Well, for my part it's a reaction to the "USA! USA! America is the greatest!" message that permeates much of your cultural output and political attitude and manoeuvrings. Your reaction to what was clearly a joke doesn't do much to help, either...
All I can do is throw an anecdote at your anecdote, but the day before yesterday I had FF taking up 759MB of RAM after a day or so of idling, followed by an hour or so of actual use.
That's unusual, I'll grant you, but I regularly see FF using 150-200MB of RAM. It's gotten to the point now where I rarely bother checking; I just shut it down every day or two on general principle.
Why can't MS notify you about that when you first boot instead of at some unpredictable time when the whole world might be watching?
Well, the very few times it's happened to me, it *has* been when I first logged in. More specifically though, I'd imagine that it happens when the AV software notifies the security centre that it needs to be updated, which is likely to be whenever it feels like it.
I'd be wary of pinning all the blame for this one on MS; it's entirely possible that it's the av software that's nagging you.
The problem is if you read the GPL code, and someone sues you, it's very much harder to prove that you didn't lift sections of it - especially if there are similarities between the two sets of source code.
As another poster already pointed out, the initial cost of production still exists. Depending on what it is being produced, the move to a digital distribution method may have little or no impact on the cost of production (eg for a writer going from typewriter to PC isn't going to make a whole lot of difference to the amount of money they spend producing the work).
zero cost of distribution
Bandwidth is free now? Servers are free?
Cost of distribution is much lower per unit, but it most certainly is not zero.
and near-zero cost of marketing.
Why is that? Because the moment you put something on the web, google and word of mouth will do all your marketing for you? Why does going digital all-but eliminate the need to market your product?
what if that goth, devil-worshipping hacker wants to become a manager some day?
Then I'd realise that I'd have to swap my jeans and T-shirt for a suit more frequently. Thankfully I haven't had that much of my soul removed yet.
Seriously, I have the luxury of dressing pretty much as I please in my current job (Senior Programmer at a web agency). If I was to move into a more client-facing role, with more external meetings, then I'd expect to be wearing a suit more often.
Too bad he looks funny, so we can't make that extra million this year.
Yeah, it is too bad, because like it or not a lot of middle- and higher level managers simply won't react well to the way that sort of person looks. Hell, I turned up to a client meeting once in smart, shiny shoes, suit trousers, shirt and jacket.
They complained to my project manager that I wasn't wearing a tie. That is the sort of mentality you're dealing with here - never mind that one guy was dressed almost entirely in pink, he was wearing a full stuit and tie so he was ok.
In certain positions, a suit is the uniform that you are expected to wear. It sucks, it's irrational, but that's the way the higher-ups act, and unless you're incredibly lucky, you put it on or you hit a glass ceiling.
Why? Making jokes and laughing about things is just one way of dealing with unpleasant or frightening things.
One of my friends at university had chemo for Hodgkin's disease. One of my ex's friends has had three operations for throat cancer; if the last one didn't get it all, there's probably nothing more that they can do. As it is, she has an ugly scar on her throat and has difficulty speaking because they had to remove part of her tongue. She's married with a young daughter.
Don't get me wrong, I care deeply, but I'm damned if I'm going to stop laughing at silly jokes just because it's a serious subject. Sometimes laughing is all you can do.
Countries with mandatory possession have much lower crime rates than countries with strict gun laws.
And yet, the US has the largest prison population per capita of any country in the world. I appreciate that you don't have mandatory gun possession, but lots of countries have far stricter control and yet enjoy lower crime rates.
Yeah, "you" stepped in to europe and saved our asses from the Nazis.
Arguably the Russian army would've won without the US's help. It is also arguable that the only reason the US finally joined in was to prevent Russia from keeping hold of the territories it liberated.
Yes, I have. Every single bug in it is the fault of the coders. That's not to say that they put them there intentionally, of course not. It's also not to say that they are somehow deficient or incompetent.
