Hey, I grew up on Slackware, too. Then I grew up. These days I use Red Hat pretty much exclusively (when I'm not using FreeBSD). At the same time it bothers me that vendors are supporting Red Hat to the exclusion of other Linux distributors. This is supposed to be a community and I'd like to think all Linux distributions are welcome in that community (well, except maybe for LinuxOne). I wouldn't give my business to a commercial vendor that didn't recognize and support the entire community whenever possible.
And I don't quite understand why the commercial vendors don't get it. After all, if you believe the poll on the site, only 29% of people are using Red Hat. That means Red Hat-only vendors are missing 71% of their potential market! So put that way, it doesn't make good business sense. That's an argument you can use with your PHB to good effect. ---
Not all synthesized music is "popular" (i.e. overhyped by record labels trying to make money off mediocre-at-best "bands").
I'd like to see a return of music to the days . . . when music required skill and talent to create and produce.
You should check out "less popular" (i.e. not overhyped by record labels trying to make money off mediocre-at-best "bands") groups like Kraftwerk, Apoptygma Berzerk, MDFMK (KMFDM), Spahn Ranch, Front Line Assembly... I could go on... but this isn't my field of expertise, and five minutes on Napster will give you a halfway decent taste for what I'm talking about (or would if 99% of the MP3s on there weren't so poorly ripped and/or encoded). ---
A little further in my post, I mention that MCI lost a customer. The person they had call me only lost a single 'sale'. If I had the opportunity, I'd rather remove the idiot who thought of using telemarketing in the first place from his position than the person who made the call.
As a former employee of MCI whose job, in part, was to bust unethical or misbehaving telemarketers, I think I can say a few things here.
(Yes, it was a very satisfying aspect of my job!)
First, telemarketing works. It's maybe 20x more effective than snail mail. Second, your telemarketer really didn't handle the situation very well. Every telemarketer at MCI is set up so they can instantly snail mail you information on whatever plan they happen to be offering you at the time. (Of course, you can also check out same on the web site.) And they can call you back at a later, mutually agreed upon date and time. (This saves them from losing their commission and allows people to go and do their own research.) Which, if you're interested, you'd probably want to do, since the telemarketers can offer you special deals or promotions that aren't advertised on the web site.
But anyway, the point is telemarketing works. Far fewer people are bothered by it than spam. And oddly enough, it draws a better response than direct (snail) mail.
Oh, yeah. If a telemarketer calls you and does anything stupid, like curse at you, hang up on you, tell you they'll give you free long distance forever, etc., call in to MCI's customer service number and report the incident. These incidents are passed up to the Customer Research department which does a preliminary investigation into the report, and sends those with merit to the National Escalation Center which is a glorified term for a large office full of HR types who decide whether to spank or fire the telemarketer.:) ---
Under U.S. case law, courts will usually nix a law on free speech grounds if there are other "less restrictive" alternatives to accomplish the government's goal. For the ACLU, the existence of filtering software -- even with its faults -- is a way to convince judges that there are options other than COPA.
In such a case, "government must make use of less drastic means if it would regulate at all," writes constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe in American Constitutional Law.
That a "less restrictive means" exists is sufficient for the Supreme Court to kill a law on free speech grounds. The government doesn't have to use it. And the Supreme Court can't mandate such a use anyway.
What this means is that, finally, censorware is going to do some good by getting this law killed.
Government-mandated use of censorware will get killed on other grounds in completely separate cases. ---
Go ahead and moderate this down now, because it's definitely going to be flamebait.
I actually went out and bought SuSE 6.3 (the day before I bought my CD-R drive). Now I wish I hadn't. I tried it out. It looked like a bizarre combination of Red Hat and Slackware.
Now, I used Slackware way back in the day when Softlanding Systems still existed, and it was good. I finally gave up on Slackware sometime in 1996 when I realized that the distro just wasn't getting updated on a regular enough basis for me. Regular enough being "whenever necessary." Especially for security reasons.
Back then I was reading BUGTRAQ fairly regularly and I would see a bug report posted, an exploit posted, and Red Hat Linux's fixed package posted within a matter of hours. So I figured Red Hat is probably pretty cool. It took my box getting h4x0r3d through one of those exploits to really motivate me to switch, though. And once I did, I haven't looked back.
And there are a few things that bother me about Red Hat Linux, but overall I really like it.
Now I try out SuSE, and lo and behold, Patrick Volkerding wrote YaST? I don't get it. If he had spent the time maintaining Slackware, I might still be using it.
