this industry has the most fucking ANNOYING acronyms.
e-this, e-that, i-this, i-that, me-commerce, information superhighway, dot in dot com, jesus christ, THEY ALL SUCK.
Did you ever notice how actual coders and geeks never use those lame acronyms and terms? I'm talking about eThis, eThat, e-Whatever, etc. You wouldn't catch a "real coder" using those terms unless it was out of dire necessity!
Hearing somone use those terms is a pretty clear indicator that they're a "suit". Which is convenient, since "suits" don't actually wear suits anymore. So be thankful for those horrid terms; they're a convenient way to tell "us" from "them".:-)
Of course, Katz only used "me-commerce" since he was quoting the authors of the original article, so I'm not flaming him for using that term
Re:Another one bites the du5t.
on
Kuro5hin Update
·
· Score: 2
Fool.
Gotta love certain factions of the Slashdot community. Now they're bashing VA for donating a server to the community. Of course, if VA didn't help out, they'd probably complain that VA wasn't "giving back to the community".
Considering that Kuro5hin is TOTALLY community-driven, it's particularly sellout-proof. I mean, shit... even if Inoshiro and Rusty become the biggest Microsoft whores on the planet, as long as the stories on their site continue to be submitted and selected by their readers, the site's not going to suffer one iota. It's not like Slashdot, where stories are selected by a small editorial staff that could conceivably (not saying they are, but...) be biased.
Anand's site seems to be Slashdotted or something. Sometimes the pages come up and sometimes they don't.
Since pulling up any given page on Anand's site right now is sort of a crapshoot, and the benchmarks start on PAGE 8 or so of the review, you might want to jump straight to the benchmarks... here's the link...
Just change the "p=8" to "p=9" or something to jump to page 9 instead of 8... gotta love those excessively-paginated articles to boost those ad hit rates....:-D
It appears that way!!! Geez, you'd think that a site like Anand's would be able to handle it. MY guess is that word of his DDR tests are spreading very quickly across the net, since we've all been waiting for a good set of DDR benchmarks.
never ceased to amuse me how a user could, with total poker face, tell me they hadn't been drinking any coffee near the keyboard, they had been sitting there all day and it just stopped. Then I'd hold up the keyboard and watch something like heavily creamed coffee drip out.
LOL, don't you love users?
I build data-driven websites, and I've learned that I need to build at least some sort of audit-trail capability into the sites because users are *always* fucking up and entering the wrong data and then blaming us. Nothing better than *nailing* a user during a meeting in front of their superior...
Client: There's a bug with the content system. Several of the items I entered have disappeared. Why does this happen? I thought you tested this stuff!?!?!? Me: Hmmm. Actually, nothing gets deleted, it only gets marked as "inactive" and is no longer displayed... let me see... [I tap out a few SQL queries]... hmmm, looks like they're still here, and it looks like you deleted them all yourself at 5:43PM yesterday from IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.... we could have your IT people tell us what computer corresponds to that IP address, maybe someone else was using your account? Client:Oh. Uh, um. OK.... I don't know what happened... err....[shifts nervously in seat] Client's Boss:Ah. I see... good job John! [glares at incompetant underling while making angry-looking note in red ink in his elegant leather executive DayTimer]
Doesn't happen that often, but boy, is it worth it. It's just that there's so many bugs that occur in the development process, clients know they stand a good chance of succeeding if they blame their mistakes on your "buggy code".:-)
I love Slashdot to death, but this is probably the least interesting thing I've read in about six months. It's not like there was anything suprising in the article... crumbs, hairs, dead skin, etc. No kidding. What the hell else would you expect to find in there? The article also noted that you can clean your keyboard by turning it upside down and shaking it, or by vaccuuming. Yeah, no shit? That's how you clean a keyboard? No wonder mine don't work after I run them through the wash.
And this is coming from me, a guy with a serious keyboard fetish. The keyboards they were shipping HP Vectras with a few years ago were divine! Dunno if they still make them. Heard IBM's top-of-the-line keyboards are sweet, too. I hate those $10 keyboards.:-)
Tarred and zipped files will wind up being smaller than a bunch of files that were zipped and not tarred.
Zipped files achieve lossless compression because they can eliminate redundant information in each file. However, when you zip up a bunch of files, the zip algorithm doesn't take advantage of redundant information shared between files. If you first tar the files into one big uncompressed file, it lets the zip algorithm take advatange of all the redundancy between all those files because zip thinks it's just one big file now.
