insanely bloated, sourcecode-free "objects" that are larger than most applications used to be
Some of us remember when all applications *used* to fit in less than 1024 bytes of RAM. Things change; extra features and functionality require more resources.
If I've spent the money on a shedload of RAM, it'd be nice to know it's actually being used. (Being used sensibly is better than just being wasted, of course..)
Re:56 april fools in one day
on
EU to Ban Macs
·
· Score: 1
That's half my complaint. I have nothing against/. running a fool story on April 1st. I have nothing against each editor running a fool story on April 1st. But each editor deluged the site with fool stories - that's going far too far, imho.
The other half of my complaint is that they were almost all utterly, utterly crap. They're not meant to be so rediculous that they're funny, they're meant to try to fool people! You're supposed to at most start out seriously then slowly develop it almost ot the point of incredulity. The real aim, imho, is to post a fake story on April Fool's Day *and have people believe it*. There's a huge difference between a joke (which is what most of the articles were) and a Fool.
In the other case, you are trading some copyrighted work that you already own.
That's not entirely true. If you are the copyright holder, then you're free to share it with whoever you want to. If you have permission from the copyright holder, then the same applies. If you bought (eg) a CD and do not have permission, then you are not free to share the work (and you don't own it either, you own a copy of it).
Finally though, and probably my biggest issue with what you said, is that I simply do not believe that absolutely everyone who is sharing copyrighted works in violation of that copyright already (legitimately) owns a copy of it. Are you seriously saying that every single person offering stuff for download ripped it themselves? I think you'll find that a very sizable proportion simply downloaded it from someone else (in fact, I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case in the majority of cases)
Apart from that, I agree with you - copyright infringement prevents people from attempting to profit from their labour. Phishing scams defraud people of profit that they have already earned (where profit = anything you have as a result of effort expended - wages, stuff you've bought, etc)
The times are changing. Instead of crying, change with them. Truthfully, it warms my heart to see a lack of a windows version.
Why? Do you really expect people to switch to a platform they've never used before to use tools they've never used before?
(Of course, I note that you don't actually say that you want people to switch to Linux, although the patronising way in which you refer to Windows users as "junkies" and saying that people should change with the times would seem to imply that you do.)
Windows game copy prevention code essentially needs direct access to the CD ROM hardware; I don't think that's something that non-root accounts get under Linux, either.
It's not an issue on Linux because Securom et al don't exist for Linux yet. They're going to have to for the OS to be widely adopted by games publishers, though, and then you're likely to see this sort of problem (either that, or stuff getting installed to run as root)
That's not how I see it at all. I see it as two groups, each setting terms by which their products can be used, each seeking legal recourse when people attempt to use them in other ways.
Whether someone is an underdog or not is irrelevant; if you wish a legal right to be afforded to you, you must afford it to all like you. That is, if you wish people to respect your copyrights, you must respect those of others.
CherryOS would be in jail if it was MS they were ripping off because MS has plenty of money to hire lawyers.
What do you want? Do you want copyright infringement to be a criminal offence, so the PearPC guys can call the cops? Do you want copyright to be struck down entirely, so the PearPC guys can't do a damn thing? Or do you want something in the middle, with some sort of group that the little guys can turn to for help? Isn't that what the EFF and FSF are for?
And therefore, to my mind, not a real database. It's certainly not something I'd want to entrust any of my data to; YMMV, of course.
As others have pointed out, no-one has ever criticised mysql for being slow, but for lacking features that some of us old sticks in the mud consider to be utterly essential in an even half-way serious RDBMS.
Firstly, the vast majority of stuff being copied illegaly fails your test that it has passed the "reasonable copyright term".
Secondly, the "copyright holders" did not unilaterally break the terms of the contract. Blame for that lies squarely at the feet of the legislators that signed the amendments. Sure, the "copyright holders" persuaded them, but so what, the legislators are unable to say "no, that's not part of the deal"?