...and someone's going to come along and tell me to try Debian. Don't even go there. I did try slink, and well, that was a royal pain in the ass.
...and someone's going to come along and tell me to try BSD. Well, I have. I've got NetBSD running on a Sun 3/60 here. ---
This book in published form means that I can drop a copy on my mother's desk in her classroom, and, there's a small chance that she'll finally see that those quiet kids are really getting harassed and don't deserve it. This book means that, hopefully, some skinny nerd will get listened to by a principal, and it means that somewhere, some computer geek might have a plesant time in school, where he might not have previously.
This is Flamebait?!
So what if jonkatz isn't a geek like you? Here he's actually done something that may just prevent another Columbine from happening, may improve the lives of millions of geeks everywhere, and MIGHT JUST ALLOW SOME OF THOSE SUBURBAN NON-GEEKS TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, and you all are bitching?
He stole my comment! If you only commented to hear yourself talk, or to make money from it, then sure, say this. But your precious "stolen" comment is being used to help fight the oppression that geeks are living (and dying) every day. You have a problem with this?
JonKatz doesn't understand us! He isn't one of us! He's definitely not, but don't think he doesn't understand. Not being a geek, I doubt he'll fully understand what it's like, but he got the important parts: nobody deserves to be harassed, insulted, spit on, kicked, beaten, or driven to suicide or even to murder, and everybody deserves the opportunity to live up to their full potential, whether that be assistant drive-through manager at McDonald's, or leader of a revolution. It pains me to think of how many de Icaza's and Torvalds's are out there in high schools right now thinking about killing themselves, and actually doing it, because people in general don't understand. JonKatz has an ability to make the general population understand, and that's what the geeks dealing with harassment and violence in school need.
You know, I never thought I would end up defending JonKatz, but I'm sick of people flaming him because he doesn't get it. That's not the point. He gets enough to make the regular people see what's going on, and that's why he's important. Maybe we don't need to listen to him, but the rest of the world could only benefit by listening to him, and we would reap the benefits of their hopefully being able to come to terms and accept us for what we are. ---
Oh no, not another Winmodem...
on
WinDSL Coming?
·
· Score: 3
The best thing about Winmodems is you can update the firmware. The worst thing about Winmodems is you can update the firmware. Winmodems tend to be buggy, CPU-hungry beasts whose firmware is updated frequently because of it. They tend to be very unreliable. (Don't believe me? Call up your favorite ISP and ask THEIR opinion of Winmodems.) The article says it'll run fine in a 550MHz system. And they're targeting it at under-$1500 computers? Can you get a Coppermine system for that price, WITH the DSL modem? (Think Gateway, Dell, etc., not parts-from-eBay.) Besides, DSL devices are fairly cheap for the bandwidth you're getting. You have a couple of choices: avoid the issue altogether by getting an EXTERNAL device, like the Cisco 675, or write software drivers for your favorite OS. Will Motorola allow this to be done? Who knows. ---
Patents are only supposed to be good for a limited time (currently 17 years). Back in the indudstrial age, you needed that time for basic R&D and getting your product to market. By the time you got your product out and in use by people, the patent would be close to expiring. These days the product development timeframe is much shorter, especially with software. Any changes in patents should reflect this. ---
oes the presence of unusual constructs mean that Perl code cannot be maintained?
No, it doesn't. It just means you have to understand the constructs.
Any language can be the source of unmaintainable code; it's up to us to use the power of the language in a sensible way.
This is true. However, in all the Perl code I've written (some of it on fairly visible sites), I've taken pains to make sure I didn't use any of those unusual constructs, or to clarify them with comments if I found it necessary to use something weird.
Your example (mysub(2) = 15) is unmaintainable, but I suspect most sensible coders would have called the function something clearer than "mysub". And if necessary they may even have put a clarifying comment next to it.
This isn't my example; it came from the www.perl.com article. Funny that they should use such a bad example. I'd rather see good examples of how to put the language feature to use; they would be far more useful to me. But as for a clarifying comment, do I have to put one next to each invocation of mysub(), or should I just explain it at mysub() itself? What if I don't have the source for mysub()? Then I have to hope it's documented in the module documentation...
I realize any feature of perl, or any other language, can be used for good or ill. This one just seems to be carrying a negative bias... ---
This isn't intended as flamebait, though it might sound like it. That said, I'm trying to grok these new features...