That's also one reason why compression systems like WinRAR can acheieve much higher compression than zip if you're compressing a lot of files... when you check off the "solid archive" checkbox in WinRAR, it treats the whole batch of files as one big lump of data.
For example, if file one contains this data: "1234-ABCD-1234-ABCD-1234-ABCD-1234-ABCD" and file two contains this data: "ABCD-ABCD-ABCD" zipping them up wouldn't take advantage of the redundancy between the two and the zip file would unnecessarily contain duplicate copies of "ABCD" for each file. If "ABCD" is a piece of data that's large, then the wastefullness is significant... Remember, in lossless compression, you need still need to store at least one pristine copy of each little chunk of information you're compressing.
Did I do a good job of explaining this? I probably just rambled.:-)
I agree, we'll all miss the tricks you can do with analogue film... I for one miss analog special effects in movies. Give me the anamatronic movie creatures of the 80's over this CGI crap any day.
But still, I think digital film is the way of the future. I can't do exactly the same things in Photoshop that you can do in the darkroom, but I can do a lot more and I can do it faster and cheaper. And even though I just slagged off CGI in movies, it's really only been around for 2o years, and it's only been mainstream for about 10 years or so. Movies were like the original Star Wars were the culmination of 50 or 60 years of special effects. I can't wait to see what cGI looks like in 50 or 60 years.:-)
Also, digital media is a lot cheaper and more accessible. It will bring more people into the hobby/artform. Working with analogue film is kinda expensive, especially if you're developing it yourself. Digital film and cameras are more expensive in the short run than traditional cameras/film, but after you shoot the digital equivalent of 30-40 rolls of film the digital investment really pays for itself.
If you already have a computer, digital photography is pretty cheap and easy to get into. I never would have gotten into photography if it weren't for my trusy digital camera.:-)
Besides, don't underestimate the artistic possibilities that "free" digital film opens up. Most photographers will tell you... the secret to taking good pictures is to take a LOT of them.:-)
I noticed this quote in the University Business article which was linked to from the orig. posting...
"According to a study of on-line teens released this spring by Northstar Interactive, 93 percent between the ages of 13 and 18 had used the Web, and 97 percent had sent and received e-mail"
Well...duh. If you're conducting a study of ON-LINE teens, wouldn't you guess that most of them had used the web and/or email? That would be like saying that 97 of teens exiting a voting booth had voted. The only suprise is that the percentage is so LOW. Don't you love statistics? It's a good article otherwise though.:-)
And as for the online teens who hadn't used the web or email... just what the hell were they doing online exactly? There's plenty of things to do online besides the web and email, but it's kind of hard to imagine being online WITHOUT using one of the two...
Why not just outsource your code to an infinite number of moneys? They could write it for you instantaneously, and you wouldn't even have to give them specs.:-)
I don't think you can say one country is better when it comes to games.
Japan: a lot of the early arcade classics came from Japan- Space Invaders, Galaxian, Galaga, Xevious, all those other classic Taito, Namco, Konami, Nintendo games. In recent times, most (but by no means all) of the good games for the Japanese consoles have come from Japanese developers.
Americans: Just like Japan, a lot of the truly classic arcade games came from USA. Joust, Robotron, Asteroids, Tempest, etc. All those early arcade games from Atari, Williams, etc. And let's not forget pinball, OK?:-) In recent years, a lot of top-notch computer games have come from America ranging from the classic Infocom and Sierra adventures to FPS games like Wolf3D, Doom, Quake, etc.
Brits: The Brits have played a somewhat smaller role, but have contributed a LOT of great games that the posters before me have already listed at great length. Bullfrog Studios, etc. I've never been a fan of Psygnosis games buth ey, whatever floats your boat.
Of course, other great games have come from ther countries too like Canada and France and others. In the end, I think the lion's share of great games and technology have come from Japan and USA but like I say the Brits are no slouches either. Per capita, they're definitely holding their own over there.:-)
Now here's the question. We don't see a lot of Brit games over here, but the ones we do see tend to be high quality. Does that mean that Brit games are all of truly high quality, or is it true that they make as many crap games as the USA does, but they don't bother to ship the crap games over here?
I'm thinking they make just as many crap games as us. I used to think all Brit TV was good because we only see the good stuff here in USA, but I really don't think that's the case.:)
Hmmm, good points. The interface you mention would definitely be valuable.
