There were seven guns involved in the incident, allegedly- the three the killer had with him (two pistols and an M4 rifle), one in his car (a shotgun), and three more at home (all rifles, one of which was used to murder his mother). Media quotes put the total number of guns his mother owned at "at least a dozen". The arsenal also included, according to the media, notorious "extra large ammunition clips", and he was carrying enough bullets "to kill every child at the school" (there were more than 5,400 students, so presumably that means that many rounds).
More than a dozen guns, extended ammunition clips, and thousands and thousands of bullets sounds like stockpiling to me.
Exactly like that. If someone said "Gnome 3 is brilliant, I use it all the time and it's my favourite!", you would be justified in being sceptical. If it turned out that they were using Cinnamon, you would cry foul. You'd say "That's not Gnome 3, it's Cinnamon! You still hate Gnome 3, but you like the related but different Cinnamon!".
If you spend hours modifying Windows 8, ripping the guts out of it, changing your default boot-up settings, running third party replacements for core functionality, then you can't in all honesty say "Windows 8 doesn't suck, it's brilliant!". That smacks of it being badly broken out of the box.
I don't know about the other two, but in Unity hovering the cursor over an icon still gives you the full programme name. Seeing as Unity isn't intended for touchscreens (believe it or not), this isn't a big issue. Although saying that, I still prefer the old fashioned way- where the name appears right there next to the icon.
Even if that's still a feature in Windows 8, it doesn't help you if you're trying to use it on a touchscreen device.
I find America a very baffling place, sometimes. In one news story, a child whose parents belonged to the militia movement who were stockpiling weapons goes on a killing spree in a school, and one of the most vocal responses is "it wouldn't happen if only there were more guns in school- armed teachers, armed kids, armed minimum wage guards on the door!". And anyone suggesting that gun possession might be a bad thing is shouted down for trampling on our freedoms. Then in the next news story, it's a criminal offence to be a teenager who draws weapons and has common household chemicals in their house. Also, we should ban (in no particular order)- violent video games, nudity in films, rap music, and skirts that end too far above the knee.
Because it's their system? Their software and their data running on their servers? Because when you signed up, you agreed to their terms and conditions (which undoubtedly allow them to do this, in some fuzzy legal way)?
If creating a kernel is so easy, should we be expecting a production-ready GNU-branded kernel any year now?
Yes I realise the difference between monolithic kernels and the Hurd microkernel, but the important point still stands- if Linux or some other well implemented kernel hadn't come along, GNU would still be a decades-old curiosity project. Attention would have been far more likely to switch to BSD than GNU, in the absence of a working kernel, and the tools we know and love would be nothing.
Also, if creating a high-quality kernel were so easy, why is it that Google has used Linux as the (GNU-free) basis of Android? Surely they would have just whipped one up themselves, with all the benefits of full ownership and preferential licensing that that would bring? Presumably they evaluated Linux as being the best option they could choose, for a project that has nothing to do with GNU- that's high praise.
Ironically, the phrase has actually taken on new relevance in recent years. Android is Linux, but not GNU/Linux. Arguably it's Java/Linux. People often say things like "Android is based on Linux, but it isn't REAL Linux"- what they actually mean is it's Linux, but not GNU/Linux. We pedants can embrace this new language for whole new layers of clarity.
Not that that makes any difference to "the dude on the street" of course, so I guess your point still stands.
Dell has never tried to market Linux systems in my neck of the woods. Briefly, it was possible to find Ubuntu-loaded desktops in the bowels of their website, but you needed to know it was there and go looking for it. That lasted all of about one year in my market, before they disappeared again.
The only time in my life I've seen Linux machines on shelves being advertised (excluding Android) was during the initial Netbook craze; and that was notable for just how awful the Linux distros chosen really were. I mean honestly, they were truly awful. My EeePC came with Xandros on it, and it was damned near unusable. 10 minutes work to put an Ubuntu variant on it and it was one of the best machines I ever had. Linux isn't a magic bullet- if companies are going to market Linux machines and do a terrible job of it, they're going to get just as far as any company that markets terrible products anywhere.
I am on my work laptop (running a 32 bit Core Duo, that is). Obviously not relevant in terms of game development, but more so in enterprise software development. My company has somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 PC units out there in the wild at the moment, and a non-trivial number of them will be running 32 bit processors and/or OSs, and will be for a flipping long time yet.
Not that I'm trying to justify any of this nonsense, but- why would the Mexico-dwelling Mayans have predicted the end of the world in Australian local time?