From the department of bizarre syntax, subroutines can now be legal lvalues; that means they can be assigned to. Of course, this only works if they return something assignable, and if they're marked as an lvalue subroutine.
Took me a few minutes, but I finally got my head around this one. Sure, it's interesting, but it's yet more bizarre syntax that is going to be hell to debug.
mysub(2) = 15;
Without looking at mysub(), how in the hell am I supposed to know this assigns to $a? So much for the "black box." This violates just about every precept of good programming practice I can think of. Not that it won't be useful; in perl, anything can be useful...
This is yet one more reason I am going to stay as far away from perl as I possibly can. I like to be able to maintain my code. And sometimes I have to maintain other people's code. Things like this will make maintenance a complete nightmare. ---
I'm posting this just as I received it a few minutes ago....
Subject: Palm talks about Pocket PC with Palm Advantage attachment Date: Thu, 20 Apr 00 00:49:19 -0800 From: Palm Developer Program <reg_dev@palm.com> To:
We've received some questions from the Palm economy regarding what we think about the new version of Windows CE, which Microsoft calls Pocket PC. We expect that Microsoft will make a very big launch event and advertising campaign starting April 19, just as they did with the last version of Windows CE.
Just like last time, some industry analysts will announce that Palm is dead, because Microsoft's handheld has more PC features than Palm handhelds. And just like last time, when the smoke clears we think Palm will still be on top.
We don't ever underestimate a competitor, though. The market is too competitive and changes too fast. Besides, there's no question that Windows CE is less unpleasant than it used to be. So we'll continue to work hard to tell Palm's story, including the amazing array of great software and hardware products that you bring to the Palm platform.
Now that we're a public company, we have very aggressive plans to drive the long-term growth of the Palm platform. We'll be revealing more about those plans in the next several months. And in the meantime, we think we have a great story to tell about Palm and our partners today. Here's some of the information we'll be distributing. You'll see this reflected in new and more aggressive marketing campaigns this summer. If you get questions about Palm's competitiveness, we encourage you to pass this information along. And we'd like to hear from you if you have comments on this memo, or ideas on things that we could do better.
Please email your comments and suggestions to devinfo@palm.com with "Pocket PC feedback" in the subject title.
Thanks very much for your support of the Palm family.
Michael Mace VP, Product Strategy Palm, Inc. ================= The Palm Advantage
Palm OS(R) handhelds are the standard - Palm OS has more than 75% market share worldwide, and our installed base doubled in the last year. - Palm OS has more than 5,000 software programs, 10-50 times more than any other handheld platform. - Palm OS is supported by the leaders in enterprise software, including Oracle, Siebel, SAP, Lawson, Sun, and Sybase.
Palm OS handhelds are the leader because they were designed from the ground up for your needs - They're designed for information management when you're on the go, not to be a shrunken PC. Key features of a handheld are different from a PC: - Simple. You can instantly access the information you need. - Wearable. It's small and light enough that that you can carry it in a pocket or a purse all day, and the batteries last long enough that you can go on a business trip without fear of losing information. - Mobile. You can always update your information through wired or wireless connections, even when you are on the go. - We believe Palm remains the clear leader in all three areas.
What to ask when evaluating a handheld - How many software programs and hardware options are available? As for any other computing product, the number of software and hardware options determine how much you can do with it. Palm OS has by far the largest selection, with more than 5,000 software programs and hundreds of hardware expansion options.
- Do the people around you use it? Handheld users share information. They use the infrared connection to exchange business cards, information, and even software programs. Make sure you're not stuck on a handheld island.
- How many companies sell it? Which companies support the platform? How many? How innovative are they? Palm licensees and OEMs include many of the most innovative companies in electronics, including leaders like Sony, Nokia, and IBM, and hot new companies like Handspring, Qualcomm, and TRG.
- Is it open? Make sure your freedom of choice is protected. Some handhelds restrict your choices by forcing you to buy all of one company's software programs, limiting you to a single expansion technology, or not working with the full range of corporate software. The Palm platform gives you freedom of choice in software, with a multitude of different spreadsheets, document editors, e-book readers, mapping programs, financial management programs, etc. (see "Did You Know," below). The Palm platform offers the most expansion options -- hundreds of external expansion products for the Palm-branded family, Springboard(TM) modules from Handspring, CompactFlash(TM) from TRG, and coming soon Memory Stick(R) technology from Sony. And Palm OS handhelds are designed to work with all leading computing environments, including PCs and Macs; Outlook and Notes; Yahoo and AOL; and the leaders in enterprise software.