I was thinking of the feature you described such as keyword filtering and displayed reports as functionality, not design. When I think "design", I think "graphics" and the pretty little navbars and icons and stuff. That's what I meant when I said Slashdot is such a good site because of its content and interface, not it's design (what's up with the nasty teal color anyway?:P)
I think we can agree nobody goes to a website to look at prety widgets.:-) You and I are probably saying the same thing but we're using different terminology.
Heh, let's not forget the importance of the "View Source" button in the evolution of the web.
Today's web coders learned much (if not all) of what they know by stealing HTML code from other sites. Around 1995, when I started throwing together my first ugly webpages, one of the ways we learned how to do it was to steal code off of other sites. In fact, people still steal code all the time for some of the fancier Javascript effects (not that I'm a real fan of Javascript, but...)
Still, who cares if someone stole your site design as opposed to content? People aren't coming to your site to check out your design, they're coming to check out your funky fresh content. I mean, just look at Slashdot... one of the uglier sites out there, IMHO, but also one of the best and most functional sites in the world- if not THE best.
Aside from design geeks, who the hell's gonna visit a site just because it looks cool? That's something a lot of suits don't get.
I was going to invest in Apple, but since they say "The protection of Apple trade secrets is incredibly important to our success"... and they obviously aren't very good at doing that, I guess they're not gonna be successful.
I'll go invest in a new company that can't be sunk by one big-mouthed employee...;-)
This story raises a very good point. It does seem like the media is treating the same exact behavior in two, totally different ways.
I don't really know anything about Piranha, though. My question is, how hidden is this default login in Piranha? In SQL Server 7.0, it's pretty bleeding obvious that a user with a login of "sa" has been created... even a quick glance at the users defined for a given database makes it totally obvious that there's a user called "sa" there. Here's a screenshot. I added the black rectangles in Photoshop; normally you'd see the name of my clients' servers there...:P
Pretty obvious, eh? I'm not saying this is good behavior on the part of the software, but at least it's bleeding obvious- even someone who's never used SQL Server before should notice this "sa" user the first time he/she configures users for a newly-created database.
So how hidden is this alleged "backdoor" user in Piranha? Is it obvious? Or is it well- hidden, meaning that an otherwise-competant user might easily overlook it?
Not defending Microsoft here, just trying to see if there's any justification for the difference in treatment...
Well, playing games on that tiny LCD screen is kinda useless. Make no mistake- it's extremely cool, but pretty useless from a practical standpoint...
So what I want to know is this: can you play these games on your TV using the video-out features of the camera??!? Most digital cameras have a TV-out feature. I know my Kodak DC280 does, but it doesn't use the DigitaOS, unfortunately.:-)
From a paper on Compaq's site, talking about the end of the VAX...
http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/vax_now.ht ml
"The oft-delayed but highly-publicized Intel IA-64 architecture, not to mention Hewlett Packard's end-of-life PA-RISC processor family, and Sun Microsystems' equally-delayed UltraSparc III processor, offer proof that 64-bitness is now a major concern in the computing mainstream."
"64-bitness"??!!? Is that a word?!?!??
And they didn't even SCSI-a-bility, PCIish-ness, or even the # of RAM-thingys on each system....
Sure, I'd like to see this rule struck down so that Wal-Mart and Best Buy can sell CD's at prices so low that my COOL, AWESOME, local record stores can't compete and are forced out of business because they can't afford to sell CD's for $11 like Wal-Mart.
God, if there's one thing I hate, it's rules designed to allow independant businesses to compete. I would much rather have WAL-MART be the only #@$#$ place in town where I can buy a freakin' CD.
I like Wal-Mart because they won't sell CD's with objectionable content... I certainly don't trust my own feeble mind to decide what's appropriate to listen to and what isn't.
Seriously guys, this rule actually gives smaller chains and independant stores a CHANCE to compete against lame places like Wal-Mart. I totally agree that CD prices are too high, but I don't think this rule is the problem.
I don't have a problem with a minimum sellable price being set for each CD. The MSP's are too high, but I don't think their existance is a bad thing. Unless you want to buy all your music at Wal-Mart....
It's natural for Linux people to hate Microsoft, but come on... Microsoft just can't win with some of you people.
Microsoft is trying to kill DOS, not the CLI. So what if it's only "hidden"? The goal is to get people AWAY from it.
