Oh the joys of Fortran. I remember it from so many years ago. I guess this problem (of a program being treated as a comment must have caught a lot of people like this, because I remember that the IBM Fortran Compiler had a special mention in the rules about comments that a comment cannot be continued.
I have my own Pascal story. I was in the computer lab of a west coast State University, and while I was not part of the support staff, I was just another user ther, I was well known as the "go-to" guy to see when you had a problem. So this one student was having a problem and asked for my help. Seems he had a program of several hundred lines that wouldn't compile, and we were using Turbo Pascal (version 3, I think, which tells you how far back it was, probably 1985 or so). He kept getting some error, basically I think it was saying his program wasn't finished, so I put in a spurious "begin end." statement, as if it was the end of his program. It compiles okay. So I move it down further, and get an error. I do this, basically by doing a "split the difference" search in which I take about 1/2 the distance between the last good point and the point that doesn't work, and repeat this until I get to the last point where it's only a two line difference, and I find it. About 2-3 minutes after I sat down, I discovered what had happened: he had an open brace "{" on one of his lines. That's a "start comment" mark, and he had no other comments later in the program, so the comment was never closed. This meant the compiler treated everything from the start of the comment to the end of the program as if it were a comment. I didn't see it either even though I did look at his program for a bit before trying to find the problem.
The guy was absolutely astonished, of what I did in less than five minutes. He said that he had been studying his program "for several hours" and couldn't find where the problem was. And that's probably why I had such a reputation for fixing things, I guess.
If Sun wants to protect the use of the Java trademark so that others implementing Java runtime systems remain compatible with the standard, there already is a method available. It's called a "certification mark" or "membership mark" class of trademark or servicemark. If you live in the United States, you're almost certainly aware of one very famous certification mark, the "UL" label on electrical appliances. Companies supply samples of their equipment to Underwriters Laboratories, which basically tests the device to destruction, then if the fail point is higher than the minimum standard, UL grants them permission to affix the UL certification mark to their equipment.
A "membership mark" would be used where some organization is allowed to use a mark to show it's a member of a group or has qualified to show the particular mark. I think the "Energy Star" label from the Department of Energy would fit here.
The only requirement to do this is that someone else — that does not distribute the software — has to be the certification authority (you can't be both owner of a certification mark and a user of it, that would be a conflict of interest.) But they'd probably want to do that anyway, the way IBM turned over the Eclipse IDE to a separate foundation after they decided to release it open source.
So, there's already plenty of existing systems available for Sun to use a system to "protect" the Java trademark and the "write once, run anywhere" concept. And a small license fee for those who want to use the mark to cover testing costs for verifying compliance could make the whole thing self-funding.
I just received a phone line from SBC for $5.20/month. Now this is before taxes and fees, and has no long distance, and a limit on 60 local calls per month. But because I only ordered it so I could get DSL from another provider, that's alright with me.
That is the least expensive phone service you can get and where they offer it it's not a bad idea if you don't use your phone much. In the Washington, DC area you can generally only get that from Verizon in Maryland, and you could only have one phone line. I suspect you also couldn't add features to your line; it was what they called "life line service" and it was for people who couldn't afford full unlimited local service but didn't qualify for subsidized service. The problem is that it's really easy to go over your minimum call allotment if you aren't careful. Found that out once a few years ago when I was looking for work and didn't know we only had minimum service, and ran up $80 in message units, in one month. (I sent out more than 1,000 faxes). Thing was, full local service would have only cost an extra $8. Having dealt with Verizon back when it was Bell Atlantic and C&P Telephone, and all the times I've ordered service from them and had the back office screw up my order in one way or another, I refuse to do business with them any more, since I now have a choice. I'd rather pay the extra $10, get unlimited local service, and buy it (for usually less than Verizon charges) from someone else.
Basic phone service for $40/month? Sounds like you're getting ripped off and/or exaggerating.
No not exaggerating (ripped off maybe, but not exaggerating). Basic phone service - which, in the Washington, D.C. metro area, generally means unlimited local service for residential customers - with taxes and fees runs about $40 a month. And if I wasn't getting service from someone other than Verizon - it's a company called Cavalier - it might be even more expensive.
Right now, with DSL my phone bill runs about $65 a month. Taxes and fees run about $15 of that. My phone bill would be about $40 a month if I wasn't taking the $25 a month DSL service. For $20 more I could get unlimited long distance as well, but seeing how for the last three months our long distance usage has been averaging less than 50c a month I think we can do without it.
That's a load of BS. If Microsoft cared about open formats, they'd just use the perfectly good ones we've got now, like OpenDocument, PDF, OpenGL/OpenAL/SDL, Java, Ogg, Vorbis, FLAC, Theora, HTML (as opposed to "MSHTML"), NFS (as opposed to SMB), and god knows how many others.
Actually, Microsoft is being sued by Adobe for including a PDF generator in the latest release of Word. Apparently Adobe didn't like the idea of MS including it without additional charge in the base release of Word. (Adobe can't sell against free, so if Word includes a free PDF generator, it cuts into Adobe's business. This ignores the fact that, if I'm not mistaken, Open Office has a PDF generator built in.) If PDF was, in fact, an open format, Adobe would not have grounds to sue MS over using it. Much as I dislike some^W most of Microsoft's tactics, let us not criticize them when they do something which is right.