- Are you forced to pay for features you don't want? Everyone wants different things from a handheld. Adding hardware features increases the weight and cost of the system. Bundling extra software costs you money, and uses extra memory which adds even more cost and reduces battery life. You'll carry your handheld with you all day -- make sure you're only carrying the programs and features you'll really want. Palm puts the basics in its systems, and makes it easy for you to add whatever you want.
- How simple is it, really? Beware of companies that try to cram an entire PC into your pocket. Adding PC-style menus, windows, and programs can make a handheld too complex, and forces you to pay for extra memory and high-powered processors that can destroy battery life. Remember, the most important features of a handheld are getting to the information you need instantly and reliably, and getting a battery life long enough that you can travel without the fear of losing your information.
- How well do the features work in real life? Sometimes features work better in a demo than they do in real life. A prime example is browsing the Web. When connected to a phone line, browsing can look very fast. But when using a wireless connection, which is what most handheld users want to do, the Web slows to a crawl. You can get browsers for the Palm platform, but we also offer Web Clipping, a Web technology designed specifically for handhelds, which allows access to Web information in under ten seconds, even over a very slow connection.
Did you know that software and hardware announced for the Palm platform includes... --More than a dozen e-reading programs and thousands of e-books. --Several full-function spreadsheet programs that can read and edit Excel files. --Numerous document-editing programs that let you read and edit Word files. --Online shopping from Amazon, Ebay, and many others. --Several full-function database programs. --Corporate tools that let you fill out forms, check inventory, take orders, and even make job offers through a wireless connection. --Hundreds of games. --Many financial management programs. --Numerous drawing and painting programs. --Tools that let you easily develop your own Palm OS programs in minutes. --Two Web browsers. --An MP3 player. --Global Positioning System receivers and several mapping programs. --Cellphones that are also full-function Palm-compatible handhelds. --An electronic camera that lets you view pictures on your Palm handheld. --Online weather from Weather.com, sports from ESPN, and news from ABC, the New York Times, and the BBC. --A voice memo recorder. --And thousands of others. ---
The site's in South Africa. Is it that, or the/. effect, causing it to load so slowly?
Drop the commentary, and give us just the news! That way I wouldn't have to write the following piece of flamebait:
It apparently cost these people $7,500 to build one of these devices. In mass production, the cost would be much less, perhaps down to $99 or so. Just think, anybody could walk into Fry's and pick up a box which could screw up aircraft navigation! ---
So what's changed between Windows CE flopping heinously and Pocket PC? Windows CE didn't fail because of the name, it failed because it's desktop OS shoe-horned into a PDA. Doesn't look like much has changed except the name.
I suspect that they changed the name so they could claim "it isn't Windows" and shield it from some action they thought might happen to it in the antitrust case. What action that might be, I'm not sure. But as I've said before, the most effective remedy is going to be opening all the MS APIs. Maybe they think that they'll end up having to open the Windows source to public view, and wanted to keep this from happening with Windows CE (er, Pocket PC). ---
There are no images on the/. pages that need to be transparent.
I suppose that's true. However, the current GIF images do use transparency. And what if Taco gets a wild hair up his ass and decides to change the background to green or something? Oops, gotta redo all the GIFs.
It's called an "alpha channel" and, yeah, it rocks.
Yeah, I was trying to think of that. I haven't done any graphics work in a while. But it's obvious from a design standpoint that if the/. graphics were PNGs, the shading behind the icons could be done using the alpha channel so that the background, whatever color it is, will show through. That would save a lot of work when making certain types of design changes to a site...or changing the background colors...or placing the icons somewhere they've never been before...the possibilities are endless. ---
Why doesn't/. take some of it's own advice and burn some of it's GIFs?;)
Because Netscape still can't display PNGs with transparencies correctly. Except for this issue, the PNG support is pretty good.
I don't know about Internet Exploder since I don't use it...
(PNG supports transparency just like GIF does. Actually it's better since you can specify the amount of opacity any given pixel will have. This allows for some really neat effects that weren't possible before.) ---
The press release is equally vague about the tech, but does mention that there's a patent pending, and that it's similar to how car engines are cooled. (Isn't that prior art?) ---
Imagine I write a program that allocates a large amount of memory, but deallocates it and reallocates it in a pre-programmed way. By encoding information in a morse code type fashion into this activity pattern another user could monitor the system load and transcribe the info.
