If you thought that KDE was clunky... check out 3.0 and up. It's beautiful.
The console tools are superior to the Microsoft command line, but I would expect them to be. I've never had KDE or Gnome crash on me, yet Explorer has crashed on me through every iteration.
I'm not a big fan of cruft. You probably read that article. Linux cruft doesn't occur much more than a bunch of stuff in the home directory. I don't need to say more on that issue.
Games for Microsoft... Well, most of the important ones are getting ported to Linux, or they work well under various versions of wine.
Installation-wise, Using Red-Hat's update utility & installer is just as easy as using Windows-update. In fact, it's better. You get a myriad of choices of free software to install. Then, you've got Gentoo. That has to be the easiest distribution to upgrade and install things. The wait for compiles is nothing, especially if you have other boxes to work on.
Many of the Microsoft arguments no longer hold any water. There is very little that Microsoft has to offer that Linux doesn't, if not in a superior way. It's time to look back into Linux, it isn't what it was just a couple of years ago.
I work in the IT department of a health-care company. My primary position is something like a webmaster / user support / programmer type. Essentially, I do everything that is involved with the intranet, and I give the full time support people answers when they can't find them.
Since my job is a mixed bag, I find that I have lots of time that I absolutely need to fill. One thing about corporate culture is that they don't like to see you sitting at a desk and not typing something, or not using your mouse.
Thus, my boss has come to the realization that I'm rather creative, and I tend to come up with my own things to work on. They are usually beneficial to the company (creating an on-line ordering system, fixing and tweaking client lookups, etc.). What is great is that I've been the one with the initiative. I'm my own manager, for the most part. I follow the constraints that my boss gives me, but everything else is free.
I sometimes wish that my constraints didn't prevent me from working on a rather difficult project... I have limitations on programming languages that I'm allowed to use. Sometimes I dream about being a professor and having a pHd. I guess I would be the type that's not so concerned about getting published as much as imbueing students with a peice of my own creativity.
If I ever do go into academia, it will not be for a research position. If one comes my way, I won't deny it, but it would probably land second to what I've got going in the class room.
Is this feasible? I know that there are schools where the profs are focused on teaching, i.e. Rose Hulman. Does this political environment show up in these types of schools as well?
The flip side of the coin is that Windows gives you a nice easy way to tell you what's working, what isn't, and why under Device Manager. I was unable to locate anything like that in Linux.
Mandrake provides a utility called HardDrake that is very useful. It does the equivalent of the device manager. Also useful is the KDE Control panel. It shows you all of the identifier strings on your PCI bus.
One of the most impressive tools that I've seen, however, is LinuxConf. That proggie is the bizomb.
Other distros provide their own version of device manager. SUSE has Sax, Redhat's got something else. They're all really easy to use too.
The amazing thing is that most of these are just front ends for configuration scripts. If you want to customize something, it's all right there for you. If you want to configure X to use YY display driver for ZZ resolution, but a different display driver for a different resolution, it lets you. I have yet to see Windows allow any freedom in that respect.
You won't see well established companies sending spam (ever received spam from IBM?).
I get spam from Microsoft and AT&T. They're pretty well established companies.
Though this may never be read...
on
More MS EULA Fun
·
· Score: 1
I recently installed Win2K service pack 3 on my machine. It may have patched a few bug-fixes, but more importantly, it caused both my DVD and CD-R/RW drive to stop working. The reason for this was "The device driver could not be loaded." or something.
What I worry about is if I agree to the terms of said MS EULA, and MS decides to "Update" my software, am I going to turn on my computer one day to find that my graphics card drivers no longer load? How about my CD-Drives again? They both bit the big one. I installed a different OS, and they both work perfectly. Go Figure.
Microsoft shouldn't even be posting a EULA like this for a peice of "necessary" software that breaks people's machines.
I'd be great if Windows would give you those kinds of capabilities. I find myself frustrated every time I use it.
I grew up on DOS. I wrote menuing systems for the rest of my family, we used an application called "GeoWorks," a direct rip from Windows. It was more stable. I didn't handle the move to Windows 95 very well.