(Oh, and while we're picking nits, it wasn't "the copyright holders" - I'm a copyright holder, so are you, so is pretty much everyone here; copyright automatically subsists in everything you produce. It was a few large groups and influential individuals that did it, not "the copyright holders")
Java has enums as of 1.5 (or 5.0 if you're Sun's marketing dept). For previous releases, something like this should work:
public class Direction {
public static final LEFT = new Direction(1);
public static final RIGHT = new Direction(2);
public static final UP = new Direction(3);
public static final DOWN = new Direction(4);
private int dir;
private Direction(int dir)
{
this.dir = dir;
} }
Then the changeDirection method is
public void changeDirection(Direction dir) {
this.direction = dir; }
Seems to me that a slashdot employee has one or more of four duties:
1) pick stories to post 2) sell advertising 3) maintain the servers 4) design and implement additions, bug fixes, etc
Now, I'm not a subscriber, but I don't see much in the way of 4), even for features that the readership is crying out for, or that make financial sense for slashdot (such as moving to CSS for layout). I thought that/. got most of its advertising through the OSDN network, so I'd imagine that 2) is more or less minimal (and with/.'s fame, shouldn't be too hard anyway). That leaves 3) and 1). I have no idea about the time requirements of 3), but I can imagine that it might keep a couple of people busy full time.
That seems to me to leave an awful lot of time left over for 1), picking stories to post. And yet, it seems like every day or two there is a dupe, every week or so there is a downright inaccurate (or even lying) summary or headline posted, and every month or so something that's accurately summarised, but the source is just plain made up or wrong.
I know that the FAQ states that the editors don't check the stories for factual correctness, but Taco (et al) I ask you this: what do you do all day?
It's further out, and radiated energy follows an inverse square law (ie it drops off with the square of the distance - twice as far out you get a quarter of the energy), so there's less energy per unit area available. However, the atmosphere will be absorbing/reflecting less, so it may balance out; I don't have any data to hand.
That has nothing to do with the article. Furthermore, software patents would not allow only MS, but any company (and technically individual) to gain "thousands of monopolies".
The software patent issue is far, far larger and more important than some "M$ versus teh world!" issue; please don't denigrate it to such.
Don't be silly; Java's free as in beer, and plenty of places are already using it (or at least asking for it) on the server side. Besides, if they're replacing MS Office, why the hell would they worry that Java is or isn't Free? It's a lot freer than what they have...
the confusion surrounding Java on Windows, thanks to the MS VM supporting only v1.3.
I could be wrong, but I believe that MS's Java support (while it existed) only extended as far as v1.1.3, not v1.3. Of course, that's because they lost the court case to Sun, not because they couldn't or wouldn't support a newer version.
For us Windows devs, no one uses Java anymore
That's because traditionally, with a few notable exceptions, client-side Java apps suck. They're clunky, slow, and they look like arse. That's getting better, but it's almost certainly too little, too late. I do Java development on the server side, and I'm learning C#/.NET in order to do Windows client-side dev work (just scratching an itch). I'm not about to ditch Java, I just believe in using the right tool for the job. Now, it's arguable whether or not C# is the right tool, but experience tells me that Java isn't.
Re:Why has corporate America avoided Macs?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 1
That really depends on what that window's displaying. If it's old-style 80 columns of text, then of course maximising it at any "modern" resolution is a waste. On the other hand, most IDEs make very good use of as much screen space as you can throw at them, displaying additional information and controls, etc. I'd imagine that most other "professional" applications (eg image editing, CAD, etc) are the same, although my experience with them is strictly limited.
Oh, and "disgustingly wasteful"? That's rather a strong reaction - all we're talking about is screen space. Nothing is really being wasted; no-one is going without if I maximise all my windows...
Am I the only one who thinks it a bit much when applications software costs more than the OS?
Yes, you are. The only purpose of the OS is to support the applications you want to run on the computer. People don't spend all day using Windows or Linux, they spend all day using Word, or Photoshop, or Maya, or ssh and vi, etc.
I'm a Java programmer by trade; at work, I currently use JBuilder X Enterprise. It cost around £1500, or approximately 50% more than the PC I run it on (let alone the OS). It paid for itself in a matter of days due to increased productivity. (My charge out rate, depending on what I'm doing, is £1000 - £1200 per day)
I can't be bothered to google to see if my memory does serve me, but I seem to remember that MTBF for hard drives is generally quoted at around 100,000 hours. Like you say, compiling a few (or a few thousand) packages isn't going to make a whole lot of difference, even if it does all come off the hard drive the whole time.
Slashdot Mirror
insanely bloated, sourcecode-free "objects" that are larger than most applications used to be
Some of us remember when all applications *used* to fit in less than 1024 bytes of RAM. Things change; extra features and functionality require more resources.
If I've spent the money on a shedload of RAM, it'd be nice to know it's actually being used. (Being used sensibly is better than just being wasted, of course..)
