Both make it natural to pass around strings, lists, other structured data, and function references around, but in Java you're limited to simple types and objects.
Oh my, you must be right - let's see, a String, List, and other structured data are all... OBJECTS! Imagine that. And function references can get quite ugly, although as mentioned in another reply, try using java.lang.reflect.Method - which is, you guessed it, an OBJECT! I guess passing objects around is really limiting. Except, of course, Java is object orientated.
Want a method to call you back to do some calculation? In Java, you can't tell it your own method or lambda function, you have to make a new object which implements the interface the external method expects to be able to call. Major PITA. Want an (int, string, boolean) tuple? Have fun creating a whole new class to describe it, or surrounding a Vector with ugly (Cast)s.
Oh my, you're right! There's absolutely no way for a class to implement the interface itself. That would mean something like...
public class MainWindow extends Frame implements KeyListener, MouseListener, MouseMotionListener, WindowListener
There's no way to implement the interface in your main object at all. Can't be.
As for passing tuples, yeah, that can be a pain. Try using an Object[] array unless you really have a variable number of return results. And not surprisingly, creating a new class is actually the right solution. Although I really see no difficulty in just making a new.java file for the new class, or, depending on circumstance, using a public inner class. I suppose typing
public class Tuple { public int number; public String text; public boolean bool; }
Is really difficult. And creating a new file - my what a hardship. Of course, you could also add those lines inside the class that returns it - it would be an inner class. But given your apparent knowledge of Java, you already know that, right?
And is it just me, or are Java exceptions completely useless? I thought the whole idea of exceptions was to bubble error conditions up to the nearest level of execution that knows how to handle them, but Java requires you to include what possible exceptions can be thrown in the method interface, so it's impractical to not handle exceptions as soon as they occur. It's no better than checking the return code from a function call in C. Actually it's worse since you don't even have the option of *not* checking it; if you don't catch (...), it won't compile, even for exceptions that will never ever happen.
Um, OK, yeah. There's a useless and incorrect rant. Java exceptions are insanely useful, far more useful than error codes. And you can bubble them up - I have a method that reads in a file and interprets the data. One of the exceptions it throws is IOException. Should an IO error occur, I don't have to check it in the method itself. The load method completely ignores the possibility of an I/O error, since the error would prevent it from successfully loading anyway. Since it doesn't update any class data until after it's finished with I/O, it's safe to handle it that way. As soon as it has succesfully loaded data, it does some post-processing and then updates internal data structures. Should there be any error, it throws an exception.
Next question: Why would you ever want to ignore an exception? Doing that strikes me as bad programming. I suppose you ignore return codes in C programs too. If the method claims it can throw the exception, there's probably a reason for it! And if you "know" the exception will never be thrown, then just
try { // Do Whatever } catch (UselessException ue) { // do nothing, it'll never be thrown }
Maybe the requirement to list exceptions that your method throws is just to help make sure that when you use the method elsewhere, you know what it'll throw? I know, that would be something like being forced to document error codes that your function returns. A real hardship.
(Also, if you want an exception that you can safely not catch, make it extend RuntimeException - RuntimeExceptions don't need to be caught. However, if they make it all the way to the top-level (ie, no function ever catches it) they will halt the program. Often, this is a good thing - usually continued running would be bad anyway. And if not, then, well, you should have caught the exception!)
The point here is that IE loads faster because part of it's load time is moved to boot time. It renders faster because it does render faster. (And this has nothing to do with kernel-space issues, it has everything to do with partial rendering support and Netscape's hatred of <TABLE>s.)
Given the integration between IE and so many Windows things, it's impossible to say exactly how long IE really takes to load. (The UI libraries are loaded at startup, for example, because they're also used in a lot of other programs. As far as I can tell (not really knowing the internals) all the IE program you use does is create the widgets around the HTML render. I'd imagine the HTML renderer is loaded with the program, but I may be wrong - if you use Active Desktop, for example, it's used in that. It's also available as a COM object/ActiveX control, making it handy to use whenever as a Windows developer you need HTML support. Overall, I'm not sure exactly what IE preloads - but given that IE isn't also a newsreader, editor, chat client, and kitchen sink cleaner, it probably would load faster anyway.)
Find a site with a large text or html index file, press back and then forward in netscape, wait as the status meter goes from 0-100% in the lower left. Try it with IE, no wait. The page loads instantly.
Sounds like a caching issue - possibly because Netscape checks the server to see if the page has changed and IE doesn't. I dunno, it's late, and I can't test it right now. (Need to create a page and a server to test it - maybe IE keeps the page in memory and Netscape writes it out? Compare memory cache sizes if possible.)
First, I'd like to say that when I was writing that, I had a midterm as a deadline, so that at 3:00 (or 15:00 if I'm going to be international) EST I had to post and run. Which meant I only went over it around three times before realizing I was late and had to run (according to the timestamp, it was 15:02EST when I posted...)
I was expecting such an answer; Even if these restrictions are supposedly designed for children, everybody is a victim. For example, the whole Hollywoodian movie production is calibrated to avoid a PG-17 rating: this has HUGE consequences on the artistic nature of American cinema.
The real problem with American cinema is that the movie producers are forced to try and turn a profit. Paying for the movie becomes more important than creativity - most of the MPAA bashing posts have already gone over this. Don't just blame it on Puritain culture, blame it on commericial culture as well. (For real proof, try listening to some directors commentary on their films - the issue really does come up. Oops, sorry, you're probably in Region 2. Well, that's another story...) (BTW, it's "NC-17", which replaces the "X" rating. So it's ranked G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 with NC-17 being the only rating a parent can't bring children to. Which is in itself dumb, and I hear stories about NC-17 being used to censor non-MPAA materials...)