Monitoring system load and process activity are administrative tasks. An operating system could restrict a user's ability to perform these tasks, e.g. not display load averages, only allow users to view stats on their own processes, etc.
This type of data transfer is called a "covert channel," in other words, an unusual or unorthodox method of transferring data, where it's not obvious that data is being transferred at all. Steganography, for instance, creates a covert channel for data within images to which it is applied. This is distinguished from an "overt channel" where it is obvious that data is being transferred. Examples of this include FTP, sneaker net, telephone calls, etc.
Guarding against allowing covert channels to be opened in a system isn't very easy. However, restricting administrative tasks to those with a "need to know" would nearly completely solve the problem, at least within the computer. Now the network is another story..... ---
Slashdot Mirror
In a word: SCSI. (And the linear option, it won't hurt you.)
---
And I don't quite understand why the commercial vendors don't get it. After all, if you believe the poll on the site, only 29% of people are using Red Hat. That means Red Hat-only vendors are missing 71% of their potential market! So put that way, it doesn't make good business sense. That's an argument you can use with your PHB to good effect.
---
And I'm sure as hell not going to pay 3G for a cell phone, even if I can hear digital music over it!
---
My Linux distro came with a nice killall command that does:
# killall netscape
---
I'd like to see a return of music to the days . . . when music required skill and talent to create and produce.
You should check out "less popular" (i.e. not overhyped by record labels trying to make money off mediocre-at-best "bands") groups like Kraftwerk, Apoptygma Berzerk, MDFMK (KMFDM), Spahn Ranch, Front Line Assembly... I could go on... but this isn't my field of expertise, and five minutes on Napster will give you a halfway decent taste for what I'm talking about (or would if 99% of the MP3s on there weren't so poorly ripped and/or encoded).
---
- USA Today coverage
- Washington Post coverage
USA Today is citing "people familiar with the case," while the Washington Post is citing "people familiar with the discussions." Sheesh.---
As a former employee of MCI whose job, in part, was to bust unethical or misbehaving telemarketers, I think I can say a few things here.
(Yes, it was a very satisfying aspect of my job!)
First, telemarketing works. It's maybe 20x more effective than snail mail. Second, your telemarketer really didn't handle the situation very well. Every telemarketer at MCI is set up so they can instantly snail mail you information on whatever plan they happen to be offering you at the time. (Of course, you can also check out same on the web site.) And they can call you back at a later, mutually agreed upon date and time. (This saves them from losing their commission and allows people to go and do their own research.) Which, if you're interested, you'd probably want to do, since the telemarketers can offer you special deals or promotions that aren't advertised on the web site.
But anyway, the point is telemarketing works. Far fewer people are bothered by it than spam. And oddly enough, it draws a better response than direct (snail) mail.
Oh, yeah. If a telemarketer calls you and does anything stupid, like curse at you, hang up on you, tell you they'll give you free long distance forever, etc., call in to MCI's customer service number and report the incident. These incidents are passed up to the Customer Research department which does a preliminary investigation into the report, and sends those with merit to the National Escalation Center which is a glorified term for a large office full of HR types who decide whether to spank or fire the telemarketer. :)
---
In such a case, "government must make use of less drastic means if it would regulate at all," writes constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe in American Constitutional Law.
That a "less restrictive means" exists is sufficient for the Supreme Court to kill a law on free speech grounds. The government doesn't have to use it. And the Supreme Court can't mandate such a use anyway.
What this means is that, finally, censorware is going to do some good by getting this law killed.
Government-mandated use of censorware will get killed on other grounds in completely separate cases.
---
They'd rather pay for inferior software than get better software for free? (as in beer AND speech)
---
I thought trolls lived under bridges. Do /. trolls live under routers?...
---
I actually went out and bought SuSE 6.3 (the day before I bought my CD-R drive). Now I wish I hadn't. I tried it out. It looked like a bizarre combination of Red Hat and Slackware.
Now, I used Slackware way back in the day when Softlanding Systems still existed, and it was good. I finally gave up on Slackware sometime in 1996 when I realized that the distro just wasn't getting updated on a regular enough basis for me. Regular enough being "whenever necessary." Especially for security reasons.
Back then I was reading BUGTRAQ fairly regularly and I would see a bug report posted, an exploit posted, and Red Hat Linux's fixed package posted within a matter of hours. So I figured Red Hat is probably pretty cool. It took my box getting h4x0r3d through one of those exploits to really motivate me to switch, though. And once I did, I haven't looked back.