That's half my complaint. I have nothing against /. running a fool story on April 1st. I have nothing against each editor running a fool story on April 1st. But each editor deluged the site with fool stories - that's going far too far, imho.
The other half of my complaint is that they were almost all utterly, utterly crap. They're not meant to be so rediculous that they're funny, they're meant to try to fool people! You're supposed to at most start out seriously then slowly develop it almost ot the point of incredulity. The real aim, imho, is to post a fake story on April Fool's Day *and have people believe it*. There's a huge difference between a joke (which is what most of the articles were) and a Fool.
In the other case, you are trading some copyrighted work that you already own.
That's not entirely true. If you are the copyright holder, then you're free to share it with whoever you want to. If you have permission from the copyright holder, then the same applies. If you bought (eg) a CD and do not have permission, then you are not free to share the work (and you don't own it either, you own a copy of it).
Finally though, and probably my biggest issue with what you said, is that I simply do not believe that absolutely everyone who is sharing copyrighted works in violation of that copyright already (legitimately) owns a copy of it. Are you seriously saying that every single person offering stuff for download ripped it themselves? I think you'll find that a very sizable proportion simply downloaded it from someone else (in fact, I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case in the majority of cases)
Apart from that, I agree with you - copyright infringement prevents people from attempting to profit from their labour. Phishing scams defraud people of profit that they have already earned (where profit = anything you have as a result of effort expended - wages, stuff you've bought, etc)
Something doesn't have to be believable to be funny.
But the whole idea of April Fool's jokes is to fool people into believing them...
I have nothing against a good April Fool's joke. Unfortunately, each year slashdot tends to trot out a dozen crap ones instead.
Don't blame the tool because the people using it are lazy and/or doing it wrong.
It's traditional to play one April Fool's joke, not several each...
Roll on tomorrow, when the site will return to being nearly (but not quite) a useful source of information.
The times are changing. Instead of crying, change with them. Truthfully, it warms my heart to see a lack of a windows version.
Why? Do you really expect people to switch to a platform they've never used before to use tools they've never used before?
(Of course, I note that you don't actually say that you want people to switch to Linux, although the patronising way in which you refer to Windows users as "junkies" and saying that people should change with the times would seem to imply that you do.)
If someone asked Adobe to change their interface to match some other software, they'd have a similar response.
If enough of their customer base requested a feature, they'd implement it, especially if a competing product had it or was going to have it soon.
Windows game copy prevention code essentially needs direct access to the CD ROM hardware; I don't think that's something that non-root accounts get under Linux, either.
It's not an issue on Linux because Securom et al don't exist for Linux yet. They're going to have to for the OS to be widely adopted by games publishers, though, and then you're likely to see this sort of problem (either that, or stuff getting installed to run as root)
That's not how I see it at all. I see it as two groups, each setting terms by which their products can be used, each seeking legal recourse when people attempt to use them in other ways.
Whether someone is an underdog or not is irrelevant; if you wish a legal right to be afforded to you, you must afford it to all like you. That is, if you wish people to respect your copyrights, you must respect those of others.
CherryOS would be in jail if it was MS they were ripping off because MS has plenty of money to hire lawyers.
What do you want? Do you want copyright infringement to be a criminal offence, so the PearPC guys can call the cops? Do you want copyright to be struck down entirely, so the PearPC guys can't do a damn thing? Or do you want something in the middle, with some sort of group that the little guys can turn to for help? Isn't that what the EFF and FSF are for?
Sure it's not ACID
And therefore, to my mind, not a real database. It's certainly not something I'd want to entrust any of my data to; YMMV, of course.
As others have pointed out, no-one has ever criticised mysql for being slow, but for lacking features that some of us old sticks in the mud consider to be utterly essential in an even half-way serious RDBMS.
Two points:
Firstly, the vast majority of stuff being copied illegaly fails your test that it has passed the "reasonable copyright term".
Secondly, the "copyright holders" did not unilaterally break the terms of the contract. Blame for that lies squarely at the feet of the legislators that signed the amendments. Sure, the "copyright holders" persuaded them, but so what, the legislators are unable to say "no, that's not part of the deal"?
