I have the Microsoft trackball that you linked to. It's well-designed, but poorly built. The ball, buttons and wheel are well-positioned, but there are lots of details that were done wrong. The sensor is in a little nook that is left open, making it a very effective dirt trap. At least once a day the thing stops working and I have to pop the ball out and clean that little nook. Usually it's just one barely-visible little fiber from clothing or carpet or something. The last trackball I had (logitech two-button) had a little cover over the nook where the sensor is, to avoid that. Also, the buttons have a lot of play to them (by design as far as I can tell; cheap construction), and one of the extra LEDs in the unit (which is not actually needed, it's just there for show) sometimes shines through the space between the buttons and the wheel, right into my eye. These are both minor annoyances, but very regular ones, and could've been avoided if they had built the thing properly.
If Logitech would build a trackball with a similar design I would buy it in a second.
BTW, why do you want wireless? I can understand a wireless mouse, because you move the unit around in normal operation, but a trackball sits stationary so the cord isn't really an issue...?
You can learn as much from a data structures class taugh in Java as you can from one taught in $language_of_choice. The idea is to learn how things work fundamentally, and then apply those ideas practically. A linked list in Java works the same as a linked list in C.
The thing is, Java is somewhat high-level. There are things that go on under the hood that you won't learn about, but once in a while pop up anyway. For example, being taught Java, you won't learn about the difference between memory allocated on the heap, and memory allocated on the stack. And yet...
This does not work (it doesn't even compile):
String x = "a"; (new Runnable() { public void run() { x = "b"; } } ).run(); System.out.println(x);
There's nothing wrong with the code; the problem is that Java pretends to support closures but really doesn't. To use x in the anonymous inner class, you need to declare it final. But if you declare it final, you can't do the x = "b" assignment.
I'm familiar with C, so I understand the difference between the heap and the stack. I can infer that x (the reference to the string, not the string itself) is allocated on the stack. It is not uncommon for instances of anonymous inner classes to outlive the stack frame they were created in, so the compiler doesn't know whether or not x (on the stack) will still exist when the object's run() method is called. So it makes a _copy_ of x, but in order to pretend that it is still x, the compiler wants you to declare it final so that the original and the copy can never get out of sync.
Having experience with C, I know the heap is a safe place to put things that may need to outlive the current stack frame:
final String[] x = new String[] { "a" }; (new Runnable() { public void run() { x[0] = "b"; } } ).run(); System.out.println(x[0]);
It's ugly, but it works. The reference called x needs to be declared final (because it's on the stack) but the reference contained in the array does not need to be final (because it's on the heap).
Because of my experience with lower-level stuff, I understand how Java is faking its support for closures, and how to work around the limitations. This is only one example; there are many other times when understanding things from a closer-to-the-metal perspective gives insights that would be lost if things were only understood from a high level. Joel Spolsky summed this up fairly well: Leaky Abstractions
If MS bought AOL that cooperation might break down. MSN Messenger on it's own is just another IM network, but "MSAIM" (or whatever it would be called) would have sufficient mass to crush Yahoo.
The DOJ was going for a breakup. Ruling after ruling the DOJ was rebuffed on this issue, at one point the judge saying basically "it ain't ever going to happen with this case". At that point, the DOJ "lost" in terms of public perception.
They were not rebuffed. They even had a ruling ordering a breakup! But that did not survive appeal. Not because a breakup was inappropriate, but because the judge in the case spoke out, and the appeals court claimed that it was inappropropriate and he was expressing bias. They didn't throw out the idea of a breakup, only the specific ruling; not because of what it ordered, but because the judge expressed bias. After that, there's no reason the DOJ couldn't continue to persue a breakup order; just because the judge supposedly exprpessed bias does not automaticly mean his ruling was wrong, it simply means they need an unbiased judge to make a new ruling.
But then the Bush administration instructed them to settle. That completely blew away any chance of a breakup.
That could easily end with a bunch of people with armor and swords being arrested. Which would be oddly appropriate, if I remember how that movie ended.
Wrong. Double-ROT-13 was found to be insecure. I mean, come on - it's obvious that the second ROT-13 undoes the first ROT-13! So the internet has since been upgraded to quadruple-ROT-13, which is twice as secure as double-ROT-13.