You people slag MS for still relying on DOS, and then you slag them for killing it. Well, which do you want? You can't have it both ways. Honestly, if you're going to argue for Linux's superiority over Windows, try to have some sort of consistant logic in your arguments, or you're just going to make the cause look bad. There's plenty of reasons to hate Microsoft, so why strain your credibility by inventing new ones?
Besides, even if you hate it, NT4/Win2K are an order of magnitude better than Win9x in terms of stability. Killing DOS is a step away from DOS and towards the far superior NT kernel. If you still feel that the NT kernel is shit, then that's fine... but it's still a step in the right direction.
Even if you feel Microsoft sucks, don't slag them for moving in the right direction... what kind of sense does that make? If you were trying to get someone to quit smoking and they moved from 2 packs/day to 1 pack/day, would you slag them for that, too?
It's fun (and easy... and justified...) to pick on MS, but picking on them for the wrong reasons will make people think you're bashing MS for some sort of personal vendetta, and not because you have a valid, superior alternative (Linux, BeOS, CP/M, whatever floats your boat). And then who will listen to you??!
How about having the students write a small text-based web server? At it's most basic, a web server is a really simple piece of software (if you're just talking about serving static pages).
That would be a pretty fun project, and hey... the web IS pretty darn relevant in today's world, I think.;-)
If network programming is beyond them, then just have them write a function/method/class/etc that "simulates" a web server...ie, pass a URL string to the function, and the function will return the appropriate http content.
This is also a neat project because you can add to it as their skills progress. "Project #1" could just be a function that simulates a web server and returns a static page (teaches them how to read text streams).
Subsequent projects could add things like more dynamically-generated pages via include files and URL querystring parsing, etc.
This project would give them a good understanding strings, file i/o, text parsing, and a good grasp of how the stateless client-server architecture of the web works. Damn, maybe I should be a teacher!:-)
Slashdot Mirror
this industry has the most fucking ANNOYING acronyms.
e-this, e-that, i-this, i-that, me-commerce, information superhighway, dot in dot com, jesus christ, THEY ALL SUCK.
Did you ever notice how actual coders and geeks never use those lame acronyms and terms? I'm talking about eThis, eThat, e-Whatever, etc. You wouldn't catch a "real coder" using those terms unless it was out of dire necessity!
Hearing somone use those terms is a pretty clear indicator that they're a "suit". Which is convenient, since "suits" don't actually wear suits anymore. So be thankful for those horrid terms; they're a convenient way to tell "us" from "them". :-)
Of course, Katz only used "me-commerce" since he was quoting the authors of the original article, so I'm not flaming him for using that term
Fool.
Gotta love certain factions of the Slashdot community. Now they're bashing VA for donating a server to the community. Of course, if VA didn't help out, they'd probably complain that VA wasn't "giving back to the community".
Considering that Kuro5hin is TOTALLY community-driven, it's particularly sellout-proof. I mean, shit... even if Inoshiro and Rusty become the biggest Microsoft whores on the planet, as long as the stories on their site continue to be submitted and selected by their readers, the site's not going to suffer one iota. It's not like Slashdot, where stories are selected by a small editorial staff that could conceivably (not saying they are, but...) be biased.
Anand's site seems to be Slashdotted or something. Sometimes the pages come up and sometimes they don't.
Since pulling up any given page on Anand's site right now is sort of a crapshoot, and the benchmarks start on PAGE 8 or so of the review, you might want to jump straight to the benchmarks... here's the link...
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.h tml?i=1319&p=8Just change the "p=8" to "p=9" or something to jump to page 9 instead of 8... gotta love those excessively-paginated articles to boost those ad hit rates.... :-D
It appears that way!!! Geez, you'd think that a site like Anand's would be able to handle it. MY guess is that word of his DDR tests are spreading very quickly across the net, since we've all been waiting for a good set of DDR benchmarks.
:D
never ceased to amuse me how a user could, with total poker face, tell me they hadn't been drinking any coffee near the keyboard, they had been sitting there all day and it just stopped. Then I'd hold up the keyboard and watch something like heavily creamed coffee drip out.
LOL, don't you love users?
I build data-driven websites, and I've learned that I need to build at least some sort of audit-trail capability into the sites because users are *always* fucking up and entering the wrong data and then blaming us. Nothing better than *nailing* a user during a meeting in front of their superior...