Now, if they were making non-standard PDFs that required a Microsoft application to use them, that would be another story. But that is not happening. All they were trying to do was exactly what people here (or at least, the parent poster) are asking, to make their stuff so other (non-MS) applications could work with them. They did, and are being sued over it. It's all about money, and power. There's no pot of money in open source and only a small marketshare which is why Adobe isn't suing open source applications that include PDF generators.
Is it just me or is every article on/. that mentions Microsoft tagged with fud, lies, traps etc.
How else can it be if we have to quote comments from people who speak on behalf of Microsoft?:) Is it a lie to claim that Microsoft is illegally monopolizing market share in the operating systems market and in web browsers? No, a federal court has so declared. Is it a lie to claim Microsoft is willfully refusing to comply with the promises it has made to fully publish their APIs and documentation necessary to write software that interacts with their software? No, Microsoft is being fined something over 1/2 a billion dollars by the E.U. for doing exactly that. I don't see where anyone is saying anything (bad) about Microsoft that isn't usually backed by factual evidence. Their penchant for misconduct is legendary and well documented.
It seems stupid to have tags if they are always going to be the same nonsense.
Well, Microsoft has generally been consistent in treating competitors badly, so...
I resent that. I really want to use a computer, really enjoy using a computer, and generally prefer to use windows. Most of the problem with you zealots is you seem to think that people who prefer windows are idiots.
I haven't heard that last word from anyone except you. Over many years, Microsoft has been the big bully in this matter, all of their blustering, threats, hired shills and jawboning have been useless, so now they — or someone else, I'm not sure which — claim that there should be a "truce" in the "war". If there has been a war, it was of Microsoft's doing. I happen to prefer to use Windows because all the applications software I have — 90% of it being non-Microsoft — uses Windows. I would use Linux more if I could do what I need to do using it. I specifically switched to Netscape because of security issues in Internet Explorer. I think Microsoft has developed some fairly good applications. It is the way Microsoft treats attempts to get out from under their thumb — to avoid giving them absolute control — that is shameful and disgusting.
No. People who would prefer linux but don't know how to migrate are idiots. People like me, who have a Windows machine and a Linux machine on a KVM right next to each other in the living room, but yet spend less than 2% of their time on Linux can not be shoveled into the same category.
Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. Microsoft's problem all along has been how they want it all and are unwilling to share. They have chosen to take a winner-take-all stance and a scorched-earth policy toward any disagreement with their policies. When has Microsoft ever been willing to grant to others anything? Only when they were forced to do so, and even then they weasel out of it at the first opportunity. People who have dealt with Microsoft or been partners with them are almost unanimous that any time you are involved in a transaction with them they will give you the short end of the stick. This is just another attempt by Microsoft to supposedly gain the benefits of cooperative development while refusing to cooperate with anyone else. Microsoft has been forced by the threat of competition they cannot buy off, bully or threaten, to change their attitude. But their tactics have never changed one iota.
The fact that you state something like that as a genuine feeling, and that alot of your "collegues" would as well, proves the point. Zealots are generally condescending, arrogant, presumptuous, overbearing and assinine,
@on all change 'Zealots are' to 'Microsoft is' ; Statement is then valid.
and if you, any of you, for one second had your finger on the true pulse of the full world of computing, perhaps you would realise you are, in fact, the cause of the long, slow death of truly wonderful open source platforms and software.
If it really is a long, slow death, Microsoft need do nothing but sit back and wait. Their continued attacks on GPLed Open Source indicate that they are the ones in trouble. And they know it.
Comments like yours indicate the exact opposite, this is the beginning of the long, slow death of proprietary software and vendor lock-in.
Your attitudes are suicidal.
I think the suicidal attitude is one of Microsoft. Say what anybody wants about them, they do have a lot of very smart people, and I think they are seeing the end of the road.
I don't think that Linux has ever been at war with anybody. Nor has there been any license problems. The problem has been with a company like Microsoft that wants to use other people's things and close them up so no one else can use them, invoke vendor lock-in and make choice of non-Microsoft solutions impossible or nearly so. Microsoft doesn't like the GPL because they aren't allowed to take the developments of others and not share as well. Microsoft loves the BSD license because it allows them to do exactly that.
The only thing the GPL does is that it requires you publicly redistribute, on the same terms as the stuff you got, any changes that you make. It does not stop you or in any way prevent you from independently developing the same software. Nor does it attempt to prohibit you from running other software which use other licenses or operate on other systems. Microsoft has routinely used its EULAs to do exactly that. This is Microsoft's war, not Linux's, and Microsoft is the only one that can end this war, when it chooses to stop fighting. But to do that would require Microsoft to change the way it has been doing business.
Microsoft has become rich as a result of proprietary software and vendor lock-in, and for it to change its way of operating to no longer do this would require a complete change of outlook. (Pun unintentional)
I mean, obviously computers are the most complex of all machines.
No, living organisms are. Computers are the most complex man-made machines.:)
But they still only actually do a small handful of different basic tasks. I guess I'm just surprised, in principle, that there isn't a logically ideal language for giving a computer instructions on what to do and when to do it.
The 'programming language' for implementing living organisms, DNA, if I remember correctly, only has about 4 'instructions' for describing how to build a cell. By stringing those instructions into long chains of molecules, you get various cells that do certain things. Cells combine to form organs and the organs combine in a system to form a person, an insect, a dog or just about any living thing. (Viruses work differently and are usually considered nonliving for technical reasons.) In computer code, the individual instructions are the equivalent of DNA, and subroutines, functions and objects are the equivalent of cells. Programs are the equivalent of organs and collections of programs used to perform a function represent the equivalent of living things. The complexity of both is about equivalent in terms of what they can do even though DNA is much simpler in theory, in practice it does some amazingly complex things.