For people complaining about Real selling your personal info:
How else are they supposed to pay for the development of their media player?
The other two media player giants each own an entire platform and use the profits to fund their media player development. Unless you're running a non-MS and non-Apple OS exclusively, you've already paid cold hard cash for either WMP or QuickTime. Real doesn't have that kind of income. Heck, even if Real put out a top-notch product and everyone used it to the exclusion of all others, most people would still be paying for WMP whether they want to or not. It's Netscape all over again.
When you download their "free" media player, you are paying for it by giving them your personal information. That information is worth money to them. Money that they use to pay for development. If your personal information is not worth a media player, don't download the player. It's that simple.
BTW, anyone know of some magical code to block SQL injection vulnerabilities?
Use placeholders. PEAR DB supports them, as do other database abstraction layers. As long as you _always_ use placeholders you will be safe against SQL injection.
If you can't depend on PEAR DB (or similar) to be installed / at the correct version, you could quickly build yourself a function that takes a variable number of arguments: a SQL statement containing '%s' (for strings) or %d (for numerics) followed by potentially hostile arguments. Run each of the arguments through mysql_escape_string (or equivalent for your DB) then build your SQL statement using sprintf. Note: I haven't tested that approach; use with caution.
In my opinion, PostgreSQL is the superior database. Many of the features that are "alpha" in MySQL have been in PostgreSQL for years and are very mature. Using MySQL, there are features that I miss that are present in PostgreSQL. I haven't noticed the reverse at all.
However, there are a couple of very good reasons to use MySQL:
Windows support is much better with MySQL than PostgreSQL.
Far more hosting companies support MySQL than PostgreSQL
Personally, I couldn't care less about Windows support, but writing apps for clients that want to host their stuff on an inexpensive shared account makes MySQL the obvious target of choice.
Difficult installers and obscure, overcomplicated package management systems are just the tip of the iceburg.
[...]
I despise portage and apt-get. RPMs, IMO, would be far better if they didn't suck with their can't solve their own dependencies problem.
So why do you like RPMs? If you just want decent GUI tool Synaptic is a very nice front-end for apt.
I really don't see how you can praise package management on Windows. Ever heard of DLL hell? And Windows Update is MS-only (compare to apt, which allows you to specify additional package sources). Linux (or at least Debian) is years ahead of MS in that department, and has been for a very long time.
There doesn't seem to be any R&D towards developing unmanned targets so I'm sure there will be plenty of employment opportunities there. And with GWB as president I'm sure there will be plenty of growth in that field.
M$ has a larger percentage of the desktop market, but a much smaller percentage of the server market.
The number of servers out there is tiny compared to the number of desktops, so it doesn't make that much difference. Also, I think you underestimate Microsoft's percentage on servers. Most server machines end up in the office, which is desktop-central, and thus end up running Windows.
As for AMD versus Intel, I don't think that is a valid comparison. You don't have to give up your investment in software and training in order to switch from Intel to AMD.
So how do you do loops and conditionals through a GUI? Computers exist to do stupid and repetitive things, yet most GUI apps don't give you a flexible way to take advantage of that. You can only do the tasks the programmer intended. To do anything else, you need to be a programmer, and that usually means a text-based programming language.
I know it's not what you're asking for, but I'd recommend setting up one of those 8 boxes as a file server with regular RAID. It's a simple and proven way to get the end result you're after. It doesn't have to be expensive either, a pair of IDE drives (each alone on their own IDE port) and Linux with its built-in software RAID, exported to the network via NFS and/or SAMBA and/or whatever else.
Using a password limits access, not only to the employer but to random people as well, which may not be what you want.
I'm a big fan of pseudonyms, A.K.A. "pen names". Sure your employer might be able to figure out that it's you, but it'll take a lot more effort than a google query to do it, especially if you be non-specific in certain details. You can tell your friends and family about your pseudonym, just like a password, while still leaving your writings out in public with little fear of repercussions.