But when I read your post, I kept thinking... If we give that level of customization to the user, just how many users are going to mess something up like hiding the 'X' in the upper right hand corner? It isn't really a matter of spoon-feeding, it's more a matter of protecting people from their own stupidity.
It may sound harsh, but it's true. The average user is going to break something because they are trying to "fix outlook." They'll take the path bar out of IE, they'll eliminate the menu bar. Then they won't know how to bring it back, or worse, won't be able to. All of this, just because the GUI was incredibly flexible.
A better way to do it would be to have a few command-line programs that would allow for the customization. It sounds simple, but think about it for a moment. The average user gets goose-bumps if they ever see a DOS-prompt. It's is something arcane to them, something on par with witchcraft. They'll see you using the command-line, and automatically think that you are a programmer.
If we don't really let them know that they can change things, and if we make it only slightly more difficult to change things, then it would eliminate many of the potential problems.
As long as I've got the computer I have, with a copy of winamp, I'll be able to play those mp3's. Keep in mind that this is all talk about the future of hardware and software. Unless everyone upgrades to the new M$ OS, unless everyone purchases the new hardware to handle DRM, then we'll have problems with GB#5 distributing mp3's.
This is why every mp3 made up to the point of true DRM will be pirated with little or no control. Any law that states this, or states that is illegal is really just the flapping of feathers. Sure, they may bust the occasional kid in a college dormroom who is dumb enough to utilize 90% of a university's bandwidth distributing his 5 gigabytes of mp3's. It is highly unlikely that they can bust the average user on it, since nearly every American pulls this crap.
If unsigned mp3 distribution became illegal, I'm sure that more than half of the senators in Washington could possibly get busted for it. I find it hard to believe that none of them have an mp3 that they do not own, or that no one in their family does. Once the lawmakers realize that they are American citizens themselves, and subject to the same laws, then the passage of these communist psycho laws will cease. Regardless of the funding the MP/RIAA throw at it.
The point of "45,000" things springs from the type of questions that can be answered with the same answer. Alice isn't about generating actual intelligent responses, it is just about generating a response that sounds like it could have been generated intelligently. Thus, Wallace poses the question: What's the difference between illusion and material? This type of attitude brushes on the theories that state that we are all just a set of batteries for a massive army of robots, and our brains are connected into some massive Matrix...
Anyway, the responses he refers to are like such:
How do I change my oil? How do I tie my shoelaces? What are you? What are ants?
You see, the italicized portions are all that is really important. You can chop off the unnecessary portion (the details) using a wildcard, and come up with a somewhat intelligent response. example:
How do I *?
A: RTFM! What are *? Here, it checks for a keyword, you in this case. It will answer: A: I am a machine. Otherwise, it would answer: A: We can't be certain what they are.
So you see, there are surprisingly few responses that "fit" with many stimuli. This is what he meant by saying that there are 45,000 possibilities, or some such.
The doctor states that Alice is intelligent, to the point of simulating a human response. He also goes so far as to state that the human is 99.99999% robot, some of us being even more so.
But then you notice that Alice fails in cases of creativity. For instance:
C: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge. R: Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry.
A good experiment to test true human-like intelligence would be to pass the machine a string of random words, and ask it to construct a meaningful paragraph from them. Humans can do this without a problem, this is as simple as the word magnets attached to the refrigerator.
It seems that Alice's responses are all just a reflection of a human's decision of what is appropriate, and what isn't. The machine is not making the actual decision of what to say, it is merely spurting sentences that are pre-existant. I doubt that Alice will have the occasion of 'putting her foot in her mouth.'
I am amused that the Artificial Intelligence community, in fact most scientific communities have adopted a mindset of me-first, science-second, especiallly AI. One would think that the AI community would apply one of it's own algorithms to the structure of the community itself, thereby increasing scientific capacity.
It would be great if we CS people could organize ourselves to the point where we can test out our own algorithms on a broad social scale, and not just within the limits of our metal boxes with blinking lights.
And then you realize that most kids drive like they do because of the pressures put upon them by their peers. The parents may not have anything to do with how a teen drives at all, rather a matter of hormones and car size.