I vaguely understand the difference between assembly languages and higher-level languages, but again I'm surprised there isn't a logically optimal higher-level language that translates into assembly wth maximum efficiency and accuracy, which then translates into actual instructions with similarly maximum efficiency and accuracy.
Each CPU architecture does different things and has different uses even if they are designed as 'general purpose' processors. The Power PC CPU for the Macintosh is a different beast than the X86 CPU for Wintel PCs as is the IBM 370 Z-series mainframe processors, while they're all made out of sand (silicon is simply processed sand), they might as well be as alike as oak trees and aphids are alike in the sense they're both living organisms. Which means the methods of working with different processors (as the DNA for both types of living things) require entirely different methods altogether even if computer code / DNA all start at the same place.
The problem isn't native-code vs interpretive code. It's that our native code languages are terribly flawed.
Hear, Hear! The convulsions you have to go through to get things done in some programming languages makes my skin crawl.
Programming backed itself into a corner with C and C++. They're useful languages, but they're not safe.
Preaching to the converted here. One of the stupidest features (spelled b-u-g-s) in C was the making identifiers case sensitive. So now, you have more ways to make mistakes because not only can you mess up by spelling an identifier wrong, you can also mess up by using the wrong case for the identifier too! A (programming) language that gives us more ways to screw up has got to be one of the great moments in human development.</sarcasm>
Now this has nothing to do with performance; you can have safety in a hard-compiled language. Ada, the Modula family, and the Pascal/Delphi family did it.
Ada might have been a good language except it has a big problem because in that it was too complicated to use properly. Sort of like the complexity of APL but without the capability. Too many features that should more properly be implemented in the environment through system calls (like co-routines and subtasking) were made part of the language. Increasing complexity makes it harder to write code and definitely harder to write compilers.
A number of people criticize Pascal because of the supposed 'limits' in the language. What they miss is many of the so-called limits were designed to teach people how to write better programs by forcing better habits. And despite the 'smearing' of the language by referring to it as an 'educational' language, what it does do is exactly the sort of thing that professional programmers need to be protected against just as much: making errors in handling data.
Features of Pascal such as strict type checking (you can't assign two non-equivalent values to each other (with some limited exceptions) unless you explicitly declare them using conversion), array size validation (you can't access an array outside the valid ranges, both low subscript and high subscript), predefinition of identifers (you have to declare an identifer and its data type before you're allowed to use it), deprecation of the 'goto' statement in favor of better constructs, are all features that make people write better programs that are less likely to have serious errors. The worst attacker problem in C / C++ applications, the buffer overflow problem, where someone contaminates a program by injecting new code beyond the range of an array, and thus causes an application to run arbitrary code of their own choice, is impossible in Pascal because if you access an array outside the legitimate range size, the value checking system throws an exception.
The problem is that, because of some bad design decisions in C (the equivalence of arrays and pointers being the big one), you have to lie to the language to get anything done. This makes safety hopeless. The basic problem of C is that you have to obsess on "who owns what" for memory allocation purposes, and the language gives you no help with this. The language doesn't even adequately address "how big is this". With those two design defects, we're doomed to have memory safety problems. Which we do.
People seem to have obsessed over Java and the safety features of the language and how wonderful it is. Java is just C with a number of the unsafe features either deprecated or removed. Java is an attempt to give C some of the safety features of Pascal while still leaving off many of its other safety features.
What's so embarassing about all this is that it's quite fixable. The solutions were known twenty years ago.
Pascal was able to correctly implement pointers (which you need if you are going to manipulate data structures where you don't know how many i
Now that the RIAA has filed all these lawsuits and ruined a lot of people's lives, including actions which, in some cases, were filed against innocent people, the former head of the RIAA decides that it was a bad idea. Thanks a lot. Why do I suspect that if she were still head of the RIAA she would not be making this comment and would still be insisting on having the RIAA going after anyone they could find?
I believe her comments are hypocritical, and I don't believe she's sincere. Or, to put it colloquially, "I'll forgive her when Vietnam Veterans forgive Hanoi Jane, or when the Jews forgive Hitler."
What use is, for example, a compiler, to someone without high technical knowledge?
You apparently did not read the article. Your ignorance shows from your dismissal of the person's arguments with (less than) mere handwaving.
All you have to do is look at the "fit and finish" and usability of Windows applications - that do work, and do the job - versus many of the applications on Linux and see that Windows applications far and away are much easier to install, to configure, and to use for ordinary people.
Honestly, where do they get some of these authors?
His article refers to ordinary people using ordinary applications, not to computer professionals using specialized tools like compilers. You are comparing apples and oranges and then asking why the user is not talking about it being fruit salad.
I posted the following on the website of the article:
I agree with your statements. The Linux operating system still needs work to get more of its components easier to use. Eric S. Raymond tells of his trouble getting the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) working on his Linux machine and the problems he had, despite the fact he is one of the uber-geeks of the software community. He noted the trouble to the excess complexity in getting the software to set its own parameters, something it should reasonably know how to do, not necessarily require the user to figure out.
On Windows, if you have a USB printer, you just plug it in, and if it doesn't already have the drivers built into the os database (and already installed) it will ask for a disk, you put it in and it shows you a list of printers the manufacturer has specified, you choose it and the installation is done automatically, or the manufacturer has a program on the disk to do that.