Bugs don't write themselves, however; someone wrote the code that the bug is in, and didn't write it as well as it could've been written. Happens to us all.
In my experience, Java is utterly non-portable, and the "write once, run anywhere" thing is one of the biggest deceits in computing, pure propaganda. Java is the most non-portable language system I've ever come across, and I run pretty much everything here.
Having read your other post, I almost dare not reply, but here goes...
What sort of app were you trying to get running? I've spent the best part of 6 years now writing web apps in Java, and have never had any problems getting them running on different systems. I develop under Windows, the apps are built on Windows, and are almost always deployed to Linux boxes, and we've not had any problems.
I can't vouch for applets (which I've never done, but they are historically a complete pain in the arse, although I believe that situation has improved) or client-side applications, but on the server, I'm not aware of there being any problems.
That's not to say that the language doesn't have issues (every language does, and Java is no exception), but I've never seen any relating to portability (again, not saying they don't happen, just relating my experience, for what little it's worth).
Hate to burst your bubble, but my company is about to be bought for the second time since I joined it, and both times all the employees have known what's happening. No, we've not known all the details until the sale was more or less finalised, but in both cases we've known:
1) that we're going to be sold 2) some details about the likely buyers
In the case of 2), I can well imagine that we'd be told that the currently-interested party was "one of the largest corporations in the world". Bosses are human too, and have to balance the need for secrecy (or at least plausible denial) with the need to boast now and then. "One of the largest corporations in the world" doesn't narrow it down enough to cause too much of an upset if that's leaked by a careless/malicious employee.
While I agree with you in general terms, something I've found in my experience is that the occasional spurt of long hours - stay late, come in at the weekend, etc - can actually be fun. I wouldn't want to do it too often, or for any length of time, but every once in a while it's kind of cool - you get a real feeling of the whole team pulling together against adversity, and it's a change to the normal routine.
Also, I take some small issue with your final point - anything beyond 8 or 9 hours a day *for long stretches at a time* is not productive. However, you're not telling me that the occasional 10 or 12 hour day won't be productive as long as you come at it fresh. It's when it starts to become the norm and you're approaching burn out that it's time to give up, go home and get some rest.
I'm afraid >a href="http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?k ey=64758&dict=CALD">it's too late.
Besides which, the "original" quantum leap isn't "the smallest possible leap", it's a movement of a particle that should be impossible - iirc, it's either when a particle moves from point A to point B without passing through the intervening space, or when it crosses a potential barrier that (classically speaking) it's impossible for it to cross.
The idea being not that it's a giant leap forward, but that it's an unexpected, seemingly impossible event; it has since come to mean an important improvement. It does grate a little on me too, to be honest.
To be fair, that's often the case with any large organisation. While it certainly shouldn't be the response that a customer gets, internally that'll almost certainly be exactly how things are set up. Certainly it is where I work, and my company was bought by its current owners about 5 years ago.
To be honest, I imagine that the script called for a computer, so the props department had to supply one, and it just so happened that they have a resident geek who brought in their own, Linux-running PC.
As another poster notes, most companies would *pay* to have their products feature prominently; it's just another form of advertising.
I can't vouch for false-positives for websites, but Thunderbird routinely thinks that the monthly Sun Developer Network Program newsletter is a scam, and quite often labels developer mails from Microsoft as scams too. Ignoring the obvious jokes, it's irritating, especially as there seems to be no way to configure it (other than turning it off) and it completely fails to catch most of the real scam mails I get...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, for my part it's a reaction to the "USA! USA! America is the greatest!" message that permeates much of your cultural output and political attitude and manoeuvrings. Your reaction to what was clearly a joke doesn't do much to help, either...
These days, "0day exploit" seems to have changed to mean "an exploit for which there is currently no fix". Not quite the same...
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It's been 4 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.]
All I can do is throw an anecdote at your anecdote, but the day before yesterday I had FF taking up 759MB of RAM after a day or so of idling, followed by an hour or so of actual use.