And being a regular commuter..The numbers of drivers that drive like idiots and morons is increasing..
I've also been a regular driver, and I've noticed the number of UAV's (SUV's) increasing. Wouldn't you think that the mindset of "Much bigger car = me have my way" sets in with these monstrous vehicles? I've seen many vehicles force themselves into traffic, tailgaiting, cutting off, and ending on the side of the road. The majority of them were UAV's.
My dad is an asshole driver. He hits the gas when he's three feet behind the next vehicle, he regularly uses the term "Jag-off," "Whore," "Sonovabitch," and a few others. I am a good driver, I do speed up and squeeze out of tight situations. I rarely cut people off, and I never tailgate. It's not good style. Coincidently, I also drive a tiny Kia.
I don't think that all of what you said holds water, but your observation is true. I believe that the increase in shitty driving is directly related to the increase of UAV(SUV) ownership.
The real area where SQL is weak is recursion. There is no allowance for recursion in '92 and there is little I believe in '99.
An excellent language to examine is Datalog, which uses rules to do queries. The structure of the Datalog language, as well as it's queries, falls very close to the definition of a finite state machine.
You can show the flow of data, and how it fits within the bounds of the rules you give it, all by drawing the states that you define within the language. The query ends when it reaches a point where it can no longer process any data.
SQL is great for database work, but I honestly believe that the future lies in a rules-based language like Datalog.
"A complement is a product that you usually buy together with another product. Gas and cars are complements. Computer hardware is a classic complement of computer operating systems."
Since when did the operating system come before the hardware? I can understand that with the advent of Quake 3, a 3D card was a necessity. This would be an example of hardware following software, but not the operating system.
Maybe next time, I'll leave the CPU at home and run M$ windows from my car's CD player.
They probably just need something that costs a lot of money, that looks probable. Yes, a SEAL carrying sub is not going to be patrolling the bottom and spying, it's going to be delivering SEALs.:-)
And then you realize that the boat belongs to the NSA. They want you to think that the ship is delivering SEALs. They want you to think that that's what the money was spent on. Knowing government, they probably already have the solution, and it costs about as much as a "bigger SEAL delivery system."
Don't waste your time looking for a Computer Science job right now. You overlook those positions that will pay you the money you need while you look for your niche job.
I got my job through the back way. I started out as a receptionist, of all things. The position demonstrated that I had massive communication skills. I got to know the CEO, all of the VP's, and all of the managers of all of the branches. Then I caught the attention of the IT director.
I sent him my resume', it was sparse but he didn't care. I haven't even finished college, I have no certifications, but I know patience. It took time, working in a hellhole in front of a call-monitor. The IT director would walk by, I'd talk to him about technical things and he'd quiz me on miscellaneous things. We developed a good working relationship before he even hired me.
He hired me at a rate that was significantly lower than what the work I did usually earned. I didn't care, because my foot was in the door. I spent time with the department, I went out of my way to do things. I got noticed by the other higher-ups. They were pleasantly surprised that this talkative kid that sat behind the call-monitor was actually a really good computer-nerd.
I was given salary this year. I still have no certifications. There are few certifications that I actually respect. To me, the best certification is that Lamb's Skin you get after 4 years of dedicated work. To me, the best way to utilize it is by being patient, having humility, and looking for any oppurtunity of getting your foot in the door.
"The Zone" lasts for hours on end. Necessary requirements: 1) Block girlfriend from buddy list and don't answer the phone. She is a distraction, part of the outside world. She will burst your bubble.
2) Two or three large bags of Nacho Cheesier Doritos. Sustenance is vital for the long haul, and it keeps the body temperature up.
3) A refrigerator full of Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew is the answer to all problems. It is the fuel that your brain burns. It makes 2+2 add faster for your brain, and the computer. It is the lifeblood, the essence. It awakens the Awen.
4) No flourescence. Wooden surroundings are best, with Christmas lights all over. The smell of the wood invigorates, and when mixed with the caffeinated high, causes a euphoric state where the logic flows from your brain down to the long fingers that fly over the keyboard.
