Indeed it was... I downloaded their 100+ meg installer (if memory serves me correctly) over a friggin modem. That was a royal PITA.Two times I had to start over because resume wasn't supported!;)
Re:I have great respect for the OpenSSL project...
on
OpenSSL 1.0.0 Released
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· Score: 1
There is no mathematical difference between a date stamp and a version stamp if they both increment by arbitrary amounts over releases and programmers can't move backward in time.
Good point.:)
I'd heard of the TeX approach before. I like it, but personally I don't have that much fate in the architectural direction most projects to see it as a viable option for universal adoption.;)
Re:I have great respect for the OpenSSL project...
on
OpenSSL 1.0.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
You mean the WINDOWS approach. You know that MS started that “trend”, and that we all hated it, back then? We still do, for the same reasons.
Actually, Adobe did it with Illustrator way back in 88.
Also, software doesn’t go stale, so your “argument” is false. If there is nothing to change, because it is fine as it is, and nobody finds bugs despite searching for them, would you stop using a program, just because it’s older??
Lots of software goes stale. Libraries cease to work with newer file formats and/or protocols. Programs don't understand newer formats or keep supporting features deprecated ages ago.
Granted, some software can stay the same for decades, but there is a lot that does need updating to keep with the times.
I stand by my argument that having a release with a "date stamp" makes it easier to keep track of these things. It's by no means the only approach, but it a perfectly sensible one.
I used to feel horrible because back in elementary school me and a bunch of others bullied this one poor kid for 6 fucking years. Eventually I came to terms with it. I was, like most kids, a fucking retard shithead.
So, have you called up this person to apologize for being a fucking retard shithead?
I was bullied in school, yet none of my bullies have ever as adults apologized for their behavior. But yes, I still remember it, and yes, an apology would be a way to find real closure. The thought that my former bullies are no longer fucking retard shitheads and have given up abusing other people would be a nice thing to know.
I've gotten over it, I have good self esteem these days and I am successful. But the emotional scars are still there, somewhere beneath the surface.
Probably the best current solution is teaching your kids how to beat the living shit out of a bully and to deal with the repercussions of that action.
Speaking as someone who was bullied, this is not a realistic option. It might be doable when there's one bully, but in many cases there are ten bullies and one victim. Trying to beat the living shit out of ten people alone is more or less a suicide mission.
I have great respect for the OpenSSL project...
on
OpenSSL 1.0.0 Released
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
...but when it comes to version numbers I've grown fond of Ubuntu's approach, with month and year as the version. It makes it very simple to tell if you have a fresh or stale copy of something.
But then again, OpenSSL is a library. Version numbering schemes hardly matter for something like that.
Sometimes it's better to ship a product and deliver it to 95% of the user base instead of having everyone wait because 5% wants feature X which is broken.
But there is the option to disable feature X, so rather than knowingly ship with bugs you can often have the program show a notice that this feature is disabled or something like that.
Generally when building software you'll have "Quickly", "Lots of features" and "Bug free". Depending on the software and project stage you'll want to strike a different balance. Releasing an alpha which has lots of features quickly with loads of bugs is OK. Releasing a final release of a program handling financial transactions with loads of bugs is never OK.
But yes, it's a question of economics, and what makes sense for a given project at a given time.
So how, exactly, is this any different from spending money on WOW? Not everyone likes the same kind of games.
Just because the average Joe doesn't like Farmwille, WOW, curling or knitting that doesn't mean it's not worth the investment in time and/or money to someone else.
I let my kids (3.5 and 6) play on our Wii. But it's supervised, and only a few hours a week. Usually I'm taking part too. (New Super Mario Bros is more fun when you can go into the bubble and daddy can clear the hard part of the level.;)
I'd argue in our family gaming is a net positive activity. The kids learn motor skills, cooperation, and given that I emphasize social games, get used to do gaming together as a group.
Any fool can tell that dumping a Playstation on a kid and not moderating the activity will likely be harmful. Any activity is bad for you if you do too much of it...