That's unusual, I'll grant you, but I regularly see FF using 150-200MB of RAM. It's gotten to the point now where I rarely bother checking; I just shut it down every day or two on general principle.
Why can't MS notify you about that when you first boot instead of at some unpredictable time when the whole world might be watching?
Well, the very few times it's happened to me, it *has* been when I first logged in. More specifically though, I'd imagine that it happens when the AV software notifies the security centre that it needs to be updated, which is likely to be whenever it feels like it.
I'd be wary of pinning all the blame for this one on MS; it's entirely possible that it's the av software that's nagging you.
The problem is if you read the GPL code, and someone sues you, it's very much harder to prove that you didn't lift sections of it - especially if there are similarities between the two sets of source code.
But drastically lowered cost of production
As another poster already pointed out, the initial cost of production still exists. Depending on what it is being produced, the move to a digital distribution method may have little or no impact on the cost of production (eg for a writer going from typewriter to PC isn't going to make a whole lot of difference to the amount of money they spend producing the work).
zero cost of distribution
Bandwidth is free now? Servers are free?
Cost of distribution is much lower per unit, but it most certainly is not zero.
and near-zero cost of marketing.
Why is that? Because the moment you put something on the web, google and word of mouth will do all your marketing for you? Why does going digital all-but eliminate the need to market your product?
what if that goth, devil-worshipping hacker wants to become a manager some day?
Then I'd realise that I'd have to swap my jeans and T-shirt for a suit more frequently. Thankfully I haven't had that much of my soul removed yet.
Seriously, I have the luxury of dressing pretty much as I please in my current job (Senior Programmer at a web agency). If I was to move into a more client-facing role, with more external meetings, then I'd expect to be wearing a suit more often.
Too bad he looks funny, so we can't make that extra million this year.
Yeah, it is too bad, because like it or not a lot of middle- and higher level managers simply won't react well to the way that sort of person looks. Hell, I turned up to a client meeting once in smart, shiny shoes, suit trousers, shirt and jacket.
They complained to my project manager that I wasn't wearing a tie. That is the sort of mentality you're dealing with here - never mind that one guy was dressed almost entirely in pink, he was wearing a full stuit and tie so he was ok.
In certain positions, a suit is the uniform that you are expected to wear. It sucks, it's irrational, but that's the way the higher-ups act, and unless you're incredibly lucky, you put it on or you hit a glass ceiling.
Why? Making jokes and laughing about things is just one way of dealing with unpleasant or frightening things.
One of my friends at university had chemo for Hodgkin's disease. One of my ex's friends has had three operations for throat cancer; if the last one didn't get it all, there's probably nothing more that they can do. As it is, she has an ugly scar on her throat and has difficulty speaking because they had to remove part of her tongue. She's married with a young daughter.
Don't get me wrong, I care deeply, but I'm damned if I'm going to stop laughing at silly jokes just because it's a serious subject. Sometimes laughing is all you can do.
Countries with mandatory possession have much lower crime rates than countries with strict gun laws.
And yet, the US has the largest prison population per capita of any country in the world. I appreciate that you don't have mandatory gun possession, but lots of countries have far stricter control and yet enjoy lower crime rates.
The UK has dozens of parties and independent candidates. The problem is that only three of them matter, and of those, only two *really* matter.
The story might be different if people realised that voting "not Tory or Labour" isn't a wasted vote, especially if everyone else does it.
Yeah, "you" stepped in to europe and saved our asses from the Nazis.
Arguably the Russian army would've won without the US's help. It is also arguable that the only reason the US finally joined in was to prevent Russia from keeping hold of the territories it liberated.
There have even been people who suggest that if men got breast cancer it would have been cured by now!
Men do get breast cancer. Nowhere near as many, but it does happen, and some die of it.
Yes, I have. Every single bug in it is the fault of the coders. That's not to say that they put them there intentionally, of course not. It's also not to say that they are somehow deficient or incompetent.