Also, what's all this about "failing to learn from history"?
The whole "failing to learn from history" bit comes from the whole idea that not being allowed to buy something somehow prevents it from existing or something. Why not view Nazi material? I can't think of a single logical reason - maybe no Nazi paraphenalia, but why not uniforms? Weapons? Code books? Presumably, as part of the history lessons, you are allowed to look at Nazi material. But making it criminal to look at material is just nonsense. Coming from an American upbringing, I can at least understand the "no sex" culture. (Actually, that's changing in America. Slowly, but it's changing. America as a whole is redicovering its sexuality - there have been a whole batch of "coming of age" films recently.) The unwanted side effect is that hiding sex actually adversely effects a teenage developement - since a child doesn't know exactly what sex is, they can't understand what's right and what's wrong.
Now apply hiding sex to hiding Nazi materials. They still exist. Even if there are "sex-ed" courses being taught in schools, they mostly consist of "Don't do it" because that's all they can say. So does your history become a lesson in hating Nazis or a lesson in how they came to power and what they did? Brushing Nazi material under the rug does have the effect of making it something that gets ignored - the real question becomes, do you start hating Nazis, or do you start hating what the Nazis stand for? If a huge anti-Nazi group came to power that started a German genocide, they would be no different from the Nazis - but would they be recognized as a new Nazi-like group? Or would the fact that they don't ware swasticas and don't hail Hitler keep the distinction from being made?
Transferring the hate from those who would repeat the Nazi horrors to Nazi artifacts is wrong - it's not helping. Just like hidding sex in America hasn't really helped anything, hiding Nazism is most likely going to move hate over an idea to hate over tangible artifacts. A Nazi pin is a Navi pin. It's something that has historical value. It symbolizes something - but it does nothing. Seeing it doesn't pass the values it represents onto you. It's just a lump of metal.
But I'd rather leave in a country which is irrational about nazism than in a country which is absurdly puritan about sex, alcohol and related, sorry.
I'm sorry, I just can't agree. First of all, you can't really compare the two restrictions of rights - America restricts the rights to see nudity and drink alchol from all minors. Once you're of age, have at it! Download porn off the internet, get those smutty DVDs, watch Pay-Per-View sex show. Have a beer and watch a porno - go ahead. You can do that. The reason that the definition of porn is so broad so that even artistic nudity is considered pornographic (or is it? There is a nice "old world" map at my former highschool that definately has a prominant naked women in it) is that the most vocal against porn are just that crazy. And most people don't want to come out in favor of porn. ("See, he thinks that a women's naked brest is OK for our children to see! He supports pornography!" instead of "he supports basic rights to freedom of speach." It's easy to take more rational thinking about what is pornography out of context so it becomes political suicide to go for laxing restrictions.)
The official reason that TV and radio is censored is that children can view it without restriction. (That's where all this internet filtering fun comes from too.) Many people feel that we should "protect" the "impressionable youth" (and then bitch about the apathy of said youth later - hmmm... let's think a bit...).
Blocking out Nazi artifacts (that's really what they are - historical artifacts) to all people is just stupid. I could see an argument against letting younger children view - it mostly involves the "impressionable youth" bit again - but against anyone? It's just stupid. There's also the "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it" bit. Ignoring it doesn't solve anything. I'd rather live in a nation that censors content with the intent to proect only minors so that once you're "of age" you can view without restrictions, rather than one that assumes everyone is better off without being able to see Nazi material. But to each their own - if you think being able to see nudity is more important than learning about the past, why not? It's not my place to judge. I just would rather live in America.
.com is catchy because the dot-coms have spent billions of dollars making it catchy. They have taught people to think of the net as whatever.com. Amazon.com, Yahoo.com, eBay.com, etc. All these companies have worked to teach.com to people - not that they really meant to, in the beginning, but they did. People expect.com because of all the advertisments they see for XTZ.com. They hear.com.com.com, it's drilled in through media, it's drilled in through advertising..com is here to stay.
Dot-BIZ is going to be fighting five years of consumer learning. That's why.com is catchy. You've been taught to think of.com as catchy. Dot-biz is going to have a long road ahead to become accepted. I doubt that.biz will ever really catch on unless.biz becomes known as where there are certified companies, and you have someone to complain to if a buisness in.biz screws you. Otherwise,.biz isn't going to go anywhere - people will just continue to go to the.com counterpart.
The point is, the "there are no fonts on linux!" means your sysadmin is incompetent and can't install xfstt or any other alternative. Besides, when I want to do gfx, I move over to my G4, anyway.
Whoa! Where in hell did a sysadmin come from? This thread used to be talking about desktop computers! Where do you get this "sysadmin" you talk of for Corel Linux?
Also, I hate that productivity = writing memos and using Word. Productivity for me means writing CGI, working with databases, network and system administration. Why is it so bad when I counter that my "productivity tools" are nmap, ethereal, snort, inetd, Apache, mod_perl, and so forth?
Good for you - you aren't Corel's target market. Again, this thread used to be talking about desktop machines, where the average user uses it almost exclusively for this type of thing. The "normal" desktop user uses their PC to surf the web, to read e-mail, and to write various documents/presentations.
Very few users are programmers - for the vast, vast (at least 90% of all users) majority, productivity means writing memos/presentations; not writing apps.
Um, Linux Mandrake would have exactly what to do with Corel's opperations? Stay on topic.
Fonts?? big deal, they have plenty.