It it really so hard people?
Re:apparently in Spain, the accused have privacy
on
Mariposa Botnet Beheaded
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Of course, we are talking about botnet script-kiddies after all, so whose to say these upstanding individuals aren't actually minors as well?
Do you seriously believe that today's bot nets have any resemblance with the irc-botnets of yesteryear? Bot nets are used primarily by organized criminals these days, trading in identities and performing phishing and scamming operations. The script kiddies were replaced by real crooks with guns a long time ago.
Not only are younger coders generally cheaper, they also generally are more into the "new technologies" -- as a programmer gets older, it becomes almost a second job to keep up with the new technology as it comes out, and at some point I suspect that many just decide it's easier to get off the carousel and go find something else to do.
I believe that the 'true hacker' type of programmer is driven by passion. A passion to make great software. A passion to learn new things until the very end. Without the passion there just isn't enough motivation to keep learning new skills, constantly asking yourself the question: "Could this be done better?"
I've met programmers who code for a living, and I've met programmers who have made a living of what they want to do anyway: To code.
I am going to let my children watch whatever they want, and play whatever they want. This is how I was raised. I always had the freedom to watch horror movies filled with all sorts of gore, and play the same type of games (then again, games back then didn't have much in the way of gory bits).
We tried letting our kids (3 and 5) watching more aggressive programming for a while. This was very quickly reflected in their behavior.
So I'm choosing the way I was raised, not allowing my kids to see stuff that is deemed unsuitable. (Not that I'm being fundamentalistic about it, but as a general rule.) That being said I'm also not going to have any issues with said kids getting into whatever horror&gore / kinky hardcore porn / whatever once they are old enough to truly separate fantasy from reality.
How about people actually started parenting their children? I'm sure as hell not going to let the kids go online alone until they are old enough to do so responsibly. Just like I don't let them watch TV programs and movies out of their age group. Or how I actually spend time with them and talk to them about stuff. (Even a three-year-old can have a proper conversation if you actually listen and support with asking questions.)
So when will people get off their collective asses and stop trying to find ways to escape responsibility and offload it to whatever solution happens to be popular at the time?
I man can dream, can't he?
(And no, I can't control what they do at their friends etc. etc. But there are risks with crossing the street too.)
IANAL, but if you ask me the time and name of the program is a fact. The description/synapsis/call it what you will, is not. So I guess it's OK to publish the asctual schedule of a channel, or scrape the channel's official guide. But I'm sure that scraping a publication's TV-guide and basically copying it is more of copyright infringement and less of publishing facts.
This does bring up an interesting issue. Pharmaceutical companies are apparently applying patents for genes these days. Aren't the DNA base sequences of any gene a fact if anything?
I use Spotify a lot. But there's one huge problem: If Big Content pulls out then Spotify will wither and die. And if they do then my playlists, which contain the most valuable information for me, are also doomed. This is huge problem.
If I spend countless hours listening to music and discovering new artists without the ability to export my playlists in some open format (just the metadata, not the songs themselves), I'd get totally pissed if I can't access them any more. So as long as Big Content is threatening to pull out of these services (which apparently still pay more than radio from what I've heard) I'm not inclined to pay. I can always get the tracks themselves through some other service, but only if I know which they are.
I wish they would just friggin stop shooting themselves in the foot, and stop treating customers like the enemy. But I'm too idealistic, I guess...
The error is simply sub-standard education. We already have a whole generation of people here in Finland who have been using phones and IM for ages. (Everyone had cell phones when I was in high school, and I've passed thirty.) But we also have (for now) a rather good educational system. Taught right, people can distinguish informal and formal writing properly.
One thing I've never understood about the US system: Why do you people think kids have to learn to read at such a young age? Is it just peer pressure? Here most kids learn to read at the age of seven, and yet we seem to be doing just fine compared to a lot of places. Early education here centers a lot on letting kids be kids and develop "normally", whatever that is...;)
I know, but so far they are all too expensive for what I would be doing with them... Newer generations of atom and associated HD decoding chips will hopefully change that.