Pseudonyms are a sort of literary tradition, too. Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Clemens (as slashdotters may remember from the ST:TNG episodes "Time's Arrow" 1 & 2). Many other authors have used pseudonyms and not revealed the truth. Some people suspect Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare might have been the same person, yet there is no conclusive proof.
I guess that for a lot of people, a MP3 encoded at 128k sounds the same as the original.
I think those people just haven't done the side-by-side comparison. 128k sounds "good enough" so they don't really care. For most stuff it's pretty easy to tell 128k from 192k when given the same recording at the two bitrates playing one after the other; the 128k usually sounds louder (noisier).
Don't get me started on how [random deity]-AWFUL Java is for reliable Runtime.exec() in a cross-platform manner.
The only problems I've ever had with Runtime.exec() is when the underlying process outputs to stdout and/or stderr, fills up the buffer, and blocks. That can be avoided by draining stdout/stderr, using a background thread if necessary.
Ok. So you can take over my computer with a web page. Well, I'm not going to YOUR web page.
That doesn't help much. The recent QHosts malware (which used one of the 31 unpatched IE holes to install itself) was distributed via a banner ad. You don't have to visit $badguy's web page if $badguy has hacked into one of the web sites you do visit, or if he can use the commercial banner ad network to serve up his exploits.
I can't believe in all the responses to your post, nobody has mentioned virtual desktops. Has slashdot been completely overrun by people who have never even seen a Linux GUI environment before??? What you are saying doesn't "apply equally well to X" unless you are using a really limited window manager.
Everything you would group on one monitor, you can group on a virtual desktop. Then with one keypress you can flip to that group of windows, do your thing, then flip back to another group of windows. No need to alt-tab through a gazillion windows and subwindows, or hunt down your desired window on the taskbar.
I have six virtual desktops on my current single-monitor setup. I normally have at least four in use, and frequently use all six. If I had to group these on to physical monitors I would need to move to a bigger room, and would probably end up with whiplash.
I've used dual-monitor setups. Even then I still use just as many virtual desktops, they just hold twice as much stuff. It's the ultimate in productivity. But if I had to choose one or the other, I'd choose one physical monitor with a bunch of virtual desktops.
Virtual desktops are not new. I've been using them since I switched to Linux in the mid 90s, and they weren't new then either. It's a great idea, and I really don't understand why it hasn't caught on.
In order for Linux to become as popular and intuitive [shiver] as Windows, things like "setting execute permissions" need to be automatic. Installing apps should be relatively simple as well.
An email client is not a program installer. That is what apt/up2date/whatever, and their various GUI front-ends, are for. Those do set execute permissions, among other important functionality (like handling dependencies) that does not belong in an email client.
OSes will have vulnerabilities. They need to be patched. It ALWAYS comes down to the user.
Slashdot Mirror
I have the Microsoft trackball that you linked to. It's well-designed, but poorly built. The ball, buttons and wheel are well-positioned, but there are lots of details that were done wrong. The sensor is in a little nook that is left open, making it a very effective dirt trap. At least once a day the thing stops working and I have to pop the ball out and clean that little nook. Usually it's just one barely-visible little fiber from clothing or carpet or something. The last trackball I had (logitech two-button) had a little cover over the nook where the sensor is, to avoid that. Also, the buttons have a lot of play to them (by design as far as I can tell; cheap construction), and one of the extra LEDs in the unit (which is not actually needed, it's just there for show) sometimes shines through the space between the buttons and the wheel, right into my eye. These are both minor annoyances, but very regular ones, and could've been avoided if they had built the thing properly.
If Logitech would build a trackball with a similar design I would buy it in a second.
BTW, why do you want wireless? I can understand a wireless mouse, because you move the unit around in normal operation, but a trackball sits stationary so the cord isn't really an issue...?
But then we'd have to define "big".
Let's just call them all "marklars" and be done with it.
The thing is, Java is somewhat high-level. There are things that go on under the hood that you won't learn about, but once in a while pop up anyway. For example, being taught Java, you won't learn about the difference between memory allocated on the heap, and memory allocated on the stack. And yet...
This does not work (it doesn't even compile):
There's nothing wrong with the code; the problem is that Java pretends to support closures but really doesn't. To use x in the anonymous inner class, you need to declare it final. But if you declare it final, you can't do the x = "b" assignment.