The problem is that the technical solution to the problem is usually the "low hanging fruit" that gets solved first. Fit and finish, user interface and usability are "not sexy," considered "chrome," or unimportant, and/or are much harder to do than actually solving the problem, so they get short shrift in the scale of attention if they get done at all. (The programming tools on Unix and X Windows, until very recently, also didn't help much to make this job easier.)
And exposure to the ease-of-use factors that Windows provides can't help but to encourage work on those factors for applications to run on non-Windows systems and perhaps make them easier to use for non-technical people.
Paul Robinson
Arlington, Virginia, USA
There isn't much you could do to stop it
on
The .EU Landrush Fiasco
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· Score: 2, Informative
Here were the comments I posted on Bob Parson's blog regarding the so-called 'gaming the system' by someone or some group creating hundreds of registrars :
Well, there isn't really any way to work around this, as someone could simply have paid $50 each or whatever the cheapest state in the U.S. charges for corporations, and register 1000 corporations, then have each apply separately. After they get whatever domains they want, they sell them - for $1 - to the destined 'master corporation' and discontinue operators by doing a wind-up and dissolve . As legal as church on Sunday and as legally invulnerable. Whether you like it or not, a corporation is a separate entity from its directors or stockholders, and two separate corporations created by the same incorporator are, as a matter of law, three separate entities and entitled to recognition as separate entities. So even if some of the registrars are fake, they could still do the whole thing by registering lots of corporations separately. Raises the price by $50 each registrar but when we are looking at potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of euros per domain name they get, it's chump change.
Are you upset because you don't like what they are doing or are you upset because you didn't think to do it? You're the owner of a corporation; realize the purpose of a corporation is to provide limited liability for its owner(s) and thus allowing them, in effect, to legally cheat their creditors by denying them access to the owner's personal assets if the business fails. (Your company isn't public so I presume you're not needing to sell stock, which is a different matter). If this wasn't the purpose of a separate entity, one wouldn't need to incorporate, one could simply operate it as a sole proprietor under a fictitious name. But operating in corporate form allows one limited liability and separate existence from the corporate form. And if someone wants to set up a bunch of alleged 'sham' registrars, there really isn't any way to do it unless you only allow registrars to be individuals.
Short of that, there is always some way someone could - as you call it - 'game the system'.
If names would have been more valuable that multiple registrants would want the same names, then the answer is for the EU registry to auction them itself, thus draining the profit away from middlemen resellers.
Maybe it might seem unfair, but your comment sounds more like sour grapes. As long as someone registering in a system does not have to be a human being and can be a legal entity someone can always find a way to make multiple registrations in that system.
The last 5 things I've bought from sony have been junk that have either not worked right or broken within a year. Sony once may have produced quality products but today they produce cheap junk that sells on the sony name.
I have to agree. We bought my sister a Sony PC which has had problems working correctly with XP. It won't network with other computers I own. My HP PC can be seen and can share files with it, but it is completely invisible to anything on the network. We had problems opening the case in order to replace the CD drive with a DVD. It's not quite as bad as the real garbage from Packard Bell but compared with PCs from Hewlett Packard - which are often less expensive and of much higher quality - they are junk. Even the store brand PCs from Micro Center are better.
Ray, as everyone who reads the alt.seduction.fast usenet newsgroup knows, your claims that you will appeal, mean about as much as the "continued and inexcusable failure" you are, claiming you haven't lost yet. This is just another one of your failed attempts to "sue for a living" where you have again lost, as you always do. The only difference being the people on Slashdot do not know you or your history. But it's easy enough to find out; all anyone has to do is go there and read what you've said; your own words will convict you in anyone's mind.
Gordon Roy Parker so hates his own name he goes by the alias of Ray Gordon, which is also the name of a U.K. writer of erotica, and some people confuse the two of them. He hangs out on the usenet newsgroup alt.seduction.fast (or on Google Groups via the Web here.).
Parker is a nutcase, a man who has serious (admitted) mental problems and doesn't seem to care how he alienates anyone who reads what he has to say, and apparently thrives on causing dissention. He is basically one of the funniest floor shows if you like watching crazy people act in an insane fashion. His detractors that post comments against him are almost as crazy as he is, and add to the hilarity of the situation there.
Here's the situation on this lawsuit. Mr. Parker has written some books on how to seduce women, but his own stellar lack of success in doing so over the past few years plus the ineffectiveness of his ideas means he has essentially had to give away his books for free since no one will pay to read what he has to say. This compares with a number of men who make money through paid seminars in telling other men how to do exactly this. These men have been fairly successful in their conquests and tell other men how to learn to be able to do the same thing. Since Mr. Parker is unable to do this and can't teach anyone how since he doesn't have the slightest hint of a clue, all he can do is whine about it and threaten to sue anyone who disagrees with him.
Well, Google - as it does for millions of other sites - cached the information on his website (where his books were available for downloading) in order to allow others to be able to search and find it. He didn't know that he can mark his site so Google won't do that, and then when he tried to change the status of one of his books from giving it away to charging for it, then discovered people could obtain the book for free from Google by using the cached copy, Gordo decided to sue Google. As with the other six lawsuits he's filed in Federal court (I'm not kidding), he lost again. Again I'm not kidding, Gordon has filed at least six cases in federal court and lost every one of them. A federal judge referred to his ability to handle a lawsuit as "... Plaintiff Gordon Roy Parker's... continued and inexcusable failure..." {Gordon Roy Parker v. "Wintermute" et. al.} 02-CV-7215 (Feb. 25, 2003, Federal District Court, Eastern District, Pennsylvania). The only other item on the world-wide-web referred to as a "continued and inexcusable failure" is the U.N. screwup in Kosovo that got people killed.