Yeah, and they look like ass. Especially if you want them to be large enough to read - wow, reminds me of the Nintendo days - 8x8 pixel fonts! Oh joy. I finally got around to adding/C/windows/Fonts to my font path, after finally finding out that you can't mkfontdir it, and instead have to use the undocumented ttmkfdir. Now try telling me that was easy.
Drive support? Like what???? they support everything I use and can think of....
Drive support = Vendor supported drivers, I think. In other words, besides my NVidia module, I have no vendor drivers (although by net drivers I got through LinkSys, but they're repackaged OSS drivers).
Easy? KDE2 is very Windows like, so of course any idiot can use it.
I believe Corel's distro was/is using KDE1, and anyway, having to get through the logon process is still daunting to the average user - ask anyone who's watched a newbie try and figure out Win2K...
Dunno, haven't used KDE in a while, so I can't really provide any arguments for or against that assertion. Didn't like KDE when I did try it, though - it was too slick:).
Well, it isn't the top three, that leaves 4: Average "dumb" desktop users. Who, by most Power Users or even 1337 k1dd13s standards are morons when it comes to "computers." You do realize that in life outside of the tech croud, a "power user" is someone who is simply experienced with the interface? Someone who understands the quirks and can get things done, without having to ask for much help?
The first thing that is taught in my college's Human/Computer Interaction (HCI) course is that: You are NOT NORMAL.
The users that Corel was attempting to target are the people who Microsoft is hiding the command line from. The users that Corel wanted to move to Linux are those who think that the desktop is the only interface - who shy away from "complicated" things like logging on, or having a password.
The original poster (although the username ("buttfucker2000") strikes me as a troll name) is entirely right when he said that Corel is right to pull out - Linux isn't ready for the user market that Corel was targetting.
Actually, that's not the angle I'm coming from. The angle I'm coming from is that the GPL prevents commerical companies from writing commerical KDE apps. The LGPL used for the GNOME libraries allows commerical apps. If those are your choices, and you write commerical apps...
Hmm... wait.. don't forget, that's $1500 per developer - it's not a one-time cost. Compare with: GNOME.
Cost: nothing. (Maybe $2 for CDs...)
Grab a Debian CD, install it on a box, and you can write commerical GTK+ apps. That's it. Complete. Compare with KDE - $1500 a developer? For a five-man team, you're at $7500!!!
Compare with Microsoft's licensing terms - same five-man team with comparitive tools (ie, just the dev-studio, since that's all the $1500 covers) comes in at around $2500.
All I'm trying to say is that for commerical apps, Qt is worse than Microsoft! And since GTK+ developement is even cheaper (ie, $0 in licensing fees), it stands to reason, from a commerical point of view, that GNOME is a more commerically viable platform to develop for than KDE.
The other fun point is that products developed for MS platforms are automatically potentially more viable than those developed for any Linux desktop - there's more of a market. By using Qt, KDE is forcing commerical developers to GNOME. What that means in the end is anyone's guess.
If your product is closed source, indeed, you need to pay, but you will have to look for sympathy elsewhere.
Yeah, they'll look for sympathy elsewhere alright: it's called GNOME. GNOME is under the LGPL, making it perfect for companies that want to develope software - and that's why, even though KDE is nicer and better than GNOME, it is currently doomed to fail as a viable desktop.
Let's say that Company A wants to write Product B for Linux, so they look at their options: KDE (Qt), GNOME (GTK+), Motif. What are they going to choose? More than likely, they'll go with the free one - GTK+, meaning GNOME. That's why the GNOME Foundation was first - because it is commerically viable to produce programs for that environment.
To give you some perspective, it costs a third-party application vender around $500 per developer to write programs for Windows - that's assuming they decide to use MS DevStudio (I think you can get just Visual C++ for around $250 - and that is literally everything you need to write for Windows). If you pay around $2500 a year, then MS gives you a damn sweet deal, sending the developer
A copy of all MS current operating systems (right now, that's Win98, Win98SE, WinNT4.0 SP6, Win2000, Win ME).
A copy of all MS developement software (IE, DevStudio Enterprise Ed.)
A copy of all MS Office software (that's right, it includes Office 2000)
The entire Knowledge Base on CD/DVD
The entire MS library documentation
In other words, writing commercial software for Microsoft OSes is actually cheaper then writing for Qt!
I dunno... I can live without electricity (although it won't be easy) but should the waterworks stop working, I'll be up in arms - I like working toilets...
Ads on TV, ads on the radio. That's why.coms need a catchy domain name. Most of the smaller sites don't. It's already getting annoying listening to some of the ads, since they have to spell out their URL ("Come to E-Job-Foo, that's Ee, dash, Jay, Oh, Bee, dash, Eff, Oh, Oh, dotcom...")
That's why companies fight so hard for "their" trademarks once their taken. Which is easier to remember, clue.hasbro.com or clue.com? Go see X-Men at xmen.com as opposed to x-men-the-movie.com or even worse x-men-the-movie.fox.com! It's all about making them memorable. Short is important. Common words are important. Since most people try the.com first (whitehouse.com anyone?), the.COM domains are important. (Personally, I don't think new TLDs will help at all but I'm probably wrong. At least, I hope I am.)
That's why companies fight for "their trademark" - it's because the shorter and simpler the domain name, the easier it is to remember. Slashdot is simple to remember - if Slashdot were still something along the lines of slashdot.res.hope.edu or whatever it's original URL was (I'm not exactly a newcomer as my 150000+ ID shows, so I dunno the original URL) it wouldn't be as popular - people wouldn't hear about from word-of-mouth and head there ("Oh, I read this on Slashdot." "What?" "It's a webpage, Slashdot.org." "Oh, OK, I'll check it out sometime..." compared to "It's a webpage, slashdot.res.hope.net." "Right..."). How many people actually write down the URLs they hear/see in ads? Not many. So it needs to be memorable - which is why companies fight for the simple names.