(Oh, and while we're picking nits, it wasn't "the copyright holders" - I'm a copyright holder, so are you, so is pretty much everyone here; copyright automatically subsists in everything you produce. It was a few large groups and influential individuals that did it, not "the copyright holders")
Java has enums as of 1.5 (or 5.0 if you're Sun's marketing dept). For previous releases, something like this should work:
public class Direction
{
public static final LEFT = new Direction(1);
public static final RIGHT = new Direction(2);
public static final UP = new Direction(3);
public static final DOWN = new Direction(4);
private int dir;
private Direction(int dir)
{
this.dir = dir;
}
}
Then the changeDirection method is
public void changeDirection(Direction dir)
{
this.direction = dir;
}
Seems to me that a slashdot employee has one or more of four duties:
/. got most of its advertising through the OSDN network, so I'd imagine that 2) is more or less minimal (and with /.'s fame, shouldn't be too hard anyway). That leaves 3) and 1). I have no idea about the time requirements of 3), but I can imagine that it might keep a couple of people busy full time.
1) pick stories to post
2) sell advertising
3) maintain the servers
4) design and implement additions, bug fixes, etc
Now, I'm not a subscriber, but I don't see much in the way of 4), even for features that the readership is crying out for, or that make financial sense for slashdot (such as moving to CSS for layout). I thought that
That seems to me to leave an awful lot of time left over for 1), picking stories to post. And yet, it seems like every day or two there is a dupe, every week or so there is a downright inaccurate (or even lying) summary or headline posted, and every month or so something that's accurately summarised, but the source is just plain made up or wrong.
I know that the FAQ states that the editors don't check the stories for factual correctness, but Taco (et al) I ask you this: what do you do all day?
I guess plasma physics is difficult. Who'd have guessed?
;-)
Me - I gave up a PhD in it a few years ago
IIRC Mars gets less sunlight than Earth does
It's further out, and radiated energy follows an inverse square law (ie it drops off with the square of the distance - twice as far out you get a quarter of the energy), so there's less energy per unit area available. However, the atmosphere will be absorbing/reflecting less, so it may balance out; I don't have any data to hand.
That has nothing to do with the article. Furthermore, software patents would not allow only MS, but any company (and technically individual) to gain "thousands of monopolies".
The software patent issue is far, far larger and more important than some "M$ versus teh world!" issue; please don't denigrate it to such.
Corporate adoption may be slowed
Don't be silly; Java's free as in beer, and plenty of places are already using it (or at least asking for it) on the server side. Besides, if they're replacing MS Office, why the hell would they worry that Java is or isn't Free? It's a lot freer than what they have...
the confusion surrounding Java on Windows, thanks to the MS VM supporting only v1.3.
I could be wrong, but I believe that MS's Java support (while it existed) only extended as far as v1.1.3, not v1.3. Of course, that's because they lost the court case to Sun, not because they couldn't or wouldn't support a newer version.
For us Windows devs, no one uses Java anymore
That's because traditionally, with a few notable exceptions, client-side Java apps suck. They're clunky, slow, and they look like arse. That's getting better, but it's almost certainly too little, too late. I do Java development on the server side, and I'm learning C#/.NET in order to do Windows client-side dev work (just scratching an itch). I'm not about to ditch Java, I just believe in using the right tool for the job. Now, it's arguable whether or not C# is the right tool, but experience tells me that Java isn't.
That really depends on what that window's displaying. If it's old-style 80 columns of text, then of course maximising it at any "modern" resolution is a waste. On the other hand, most IDEs make very good use of as much screen space as you can throw at them, displaying additional information and controls, etc. I'd imagine that most other "professional" applications (eg image editing, CAD, etc) are the same, although my experience with them is strictly limited.
Oh, and "disgustingly wasteful"? That's rather a strong reaction - all we're talking about is screen space. Nothing is really being wasted; no-one is going without if I maximise all my windows...
Am I the only one who thinks it a bit much when applications software costs more than the OS?
Yes, you are. The only purpose of the OS is to support the applications you want to run on the computer. People don't spend all day using Windows or Linux, they spend all day using Word, or Photoshop, or Maya, or ssh and vi, etc.
I'm a Java programmer by trade; at work, I currently use JBuilder X Enterprise. It cost around £1500, or approximately 50% more than the PC I run it on (let alone the OS). It paid for itself in a matter of days due to increased productivity. (My charge out rate, depending on what I'm doing, is £1000 - £1200 per day)
Dude. $599/day for 220 working days a year is over $131k/year; math not your best subject?
I can't be bothered to google to see if my memory does serve me, but I seem to remember that MTBF for hard drives is generally quoted at around 100,000 hours. Like you say, compiling a few (or a few thousand) packages isn't going to make a whole lot of difference, even if it does all come off the hard drive the whole time.