I'm familiar with C, so I understand the difference between the heap and the stack. I can infer that x (the reference to the string, not the string itself) is allocated on the stack. It is not uncommon for instances of anonymous inner classes to outlive the stack frame they were created in, so the compiler doesn't know whether or not x (on the stack) will still exist when the object's run() method is called. So it makes a _copy_ of x, but in order to pretend that it is still x, the compiler wants you to declare it final so that the original and the copy can never get out of sync.
Having experience with C, I know the heap is a safe place to put things that may need to outlive the current stack frame:
It's ugly, but it works. The reference called x needs to be declared final (because it's on the stack) but the reference contained in the array does not need to be final (because it's on the heap).
Because of my experience with lower-level stuff, I understand how Java is faking its support for closures, and how to work around the limitations. This is only one example; there are many other times when understanding things from a closer-to-the-metal perspective gives insights that would be lost if things were only understood from a high level. Joel Spolsky summed this up fairly well: Leaky Abstractions
If MS bought AOL that cooperation might break down. MSN Messenger on it's own is just another IM network, but "MSAIM" (or whatever it would be called) would have sufficient mass to crush Yahoo.
Nerf Motor Co. ?
They were not rebuffed. They even had a ruling ordering a breakup! But that did not survive appeal. Not because a breakup was inappropriate, but because the judge in the case spoke out, and the appeals court claimed that it was inappropropriate and he was expressing bias. They didn't throw out the idea of a breakup, only the specific ruling; not because of what it ordered, but because the judge expressed bias. After that, there's no reason the DOJ couldn't continue to persue a breakup order; just because the judge supposedly exprpessed bias does not automaticly mean his ruling was wrong, it simply means they need an unbiased judge to make a new ruling.
But then the Bush administration instructed them to settle. That completely blew away any chance of a breakup.
That could easily end with a bunch of people with armor and swords being arrested. Which would be oddly appropriate, if I remember how that movie ended.
No, but you'll need 1.34 Canadian $20's to get the explosive power of a single American $20.
Simply put, you just don't get as much bang for your buck.
Wrong. Double-ROT-13 was found to be insecure. I mean, come on - it's obvious that the second ROT-13 undoes the first ROT-13! So the internet has since been upgraded to quadruple-ROT-13, which is twice as secure as double-ROT-13.
For people complaining about Real selling your personal info:
How else are they supposed to pay for the development of their media player?
The other two media player giants each own an entire platform and use the profits to fund their media player development. Unless you're running a non-MS and non-Apple OS exclusively, you've already paid cold hard cash for either WMP or QuickTime. Real doesn't have that kind of income. Heck, even if Real put out a top-notch product and everyone used it to the exclusion of all others, most people would still be paying for WMP whether they want to or not. It's Netscape all over again.
When you download their "free" media player, you are paying for it by giving them your personal information. That information is worth money to them. Money that they use to pay for development. If your personal information is not worth a media player, don't download the player. It's that simple.
Use placeholders. PEAR DB supports them, as do other database abstraction layers. As long as you _always_ use placeholders you will be safe against SQL injection.
If you can't depend on PEAR DB (or similar) to be installed / at the correct version, you could quickly build yourself a function that takes a variable number of arguments: a SQL statement containing '%s' (for strings) or %d (for numerics) followed by potentially hostile arguments. Run each of the arguments through mysql_escape_string (or equivalent for your DB) then build your SQL statement using sprintf. Note: I haven't tested that approach; use with caution.
In my opinion, PostgreSQL is the superior database. Many of the features that are "alpha" in MySQL have been in PostgreSQL for years and are very mature. Using MySQL, there are features that I miss that are present in PostgreSQL. I haven't noticed the reverse at all.
However, there are a couple of very good reasons to use MySQL:
Personally, I couldn't care less about Windows support, but writing apps for clients that want to host their stuff on an inexpensive shared account makes MySQL the obvious target of choice.
So why do you like RPMs? If you just want decent GUI tool Synaptic is a very nice front-end for apt.