Client: There's a bug with the content system. Several of the items I entered have disappeared. Why does this happen? I thought you tested this stuff!?!?!?
Me: Hmmm. Actually, nothing gets deleted, it only gets marked as "inactive" and is no longer displayed... let me see... [I tap out a few SQL queries]... hmmm, looks like they're still here, and it looks like you deleted them all yourself at 5:43PM yesterday from IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.... we could have your IT people tell us what computer corresponds to that IP address, maybe someone else was using your account?
Client:Oh. Uh, um. OK.... I don't know what happened... err....[shifts nervously in seat]
Client's Boss:Ah. I see... good job John! [glares at incompetant underling while making angry-looking note in red ink in his elegant leather executive DayTimer]
Doesn't happen that often, but boy, is it worth it. It's just that there's so many bugs that occur in the development process, clients know they stand a good chance of succeeding if they blame their mistakes on your "buggy code". :-)
Corn flakes? Yeah right. I'm thinking they were the boogers that a previous poster postulated about (now try saying THAT aloud).
"Any sufficiently crumbled corn flake is indistinguishable from boogers"... didn't Arthur C. Clarke say that?
I love Slashdot to death, but this is probably the least interesting thing I've read in about six months. It's not like there was anything suprising in the article... crumbs, hairs, dead skin, etc. No kidding. What the hell else would you expect to find in there? The article also noted that you can clean your keyboard by turning it upside down and shaking it, or by vaccuuming. Yeah, no shit? That's how you clean a keyboard? No wonder mine don't work after I run them through the wash.
And this is coming from me, a guy with a serious keyboard fetish. The keyboards they were shipping HP Vectras with a few years ago were divine! Dunno if they still make them. Heard IBM's top-of-the-line keyboards are sweet, too. I hate those $10 keyboards. :-)
Tarred and zipped files will wind up being smaller than a bunch of files that were zipped and not tarred.
Zipped files achieve lossless compression because they can eliminate redundant information in each file. However, when you zip up a bunch of files, the zip algorithm doesn't take advantage of redundant information shared between files. If you first tar the files into one big uncompressed file, it lets the zip algorithm take advatange of all the redundancy between all those files because zip thinks it's just one big file now.
That's also one reason why compression systems like WinRAR can acheieve much higher compression than zip if you're compressing a lot of files... when you check off the "solid archive" checkbox in WinRAR, it treats the whole batch of files as one big lump of data.
For example, if file one contains this data: "1234-ABCD-1234-ABCD-1234-ABCD-1234-ABCD" and file two contains this data: "ABCD-ABCD-ABCD" zipping them up wouldn't take advantage of the redundancy between the two and the zip file would unnecessarily contain duplicate copies of "ABCD" for each file. If "ABCD" is a piece of data that's large, then the wastefullness is significant... Remember, in lossless compression, you need still need to store at least one pristine copy of each little chunk of information you're compressing.
Did I do a good job of explaining this? I probably just rambled. :-)
I agree, we'll all miss the tricks you can do with analogue film... I for one miss analog special effects in movies. Give me the anamatronic movie creatures of the 80's over this CGI crap any day.
But still, I think digital film is the way of the future. I can't do exactly the same things in Photoshop that you can do in the darkroom, but I can do a lot more and I can do it faster and cheaper. And even though I just slagged off CGI in movies, it's really only been around for 2o years, and it's only been mainstream for about 10 years or so. Movies were like the original Star Wars were the culmination of 50 or 60 years of special effects. I can't wait to see what cGI looks like in 50 or 60 years. :-)
Also, digital media is a lot cheaper and more accessible. It will bring more people into the hobby/artform. Working with analogue film is kinda expensive, especially if you're developing it yourself. Digital film and cameras are more expensive in the short run than traditional cameras/film, but after you shoot the digital equivalent of 30-40 rolls of film the digital investment really pays for itself.
If you already have a computer, digital photography is pretty cheap and easy to get into. I never would have gotten into photography if it weren't for my trusy digital camera. :-)
Besides, don't underestimate the artistic possibilities that "free" digital film opens up. Most photographers will tell you... the secret to taking good pictures is to take a LOT of them. :-)
There was another poll showing that 97% of fucking drama class dorks were fucking drama class dorks, but I lost the link.
I noticed this quote in the University Business article which was linked to from the orig. posting...