Presumably we've got about another 11 hours, until midnight Mexican time, before we're "in the clear", so to speak.
The problem is really that people don't understand what they're doing with Kickstarter any more. It's a symptom of how popular it's become in such a short period.
The idea is that you're sponsoring a project with what amounts to a donation, and some projects offer to give you a a free item of their product if the project is successful. And that's different from a pre-order. It's a donation with a potential reward; there's no guarantee you'll get anything.
So I've recently pledged to the GODUS project*, at a pledge level that gives me a copy of the game once it ships. But I've got to be completely OK with the fact that I might have lost that money forever; I'm OK with that, I haven't pledged more than I can afford, and the risk/reward ratio seems good.
* While we're on the topic, GODUS recently announced Linux support as a stretch goal. Last day of the fund-raising so it's probably out of reach, but fingers crossed...
I work in a real company, and project dates still slip if either scope, resources or both change. Project Management can get as cross as they like, but that's reality. There's only so far you can lower quality to compensate.
If you estimate dates for a project that delivers a few 100 units for a few thousand dollars, those dates simply won't fit a project for a few hundred thousand units for a few million dollars. Just the cost of tooling up is enough to set you back months. Cutting corners or botching the testing can only get you so far.
There are three major parties (discounting UKIP, who may or may not come to something in the next General Election), and two of them coalesced to form this government. The other party has not voiced strong opposition to this policy. So of a choice of 3 parties, two are implementing it and one doesn't seem to care overly. So not much of a choice there.
For what it's worth, the government launched a public consultation, which came back overwhelmingly against this policy. So you can't vote against it, and can't register your disapproval of it in any way that matters. Democracy sucks.
Maybe it's because it's getting late, but I think "wrote" is correct. "Wrote" is the active past participle, "written" is the passive past participle. "He should have wrote" sounds like an active phrase ("he" is doing some writing in the past), so "wrote" is correct. "Dropped by 2/3rds is what he should have written" would be the passive form (the phrase "dropped by 2/3rds" is the subject of some writing in the past), so that would be the version with "written".
But then I am quite tired, so shoot me down if I'm being crazy.
It is illegal to offer things in a country that don't comply with local law. If you were a Chinese electronics company, you wouldn't be allowed to sell your devices in America shops unless they complied with local consumer electronics laws. That's just the way it is.
Facebook's choice is either to comply with German law and carry on marketing themselves in Germany, or withdraw from Germany and prove under law that they've done so- banning German users, taking down their German localised site, IP geo-filtering, etc. Seeing as Germany is the most populous country in Europe, I'm going to guess that they would prefer the former.
If Mr Young is right, it isn't encrypted- it's just acronyms and shorthand. If that's all modern espionage relies on, then they're probably in trouble. Anyone with a taste for newspaper word puzzles would be able to crack them.
GCHQ's story is also plausible enough- that it was a one-time pad. It's well known that one-time pads were in heavy use during the war; and a good one-time pad is essentially unbreakable without having the solution. If number stations rely on one-time pads (which is also perfectly plausible), then knowing that that's how they work won't do you any good.
The only thing they would want to keep secret is if a) both the pigeon message and modern espionage use an encryption method other than one-time pads, b) that the same one has been in use for 80 years without revision, and c) that the method has been compromised.
I disagree. According to Mr Young, it was not encrypted in the first place- it's a plain-text message composed entirely of acronyms. If it isn't encrypted, you can't decrypt it.
Heavily abstracted plain-text CAN be a code, however; and you "crack" a code. Or "decode" a code would probably be more accurate.
To be fair, Dell's Android division was hardly a runaway success was it? Did anyone, anywhere, ever, by a Dell Streak?
Not that switching a failed tablet division from the most popular major tablet OS to the least popular major tablet OS is ever so likely to turn things around for them, but you can't blame them for thrashing around for a solution to their problems. For them, it probably is the right decision- if you're barely going to sell any of a product, it might as well be as similar as possible to the products you are selling and supporting...
Slashdot Mirror
There were seven guns involved in the incident, allegedly- the three the killer had with him (two pistols and an M4 rifle), one in his car (a shotgun), and three more at home (all rifles, one of which was used to murder his mother). Media quotes put the total number of guns his mother owned at "at least a dozen". The arsenal also included, according to the media, notorious "extra large ammunition clips", and he was carrying enough bullets "to kill every child at the school" (there were more than 5,400 students, so presumably that means that many rounds).