I really don't see how you can praise package management on Windows. Ever heard of DLL hell? And Windows Update is MS-only (compare to apt, which allows you to specify additional package sources). Linux (or at least Debian) is years ahead of MS in that department, and has been for a very long time.
There doesn't seem to be any R&D towards developing unmanned targets so I'm sure there will be plenty of employment opportunities there. And with GWB as president I'm sure there will be plenty of growth in that field.
The number of servers out there is tiny compared to the number of desktops, so it doesn't make that much difference. Also, I think you underestimate Microsoft's percentage on servers. Most server machines end up in the office, which is desktop-central, and thus end up running Windows.
As for AMD versus Intel, I don't think that is a valid comparison. You don't have to give up your investment in software and training in order to switch from Intel to AMD.
So how do you do loops and conditionals through a GUI? Computers exist to do stupid and repetitive things, yet most GUI apps don't give you a flexible way to take advantage of that. You can only do the tasks the programmer intended. To do anything else, you need to be a programmer, and that usually means a text-based programming language.
SCO considers millions of lines of Linux to be "theirs", so in SCO's mind they are running their own OS on their webservers.
Don't you read Slashdot?
I know it's not what you're asking for, but I'd recommend setting up one of those 8 boxes as a file server with regular RAID. It's a simple and proven way to get the end result you're after. It doesn't have to be expensive either, a pair of IDE drives (each alone on their own IDE port) and Linux with its built-in software RAID, exported to the network via NFS and/or SAMBA and/or whatever else.
Using a password limits access, not only to the employer but to random people as well, which may not be what you want.
I'm a big fan of pseudonyms, A.K.A. "pen names". Sure your employer might be able to figure out that it's you, but it'll take a lot more effort than a google query to do it, especially if you be non-specific in certain details. You can tell your friends and family about your pseudonym, just like a password, while still leaving your writings out in public with little fear of repercussions.
Pseudonyms are a sort of literary tradition, too. Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Clemens (as slashdotters may remember from the ST:TNG episodes "Time's Arrow" 1 & 2). Many other authors have used pseudonyms and not revealed the truth. Some people suspect Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare might have been the same person, yet there is no conclusive proof.
I think those people just haven't done the side-by-side comparison. 128k sounds "good enough" so they don't really care. For most stuff it's pretty easy to tell 128k from 192k when given the same recording at the two bitrates playing one after the other; the 128k usually sounds louder (noisier).
The only problems I've ever had with Runtime.exec() is when the underlying process outputs to stdout and/or stderr, fills up the buffer, and blocks. That can be avoided by draining stdout/stderr, using a background thread if necessary.
That doesn't help much. The recent QHosts malware (which used one of the 31 unpatched IE holes to install itself) was distributed via a banner ad. You don't have to visit $badguy's web page if $badguy has hacked into one of the web sites you do visit, or if he can use the commercial banner ad network to serve up his exploits.
I can't believe in all the responses to your post, nobody has mentioned virtual desktops. Has slashdot been completely overrun by people who have never even seen a Linux GUI environment before??? What you are saying doesn't "apply equally well to X" unless you are using a really limited window manager.
Everything you would group on one monitor, you can group on a virtual desktop. Then with one keypress you can flip to that group of windows, do your thing, then flip back to another group of windows. No need to alt-tab through a gazillion windows and subwindows, or hunt down your desired window on the taskbar.
I have six virtual desktops on my current single-monitor setup. I normally have at least four in use, and frequently use all six. If I had to group these on to physical monitors I would need to move to a bigger room, and would probably end up with whiplash.
I've used dual-monitor setups. Even then I still use just as many virtual desktops, they just hold twice as much stuff. It's the ultimate in productivity. But if I had to choose one or the other, I'd choose one physical monitor with a bunch of virtual desktops.
Virtual desktops are not new. I've been using them since I switched to Linux in the mid 90s, and they weren't new then either. It's a great idea, and I really don't understand why it hasn't caught on.
An email client is not a program installer. That is what apt/up2date/whatever, and their various GUI front-ends, are for. Those do set execute permissions, among other important functionality (like handling dependencies) that does not belong in an email client.
Internet Explorer has 31 unpatched vulnerabilities. How does it "come down to the user" to fix those holes when there are no patches available?