It's said that you're not really a member of the newsgroup alt.seduction.fast until Ray threatens to sue you. He's threatened me with a lawsuit over my comments at least four times in something over two years I've been reading postings there. When I first got there I defended him because I thought he was being unfairly targeted by just about everyone else, but over time, from his own words, I learned just how much of a miserable misanthrope he is. He hates himself for what has happened to him, hates everyone else because most of the time he makes wild claims without proof, says things that don't make much sense or are completely wrong.
He's also known for being a bully and the only thing he respects are people who won't back down from his threats. All he's ever done is threaten me with a lawsuit because he knows I'd clean his clock in a New York minute with a countersuit if he did actually sue me.
One of the things he posted - on September 11, 2001 - was that everyone who died in the two towers deserved what they got, primarily because he wasn't hired by some companies that work there. He's referred to some of the people (women in general) who died there as "office whores," mainly because he couldn't get hired (probably because he's just as unpleasant in person as he is on USENET.) While he's entitled to his opinion, to make such a spiteful comment
Most games are overpriced relative to how much value people can get out of them. But the biggest issue is the issue of value. Too many games are being designed by hard-core gamers for hard-core gamers, and as a result the novice or new player is completely stumped or disappointed because the game is unplayable.
I can give an example with Quake III Arena. I bought the game because it looked interesting. On the lowest possible setting the game is so hard I'm being killed before I even start. The action is so fast, violent and crippling that it's all but impossible to have any serious chance to play the game. These games need to get better design in order to make the game less challenging for people who do not want to have to spend 6,000 hours of time just to possibly get by at the lowest setting.
And let's try having some good games that do not involve killing someone or something for a change.
And if all the entertainment industry can develop is sequels, all they're going to get is a second-rate response from the public. A constant diet of fattening left overs is going to produce "hardening of the arteries" in the checkbooks of customers.
Windows runs about 90% or more of all desktops. Apple and Linux make the vast majority of the remainder with everyone else totalling probably less than 1% of all desktops. As a result, if someone writes a virus, they more likely than not own a Windows machine, and thus have the capacity to target it. Also, there being lots of Windows desktops and the infection vector is larger it's a bigger target.
As most malware attacks are for profit these days, the Windows environment, with its huge level of insecurity provides a bigger payback for the investment of time and effort involved.
If Apple and Linux boxes were more popular - or become more popular - for desktop application systems which are connected to the Internet, they would get targeted more. But, there is a saving point here. If these systems can be properly configured and locked down so malware can't get started they will remain relatively immune. Once it gets around that Apple or Linux systems have good "as installed" security against malware, its authors will look elsewhere as criminals are just as lazy - if not more so - as everyone else, and are not going to work hard for small returns. Problem is, the settings for this will have to be done by the release maintainers as most people will probably use them 'out of the box' in whatever way the system is set up to be configured. If the Linux and Apple OS release maintainers do not design their systems to install in a secure method in the first place, (Linspire being the prime example, having the user default to root), these systems can and will become just as buggy and virus-ridden as Windows boxen have become.
Paul Robinson
paul@paul-robinson.org / paul@paulrobinson.org
There is no way a game machine can sell for $900. You can buy a new, full PC for 1/2 of that price. You can buy new Playstation 2 or XBox for $199, used for $79. Basically I think public perception expects a $200 machine, maybe $300 but not beyond that as it's becoming close to the price of a full desktop computer which can be used for other things too.
Fuck me! I was goddam shocked by this study. These sons-a-bitches are cursing in on-line games? Bastards. We need to do something about these cocksuckers. We can't have these assholes ruining on-line experiences with cursing and profanity. This shit has got to stop.
Back around 2000 or so I was voting in Stafford County, Virginia where I lived, and the voting machines there used the equivalent of Scantrons; the voting booth had a device where it indicated which item to mark on the page, then you inserted the paper ballot into the machine that scanned it, then dropped the paper inside of it. This meant that it had a paper ballot stored as a check in case there was a question. So this can be done, but because it's easier to (undetectably) steal elections with electronic voting machines thats why they use them.
The first computer I ever used was a 4-User Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP 11/03 at Long Beach City College, running RT11. This machine had 64K words (that's K, not Meg) of memory (about 128KB) and cost (amazingly low for that type of computer then) about $20,000 in 1976. I loved that machine, and about 15 years later I would buy a surplus one for $200.
The first computer I owned was a V-20 powered IBM Clone, circa 1986. It was so close in terms of compatibility I had it and used it on a daily basis for two years before I discovered it wasn't an 8086. (The V-20 processor was made by NEC, and has a built-in 8080 processor so it can run CP/M programs natively.)
We ran a version of Basic on the PDP that gave each user terminal a whopping 4KB of memory. I am amazed to think of some of the things we did there on a machine that had two floppy disks (8" sized) carrying, at most, about 240KB each. Disk 0 was generally unavailable because it had to hold the operating system, Basic and support programs, so stuff was stored on the second floppy. Single sided, and they cost about $8 apiece.
I will always think fondly about the PDP-11 and the amazing things I and other people at the college did with it.