Once a company has taught their customer base to think of them as their name, they don't want to have to re-teach all their customers a different, strange URL. Imaging instead of Kraft.com being forced to go for kraft-food.com? Or instead of cheerios.com having to send people to cheerios.general-mills.com or even cheerios.general-mills-cereals.com? Marketers aren't that stupid - that's the reason companies fight for these domain names. People do need to make them easy to remember.
As that Indian-sex-word squatter is going to find out, porn sites don't follow the same rules - they get most of their hits through banners or search hits. So having to do some weird domain isn't going to effect them at all. It's corporate America that needs to teach Joe Sixpack to remember how to spell their name that needs the short, simple domains.
The Linux square is the standard Electric Company square, the Sun square is the Waterworks. I have no idea why I know that. They make sense as utilities, in a way, I guess...
The problem is that Slashdot really isn't CmdrTaco's site anymore. He needs to realize that some day. It's grown up, moved on. If you want to have a community, you have to understand that it's the community that ultimately should control what goes on - not the orignal creator.
In a way, it's sad - but it's happened. CmdrTaco really needs to on, and understand that it's not the same Slashdot he used to run from Hope College. It's a price he has to pay for "making it big." It's a price he has to pay for having a "slashdot community." The site is no longer just his, it's become something else. As it is, other than posting stories, CmdrTaco seems to have almost nothing to do with the community that Slashdot has created. It really feels like it's time he understands this and gives more control to the community that makes Slashdot what it is. Don't forget, without the readers, Slashdot would never have become what it is today.
It started out as a good idea, but like everything else in life, it needs to grow in response to change. It may be "his site" but in reality, it became all the readers' sites. Since the readers submit the bulk of the stories, it makes sense for the readers to have some control over what gets on the front page. Originally, CmdrTaco and the other editors did all the moderation - that job got too hard for just them. They had to allow readers to take on the task. Think of this as a natural extension - he needs to allow some of the readers to help with story submissions. It might actually help the site.
We all know by now this is a repeat. Oops, they messed up. Since I really don't have anything to say about the story (other than "that's kinda cool") since I don't now, and never did, own an Atari, I want to instead comment on how they might prevent repeats like this.
Open the submission queue! I have to wonder why they don't do it yet. Given that many people instantly saw this as a repeat (I didn't, missed that day), you'd think allowing them to moderate/comment on the story while in the queue would help...
From the FAQ answer as to "How about a page for rejected or pending story submissions?":
Abuse is much worse. We get hundreds of submissions a day: we don't need more submissions, we need better ones. A public forum that gets the kind of traffic we get tends to be abused (like, say, the Slashdot comments for example). We don't want to be deleting "First Posts" and "Natalie Portman" type trolls and spams from the submission bin: we're busy enough as is.
If you want to prevent worse stories, then open up the queue! That way people will be able to see how the community acts to their writing, and might actually get useful feedback. Since I have no way of judging whether a story is "good" or not, I have no way of knowing how to make a "better submission." The only other problem I can think of is repeats in the story queue.
You wanna know why you get so many repeats? I'd love to be able to go through the submitted stories and see if I'm sending in a repeat. But I can't! The only way I know I was being redundent is either after someone else's story was accepted. If they decide not to run a story, I never do! Let's say they decide not to run some piece that a hundred people think they should submit. Well... those hundred people can't see that they're all getting rejected, so in they come!
Appropriateness From there, we move to the many stories that are submitted which are very wrong for Slashdot. They are horribly off topic, or offensive, or just plain scary. Obituaries for people that aren't dead? Rants about events that never occurred? Random Conspiracy Theories? Bug reports? Feature requests? I don't want to propagate this stuff, and I'm afraid that another public forum for them would only make the problem worse. There is some stuff submitted that would make for a very interesting page, and maybe someday we'll implement that. But as it stands, the overhead and the potential for abuse is so high that we don't want to mess with it.
Yet again, he's missing the oppertunity. Sure, people will abuse it - but having hundreds of people going over to verify is better than just the few active authors. (How many are there? 10 to 20?) If you're really that constrained on time, then think please - you don't need to make this take more time - it can actually take less! Think about it as outsourcing the story submissions - the editors still choose what goes on the front page, but the readers can help by "moderating" the stories, allowing the editors to spend less time in the story queue - not more.
Yes, this is offtopic, but it should be addressed at some point. I know why CmdrTaco says he doesn't want to do it, and I just personally disagree. Since most of the thread is currently talking about how this is a repeat, I though trying to offer constructive critism might actually help.
Actually, several schools already do that. For example, at my college, all of the introductory courses are based around Java. Write it anywhere, test it anywhere, and it should work anywhere. (Simple stuff, like System.out.println("Hello World");, nothing overly complex that usually causes problems cross-platform.) Higher level courses teach things like prolog, scheme, and other languages - but it's all mostly platform dependent. (I dunno about the C/C++ cources, I took an AP exam at college and was allowed to skip those, just like the introductory ones... but I know about the introductory courses by word of mouth...)
The only classes that aren't platform indepenent are the ones that really can't be. It's hard to be platform-indepent when teaching x86 assembly! Even in these cases there are labs available for people without computers or without the needed OS.