More than a dozen guns, extended ammunition clips, and thousands and thousands of bullets sounds like stockpiling to me.
Exactly like that. If someone said "Gnome 3 is brilliant, I use it all the time and it's my favourite!", you would be justified in being sceptical. If it turned out that they were using Cinnamon, you would cry foul. You'd say "That's not Gnome 3, it's Cinnamon! You still hate Gnome 3, but you like the related but different Cinnamon!".
If you spend hours modifying Windows 8, ripping the guts out of it, changing your default boot-up settings, running third party replacements for core functionality, then you can't in all honesty say "Windows 8 doesn't suck, it's brilliant!". That smacks of it being badly broken out of the box.
Just like Gnome 3.
I don't know about the other two, but in Unity hovering the cursor over an icon still gives you the full programme name. Seeing as Unity isn't intended for touchscreens (believe it or not), this isn't a big issue. Although saying that, I still prefer the old fashioned way- where the name appears right there next to the icon.
Even if that's still a feature in Windows 8, it doesn't help you if you're trying to use it on a touchscreen device.
I find America a very baffling place, sometimes. In one news story, a child whose parents belonged to the militia movement who were stockpiling weapons goes on a killing spree in a school, and one of the most vocal responses is "it wouldn't happen if only there were more guns in school- armed teachers, armed kids, armed minimum wage guards on the door!". And anyone suggesting that gun possession might be a bad thing is shouted down for trampling on our freedoms. Then in the next news story, it's a criminal offence to be a teenager who draws weapons and has common household chemicals in their house. Also, we should ban (in no particular order)- violent video games, nudity in films, rap music, and skirts that end too far above the knee.
Very odd place.
How does Facebook deserve this money?
Because it's their system? Their software and their data running on their servers? Because when you signed up, you agreed to their terms and conditions (which undoubtedly allow them to do this, in some fuzzy legal way)?
Any other reasons?
If creating a kernel is so easy, should we be expecting a production-ready GNU-branded kernel any year now?
Yes I realise the difference between monolithic kernels and the Hurd microkernel, but the important point still stands- if Linux or some other well implemented kernel hadn't come along, GNU would still be a decades-old curiosity project. Attention would have been far more likely to switch to BSD than GNU, in the absence of a working kernel, and the tools we know and love would be nothing.
Also, if creating a high-quality kernel were so easy, why is it that Google has used Linux as the (GNU-free) basis of Android? Surely they would have just whipped one up themselves, with all the benefits of full ownership and preferential licensing that that would bring? Presumably they evaluated Linux as being the best option they could choose, for a project that has nothing to do with GNU- that's high praise.
Ironically, the phrase has actually taken on new relevance in recent years. Android is Linux, but not GNU/Linux. Arguably it's Java/Linux. People often say things like "Android is based on Linux, but it isn't REAL Linux"- what they actually mean is it's Linux, but not GNU/Linux. We pedants can embrace this new language for whole new layers of clarity.
Not that that makes any difference to "the dude on the street" of course, so I guess your point still stands.
Dell has never tried to market Linux systems in my neck of the woods. Briefly, it was possible to find Ubuntu-loaded desktops in the bowels of their website, but you needed to know it was there and go looking for it. That lasted all of about one year in my market, before they disappeared again.
The only time in my life I've seen Linux machines on shelves being advertised (excluding Android) was during the initial Netbook craze; and that was notable for just how awful the Linux distros chosen really were. I mean honestly, they were truly awful. My EeePC came with Xandros on it, and it was damned near unusable. 10 minutes work to put an Ubuntu variant on it and it was one of the best machines I ever had. Linux isn't a magic bullet- if companies are going to market Linux machines and do a terrible job of it, they're going to get just as far as any company that markets terrible products anywhere.
Personally I think it parses better that way. Press Super. Type. Have a Shit. Shit happens. I can't fault your logic.
Doesn't the military do that anyway?
I know this would be UK/Canada/etc. rather than US, but still fun all the same:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_charles#Honours_and_military_appointments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip,_Duke_of_Edinburgh#Honours_and_honorary_military_appointments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Andrew#Naval_ranks
And so on and so forth.
I am on my work laptop (running a 32 bit Core Duo, that is). Obviously not relevant in terms of game development, but more so in enterprise software development. My company has somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 PC units out there in the wild at the moment, and a non-trivial number of them will be running 32 bit processors and/or OSs, and will be for a flipping long time yet.