An old story: You have to know what to measure
on
Being Enron's SysAdmin
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Some of his comments about benchmarks and measuring performance bottlenecks go back decades to some comments I've seen time and time again. You have to know what you are measuring in order to know how to measure your performance. If you don't know what you are measuring, you're not going to get useful information.
His points about 'taking ownership' of the problem appear to be spot-on right, when people take ownership of a problem it provides a better chance to solve the problem. This comes straight out of the book In Search of Excellence as a method of building a better company. Difficulties and loss of effort happen when the general environment is one of "it's not my problem." When one takes ownership of problems in order to fix them no matter where the actual problem is you can produce excellent results. But again, if you're not looking in the right place to find the solution, chances are you won't find it.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh the joys of Fortran. I remember it from so many years ago. I guess this problem (of a program being treated as a comment must have caught a lot of people like this, because I remember that the IBM Fortran Compiler had a special mention in the rules about comments that a comment cannot be continued.
I have my own Pascal story. I was in the computer lab of a west coast State University, and while I was not part of the support staff, I was just another user ther, I was well known as the "go-to" guy to see when you had a problem. So this one student was having a problem and asked for my help. Seems he had a program of several hundred lines that wouldn't compile, and we were using Turbo Pascal (version 3, I think, which tells you how far back it was, probably 1985 or so). He kept getting some error, basically I think it was saying his program wasn't finished, so I put in a spurious "begin end." statement, as if it was the end of his program. It compiles okay. So I move it down further, and get an error. I do this, basically by doing a "split the difference" search in which I take about 1/2 the distance between the last good point and the point that doesn't work, and repeat this until I get to the last point where it's only a two line difference, and I find it. About 2-3 minutes after I sat down, I discovered what had happened: he had an open brace "{" on one of his lines. That's a "start comment" mark, and he had no other comments later in the program, so the comment was never closed. This meant the compiler treated everything from the start of the comment to the end of the program as if it were a comment. I didn't see it either even though I did look at his program for a bit before trying to find the problem.
The guy was absolutely astonished, of what I did in less than five minutes. He said that he had been studying his program "for several hours" and couldn't find where the problem was. And that's probably why I had such a reputation for fixing things, I guess.
Paul Robinson paul@paul-robinson.us
If Sun wants to protect the use of the Java trademark so that others implementing Java runtime systems remain compatible with the standard, there already is a method available. It's called a "certification mark" or "membership mark" class of trademark or servicemark. If you live in the United States, you're almost certainly aware of one very famous certification mark, the "UL" label on electrical appliances. Companies supply samples of their equipment to Underwriters Laboratories, which basically tests the device to destruction, then if the fail point is higher than the minimum standard, UL grants them permission to affix the UL certification mark to their equipment.
A "membership mark" would be used where some organization is allowed to use a mark to show it's a member of a group or has qualified to show the particular mark. I think the "Energy Star" label from the Department of Energy would fit here.
The only requirement to do this is that someone else — that does not distribute the software — has to be the certification authority (you can't be both owner of a certification mark and a user of it, that would be a conflict of interest.) But they'd probably want to do that anyway, the way IBM turned over the Eclipse IDE to a separate foundation after they decided to release it open source.
So, there's already plenty of existing systems available for Sun to use a system to "protect" the Java trademark and the "write once, run anywhere" concept. And a small license fee for those who want to use the mark to cover testing costs for verifying compliance could make the whole thing self-funding.
Paul Robinson paul@paul-robinson.us
Right now, with DSL my phone bill runs about $65 a month. Taxes and fees run about $15 of that. My phone bill would be about $40 a month if I wasn't taking the $25 a month DSL service. For $20 more I could get unlimited long distance as well, but seeing how for the last three months our long distance usage has been averaging less than 50c a month I think we can do without it.
Now, if they were making non-standard PDFs that required a Microsoft application to use them, that would be another story. But that is not happening. All they were trying to do was exactly what people here (or at least, the parent poster) are asking, to make their stuff so other (non-MS) applications could work with them. They did, and are being sued over it. It's all about money, and power. There's no pot of money in open source and only a small marketshare which is why Adobe isn't suing open source applications that include PDF generators.
Comments like yours indicate the exact opposite, this is the beginning of the long, slow death of proprietary software and vendor lock-in.
I think the suicidal attitude is one of Microsoft. Say what anybody wants about them, they do have a lot of very smart people, and I think they are seeing the end of the road.The only thing the GPL does is that it requires you publicly redistribute, on the same terms as the stuff you got, any changes that you make. It does not stop you or in any way prevent you from independently developing the same software. Nor does it attempt to prohibit you from running other software which use other licenses or operate on other systems. Microsoft has routinely used its EULAs to do exactly that. This is Microsoft's war, not Linux's, and Microsoft is the only one that can end this war, when it chooses to stop fighting. But to do that would require Microsoft to change the way it has been doing business.
Microsoft has become rich as a result of proprietary software and vendor lock-in, and for it to change its way of operating to no longer do this would require a complete change of outlook. (Pun unintentional)
Paul Robinson
Hear, Hear! The convulsions you have to go through to get things done in some programming languages makes my skin crawl.
Preaching to the converted here. One of the stupidest features (spelled b-u-g-s) in C was the making identifiers case sensitive. So now, you have more ways to make mistakes because not only can you mess up by spelling an identifier wrong, you can also mess up by using the wrong case for the identifier too! A (programming) language that gives us more ways to screw up has got to be one of the great moments in human development.</sarcasm>
Ada might have been a good language except it has a big problem because in that it was too complicated to use properly. Sort of like the complexity of APL but without the capability. Too many features that should more properly be implemented in the environment through system calls (like co-routines and subtasking) were made part of the language. Increasing complexity makes it harder to write code and definitely harder to write compilers.