And there are a few things that bother me about Red Hat Linux, but overall I really like it.
Now I try out SuSE, and lo and behold, Patrick Volkerding wrote YaST? I don't get it. If he had spent the time maintaining Slackware, I might still be using it.
---
This is Flamebait?!
So what if jonkatz isn't a geek like you? Here he's actually done something that may just prevent another Columbine from happening, may improve the lives of millions of geeks everywhere, and MIGHT JUST ALLOW SOME OF THOSE SUBURBAN NON-GEEKS TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, and you all are bitching?
He stole my comment! If you only commented to hear yourself talk, or to make money from it, then sure, say this. But your precious "stolen" comment is being used to help fight the oppression that geeks are living (and dying) every day. You have a problem with this?
JonKatz doesn't understand us! He isn't one of us! He's definitely not, but don't think he doesn't understand. Not being a geek, I doubt he'll fully understand what it's like, but he got the important parts: nobody deserves to be harassed, insulted, spit on, kicked, beaten, or driven to suicide or even to murder, and everybody deserves the opportunity to live up to their full potential, whether that be assistant drive-through manager at McDonald's, or leader of a revolution. It pains me to think of how many de Icaza's and Torvalds's are out there in high schools right now thinking about killing themselves, and actually doing it, because people in general don't understand. JonKatz has an ability to make the general population understand, and that's what the geeks dealing with harassment and violence in school need.
You know, I never thought I would end up defending JonKatz, but I'm sick of people flaming him because he doesn't get it. That's not the point. He gets enough to make the regular people see what's going on, and that's why he's important. Maybe we don't need to listen to him, but the rest of the world could only benefit by listening to him, and we would reap the benefits of their hopefully being able to come to terms and accept us for what we are.
---
http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ti cker=mot&script=410&layout=7&i tem_id=86582
---
The best thing about Winmodems is you can update the firmware. The worst thing about Winmodems is you can update the firmware. Winmodems tend to be buggy, CPU-hungry beasts whose firmware is updated frequently because of it. They tend to be very unreliable. (Don't believe me? Call up your favorite ISP and ask THEIR opinion of Winmodems.) The article says it'll run fine in a 550MHz system. And they're targeting it at under-$1500 computers? Can you get a Coppermine system for that price, WITH the DSL modem? (Think Gateway, Dell, etc., not parts-from-eBay.) Besides, DSL devices are fairly cheap for the bandwidth you're getting. You have a couple of choices: avoid the issue altogether by getting an EXTERNAL device, like the Cisco 675, or write software drivers for your favorite OS. Will Motorola allow this to be done? Who knows.
---
Patents are only supposed to be good for a limited time (currently 17 years). Back in the indudstrial age, you needed that time for basic R&D and getting your product to market. By the time you got your product out and in use by people, the patent would be close to expiring. These days the product development timeframe is much shorter, especially with software. Any changes in patents should reflect this.
---
No, it doesn't. It just means you have to understand the constructs.
Any language can be the source of unmaintainable code; it's up to us to use the power of the language in a sensible way.
This is true. However, in all the Perl code I've written (some of it on fairly visible sites), I've taken pains to make sure I didn't use any of those unusual constructs, or to clarify them with comments if I found it necessary to use something weird.
Your example (mysub(2) = 15) is unmaintainable, but I suspect most sensible coders would have called the function something clearer than "mysub". And if necessary they may even have put a clarifying comment next to it.
This isn't my example; it came from the www.perl.com article. Funny that they should use such a bad example. I'd rather see good examples of how to put the language feature to use; they would be far more useful to me. But as for a clarifying comment, do I have to put one next to each invocation of mysub(), or should I just explain it at mysub() itself? What if I don't have the source for mysub()? Then I have to hope it's documented in the module documentation...
I realize any feature of perl, or any other language, can be used for good or ill. This one just seems to be carrying a negative bias...
---
From the department of bizarre syntax, subroutines can now be legal lvalues; that means they can be assigned to. Of course, this only works if they return something assignable, and if they're marked as an lvalue subroutine.
Took me a few minutes, but I finally got my head around this one. Sure, it's interesting, but it's yet more bizarre syntax that is going to be hell to debug.
mysub(2) = 15;
Without looking at mysub(), how in the hell am I supposed to know this assigns to $a? So much for the "black box." This violates just about every precept of good programming practice I can think of. Not that it won't be useful; in perl, anything can be useful...
