++ on this comment. My experience is similar. Postgres and PostGIS are very reliable, very fast and scale well.. If you set them up right. There isn't as extensive of a commercial support network for them as Oracle (duh) but there are commercial options and the online free communities are amazingly open, supportive and helpful. The GiST indexes which enable (I believe) a lot of spatial operations to occur in a timely manner are really impressive and learning how they work itself is a nice little CS continuing education course.
I have to plain old flat out disagree with you. I have to use Vista at work and it sucks. It just sucks to use - even now interface features don't work right - either inconsistent, confusing or slow. I have Win7 on a home laptop and it works fine - the issues I have on Vista are gone in Win7 - it works like I expect a decent OS to work. So I'm not a Windows hater (still have XP on a number of less used machines -- plus Ubuntu on another laptop). But Vista really is a very poor OS in my experience.
This site doesn't appear to be any more legal than the other ones you expressed concern about. Look on their license page.. They don't have the legal standing to offer you these games for non-commercial use, they're just operating under a legal theory that pirating abandoned games for non-commercial use is legal (or at least it's not going to get you or they into trouble). Very similar to the underdogs website theory (http://www.hotud.org/).
The science is sound but the engineering isn't. The kind of problems that just the materials engineers have to cope with are stupendous for tokamak style high temp large scale reactors. The neutron bombardment of the structure holding the magnets makes it hard to figure out what material could stand up to the task. There are no known materials, last I checked in on this, that can do the job. So even if they get an energy sustaining reaction, they still have a bunch of engineering issues to solve which are very hard, if they want to build a commercial reactor that doesn't dissolve into dust after 5 years of operation. Much harder than the problems we solved for fission reactors..
I totally agree -- there aren't good choices. Chrome does a few things "wrong" and is missing some tools I get from FF, so I stick with FF. FF today strikes me as the "MS Word" of browsers. It's better than the alternatives, so suck it up on the problems.. For now. Once/if Chrome gets the polish on it, there may be a mass migration..
Warning: anecodotal data coming. But that's just not true - lots of regular tech users resent this aspect of the ecosystem. They put up with it b/c the services are otherwise so good, but I have interacted with many users who have reached out for help in dealing with the closed aspects of the ecosystem - such as why ripped mp3's that they own are so hard to get back out of itunes. Granted not many people care about the closed nature of the appstore on ios..
You've just effectively summed up and answered about a decade (or more?!) of slashdot comment-chatter. Not that I expect this to change anything, but +1 from me.:)
Can't you just set the zoom to smaller and see things beyond the edge of the canvas? I thought I've done this before with that app but I don't have it where I am..
Of course that solution is kooky in its way but also amazing in a way b/c each step actually makes sense and works with the other steps only b/c of the genius of the layered internet.
I tried and tried to make gimp work but it's just (interface-wise) a total POS. Maybe this new version will fix things. I happen to be on Windows and if you're in the same boat, I'd suggest anyone interested take a look at this program: http://www.getpaint.net/
Free (as in beer) also, and made it so much easier for me to take care of basic graphics activities than gimp. FWIW.
Double plus on your last paragraph -- browser headers are really really unique at this point: http://panopticlick.eff.org/
Using cookies is just simpler for advertisers, but banning those on the client without enforcing some "do not track" at the supplier end won't solve the problem. They'll just move to browser headers..
Could Android be licensed GPLv3? I thought it was primarily Linux based which is GPLv2, not just from choice, but necessity, in that all the contributors have only agreed to license their contributions as GPLv2, so a forward licensing can only be done with permission from all of them, which is impractical.
So isn't Android stuck at GPLv2 for the linux core at least? Presumably they could dual license the bootloader locking custom code as GPLv2 and anything else? If I were Google I'd be using GPLv2 everywhere just to reduce the risk of getting in trouble for releasing something they wrote in/near Linux kernel that should be viral licensed as GPLv2 but isn't.
Put another way, what's in it for Google to use v2?
In this context, a public company could do pretty much whatever it wants too. It's not like the CEO would have to run something like this past the board, unless their board is a bunch of micromanagers. As long as his legal signs off, this could happen, public or private, at least with most companies I've had experience with.
But Bethesda mgmt might see a publicity opportunity that outweighs benefits of the law suit and brand protection (and still earn some brand protection from being active in their protection of the TM)..
If the game Scrolls is reasonably similar to Elder Scrolls, he has a big problem. If the games are unrelated in style, it's a harder road for Bethesda. Brand confusion is one of the main damages that win you a trademark suit I believe (IANAL). So if this were "Scrolls toilet paper" and had no chance of confusion a customer that is was related to Elder Scrolls, it would probably be dismissed summarily..
Slashdot Mirror
++ on this comment. My experience is similar. Postgres and PostGIS are very reliable, very fast and scale well.. If you set them up right. There isn't as extensive of a commercial support network for them as Oracle (duh) but there are commercial options and the online free communities are amazingly open, supportive and helpful. The GiST indexes which enable (I believe) a lot of spatial operations to occur in a timely manner are really impressive and learning how they work itself is a nice little CS continuing education course.