Bottom line is, most schools already go for platform-indepence. When you think about it, most languages are not OS-specific. Just the libraries and APIs - but that's not what should be taught. A good school teachs programming concepts which should really be not only platform-independent but to a greater degree language-independent. I have yet to go to a course which required you to be able to use a specific operating system. You do have a choice. It's currently Windows/UNIX, which all the Mac people absolutely hate with a vehemence that scares even Linux zealots, but it's a choice...
Ever read your own post an hour after writing it and thinking what on earth is that?
Ugh... well, so I can troll myself before someone else does (and I previewed the thing four times!):
The third paragragh should have read:
But the real purpose of a company is to remove liability from the
individual owners and onto the "company" as an entity. In other words, Bill Gates is not legally liable for anything Microsoft does - Microsoft itself is. So if a system based on MS-BASIC caused a building to collapse due to a flaw in MS-BASIC, Gates would not be liable, and could not suffer penalty from a lost lawsuit. Microsoft would be liable. This protects every corporate owner from liability from the company's actions.
Italized portion (mostly) is the part I screwed up. Man, I gotta get some more sleep, I guess.
I also left out the part about companies having more rights than individuals in certain cases in the second paragraph. Well, preview is nice, but I guess I should read more carefully...
Legally speaking, a company is an "entity" - entitled to all the same rights everyone else is. Theoretically speaking, a company has the same rights as any other citizen.
However, there seem to be sets of laws that change this, so in some cases, companies have less rights and people have more.
But the real purpose of a company is to remove liability from the individual owners and onto the "company" as an entity. In other words, Bill Gates is not legally liable for anything Microsoft does - Microsoft itself is. So if a system based on MS-BASIC caused a building to collapse due to a flaw in MS-BASIC, Gates would not be liable, and could suffer not penalty from Microsoft's fallings. Microsoft would be. This protects every corporate owner from liability from the companies actions.
Don't forget, every stockholder is a part-owner. Imagine your house being taken over because you owned some stock in a company that was forced to pay massive amounts of money in damages!
Because a company has the ability to legally act as any person does (which is why companies can bring lawsuits, for example) a company is also entitled to the same rights.
And now, for the exact wording of the dialog box that appears when Windows crashes:
There was an internal error and one of the windows you were using will be closed. It is recommended that you save your work, close all programs, and then restart your computer.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh my, you must be right - let's see, a String, List, and other structured data are all... OBJECTS! Imagine that. And function references can get quite ugly, although as mentioned in another reply, try using java.lang.reflect.Method - which is, you guessed it, an OBJECT! I guess passing objects around is really limiting. Except, of course, Java is object orientated.
Oh my, you're right! There's absolutely no way for a class to implement the interface itself. That would mean something like...
public class MainWindow extends Frame implements KeyListener, MouseListener, MouseMotionListener, WindowListener
There's no way to implement the interface in your main object at all. Can't be.
As for passing tuples, yeah, that can be a pain. Try using an Object[] array unless you really have a variable number of return results. And not surprisingly, creating a new class is actually the right solution. Although I really see no difficulty in just making a new .java file for the new class, or, depending on circumstance, using a public inner class. I suppose typing
public class Tuple {
public int number;
public String text;
public boolean bool;
}
Is really difficult. And creating a new file - my what a hardship. Of course, you could also add those lines inside the class that returns it - it would be an inner class. But given your apparent knowledge of Java, you already know that, right?
Um, OK, yeah. There's a useless and incorrect rant. Java exceptions are insanely useful, far more useful than error codes. And you can bubble them up - I have a method that reads in a file and interprets the data. One of the exceptions it throws is IOException. Should an IO error occur, I don't have to check it in the method itself. The load method completely ignores the possibility of an I/O error, since the error would prevent it from successfully loading anyway. Since it doesn't update any class data until after it's finished with I/O, it's safe to handle it that way. As soon as it has succesfully loaded data, it does some post-processing and then updates internal data structures. Should there be any error, it throws an exception.
Next question: Why would you ever want to ignore an exception? Doing that strikes me as bad programming. I suppose you ignore return codes in C programs too. If the method claims it can throw the exception, there's probably a reason for it! And if you "know" the exception will never be thrown, then just
try {
// Do Whatever
// do nothing, it'll never be thrown
} catch (UselessException ue) {
}
Maybe the requirement to list exceptions that your method throws is just to help make sure that when you use the method elsewhere, you know what it'll throw? I know, that would be something like being forced to document error codes that your function returns. A real hardship.
(Also, if you want an exception that you can safely not catch, make it extend RuntimeException - RuntimeExceptions don't need to be caught. However, if they make it all the way to the top-level (ie, no function ever catches it) they will halt the program. Often, this is a good thing - usually continued running would be bad anyway. And if not, then, well, you should have caught the exception!)
Given the integration between IE and so many Windows things, it's impossible to say exactly how long IE really takes to load. (The UI libraries are loaded at startup, for example, because they're also used in a lot of other programs. As far as I can tell (not really knowing the internals) all the IE program you use does is create the widgets around the HTML render. I'd imagine the HTML renderer is loaded with the program, but I may be wrong - if you use Active Desktop, for example, it's used in that. It's also available as a COM object/ActiveX control, making it handy to use whenever as a Windows developer you need HTML support. Overall, I'm not sure exactly what IE preloads - but given that IE isn't also a newsreader, editor, chat client, and kitchen sink cleaner, it probably would load faster anyway.)
Sounds like a caching issue - possibly because Netscape checks the server to see if the page has changed and IE doesn't. I dunno, it's late, and I can't test it right now. (Need to create a page and a server to test it - maybe IE keeps the page in memory and Netscape writes it out? Compare memory cache sizes if possible.)