5) Start no earlier than 6:00 pm. Any earlier, and your brain is still focused on the sun, on sex, on that half-eaten pizza in the freezer. Avoid this trap! Your code will lose it's strict hungarian style, you will become more verbose, and distraction will abound.
6) Music is the last item on the list, and yet not the least. A blend of techno, euro, trance at low volume. The ability to lose your mind in the mathematic undertones of the music will decrease the compiler warnings, and will make the code stable even when compiled on -O4.
This whole ordeal illustrates the need for a universal operating system. MS almost has it, yet everyone balks at this because MS is a company. MS goes after people's money, MS steals, MS... etc. We all know this.
So, now what? Do we entrust another company with the development of this OS? I propose having a counsel take control of an open-source based solution. This would eliminate any and all competition on the OS side, yet would provide the common ground necessary for all other software development to exist. No more multiple platforms, no more griping about a company having too much control. Instead, we'd have something slimilar to JEDEC deciding what the system calls would be.
Fragmenting windows will not affect development of software. Seriously!! Unless they change the API and system calls (which is not what is proposed), then you'd have the rift in platforms. Fragmented windows basically means hacking out Messenger, IE, Calculator, or the ever present evil Paint. As far as I understand, IE basically is a clone of the original Window's Explorer, and all else are just extra applications. A fragmented windows then would be like installing a much improved version of Windows 95 (IE didn't really count for much in that distro), which I hear people still run and don't complain about.
Stop complaining about the halt on development of software because the platforms have changed, because in truth... they haven't.
The bill comes just days after Intel and AOL Time Warner executives came to Capitol Hill urging Congress to enact "narrowly crafted" legislation designed to support and codify their efforts.
Wasn't Intel the only one who protested the suggestions that Hollings was making? Intel wasn't a pusher, it was really MPAA/RIAA.
Slashdot Mirror
Those ten least wanted sound an awful lot like sex.
I don't know how many men, much less /. readers would turn that down.
I think of "Now dead Video Game console system."
It was great, but there were no games.
It's possible that there's 2.x simulation layer in there somewhere.
It's much like running old DOS apps in the command prompt in any version of WinNT.
If you thought that KDE was clunky... check out 3.0 and up. It's beautiful.
The console tools are superior to the Microsoft command line, but I would expect them to be. I've never had KDE or Gnome crash on me, yet Explorer has crashed on me through every iteration.
I'm not a big fan of cruft. You probably read that article. Linux cruft doesn't occur much more than a bunch of stuff in the home directory. I don't need to say more on that issue.
Games for Microsoft... Well, most of the important ones are getting ported to Linux, or they work well under various versions of wine.
Installation-wise, Using Red-Hat's update utility & installer is just as easy as using Windows-update. In fact, it's better. You get a myriad of choices of free software to install. Then, you've got Gentoo. That has to be the easiest distribution to upgrade and install things. The wait for compiles is nothing, especially if you have other boxes to work on.
Many of the Microsoft arguments no longer hold any water. There is very little that Microsoft has to offer that Linux doesn't, if not in a superior way. It's time to look back into Linux, it isn't what it was just a couple of years ago.
I work in the IT department of a health-care company. My primary position is something like a webmaster / user support / programmer type. Essentially, I do everything that is involved with the intranet, and I give the full time support people answers when they can't find them.
Since my job is a mixed bag, I find that I have lots of time that I absolutely need to fill. One thing about corporate culture is that they don't like to see you sitting at a desk and not typing something, or not using your mouse.
Thus, my boss has come to the realization that I'm rather creative, and I tend to come up with my own things to work on. They are usually beneficial to the company (creating an on-line ordering system, fixing and tweaking client lookups, etc.). What is great is that I've been the one with the initiative. I'm my own manager, for the most part. I follow the constraints that my boss gives me, but everything else is free.
I sometimes wish that my constraints didn't prevent me from working on a rather difficult project... I have limitations on programming languages that I'm allowed to use. Sometimes I dream about being a professor and having a pHd. I guess I would be the type that's not so concerned about getting published as much as imbueing students with a peice of my own creativity.