A number of people criticize Pascal because of the supposed 'limits' in the language. What they miss is many of the so-called limits were designed to teach people how to write better programs by forcing better habits. And despite the 'smearing' of the language by referring to it as an 'educational' language, what it does do is exactly the sort of thing that professional programmers need to be protected against just as much: making errors in handling data.
Features of Pascal such as strict type checking (you can't assign two non-equivalent values to each other (with some limited exceptions) unless you explicitly declare them using conversion), array size validation (you can't access an array outside the valid ranges, both low subscript and high subscript), predefinition of identifers (you have to declare an identifer and its data type before you're allowed to use it), deprecation of the 'goto' statement in favor of better constructs, are all features that make people write better programs that are less likely to have serious errors. The worst attacker problem in C / C++ applications, the buffer overflow problem, where someone contaminates a program by injecting new code beyond the range of an array, and thus causes an application to run arbitrary code of their own choice, is impossible in Pascal because if you access an array outside the legitimate range size, the value checking system throws an exception.
People seem to have obsessed over Java and the safety features of the language and how wonderful it is. Java is just C with a number of the unsafe features either deprecated or removed. Java is an attempt to give C some of the safety features of Pascal while still leaving off many of its other safety features.
Pascal was able to correctly implement pointers (which you need if you are going to manipulate data structures where you don't know how many i
I believe her comments are hypocritical, and I don't believe she's sincere. Or, to put it colloquially, "I'll forgive her when Vietnam Veterans forgive Hanoi Jane, or when the Jews forgive Hitler."
All you have to do is look at the "fit and finish" and usability of Windows applications - that do work, and do the job - versus many of the applications on Linux and see that Windows applications far and away are much easier to install, to configure, and to use for ordinary people.
His article refers to ordinary people using ordinary applications, not to computer professionals using specialized tools like compilers. You are comparing apples and oranges and then asking why the user is not talking about it being fruit salad.Arlington, Virginia, USA
Well, there isn't really any way to work around this, as someone could simply have paid $50 each or whatever the cheapest state in the U.S. charges for corporations, and register 1000 corporations, then have each apply separately. After they get whatever domains they want, they sell them - for $1 - to the destined 'master corporation' and discontinue operators by doing a wind-up and dissolve . As legal as church on Sunday and as legally invulnerable. Whether you like it or not, a corporation is a separate entity from its directors or stockholders, and two separate corporations created by the same incorporator are, as a matter of law, three separate entities and entitled to recognition as separate entities. So even if some of the registrars are fake, they could still do the whole thing by registering lots of corporations separately. Raises the price by $50 each registrar but when we are looking at potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of euros per domain name they get, it's chump change.
Are you upset because you don't like what they are doing or are you upset because you didn't think to do it? You're the owner of a corporation; realize the purpose of a corporation is to provide limited liability for its owner(s) and thus allowing them, in effect, to legally cheat their creditors by denying them access to the owner's personal assets if the business fails. (Your company isn't public so I presume you're not needing to sell stock, which is a different matter). If this wasn't the purpose of a separate entity, one wouldn't need to incorporate, one could simply operate it as a sole proprietor under a fictitious name. But operating in corporate form allows one limited liability and separate existence from the corporate form. And if someone wants to set up a bunch of alleged 'sham' registrars, there really isn't any way to do it unless you only allow registrars to be individuals.
Short of that, there is always some way someone could - as you call it - 'game the system'.
If names would have been more valuable that multiple registrants would want the same names, then the answer is for the EU registry to auction them itself, thus draining the profit away from middlemen resellers.
Maybe it might seem unfair, but your comment sounds more like sour grapes. As long as someone registering in a system does not have to be a human being and can be a legal entity someone can always find a way to make multiple registrations in that system.
Paul Robinson
Ray, as everyone who reads the alt.seduction.fast usenet newsgroup knows, your claims that you will appeal, mean about as much as the "continued and inexcusable failure" you are, claiming you haven't lost yet. This is just another one of your failed attempts to "sue for a living" where you have again lost, as you always do. The only difference being the people on Slashdot do not know you or your history. But it's easy enough to find out; all anyone has to do is go there and read what you've said; your own words will convict you in anyone's mind.
Parker is a nutcase, a man who has serious (admitted) mental problems and doesn't seem to care how he alienates anyone who reads what he has to say, and apparently thrives on causing dissention. He is basically one of the funniest floor shows if you like watching crazy people act in an insane fashion. His detractors that post comments against him are almost as crazy as he is, and add to the hilarity of the situation there.
Here's the situation on this lawsuit. Mr. Parker has written some books on how to seduce women, but his own stellar lack of success in doing so over the past few years plus the ineffectiveness of his ideas means he has essentially had to give away his books for free since no one will pay to read what he has to say. This compares with a number of men who make money through paid seminars in telling other men how to do exactly this. These men have been fairly successful in their conquests and tell other men how to learn to be able to do the same thing. Since Mr. Parker is unable to do this and can't teach anyone how since he doesn't have the slightest hint of a clue, all he can do is whine about it and threaten to sue anyone who disagrees with him.