Joe and Jane Average do not have an extra $500 -$860 plus another 30/mo in addition to their cellphone and wireless internet costs to drop on "the Internet", movies, books, and apps in their laps when they have a laptop which does the just about the same thing already.
I have yet to see a laptop which is comfortable to use on a bus/train commute. The world is larger than the US, and public transportation actually works in a lot of places. Also, unlimited 3G data is 10€ a month here.
I've been looking for a decent PDF-capable ereader for my own commute for ages. This is definitely a candidate.
Most people here don't see past their own noses... Myself, I like the iPad except for the fact that Apple decides what I can install... but that's the whole point.
The iPad is a platform, not a device.
Most people just want stuff to work, and don't want to care how. Most of the time, so do I. I don't want my stove in the kitchen to require a friggin manual to do basic cooking even if I could patch it to boil eggs 15% faster I never would be bothered. It's the same for regular people with all tech, computers included. People don't want to know the details, they just want to tap on a movie/book/app/whatever, confirm their transaction, and have it all just work.
The iPad can run iPhone apps, and the SDK is available now. App developers will be falling over each other to be first with new apps taking advantage of the larger screen.
I'm very tempted, but still skeptical I'll buy this myself. The closed platform is an issue for me. But most people couldn't care less about what they can't do on a device like this, if they just can do all they want. Freedom is great, but how many of us have truly bothered to go under the hood in our games consoles for instance? I can do all I truly need with our Wii even if I can't run SCUMMVM. Hell, I don't even have time to play all the games I've bought.
The iPad will be a great example of good enough technology. "The internet", in your lap, on this amazing looking little device. With movies, books, music and apps to boot. Joe and Jane Average are gonna think it's great.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed it was... I downloaded their 100+ meg installer (if memory serves me correctly) over a friggin modem. That was a royal PITA.Two times I had to start over because resume wasn't supported! ;)
There is no mathematical difference between a date stamp and a version stamp if they both increment by arbitrary amounts over releases and programmers can't move backward in time.
Good point. :)
I'd heard of the TeX approach before. I like it, but personally I don't have that much fate in the architectural direction most projects to see it as a viable option for universal adoption. ;)
You mean the WINDOWS approach. You know that MS started that “trend”, and that we all hated it, back then?
We still do, for the same reasons.
Actually, Adobe did it with Illustrator way back in 88.
Also, software doesn’t go stale, so your “argument” is false. If there is nothing to change, because it is fine as it is, and nobody finds bugs despite searching for them, would you stop using a program, just because it’s older??
Lots of software goes stale. Libraries cease to work with newer file formats and/or protocols. Programs don't understand newer formats or keep supporting features deprecated ages ago.
Granted, some software can stay the same for decades, but there is a lot that does need updating to keep with the times.
I stand by my argument that having a release with a "date stamp" makes it easier to keep track of these things. It's by no means the only approach, but it a perfectly sensible one.
I used to feel horrible because back in elementary school me and a bunch of others bullied this one poor kid for 6 fucking years. Eventually I came to terms with it. I was, like most kids, a fucking retard shithead.
So, have you called up this person to apologize for being a fucking retard shithead?
I was bullied in school, yet none of my bullies have ever as adults apologized for their behavior. But yes, I still remember it, and yes, an apology would be a way to find real closure. The thought that my former bullies are no longer fucking retard shitheads and have given up abusing other people would be a nice thing to know.
I've gotten over it, I have good self esteem these days and I am successful. But the emotional scars are still there, somewhere beneath the surface.
Probably the best current solution is teaching your kids how to beat the living shit out of a bully and to deal with the repercussions of that action.
Speaking as someone who was bullied, this is not a realistic option. It might be doable when there's one bully, but in many cases there are ten bullies and one victim. Trying to beat the living shit out of ten people alone is more or less a suicide mission.