Finally! An excuse to buy a 25" monitor! I'm not just being greedy, I'm helping some poor, helpless burnt-out dotcommer!
It's illegal to booby-trap consumer products? Damn, guess I'll have to comment-out the section of code that deactivates my program after 30 days...
I was expecting such an answer; Even if these restrictions are supposedly designed for children, everybody is a victim. For example, the whole Hollywoodian movie production is calibrated to avoid a PG-17 rating: this has HUGE consequences on the artistic nature of American cinema.
The real problem with American cinema is that the movie producers are forced to try and turn a profit. Paying for the movie becomes more important than creativity - most of the MPAA bashing posts have already gone over this. Don't just blame it on Puritain culture, blame it on commericial culture as well. (For real proof, try listening to some directors commentary on their films - the issue really does come up. Oops, sorry, you're probably in Region 2. Well, that's another story...) (BTW, it's "NC-17", which replaces the "X" rating. So it's ranked G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 with NC-17 being the only rating a parent can't bring children to. Which is in itself dumb, and I hear stories about NC-17 being used to censor non-MPAA materials...)
Also, what's all this about "failing to learn from history"?
The whole "failing to learn from history" bit comes from the whole idea that not being allowed to buy something somehow prevents it from existing or something. Why not view Nazi material? I can't think of a single logical reason - maybe no Nazi paraphenalia, but why not uniforms? Weapons? Code books? Presumably, as part of the history lessons, you are allowed to look at Nazi material. But making it criminal to look at material is just nonsense. Coming from an American upbringing, I can at least understand the "no sex" culture. (Actually, that's changing in America. Slowly, but it's changing. America as a whole is redicovering its sexuality - there have been a whole batch of "coming of age" films recently.) The unwanted side effect is that hiding sex actually adversely effects a teenage developement - since a child doesn't know exactly what sex is, they can't understand what's right and what's wrong.
Now apply hiding sex to hiding Nazi materials. They still exist. Even if there are "sex-ed" courses being taught in schools, they mostly consist of "Don't do it" because that's all they can say. So does your history become a lesson in hating Nazis or a lesson in how they came to power and what they did? Brushing Nazi material under the rug does have the effect of making it something that gets ignored - the real question becomes, do you start hating Nazis, or do you start hating what the Nazis stand for? If a huge anti-Nazi group came to power that started a German genocide, they would be no different from the Nazis - but would they be recognized as a new Nazi-like group? Or would the fact that they don't ware swasticas and don't hail Hitler keep the distinction from being made?
Transferring the hate from those who would repeat the Nazi horrors to Nazi artifacts is wrong - it's not helping. Just like hidding sex in America hasn't really helped anything, hiding Nazism is most likely going to move hate over an idea to hate over tangible artifacts. A Nazi pin is a Navi pin. It's something that has historical value. It symbolizes something - but it does nothing. Seeing it doesn't pass the values it represents onto you. It's just a lump of metal.
I'm sorry, I just can't agree. First of all, you can't really compare the two restrictions of rights - America restricts the rights to see nudity and drink alchol from all minors. Once you're of age, have at it! Download porn off the internet, get those smutty DVDs, watch Pay-Per-View sex show. Have a beer and watch a porno - go ahead. You can do that. The reason that the definition of porn is so broad so that even artistic nudity is considered pornographic (or is it? There is a nice "old world" map at my former highschool that definately has a prominant naked women in it) is that the most vocal against porn are just that crazy. And most people don't want to come out in favor of porn. ("See, he thinks that a women's naked brest is OK for our children to see! He supports pornography!" instead of "he supports basic rights to freedom of speach." It's easy to take more rational thinking about what is pornography out of context so it becomes political suicide to go for laxing restrictions.)
The official reason that TV and radio is censored is that children can view it without restriction. (That's where all this internet filtering fun comes from too.) Many people feel that we should "protect" the "impressionable youth" (and then bitch about the apathy of said youth later - hmmm... let's think a bit...).
Blocking out Nazi artifacts (that's really what they are - historical artifacts) to all people is just stupid. I could see an argument against letting younger children view - it mostly involves the "impressionable youth" bit again - but against anyone? It's just stupid. There's also the "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it" bit. Ignoring it doesn't solve anything. I'd rather live in a nation that censors content with the intent to proect only minors so that once you're "of age" you can view without restrictions, rather than one that assumes everyone is better off without being able to see Nazi material. But to each their own - if you think being able to see nudity is more important than learning about the past, why not? It's not my place to judge. I just would rather live in America.
Dot-BIZ is going to be fighting five years of consumer learning. That's why .com is catchy. You've been taught to think of .com as catchy. Dot-biz is going to have a long road ahead to become accepted. I doubt that .biz will ever really catch on unless .biz becomes known as where there are certified companies, and you have someone to complain to if a buisness in .biz screws you. Otherwise, .biz isn't going to go anywhere - people will just continue to go to the .com counterpart.
[dpotter@whitestar dpotter]$ ls /usr/doc/XFree86-* /usr/doc/XFree86-*: No such file or directory
ls:
This is the standard desktop install of RedHat 7.0.
Whoa! Where in hell did a sysadmin come from? This thread used to be talking about desktop computers! Where do you get this "sysadmin" you talk of for Corel Linux?
Also, I hate that productivity = writing memos and using Word. Productivity for me means writing CGI, working with databases, network and system administration. Why is it so bad when I counter that my "productivity tools" are nmap, ethereal, snort, inetd, Apache, mod_perl, and so forth?