If I ever do go into academia, it will not be for a research position. If one comes my way, I won't deny it, but it would probably land second to what I've got going in the class room.
Is this feasible? I know that there are schools where the profs are focused on teaching, i.e. Rose Hulman. Does this political environment show up in these types of schools as well?
Now Available for download! Mandrake 9.0 beta 2, compiled with GCC 3.2!
Err, well, nevermind.
Yes, it was a brilliant metaphor.
If you lived in the 'real' world, it's unlikely that a sentient program is going to hack your body.
Micro$oft never accounts for that.
Mandrake provides a utility called HardDrake that is very useful. It does the equivalent of the device manager. Also useful is the KDE Control panel. It shows you all of the identifier strings on your PCI bus.
One of the most impressive tools that I've seen, however, is LinuxConf. That proggie is the bizomb.
Other distros provide their own version of device manager. SUSE has Sax, Redhat's got something else. They're all really easy to use too.
The amazing thing is that most of these are just front ends for configuration scripts. If you want to customize something, it's all right there for you. If you want to configure X to use YY display driver for ZZ resolution, but a different display driver for a different resolution, it lets you. I have yet to see Windows allow any freedom in that respect.
I get spam from Microsoft and AT&T. They're pretty well established companies.
I recently installed Win2K service pack 3 on my machine. It may have patched a few bug-fixes, but more importantly, it caused both my DVD and CD-R/RW drive to stop working. The reason for this was "The device driver could not be loaded." or something.
What I worry about is if I agree to the terms of said MS EULA, and MS decides to "Update" my software, am I going to turn on my computer one day to find that my graphics card drivers no longer load? How about my CD-Drives again? They both bit the big one. I installed a different OS, and they both work perfectly. Go Figure.
Microsoft shouldn't even be posting a EULA like this for a peice of "necessary" software that breaks people's machines.
I grew up on DOS. I wrote menuing systems for the rest of my family, we used an application called "GeoWorks," a direct rip from Windows. It was more stable. I didn't handle the move to Windows 95 very well.
But when I read your post, I kept thinking... If we give that level of customization to the user, just how many users are going to mess something up like hiding the 'X' in the upper right hand corner? It isn't really a matter of spoon-feeding, it's more a matter of protecting people from their own stupidity.
It may sound harsh, but it's true. The average user is going to break something because they are trying to "fix outlook." They'll take the path bar out of IE, they'll eliminate the menu bar. Then they won't know how to bring it back, or worse, won't be able to. All of this, just because the GUI was incredibly flexible.
A better way to do it would be to have a few command-line programs that would allow for the customization. It sounds simple, but think about it for a moment. The average user gets goose-bumps if they ever see a DOS-prompt. It's is something arcane to them, something on par with witchcraft. They'll see you using the command-line, and automatically think that you are a programmer.
If we don't really let them know that they can change things, and if we make it only slightly more difficult to change things, then it would eliminate many of the potential problems.
Actually, you'll need to read a EULA for the EULA, otherwise you could just copy the EULA without agreeing to it.
In effect, "BY AGREEING TO THIS PEULA (PRE-EULA), YOU AGREE TO NOT COPY THE FOLLOWING EULA."
hmm. Maybe /. should patent that idea.
Yes, and no.
As long as I've got the computer I have, with a copy of winamp, I'll be able to play those mp3's. Keep in mind that this is all talk about the future of hardware and software. Unless everyone upgrades to the new M$ OS, unless everyone purchases the new hardware to handle DRM, then we'll have problems with GB#5 distributing mp3's.
This is why every mp3 made up to the point of true DRM will be pirated with little or no control. Any law that states this, or states that is illegal is really just the flapping of feathers. Sure, they may bust the occasional kid in a college dormroom who is dumb enough to utilize 90% of a university's bandwidth distributing his 5 gigabytes of mp3's. It is highly unlikely that they can bust the average user on it, since nearly every American pulls this crap.