"According to a study of on-line teens released this spring by Northstar Interactive, 93 percent between the ages of 13 and 18 had used the Web, and 97 percent had sent and received e-mail"
Well...duh. If you're conducting a study of ON-LINE teens, wouldn't you guess that most of them had used the web and/or email? That would be like saying that 97 of teens exiting a voting booth had voted. The only suprise is that the percentage is so LOW. Don't you love statistics? It's a good article otherwise though. :-)
And as for the online teens who hadn't used the web or email... just what the hell were they doing online exactly? There's plenty of things to do online besides the web and email, but it's kind of hard to imagine being online WITHOUT using one of the two...
Why not just outsource your code to an infinite number of moneys? They could write it for you instantaneously, and you wouldn't even have to give them specs. :-)
Hey, it's not like I'm the only one who ever thought of this...
I don't think you can say one country is better when it comes to games.
Japan: a lot of the early arcade classics came from Japan- Space Invaders, Galaxian, Galaga, Xevious, all those other classic Taito, Namco, Konami, Nintendo games. In recent times, most (but by no means all) of the good games for the Japanese consoles have come from Japanese developers.
Americans: Just like Japan, a lot of the truly classic arcade games came from USA. Joust, Robotron, Asteroids, Tempest, etc. All those early arcade games from Atari, Williams, etc. And let's not forget pinball, OK? :-) In recent years, a lot of top-notch computer games have come from America ranging from the classic Infocom and Sierra adventures to FPS games like Wolf3D, Doom, Quake, etc.
Brits: The Brits have played a somewhat smaller role, but have contributed a LOT of great games that the posters before me have already listed at great length. Bullfrog Studios, etc. I've never been a fan of Psygnosis games buth ey, whatever floats your boat.
Of course, other great games have come from ther countries too like Canada and France and others. In the end, I think the lion's share of great games and technology have come from Japan and USA but like I say the Brits are no slouches either. Per capita, they're definitely holding their own over there. :-)
Now here's the question. We don't see a lot of Brit games over here, but the ones we do see tend to be high quality. Does that mean that Brit games are all of truly high quality, or is it true that they make as many crap games as the USA does, but they don't bother to ship the crap games over here?
I'm thinking they make just as many crap games as us. I used to think all Brit TV was good because we only see the good stuff here in USA, but I really don't think that's the case. :)
Hmmm, good points. The interface you mention would definitely be valuable.
I was thinking of the feature you described such as keyword filtering and displayed reports as functionality, not design. When I think "design", I think "graphics" and the pretty little navbars and icons and stuff. That's what I meant when I said Slashdot is such a good site because of its content and interface, not it's design (what's up with the nasty teal color anyway? :P)
I think we can agree nobody goes to a website to look at prety widgets. :-) You and I are probably saying the same thing but we're using different terminology.
Heh, let's not forget the importance of the "View Source" button in the evolution of the web.
Today's web coders learned much (if not all) of what they know by stealing HTML code from other sites. Around 1995, when I started throwing together my first ugly webpages, one of the ways we learned how to do it was to steal code off of other sites. In fact, people still steal code all the time for some of the fancier Javascript effects (not that I'm a real fan of Javascript, but...)
Still, who cares if someone stole your site design as opposed to content? People aren't coming to your site to check out your design, they're coming to check out your funky fresh content. I mean, just look at Slashdot... one of the uglier sites out there, IMHO, but also one of the best and most functional sites in the world- if not THE best.
Aside from design geeks, who the hell's gonna visit a site just because it looks cool? That's something a lot of suits don't get.
I was going to invest in Apple, but since they say "The protection of Apple trade secrets is incredibly important to our success"... and they obviously aren't very good at doing that, I guess they're not gonna be successful.
I'll go invest in a new company that can't be sunk by one big-mouthed employee... ;-)
Uranium, Spam
Radioactive, unstable
Neither is a food
Nuclear fuel online
Uranium- a fun gift?
Stock up for Christmas
This story raises a very good point. It does seem like the media is treating the same exact behavior in two, totally different ways.
I don't really know anything about Piranha, though. My question is, how hidden is this default login in Piranha? In SQL Server 7.0, it's pretty bleeding obvious that a user with a login of "sa" has been created... even a quick glance at the users defined for a given database makes it totally obvious that there's a user called "sa" there. Here's a screenshot. I added the black rectangles in Photoshop; normally you'd see the name of my clients' servers there... :P
Pretty obvious, eh? I'm not saying this is good behavior on the part of the software, but at least it's bleeding obvious- even someone who's never used SQL Server before should notice this "sa" user the first time he/she configures users for a newly-created database.