Well, Google - as it does for millions of other sites - cached the information on his website (where his books were available for downloading) in order to allow others to be able to search and find it. He didn't know that he can mark his site so Google won't do that, and then when he tried to change the status of one of his books from giving it away to charging for it, then discovered people could obtain the book for free from Google by using the cached copy, Gordo decided to sue Google. As with the other six lawsuits he's filed in Federal court (I'm not kidding), he lost again. Again I'm not kidding, Gordon has filed at least six cases in federal court and lost every one of them. A federal judge referred to his ability to handle a lawsuit as "... Plaintiff Gordon Roy Parker's... continued and inexcusable failure..." {Gordon Roy Parker v. "Wintermute" et. al.} 02-CV-7215 (Feb. 25, 2003, Federal District Court, Eastern District, Pennsylvania). The only other item on the world-wide-web referred to as a "continued and inexcusable failure" is the U.N. screwup in Kosovo that got people killed.
It's said that you're not really a member of the newsgroup alt.seduction.fast until Ray threatens to sue you. He's threatened me with a lawsuit over my comments at least four times in something over two years I've been reading postings there. When I first got there I defended him because I thought he was being unfairly targeted by just about everyone else, but over time, from his own words, I learned just how much of a miserable misanthrope he is. He hates himself for what has happened to him, hates everyone else because most of the time he makes wild claims without proof, says things that don't make much sense or are completely wrong.
He's also known for being a bully and the only thing he respects are people who won't back down from his threats. All he's ever done is threaten me with a lawsuit because he knows I'd clean his clock in a New York minute with a countersuit if he did actually sue me.
One of the things he posted - on September 11, 2001 - was that everyone who died in the two towers deserved what they got, primarily because he wasn't hired by some companies that work there. He's referred to some of the people (women in general) who died there as "office whores," mainly because he couldn't get hired (probably because he's just as unpleasant in person as he is on USENET.) While he's entitled to his opinion, to make such a spiteful comment
I can give an example with Quake III Arena. I bought the game because it looked interesting. On the lowest possible setting the game is so hard I'm being killed before I even start. The action is so fast, violent and crippling that it's all but impossible to have any serious chance to play the game. These games need to get better design in order to make the game less challenging for people who do not want to have to spend 6,000 hours of time just to possibly get by at the lowest setting.
And let's try having some good games that do not involve killing someone or something for a change.
And if all the entertainment industry can develop is sequels, all they're going to get is a second-rate response from the public. A constant diet of fattening left overs is going to produce "hardening of the arteries" in the checkbooks of customers.
As most malware attacks are for profit these days, the Windows environment, with its huge level of insecurity provides a bigger payback for the investment of time and effort involved.
If Apple and Linux boxes were more popular - or become more popular - for desktop application systems which are connected to the Internet, they would get targeted more. But, there is a saving point here. If these systems can be properly configured and locked down so malware can't get started they will remain relatively immune. Once it gets around that Apple or Linux systems have good "as installed" security against malware, its authors will look elsewhere as criminals are just as lazy - if not more so - as everyone else, and are not going to work hard for small returns. Problem is, the settings for this will have to be done by the release maintainers as most people will probably use them 'out of the box' in whatever way the system is set up to be configured. If the Linux and Apple OS release maintainers do not design their systems to install in a secure method in the first place, (Linspire being the prime example, having the user default to root), these systems can and will become just as buggy and virus-ridden as Windows boxen have become.
Paul Robinson
paul@paul-robinson.org / paul@paulrobinson.org
There is no way a game machine can sell for $900. You can buy a new, full PC for 1/2 of that price. You can buy new Playstation 2 or XBox for $199, used for $79. Basically I think public perception expects a $200 machine, maybe $300 but not beyond that as it's becoming close to the price of a full desktop computer which can be used for other things too.
Fuck me! I was goddam shocked by this study. These sons-a-bitches are cursing in on-line games? Bastards. We need to do something about these cocksuckers. We can't have these assholes ruining on-line experiences with cursing and profanity. This shit has got to stop.
That's WMDs, not UMDs.
Back around 2000 or so I was voting in Stafford County, Virginia where I lived, and the voting machines there used the equivalent of Scantrons; the voting booth had a device where it indicated which item to mark on the page, then you inserted the paper ballot into the machine that scanned it, then dropped the paper inside of it. This meant that it had a paper ballot stored as a check in case there was a question. So this can be done, but because it's easier to (undetectably) steal elections with electronic voting machines thats why they use them.
The first computer I owned was a V-20 powered IBM Clone, circa 1986. It was so close in terms of compatibility I had it and used it on a daily basis for two years before I discovered it wasn't an 8086. (The V-20 processor was made by NEC, and has a built-in 8080 processor so it can run CP/M programs natively.)
We ran a version of Basic on the PDP that gave each user terminal a whopping 4KB of memory. I am amazed to think of some of the things we did there on a machine that had two floppy disks (8" sized) carrying, at most, about 240KB each. Disk 0 was generally unavailable because it had to hold the operating system, Basic and support programs, so stuff was stored on the second floppy. Single sided, and they cost about $8 apiece.
I will always think fondly about the PDP-11 and the amazing things I and other people at the college did with it.
His points about 'taking ownership' of the problem appear to be spot-on right, when people take ownership of a problem it provides a better chance to solve the problem. This comes straight out of the book In Search of Excellence as a method of building a better company. Difficulties and loss of effort happen when the general environment is one of "it's not my problem." When one takes ownership of problems in order to fix them no matter where the actual problem is you can produce excellent results. But again, if you're not looking in the right place to find the solution, chances are you won't find it.