Not that I'm trying to justify any of this nonsense, but- why would the Mexico-dwelling Mayans have predicted the end of the world in Australian local time?
Presumably we've got about another 11 hours, until midnight Mexican time, before we're "in the clear", so to speak.
This is not true, as far as I'm aware, in the UK. Here, I've heard several people moan about converters not being included since the iPhone 5 release.
Blasphemy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMj0sJPlB48
The problem is really that people don't understand what they're doing with Kickstarter any more. It's a symptom of how popular it's become in such a short period.
The idea is that you're sponsoring a project with what amounts to a donation, and some projects offer to give you a a free item of their product if the project is successful. And that's different from a pre-order. It's a donation with a potential reward; there's no guarantee you'll get anything.
So I've recently pledged to the GODUS project*, at a pledge level that gives me a copy of the game once it ships. But I've got to be completely OK with the fact that I might have lost that money forever; I'm OK with that, I haven't pledged more than I can afford, and the risk/reward ratio seems good.
* While we're on the topic, GODUS recently announced Linux support as a stretch goal. Last day of the fund-raising so it's probably out of reach, but fingers crossed...
I work in a real company, and project dates still slip if either scope, resources or both change. Project Management can get as cross as they like, but that's reality. There's only so far you can lower quality to compensate.
If you estimate dates for a project that delivers a few 100 units for a few thousand dollars, those dates simply won't fit a project for a few hundred thousand units for a few million dollars. Just the cost of tooling up is enough to set you back months. Cutting corners or botching the testing can only get you so far.
There are three major parties (discounting UKIP, who may or may not come to something in the next General Election), and two of them coalesced to form this government. The other party has not voiced strong opposition to this policy. So of a choice of 3 parties, two are implementing it and one doesn't seem to care overly. So not much of a choice there.
For what it's worth, the government launched a public consultation, which came back overwhelmingly against this policy. So you can't vote against it, and can't register your disapproval of it in any way that matters. Democracy sucks.
Although if the same man is in charge of writing both, it's probably a fair bet that they'll say the same thing.
Maybe it's because it's getting late, but I think "wrote" is correct. "Wrote" is the active past participle, "written" is the passive past participle. "He should have wrote" sounds like an active phrase ("he" is doing some writing in the past), so "wrote" is correct. "Dropped by 2/3rds is what he should have written" would be the passive form (the phrase "dropped by 2/3rds" is the subject of some writing in the past), so that would be the version with "written".
But then I am quite tired, so shoot me down if I'm being crazy.
Yes. https://de-de.facebook.com/
It is illegal to offer things in a country that don't comply with local law. If you were a Chinese electronics company, you wouldn't be allowed to sell your devices in America shops unless they complied with local consumer electronics laws. That's just the way it is.
Facebook's choice is either to comply with German law and carry on marketing themselves in Germany, or withdraw from Germany and prove under law that they've done so- banning German users, taking down their German localised site, IP geo-filtering, etc. Seeing as Germany is the most populous country in Europe, I'm going to guess that they would prefer the former.
If Mr Young is right, it isn't encrypted- it's just acronyms and shorthand. If that's all modern espionage relies on, then they're probably in trouble. Anyone with a taste for newspaper word puzzles would be able to crack them.
GCHQ's story is also plausible enough- that it was a one-time pad. It's well known that one-time pads were in heavy use during the war; and a good one-time pad is essentially unbreakable without having the solution. If number stations rely on one-time pads (which is also perfectly plausible), then knowing that that's how they work won't do you any good.
The only thing they would want to keep secret is if a) both the pigeon message and modern espionage use an encryption method other than one-time pads, b) that the same one has been in use for 80 years without revision, and c) that the method has been compromised.
I disagree. According to Mr Young, it was not encrypted in the first place- it's a plain-text message composed entirely of acronyms. If it isn't encrypted, you can't decrypt it.
Heavily abstracted plain-text CAN be a code, however; and you "crack" a code. Or "decode" a code would probably be more accurate.
I'm sure the income from the hugely successful Dell Streak was the only thing keeping them going, you're right... [/snark]
To be fair, Dell's Android division was hardly a runaway success was it? Did anyone, anywhere, ever, by a Dell Streak?
Not that switching a failed tablet division from the most popular major tablet OS to the least popular major tablet OS is ever so likely to turn things around for them, but you can't blame them for thrashing around for a solution to their problems. For them, it probably is the right decision- if you're barely going to sell any of a product, it might as well be as similar as possible to the products you are selling and supporting...