So how hidden is this alleged "backdoor" user in Piranha? Is it obvious? Or is it well- hidden, meaning that an otherwise-competant user might easily overlook it?
Not defending Microsoft here, just trying to see if there's any justification for the difference in treatment...
Well, playing games on that tiny LCD screen is kinda useless. Make no mistake- it's extremely cool, but pretty useless from a practical standpoint...
So what I want to know is this: can you play these games on your TV using the video-out features of the camera??!? Most digital cameras have a TV-out feature. I know my Kodak DC280 does, but it doesn't use the DigitaOS, unfortunately. :-)
No, the DC280 doesn't have the DigitaOS.
Otherwise, It IS a kick-ass camera, isn't it? I have one too. ^_^
From a paper on Compaq's site, talking about the end of the VAX...
http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/vax_now.ht ml
"The oft-delayed but highly-publicized Intel IA-64 architecture, not to mention Hewlett Packard's end-of-life PA-RISC processor family, and Sun Microsystems' equally-delayed UltraSparc III processor, offer proof that 64-bitness is now a major concern in the computing mainstream.""64-bitness"??!!? Is that a word?!?!??
And they didn't even SCSI-a-bility, PCIish-ness, or even the # of RAM-thingys on each system....
Sure, I'd like to see this rule struck down so that Wal-Mart and Best Buy can sell CD's at prices so low that my COOL, AWESOME, local record stores can't compete and are forced out of business because they can't afford to sell CD's for $11 like Wal-Mart.
God, if there's one thing I hate, it's rules designed to allow independant businesses to compete. I would much rather have WAL-MART be the only #@$#$ place in town where I can buy a freakin' CD.
I like Wal-Mart because they won't sell CD's with objectionable content... I certainly don't trust my own feeble mind to decide what's appropriate to listen to and what isn't.
Seriously guys, this rule actually gives smaller chains and independant stores a CHANCE to compete against lame places like Wal-Mart. I totally agree that CD prices are too high, but I don't think this rule is the problem.
I don't have a problem with a minimum sellable price being set for each CD. The MSP's are too high, but I don't think their existance is a bad thing. Unless you want to buy all your music at Wal-Mart....
It's natural for Linux people to hate Microsoft, but come on... Microsoft just can't win with some of you people.
Microsoft is trying to kill DOS, not the CLI. So what if it's only "hidden"? The goal is to get people AWAY from it.
You people slag MS for still relying on DOS, and then you slag them for killing it. Well, which do you want? You can't have it both ways. Honestly, if you're going to argue for Linux's superiority over Windows, try to have some sort of consistant logic in your arguments, or you're just going to make the cause look bad. There's plenty of reasons to hate Microsoft, so why strain your credibility by inventing new ones?
Besides, even if you hate it, NT4/Win2K are an order of magnitude better than Win9x in terms of stability. Killing DOS is a step away from DOS and towards the far superior NT kernel. If you still feel that the NT kernel is shit, then that's fine... but it's still a step in the right direction.
Even if you feel Microsoft sucks, don't slag them for moving in the right direction... what kind of sense does that make? If you were trying to get someone to quit smoking and they moved from 2 packs/day to 1 pack/day, would you slag them for that, too?
It's fun (and easy... and justified...) to pick on MS, but picking on them for the wrong reasons will make people think you're bashing MS for some sort of personal vendetta, and not because you have a valid, superior alternative (Linux, BeOS, CP/M, whatever floats your boat). And then who will listen to you??!
How about having the students write a small text-based web server? At it's most basic, a web server is a really simple piece of software (if you're just talking about serving static pages).
That would be a pretty fun project, and hey... the web IS pretty darn relevant in today's world, I think. ;-)
If network programming is beyond them, then just have them write a function/method/class/etc that "simulates" a web server...ie, pass a URL string to the function, and the function will return the appropriate http content.
This is also a neat project because you can add to it as their skills progress. "Project #1" could just be a function that simulates a web server and returns a static page (teaches them how to read text streams).
Subsequent projects could add things like more dynamically-generated pages via include files and URL querystring parsing, etc.
This project would give them a good understanding strings, file i/o, text parsing, and a good grasp of how the stateless client-server architecture of the web works. Damn, maybe I should be a teacher! :-)