...but when it comes to version numbers I've grown fond of Ubuntu's approach, with month and year as the version. It makes it very simple to tell if you have a fresh or stale copy of something.
But then again, OpenSSL is a library. Version numbering schemes hardly matter for something like that.
Sometimes it's better to ship a product and deliver it to 95% of the user base instead of having everyone wait because 5% wants feature X which is broken.
But there is the option to disable feature X, so rather than knowingly ship with bugs you can often have the program show a notice that this feature is disabled or something like that.
Generally when building software you'll have "Quickly", "Lots of features" and "Bug free". Depending on the software and project stage you'll want to strike a different balance. Releasing an alpha which has lots of features quickly with loads of bugs is OK. Releasing a final release of a program handling financial transactions with loads of bugs is never OK.
But yes, it's a question of economics, and what makes sense for a given project at a given time.
So how, exactly, is this any different from spending money on WOW? Not everyone likes the same kind of games.
Just because the average Joe doesn't like Farmwille, WOW, curling or knitting that doesn't mean it's not worth the investment in time and/or money to someone else.
To each his own.
I let my kids (3.5 and 6) play on our Wii. But it's supervised, and only a few hours a week. Usually I'm taking part too. (New Super Mario Bros is more fun when you can go into the bubble and daddy can clear the hard part of the level. ;)
I'd argue in our family gaming is a net positive activity. The kids learn motor skills, cooperation, and given that I emphasize social games, get used to do gaming together as a group.
Any fool can tell that dumping a Playstation on a kid and not moderating the activity will likely be harmful. Any activity is bad for you if you do too much of it...
It it really so hard people?
Of course, we are talking about botnet script-kiddies after all, so whose to say these upstanding individuals aren't actually minors as well?
Do you seriously believe that today's bot nets have any resemblance with the irc-botnets of yesteryear? Bot nets are used primarily by organized criminals these days, trading in identities and performing phishing and scamming operations. The script kiddies were replaced by real crooks with guns a long time ago.
One of the most popular viewer is now an open source viewer, with many more functions than their original viewer.
What's it called? I haven't tried SL for ages, but I could kill an hour or two to see if anything has changed. :)
Not only are younger coders generally cheaper, they also generally are more into the "new technologies" -- as a programmer gets older, it becomes almost a second job to keep up with the new technology as it comes out, and at some point I suspect that many just decide it's easier to get off the carousel and go find something else to do.
I believe that the 'true hacker' type of programmer is driven by passion. A passion to make great software. A passion to learn new things until the very end. Without the passion there just isn't enough motivation to keep learning new skills, constantly asking yourself the question: "Could this be done better?"
I've met programmers who code for a living, and I've met programmers who have made a living of what they want to do anyway: To code.
The latter always outperform the former.
I am going to let my children watch whatever they want, and play whatever they want. This is how I was raised. I always had the freedom to watch horror movies filled with all sorts of gore, and play the same type of games (then again, games back then didn't have much in the way of gory bits).
We tried letting our kids (3 and 5) watching more aggressive programming for a while. This was very quickly reflected in their behavior.
So I'm choosing the way I was raised, not allowing my kids to see stuff that is deemed unsuitable. (Not that I'm being fundamentalistic about it, but as a general rule.) That being said I'm also not going to have any issues with said kids getting into whatever horror&gore / kinky hardcore porn / whatever once they are old enough to truly separate fantasy from reality.
You either chose to have four children or you're an idiot.
I got the statistically improbable option: I have double twins. :D
But like most hardship you can make if work if you are serious about pulling through.
How about people actually started parenting their children? I'm sure as hell not going to let the kids go online alone until they are old enough to do so responsibly. Just like I don't let them watch TV programs and movies out of their age group. Or how I actually spend time with them and talk to them about stuff. (Even a three-year-old can have a proper conversation if you actually listen and support with asking questions.)
So when will people get off their collective asses and stop trying to find ways to escape responsibility and offload it to whatever solution happens to be popular at the time?