Bugs don't write themselves, however; someone wrote the code that the bug is in, and didn't write it as well as it could've been written. Happens to us all.
In my experience, Java is utterly non-portable, and the "write once, run anywhere" thing is one of the biggest deceits in computing, pure propaganda. Java is the most non-portable language system I've ever come across, and I run pretty much everything here.
Having read your other post, I almost dare not reply, but here goes...
What sort of app were you trying to get running? I've spent the best part of 6 years now writing web apps in Java, and have never had any problems getting them running on different systems. I develop under Windows, the apps are built on Windows, and are almost always deployed to Linux boxes, and we've not had any problems.
I can't vouch for applets (which I've never done, but they are historically a complete pain in the arse, although I believe that situation has improved) or client-side applications, but on the server, I'm not aware of there being any problems.
That's not to say that the language doesn't have issues (every language does, and Java is no exception), but I've never seen any relating to portability (again, not saying they don't happen, just relating my experience, for what little it's worth).
Truly the Land of the Free.
Depending on the plastic it may well be recyclable.
Hate to burst your bubble, but my company is about to be bought for the second time since I joined it, and both times all the employees have known what's happening. No, we've not known all the details until the sale was more or less finalised, but in both cases we've known:
1) that we're going to be sold
2) some details about the likely buyers
In the case of 2), I can well imagine that we'd be told that the currently-interested party was "one of the largest corporations in the world". Bosses are human too, and have to balance the need for secrecy (or at least plausible denial) with the need to boast now and then. "One of the largest corporations in the world" doesn't narrow it down enough to cause too much of an upset if that's leaked by a careless/malicious employee.
While I agree with you in general terms, something I've found in my experience is that the occasional spurt of long hours - stay late, come in at the weekend, etc - can actually be fun. I wouldn't want to do it too often, or for any length of time, but every once in a while it's kind of cool - you get a real feeling of the whole team pulling together against adversity, and it's a change to the normal routine.
Also, I take some small issue with your final point - anything beyond 8 or 9 hours a day *for long stretches at a time* is not productive. However, you're not telling me that the occasional 10 or 12 hour day won't be productive as long as you come at it fresh. It's when it starts to become the norm and you're approaching burn out that it's time to give up, go home and get some rest.
No, getting him to dress up in a skin tight, neon light covered, crotch emphasizing suit when he's 240 lbs is why everyone else is suing them...
I'm afraid >a href="http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?k ey=64758&dict=CALD">it's too late.
Besides which, the "original" quantum leap isn't "the smallest possible leap", it's a movement of a particle that should be impossible - iirc, it's either when a particle moves from point A to point B without passing through the intervening space, or when it crosses a potential barrier that (classically speaking) it's impossible for it to cross.
The idea being not that it's a giant leap forward, but that it's an unexpected, seemingly impossible event; it has since come to mean an important improvement. It does grate a little on me too, to be honest.
To be fair, that's often the case with any large organisation. While it certainly shouldn't be the response that a customer gets, internally that'll almost certainly be exactly how things are set up. Certainly it is where I work, and my company was bought by its current owners about 5 years ago.
why was i not contacted... I did not check this email because it is only used for paypal
So, you were in fact contacted. I'm not arguing that what they did was right, but your anger at not being contacted is misplaced.
To be honest, I imagine that the script called for a computer, so the props department had to supply one, and it just so happened that they have a resident geek who brought in their own, Linux-running PC.
As another poster notes, most companies would *pay* to have their products feature prominently; it's just another form of advertising.
I can't vouch for false-positives for websites, but Thunderbird routinely thinks that the monthly Sun Developer Network Program newsletter is a scam, and quite often labels developer mails from Microsoft as scams too. Ignoring the obvious jokes, it's irritating, especially as there seems to be no way to configure it (other than turning it off) and it completely fails to catch most of the real scam mails I get...
What do you think is powering the lasers? Fairy dust?!