This is yet one more reason I am going to stay as far away from perl as I possibly can. I like to be able to maintain my code. And sometimes I have to maintain other people's code. Things like this will make maintenance a complete nightmare.
---
I'm posting this just as I received it a few minutes ago....
- -----
Subject: Palm talks about Pocket PC with Palm Advantage attachment
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 00 00:49:19 -0800
From: Palm Developer Program <reg_dev@palm.com>
To:
The Palm Advantage attachment is included.
-----------------------------------------------
Dear Palm Solution Providers:
We've received some questions from the Palm economy regarding what we think about the new version of Windows CE, which Microsoft calls Pocket PC. We expect that Microsoft will make a very big launch event and advertising campaign starting April 19, just as they did with the last version of Windows CE.
Just like last time, some industry analysts will announce that Palm is dead, because Microsoft's handheld has more PC features than Palm handhelds. And just like last time, when the smoke clears we think Palm will still be on top.
We don't ever underestimate a competitor, though. The market is too competitive and changes too fast. Besides, there's no question that Windows CE is less unpleasant than it used to be. So we'll continue to work hard to tell Palm's story, including the amazing array of great software and hardware products that you bring to the Palm platform.
Now that we're a public company, we have very aggressive plans to drive the long-term growth of the Palm platform. We'll be revealing more about those plans in the next several months. And in the meantime, we think we have a great story to tell about Palm and our partners today. Here's some of the information we'll be distributing. You'll see this reflected in new and more aggressive marketing campaigns this summer. If you get questions about Palm's competitiveness, we encourage you to pass this information along. And we'd like to hear from you if you have comments on this memo, or ideas on things that we could do better.
Please email your comments and suggestions to devinfo@palm.com with "Pocket PC feedback" in the subject title.
Thanks very much for your support of the Palm family.
Michael Mace
VP, Product Strategy
Palm, Inc.
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The Palm Advantage
Palm OS(R) handhelds are the standard
- Palm OS has more than 75% market share worldwide, and our installed base doubled in the last year.
- Palm OS has more than 5,000 software programs, 10-50 times more than any other handheld platform.
- Palm OS is supported by the leaders in enterprise software, including Oracle, Siebel, SAP, Lawson, Sun, and Sybase.
Palm OS handhelds are the leader because they were designed from the ground up for your needs
- They're designed for information management when you're on the go, not to be a shrunken PC. Key features of a handheld are different from a PC:
- Simple. You can instantly access the information you need.
- Wearable. It's small and light enough that that you can carry it in a pocket or a purse all day, and the batteries last long enough that you can go on a business trip without fear of losing information.
- Mobile. You can always update your information through wired or wireless connections, even when you are on the go.
- We believe Palm remains the clear leader in all three areas.
What to ask when evaluating a handheld
- How many software programs and hardware options are available? As for any other computing product, the number of software and hardware options determine how much you can do with it. Palm OS has by far the largest selection, with more than 5,000 software programs and hundreds of hardware expansion options.
- Do the people around you use it? Handheld users share information. They use the infrared connection to exchange business cards, information, and even software programs. Make sure you're not stuck on a handheld island.
- How many companies sell it? Which companies support the platform? How many? How innovative are they? Palm licensees and OEMs include many of the most innovative companies in electronics, including leaders like Sony, Nokia, and IBM, and hot new companies like Handspring, Qualcomm, and TRG.
- Is it open? Make sure your freedom of choice is protected. Some handhelds restrict your choices by forcing you to buy all of one company's software programs, limiting you to a single expansion technology, or not working with the full range of corporate software. The Palm platform gives you freedom of choice in software, with a multitude of different spreadsheets, document editors, e-book readers, mapping programs, financial management programs, etc. (see "Did You Know," below). The Palm platform offers the most expansion options -- hundreds of external expansion products for the Palm-branded family, Springboard(TM) modules from Handspring, CompactFlash(TM) from TRG, and coming soon Memory Stick(R) technology from Sony. And Palm OS handhelds are designed to work with all leading computing environments, including PCs and Macs; Outlook and Notes; Yahoo and AOL; and the leaders in enterprise software.
- Are you forced to pay for features you don't want? Everyone wants different things from a handheld. Adding hardware features increases the weight and cost of the system. Bundling extra software costs you money, and uses extra memory which adds even more cost and reduces battery life. You'll carry your handheld with you all day -- make sure you're only carrying the programs and features you'll really want. Palm puts the basics in its systems, and makes it easy for you to add whatever you want.