What's the replacement?
I have to plain old flat out disagree with you. I have to use Vista at work and it sucks. It just sucks to use - even now interface features don't work right - either inconsistent, confusing or slow. I have Win7 on a home laptop and it works fine - the issues I have on Vista are gone in Win7 - it works like I expect a decent OS to work. So I'm not a Windows hater (still have XP on a number of less used machines -- plus Ubuntu on another laptop). But Vista really is a very poor OS in my experience.
This site doesn't appear to be any more legal than the other ones you expressed concern about. Look on their license page.. They don't have the legal standing to offer you these games for non-commercial use, they're just operating under a legal theory that pirating abandoned games for non-commercial use is legal (or at least it's not going to get you or they into trouble). Very similar to the underdogs website theory (http://www.hotud.org/).
That's the best comment I've seen on slashdot in years. Well done!
I think you've not been modded funny b/c for some reason folks are not seeing the witticism..
The science is sound but the engineering isn't. The kind of problems that just the materials engineers have to cope with are stupendous for tokamak style high temp large scale reactors. The neutron bombardment of the structure holding the magnets makes it hard to figure out what material could stand up to the task. There are no known materials, last I checked in on this, that can do the job. So even if they get an energy sustaining reaction, they still have a bunch of engineering issues to solve which are very hard, if they want to build a commercial reactor that doesn't dissolve into dust after 5 years of operation. Much harder than the problems we solved for fission reactors..
I'm pretty sure it was pure Dave Brubek.
"you will never ever meet any girls you want to sleep with in engineering school. ever."
FTFY
Yeah - double plus. ME/EE seems way more compelling as a job/career generator than ME/CS..
I totally agree -- there aren't good choices. Chrome does a few things "wrong" and is missing some tools I get from FF, so I stick with FF. FF today strikes me as the "MS Word" of browsers. It's better than the alternatives, so suck it up on the problems.. For now. Once/if Chrome gets the polish on it, there may be a mass migration..
:) I had to ask. On /. it's not as easy as I would like to tell..
This is a joke right?
Warning: anecodotal data coming. But that's just not true - lots of regular tech users resent this aspect of the ecosystem. They put up with it b/c the services are otherwise so good, but I have interacted with many users who have reached out for help in dealing with the closed aspects of the ecosystem - such as why ripped mp3's that they own are so hard to get back out of itunes. Granted not many people care about the closed nature of the appstore on ios..
You've just effectively summed up and answered about a decade (or more?!) of slashdot comment-chatter. Not that I expect this to change anything, but +1 from me. :)
Well said.
Can't you just set the zoom to smaller and see things beyond the edge of the canvas? I thought I've done this before with that app but I don't have it where I am..
Yeah - that protocol layer has a name to: PEBKAC
Of course that solution is kooky in its way but also amazing in a way b/c each step actually makes sense and works with the other steps only b/c of the genius of the layered internet.
I tried and tried to make gimp work but it's just (interface-wise) a total POS. Maybe this new version will fix things. I happen to be on Windows and if you're in the same boat, I'd suggest anyone interested take a look at this program: http://www.getpaint.net/
Free (as in beer) also, and made it so much easier for me to take care of basic graphics activities than gimp. FWIW.
Double plus on your last paragraph -- browser headers are really really unique at this point: http://panopticlick.eff.org/
Using cookies is just simpler for advertisers, but banning those on the client without enforcing some "do not track" at the supplier end won't solve the problem. They'll just move to browser headers..
Private browsing isn't so private.. http://panopticlick.eff.org/
You can be pretty thoroughly tracked as an individual without cookies at all..
Could Android be licensed GPLv3? I thought it was primarily Linux based which is GPLv2, not just from choice, but necessity, in that all the contributors have only agreed to license their contributions as GPLv2, so a forward licensing can only be done with permission from all of them, which is impractical.
So isn't Android stuck at GPLv2 for the linux core at least? Presumably they could dual license the bootloader locking custom code as GPLv2 and anything else? If I were Google I'd be using GPLv2 everywhere just to reduce the risk of getting in trouble for releasing something they wrote in/near Linux kernel that should be viral licensed as GPLv2 but isn't.
Put another way, what's in it for Google to use v2?
In this context, a public company could do pretty much whatever it wants too. It's not like the CEO would have to run something like this past the board, unless their board is a bunch of micromanagers. As long as his legal signs off, this could happen, public or private, at least with most companies I've had experience with.
But Bethesda mgmt might see a publicity opportunity that outweighs benefits of the law suit and brand protection (and still earn some brand protection from being active in their protection of the TM)..
If the game Scrolls is reasonably similar to Elder Scrolls, he has a big problem. If the games are unrelated in style, it's a harder road for Bethesda. Brand confusion is one of the main damages that win you a trademark suit I believe (IANAL). So if this were "Scrolls toilet paper" and had no chance of confusion a customer that is was related to Elder Scrolls, it would probably be dismissed summarily..