If unsigned mp3 distribution became illegal, I'm sure that more than half of the senators in Washington could possibly get busted for it. I find it hard to believe that none of them have an mp3 that they do not own, or that no one in their family does. Once the lawmakers realize that they are American citizens themselves, and subject to the same laws, then the passage of these communist psycho laws will cease. Regardless of the funding the MP/RIAA throw at it.
The point of "45,000" things springs from the type of questions that can be answered with the same answer. Alice isn't about generating actual intelligent responses, it is just about generating a response that sounds like it could have been generated intelligently. Thus, Wallace poses the question: What's the difference between illusion and material? This type of attitude brushes on the theories that state that we are all just a set of batteries for a massive army of robots, and our brains are connected into some massive Matrix...
Anyway, the responses he refers to are like such:
You see, the italicized portions are all that is really important. You can chop off the unnecessary portion (the details) using a wildcard, and come up with a somewhat intelligent response. example:
So you see, there are surprisingly few responses that "fit" with many stimuli. This is what he meant by saying that there are 45,000 possibilities, or some such.
The doctor states that Alice is intelligent, to the point of simulating a human response. He also goes so far as to state that the human is 99.99999% robot, some of us being even more so.
But then you notice that Alice fails in cases of creativity. For instance:
A good experiment to test true human-like intelligence would be to pass the machine a string of random words, and ask it to construct a meaningful paragraph from them. Humans can do this without a problem, this is as simple as the word magnets attached to the refrigerator.
It seems that Alice's responses are all just a reflection of a human's decision of what is appropriate, and what isn't. The machine is not making the actual decision of what to say, it is merely spurting sentences that are pre-existant. I doubt that Alice will have the occasion of 'putting her foot in her mouth.'
I am amused that the Artificial Intelligence community, in fact most scientific communities have adopted a mindset of me-first, science-second, especiallly AI. One would think that the AI community would apply one of it's own algorithms to the structure of the community itself, thereby increasing scientific capacity.
It would be great if we CS people could organize ourselves to the point where we can test out our own algorithms on a broad social scale, and not just within the limits of our metal boxes with blinking lights.
And then you realize that most kids drive like they do because of the pressures put upon them by their peers. The parents may not have anything to do with how a teen drives at all, rather a matter of hormones and car size.
And being a regular commuter..The numbers of drivers that drive like idiots and morons is increasing..
I've also been a regular driver, and I've noticed the number of UAV's (SUV's) increasing. Wouldn't you think that the mindset of "Much bigger car = me have my way" sets in with these monstrous vehicles? I've seen many vehicles force themselves into traffic, tailgaiting, cutting off, and ending on the side of the road. The majority of them were UAV's.
My dad is an asshole driver. He hits the gas when he's three feet behind the next vehicle, he regularly uses the term "Jag-off," "Whore," "Sonovabitch," and a few others. I am a good driver, I do speed up and squeeze out of tight situations. I rarely cut people off, and I never tailgate. It's not good style. Coincidently, I also drive a tiny Kia.
I don't think that all of what you said holds water, but your observation is true. I believe that the increase in shitty driving is directly related to the increase of UAV(SUV) ownership.
The real area where SQL is weak is recursion. There is no allowance for recursion in '92 and there is little I believe in '99.
An excellent language to examine is Datalog, which uses rules to do queries. The structure of the Datalog language, as well as it's queries, falls very close to the definition of a finite state machine.
You can show the flow of data, and how it fits within the bounds of the rules you give it, all by drawing the states that you define within the language. The query ends when it reaches a point where it can no longer process any data.
SQL is great for database work, but I honestly believe that the future lies in a rules-based language like Datalog.
Since when did the operating system come before the hardware? I can understand that with the advent of Quake 3, a 3D card was a necessity. This would be an example of hardware following software, but not the operating system.
Maybe next time, I'll leave the CPU at home and run M$ windows from my car's CD player.
heh... what the Jimmy Carter is getting.
:-)
They probably just need something that costs a lot of money, that looks probable. Yes, a SEAL carrying sub is not going to be patrolling the bottom and spying, it's going to be delivering SEALs.