- How simple is it, really? Beware of companies that try to cram an entire PC into your pocket. Adding PC-style menus, windows, and programs can make a handheld too complex, and forces you to pay for extra memory and high-powered processors that can destroy battery life. Remember, the most important features of a handheld are getting to the information you need instantly and reliably, and getting a battery life long enough that you can travel without the fear of losing your information.
- How well do the features work in real life? Sometimes features work better in a demo than they do in real life. A prime example is browsing the Web. When connected to a phone line, browsing can look very fast. But when using a wireless connection, which is what most handheld users want to do, the Web slows to a crawl. You can get browsers for the Palm platform, but we also offer Web Clipping, a Web technology designed specifically for handhelds, which allows access to Web information in under ten seconds, even over a very slow connection.
Did you know that software and hardware announced for the Palm platform includes...
--More than a dozen e-reading programs and thousands of e-books.
--Several full-function spreadsheet programs that can read and edit Excel files.
--Numerous document-editing programs that let you read and edit Word files.
--Online shopping from Amazon, Ebay, and many others.
--Several full-function database programs.
--Corporate tools that let you fill out forms, check inventory, take orders, and even make job offers through a wireless connection.
--Hundreds of games.
--Many financial management programs.
--Numerous drawing and painting programs.
--Tools that let you easily develop your own Palm OS programs in minutes.
--Two Web browsers.
--An MP3 player.
--Global Positioning System receivers and several mapping programs.
--Cellphones that are also full-function Palm-compatible handhelds.
--An electronic camera that lets you view pictures on your Palm handheld.
--Online weather from Weather.com, sports from ESPN, and news from ABC, the New York Times, and the BBC.
--A voice memo recorder.
--And thousands of others.
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Drop the commentary, and give us just the news! That way I wouldn't have to write the following piece of flamebait:
It apparently cost these people $7,500 to build one of these devices. In mass production, the cost would be much less, perhaps down to $99 or so. Just think, anybody could walk into Fry's and pick up a box which could screw up aircraft navigation!
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I suspect that they changed the name so they could claim "it isn't Windows" and shield it from some action they thought might happen to it in the antitrust case. What action that might be, I'm not sure. But as I've said before, the most effective remedy is going to be opening all the MS APIs. Maybe they think that they'll end up having to open the Windows source to public view, and wanted to keep this from happening with Windows CE (er, Pocket PC).
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I suppose that's true. However, the current GIF images do use transparency. And what if Taco gets a wild hair up his ass and decides to change the background to green or something? Oops, gotta redo all the GIFs.
It's called an "alpha channel" and, yeah, it rocks.
Yeah, I was trying to think of that. I haven't done any graphics work in a while. But it's obvious from a design standpoint that if the /. graphics were PNGs, the shading behind the icons could be done using the alpha channel so that the background, whatever color it is, will show through. That would save a lot of work when making certain types of design changes to a site...or changing the background colors...or placing the icons somewhere they've never been before...the possibilities are endless.
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Because Netscape still can't display PNGs with transparencies correctly. Except for this issue, the PNG support is pretty good.
I don't know about Internet Exploder since I don't use it...
(PNG supports transparency just like GIF does. Actually it's better since you can specify the amount of opacity any given pixel will have. This allows for some really neat effects that weren't possible before.)
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- Press release
That's about it. Their has no apparent mention of the new model as of yet.The press release is equally vague about the tech, but does mention that there's a patent pending, and that it's similar to how car engines are cooled. (Isn't that prior art?)
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No good. Just try browsing http://www.research.microsoft.com/ with Netscape, and watch how fast it crashes. (Hint, it's the JavaScript.)
Turn off JavaScript and search for "astronomy" and you'll get the papers....
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Monitoring system load and process activity are administrative tasks. An operating system could restrict a user's ability to perform these tasks, e.g. not display load averages, only allow users to view stats on their own processes, etc.
This type of data transfer is called a "covert channel," in other words, an unusual or unorthodox method of transferring data, where it's not obvious that data is being transferred at all. Steganography, for instance, creates a covert channel for data within images to which it is applied. This is distinguished from an "overt channel" where it is obvious that data is being transferred. Examples of this include FTP, sneaker net, telephone calls, etc.
Guarding against allowing covert channels to be opened in a system isn't very easy. However, restricting administrative tasks to those with a "need to know" would nearly completely solve the problem, at least within the computer. Now the network is another story.....
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