Good for you - you aren't Corel's target market. Again, this thread used to be talking about desktop machines, where the average user uses it almost exclusively for this type of thing. The "normal" desktop user uses their PC to surf the web, to read e-mail, and to write various documents/presentations.
Very few users are programmers - for the vast, vast (at least 90% of all users) majority, productivity means writing memos/presentations; not writing apps.
Um, Linux Mandrake would have exactly what to do with Corel's opperations? Stay on topic.
Fonts?? big deal, they have plenty.
Yeah, and they look like ass. Especially if you want them to be large enough to read - wow, reminds me of the Nintendo days - 8x8 pixel fonts! Oh joy. I finally got around to adding /C/windows/Fonts to my font path, after finally finding out that you can't mkfontdir it, and instead have to use the undocumented ttmkfdir. Now try telling me that was easy.
Drive support? Like what???? they support everything I use and can think of....
Drive support = Vendor supported drivers, I think. In other words, besides my NVidia module, I have no vendor drivers (although by net drivers I got through LinkSys, but they're repackaged OSS drivers).
Easy? KDE2 is very Windows like, so of course any idiot can use it.
I believe Corel's distro was/is using KDE1, and anyway, having to get through the logon process is still daunting to the average user - ask anyone who's watched a newbie try and figure out Win2K...
Dunno, haven't used KDE in a while, so I can't really provide any arguments for or against that assertion. Didn't like KDE when I did try it, though - it was too slick :).
Corel seemed to think it is - that's the whole point to the story.
Is it:
Well, it isn't the top three, that leaves 4: Average "dumb" desktop users. Who, by most Power Users or even 1337 k1dd13s standards are morons when it comes to "computers." You do realize that in life outside of the tech croud, a "power user" is someone who is simply experienced with the interface? Someone who understands the quirks and can get things done, without having to ask for much help?
The first thing that is taught in my college's Human/Computer Interaction (HCI) course is that: You are NOT NORMAL.
The users that Corel was attempting to target are the people who Microsoft is hiding the command line from. The users that Corel wanted to move to Linux are those who think that the desktop is the only interface - who shy away from "complicated" things like logging on, or having a password.
The original poster (although the username ("buttfucker2000") strikes me as a troll name) is entirely right when he said that Corel is right to pull out - Linux isn't ready for the user market that Corel was targetting.
Actually, that's not the angle I'm coming from. The angle I'm coming from is that the GPL prevents commerical companies from writing commerical KDE apps. The LGPL used for the GNOME libraries allows commerical apps. If those are your choices, and you write commerical apps...
Cost: nothing. (Maybe $2 for CDs...)
Grab a Debian CD, install it on a box, and you can write commerical GTK+ apps. That's it. Complete. Compare with KDE - $1500 a developer? For a five-man team, you're at $7500!!!
Compare with Microsoft's licensing terms - same five-man team with comparitive tools (ie, just the dev-studio, since that's all the $1500 covers) comes in at around $2500.
All I'm trying to say is that for commerical apps, Qt is worse than Microsoft! And since GTK+ developement is even cheaper (ie, $0 in licensing fees), it stands to reason, from a commerical point of view, that GNOME is a more commerically viable platform to develop for than KDE.
The other fun point is that products developed for MS platforms are automatically potentially more viable than those developed for any Linux desktop - there's more of a market. By using Qt, KDE is forcing commerical developers to GNOME. What that means in the end is anyone's guess.
Yeah, they'll look for sympathy elsewhere alright: it's called GNOME. GNOME is under the LGPL, making it perfect for companies that want to develope software - and that's why, even though KDE is nicer and better than GNOME, it is currently doomed to fail as a viable desktop.
Let's say that Company A wants to write Product B for Linux, so they look at their options: KDE (Qt), GNOME (GTK+), Motif. What are they going to choose? More than likely, they'll go with the free one - GTK+, meaning GNOME. That's why the GNOME Foundation was first - because it is commerically viable to produce programs for that environment.
To give you some perspective, it costs a third-party application vender around $500 per developer to write programs for Windows - that's assuming they decide to use MS DevStudio (I think you can get just Visual C++ for around $250 - and that is literally everything you need to write for Windows). If you pay around $2500 a year, then MS gives you a damn sweet deal, sending the developer
In other words, writing commercial software for Microsoft OSes is actually cheaper then writing for Qt!
Compare: MSDN subscription overview, Trolltech licencing.
If you still think this doesn't matter, think again - it is very important from a commerical software house's point of view.
"Hmm.... ok, I can delete this directory and all subdirs, here we go, write rm -rf *."
*scribble scribble*
Palmtop displays: rm -rf /*
"No, no, no-------!!!!"
I dunno... I can live without electricity (although it won't be easy) but should the waterworks stop working, I'll be up in arms - I like working toilets...
That's why companies fight so hard for "their" trademarks once their taken. Which is easier to remember, clue.hasbro.com or clue.com? Go see X-Men at xmen.com as opposed to x-men-the-movie.com or even worse x-men-the-movie.fox.com! It's all about making them memorable. Short is important. Common words are important. Since most people try the .com first (whitehouse.com anyone?), the .COM domains are important. (Personally, I don't think new TLDs will help at all but I'm probably wrong. At least, I hope I am.)
That's why companies fight for "their trademark" - it's because the shorter and simpler the domain name, the easier it is to remember. Slashdot is simple to remember - if Slashdot were still something along the lines of slashdot.res.hope.edu or whatever it's original URL was (I'm not exactly a newcomer as my 150000+ ID shows, so I dunno the original URL) it wouldn't be as popular - people wouldn't hear about from word-of-mouth and head there ("Oh, I read this on Slashdot." "What?" "It's a webpage, Slashdot.org." "Oh, OK, I'll check it out sometime..." compared to "It's a webpage, slashdot.res.hope.net." "Right..."). How many people actually write down the URLs they hear/see in ads? Not many. So it needs to be memorable - which is why companies fight for the simple names.