And then you realize that the boat belongs to the NSA. They want you to think that the ship is delivering SEALs. They want you to think that that's what the money was spent on. Knowing government, they probably already have the solution, and it costs about as much as a "bigger SEAL delivery system."
Don't waste your time looking for a Computer Science job right now. You overlook those positions that will pay you the money you need while you look for your niche job.
I got my job through the back way. I started out as a receptionist, of all things. The position demonstrated that I had massive communication skills. I got to know the CEO, all of the VP's, and all of the managers of all of the branches. Then I caught the attention of the IT director.
I sent him my resume', it was sparse but he didn't care. I haven't even finished college, I have no certifications, but I know patience. It took time, working in a hellhole in front of a call-monitor. The IT director would walk by, I'd talk to him about technical things and he'd quiz me on miscellaneous things. We developed a good working relationship before he even hired me.
He hired me at a rate that was significantly lower than what the work I did usually earned. I didn't care, because my foot was in the door. I spent time with the department, I went out of my way to do things. I got noticed by the other higher-ups. They were pleasantly surprised that this talkative kid that sat behind the call-monitor was actually a really good computer-nerd.
I was given salary this year. I still have no certifications. There are few certifications that I actually respect. To me, the best certification is that Lamb's Skin you get after 4 years of dedicated work. To me, the best way to utilize it is by being patient, having humility, and looking for any oppurtunity of getting your foot in the door.
woooo
"The Zone" lasts for hours on end. Necessary requirements:
1) Block girlfriend from buddy list and don't answer the phone. She is a distraction, part of the outside world. She will burst your bubble.
2) Two or three large bags of Nacho Cheesier Doritos. Sustenance is vital for the long haul, and it keeps the body temperature up.
3) A refrigerator full of Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew is the answer to all problems. It is the fuel that your brain burns. It makes 2+2 add faster for your brain, and the computer. It is the lifeblood, the essence. It awakens the Awen.
4) No flourescence. Wooden surroundings are best, with Christmas lights all over. The smell of the wood invigorates, and when mixed with the caffeinated high, causes a euphoric state where the logic flows from your brain down to the long fingers that fly over the keyboard.
5) Start no earlier than 6:00 pm. Any earlier, and your brain is still focused on the sun, on sex, on that half-eaten pizza in the freezer. Avoid this trap! Your code will lose it's strict hungarian style, you will become more verbose, and distraction will abound.
6) Music is the last item on the list, and yet not the least. A blend of techno, euro, trance at low volume. The ability to lose your mind in the mathematic undertones of the music will decrease the compiler warnings, and will make the code stable even when compiled on -O4.
This whole ordeal illustrates the need for a universal operating system. MS almost has it, yet everyone balks at this because MS is a company. MS goes after people's money, MS steals, MS ... etc. We all know this.
So, now what? Do we entrust another company with the development of this OS? I propose having a counsel take control of an open-source based solution. This would eliminate any and all competition on the OS side, yet would provide the common ground necessary for all other software development to exist. No more multiple platforms, no more griping about a company having too much control. Instead, we'd have something slimilar to JEDEC deciding what the system calls would be.
Fragmenting windows will not affect development of software. Seriously!! Unless they change the API and system calls (which is not what is proposed), then you'd have the rift in platforms. Fragmented windows basically means hacking out Messenger, IE, Calculator, or the ever present evil Paint. As far as I understand, IE basically is a clone of the original Window's Explorer, and all else are just extra applications. A fragmented windows then would be like installing a much improved version of Windows 95 (IE didn't really count for much in that distro), which I hear people still run and don't complain about.
Stop complaining about the halt on development of software because the platforms have changed, because in truth... they haven't.
Anyone notice in that Newsbytes article:
The bill comes just days after Intel and AOL Time Warner executives came to Capitol Hill urging Congress to enact "narrowly crafted" legislation designed to support and codify their efforts.
Wasn't Intel the only one who protested the suggestions that Hollings was making? Intel wasn't a pusher, it was really MPAA/RIAA.
The dude totally left out Delphi, which is used by more than a few places... (It's huge in Eastern Europe.)
Borland's got a nice product, and OO pascal has it's virtues.