I man can dream, can't he?
(And no, I can't control what they do at their friends etc. etc. But there are risks with crossing the street too.)
Quite true. But I'm positive you can't patent fact. :D
IANAL, but if you ask me the time and name of the program is a fact. The description/synapsis/call it what you will, is not. So I guess it's OK to publish the asctual schedule of a channel, or scrape the channel's official guide. But I'm sure that scraping a publication's TV-guide and basically copying it is more of copyright infringement and less of publishing facts.
This does bring up an interesting issue. Pharmaceutical companies are apparently applying patents for genes these days. Aren't the DNA base sequences of any gene a fact if anything?
I use Spotify a lot. But there's one huge problem: If Big Content pulls out then Spotify will wither and die. And if they do then my playlists, which contain the most valuable information for me, are also doomed. This is huge problem.
If I spend countless hours listening to music and discovering new artists without the ability to export my playlists in some open format (just the metadata, not the songs themselves), I'd get totally pissed if I can't access them any more. So as long as Big Content is threatening to pull out of these services (which apparently still pay more than radio from what I've heard) I'm not inclined to pay. I can always get the tracks themselves through some other service, but only if I know which they are.
I wish they would just friggin stop shooting themselves in the foot, and stop treating customers like the enemy. But I'm too idealistic, I guess...
Thanks for taking the time to reply. So far letting my kids be kids seems to be working out fine for us. :)
I hate to do this, I really do ...
No worries, English is my third language, after all. :)
The error is simply sub-standard education. We already have a whole generation of people here in Finland who have been using phones and IM for ages. (Everyone had cell phones when I was in high school, and I've passed thirty.) But we also have (for now) a rather good educational system. Taught right, people can distinguish informal and formal writing properly.
One thing I've never understood about the US system: Why do you people think kids have to learn to read at such a young age? Is it just peer pressure? Here most kids learn to read at the age of seven, and yet we seem to be doing just fine compared to a lot of places. Early education here centers a lot on letting kids be kids and develop "normally", whatever that is... ;)
I know, but so far they are all too expensive for what I would be doing with them... Newer generations of atom and associated HD decoding chips will hopefully change that.
Joe and Jane Average do not have an extra $500 -$860 plus another 30/mo in addition to their cellphone and wireless internet costs to drop on "the Internet", movies, books, and apps in their laps when they have a laptop which does the just about the same thing already.
I have yet to see a laptop which is comfortable to use on a bus/train commute. The world is larger than the US, and public transportation actually works in a lot of places. Also, unlimited 3G data is 10€ a month here.
I've been looking for a decent PDF-capable ereader for my own commute for ages. This is definitely a candidate.
I likely would not. Thousands of iPhone app devs have already, however.
Most people here don't see past their own noses... Myself, I like the iPad except for the fact that Apple decides what I can install... but that's the whole point.
The iPad is a platform, not a device.
Most people just want stuff to work, and don't want to care how. Most of the time, so do I. I don't want my stove in the kitchen to require a friggin manual to do basic cooking even if I could patch it to boil eggs 15% faster I never would be bothered. It's the same for regular people with all tech, computers included. People don't want to know the details, they just want to tap on a movie/book/app/whatever, confirm their transaction, and have it all just work.
The iPad can run iPhone apps, and the SDK is available now. App developers will be falling over each other to be first with new apps taking advantage of the larger screen.
I'm very tempted, but still skeptical I'll buy this myself. The closed platform is an issue for me. But most people couldn't care less about what they can't do on a device like this, if they just can do all they want. Freedom is great, but how many of us have truly bothered to go under the hood in our games consoles for instance? I can do all I truly need with our Wii even if I can't run SCUMMVM. Hell, I don't even have time to play all the games I've bought.
The iPad will be a great example of good enough technology. "The internet", in your lap, on this amazing looking little device. With movies, books, music and apps to boot. Joe and Jane Average are gonna think it's great.