Once a company has taught their customer base to think of them as their name, they don't want to have to re-teach all their customers a different, strange URL. Imaging instead of Kraft.com being forced to go for kraft-food.com? Or instead of cheerios.com having to send people to cheerios.general-mills.com or even cheerios.general-mills-cereals.com? Marketers aren't that stupid - that's the reason companies fight for these domain names. People do need to make them easy to remember.
As that Indian-sex-word squatter is going to find out, porn sites don't follow the same rules - they get most of their hits through banners or search hits. So having to do some weird domain isn't going to effect them at all. It's corporate America that needs to teach Joe Sixpack to remember how to spell their name that needs the short, simple domains.
The Linux square is the standard Electric Company square, the Sun square is the Waterworks. I have no idea why I know that. They make sense as utilities, in a way, I guess...
In a way, it's sad - but it's happened. CmdrTaco really needs to on, and understand that it's not the same Slashdot he used to run from Hope College. It's a price he has to pay for "making it big." It's a price he has to pay for having a "slashdot community." The site is no longer just his, it's become something else. As it is, other than posting stories, CmdrTaco seems to have almost nothing to do with the community that Slashdot has created. It really feels like it's time he understands this and gives more control to the community that makes Slashdot what it is. Don't forget, without the readers, Slashdot would never have become what it is today.
It started out as a good idea, but like everything else in life, it needs to grow in response to change. It may be "his site" but in reality, it became all the readers' sites. Since the readers submit the bulk of the stories, it makes sense for the readers to have some control over what gets on the front page. Originally, CmdrTaco and the other editors did all the moderation - that job got too hard for just them. They had to allow readers to take on the task. Think of this as a natural extension - he needs to allow some of the readers to help with story submissions. It might actually help the site.
We all know by now this is a repeat. Oops, they messed up. Since I really don't have anything to say about the story (other than "that's kinda cool") since I don't now, and never did, own an Atari, I want to instead comment on how they might prevent repeats like this.
Open the submission queue! I have to wonder why they don't do it yet. Given that many people instantly saw this as a repeat (I didn't, missed that day), you'd think allowing them to moderate/comment on the story while in the queue would help...
From the FAQ answer as to "How about a page for rejected or pending story submissions?":
If you want to prevent worse stories, then open up the queue! That way people will be able to see how the community acts to their writing, and might actually get useful feedback. Since I have no way of judging whether a story is "good" or not, I have no way of knowing how to make a "better submission." The only other problem I can think of is repeats in the story queue.
You wanna know why you get so many repeats? I'd love to be able to go through the submitted stories and see if I'm sending in a repeat. But I can't! The only way I know I was being redundent is either after someone else's story was accepted. If they decide not to run a story, I never do! Let's say they decide not to run some piece that a hundred people think they should submit. Well... those hundred people can't see that they're all getting rejected, so in they come!
Yet again, he's missing the oppertunity. Sure, people will abuse it - but having hundreds of people going over to verify is better than just the few active authors. (How many are there? 10 to 20?) If you're really that constrained on time, then think please - you don't need to make this take more time - it can actually take less! Think about it as outsourcing the story submissions - the editors still choose what goes on the front page, but the readers can help by "moderating" the stories, allowing the editors to spend less time in the story queue - not more.
Yes, this is offtopic, but it should be addressed at some point. I know why CmdrTaco says he doesn't want to do it, and I just personally disagree. Since most of the thread is currently talking about how this is a repeat, I though trying to offer constructive critism might actually help.
The only classes that aren't platform indepenent are the ones that really can't be. It's hard to be platform-indepent when teaching x86 assembly! Even in these cases there are labs available for people without computers or without the needed OS.
Bottom line is, most schools already go for platform-indepence. When you think about it, most languages are not OS-specific. Just the libraries and APIs - but that's not what should be taught. A good school teachs programming concepts which should really be not only platform-independent but to a greater degree language-independent. I have yet to go to a course which required you to be able to use a specific operating system. You do have a choice. It's currently Windows/UNIX, which all the Mac people absolutely hate with a vehemence that scares even Linux zealots, but it's a choice...
Ugh... well, so I can troll myself before someone else does (and I previewed the thing four times!):
The third paragragh should have read:
Italized portion (mostly) is the part I screwed up. Man, I gotta get some more sleep, I guess.
I also left out the part about companies having more rights than individuals in certain cases in the second paragraph. Well, preview is nice, but I guess I should read more carefully...
However, there seem to be sets of laws that change this, so in some cases, companies have less rights and people have more.
But the real purpose of a company is to remove liability from the individual owners and onto the "company" as an entity. In other words, Bill Gates is not legally liable for anything Microsoft does - Microsoft itself is. So if a system based on MS-BASIC caused a building to collapse due to a flaw in MS-BASIC, Gates would not be liable, and could suffer not penalty from Microsoft's fallings. Microsoft would be. This protects every corporate owner from liability from the companies actions.
Don't forget, every stockholder is a part-owner. Imagine your house being taken over because you owned some stock in a company that was forced to pay massive amounts of money in damages!
Because a company has the ability to legally act as any person does (which is why companies can bring lawsuits, for example) a company is also entitled to the same rights.
If you don't believe me, look at this.
And if you'll excuse me, I need to save my work, close all programs, and restart my computer.