking off in front of pixels whatever those pixels represent is not.
I'd bet that controller input won't use much more than 10% of a CPU, so you still have to find other things to do for this CPU..
>What advantages could something like Alpha have over x86 now?
Have x86 caught in the SpecFP?
RISCs or Itanium tended to spank x86s on FP computations due to better memory subsystem (this is no longer an advantage) and to better FPU (here I'm not sure that x86 have caught up).
Well if memory serves, the new Itanium will removes their x86 and use software emulation instead.
That said I don't think that this will improve their performance much: I bet the problem is more in the man-month needed to maintain this part than about the transistors used.
> It's also true that the monarchy lacks any real power and is kept around out of tradition.
Ahem, money is power, and last I looked this is a damn expensive tradition (not that I really mind: I'm not English, the money doesn't come from my pocket).
> why bother uncumbering the code with declarative statements
Well that's a cost/benefit choice but ':=' instead of '=' for declaration isn't a lot of clutter!
And while mispelling which cannot be caught by compiler/pylint are rare, they're quite difficult to find: humans are not very good at distinguishing striker and strikr embedded among lots of code.
I'm in favor of passing argument by name instead of position (for function having more than 1 parameter) : not only it helps making fewer errors while writing code, it is also quite good for readability (it works even for printed/mailed code, no need of an IDE), now should it be mandatory?
That's a difficult choice.
About the other thing you said: additionnal statements slow down writing code and add visual clutter so of course it's a tradeoff.
But as said using ':=' instead of '=' slow down writing very little (only when you move existing code otherwise when you introduce a new variable you know it so it's not a problem) and it has basically no visual clutter, calling a function with parameter names instead of position: in both case you need to know the signature of the function to call it properly so it doesn't slow down the writing, sure it adds a little visual clutter but it also adds information for the reader so I consider it worthwile.
About Freedom, sorry but it isn't Python's strong point: it's Perl's strong point and we all know how TWTDI can hurt code maintenability, Python is more about consistency.
So it all depends on where you put the limit.
Interesting, it's true that Python or Ruby are quite flexible, so it should be possible to reinvent a 'use strict'.
Thanks for the idea, I'm not sure if it's pratical but it is interesting.
In a sufficient big body of code, this exemple is likely to happen and show the danger of automatic variable declaration.
Sure pylint catch other errors but why allow this kind of 'hard to catch error' in the first place, that's a strange defense of a stupid scenario: a 'use strict' would be useful for python too.
There are language in which variable declaration isn't hard to read: Limbo for example, Scala..
> As for 'use strict', the Python equivalent for programmers is pylint. It's free and it is stupid not to use it.
No, it isn't.
foo = x
( use foo )
fooo = y
( use fooo due to copy/paste )
now use foo which has a bad value
I doubt that pylint catch this, and in a sufficient big program, this kind of error will happen and is hard to catch.
> Otherwise, you'll get a runtime exception.
:= val' to declare and assign a variable of val type and x=y as simple assignment. := the language just has to forbid double declaration of variable.
(Grr stupid slashdot ate some of the text)
The problem is that you'll get exception or warning only in some case let's see:
striker = foo
( use striker )
strikr = foofoo
( use strikr again due to copy/paste )
then use striker again which has the *wrong* value.
This type of error happen.
They're of course rare, they occur much less than single mistake only but still they do happen, and they're *very* hard to catch when you reread the file.
So automatic variable declaration is quite stupid, personnaly I prefer Limbo way: use 'x
To prevent programmers abusing
> Otherwise, you'll get a runtime exception.
:= val' to declare and assign a variable of val type and x=y as simple assignment. := the language just has to forbid double declaration of variable.
Only in some case let's see:
striker = foo
strikr = foofoo
then use striker again which has the *wrong* value.
This type of error happen.
They're of course rare, they occur much less than single mistake only but still they do happen, and they're *very* hard to catch when you reread the file.
So automatic variable declaration is quite stupid, personnaly I prefer Limbo way: use 'x
To prevent programmers abusing
Note that Python, Ruby, Perl all have automatic variable declaration by default and that only Perl provide 'use strict' which allows to enforce variable declaration.
Some claim that automatic variable declaration is nice for scription language as it makes program easier to write, given the number of spelling mistake humans do, I doubt it..
IMHO a good compromise is the way Limbo (for Plan9) does it: x:=val declares x and gives it the type of val, x=val2 when you want to assign a value to an already declared variable.
The thing is: Windows doesn't work very well when you don't have administrator rights: once I had lots of trouble roaming from one point to another with my laptop, as it took numerous reboot to have the laptop find the servers.
Olny once I had the administrator password, I was able to connect succesfully.
As always, it's a conflict between ease of use and security..
While I tend to dislike Microsoft, I agree that C# is getting new features that looks interesting. But past experience with Java make me beleive that a new language is ready 5 years after all advocates swear their god that their language is the 'greatest things since sliced bread' before the implementation is too buggy to care.
And there is the problem of portability, once C# v3 will be mature on Windows, it'll take quite a long time for Free software programmers to have it running safely on Linux: difficult to match Microsoft full time team pace of development.
So it'll take a long time before C# becomes interesting, and it'll still be JIT which have lower performance usually that language compiled ahead of time..
> Swing is nice though.
I'd say that Swing design is nice but it's implementation sucked when I tried to use it, quite a long time ago, and Sun was fixing bugs very slowly when they did..
I admit not having tried to use Swing recently..
I don't know if Sun's GUI admin tools included in Solaris9 used Swing or not, but they were in Java and slow as snails, so if even Sun cannot make fast Java GUI apps, there is a problem..
More accurately why does they talk about this?
Why does-it matter where the money come from as long as it is from a legal source?