I'd love to see Skype come out with a supported, up to date version of their client for Linux first. Oh, and also, not to drop my calls as often. Et cetera.
Mustard/ gravy is a nice to have, but not very useful when the steak and potatoes aren't already on the plate.
When laying claim to a statment that "X is the most important of Y", one would expect that to be backed up my statisitics proving that point.
The only half-serious attempt that the author has made at this is in the 3rd paragraph. And even then, he is merely quoting select figures from distrowatch, without further derivation or detail, let alone an attempt to paint a balanced picture. The rest of the article is basically a listing of the various distros based off debian.
That is precisely what the title of this article should have been: "List of distros based on debian"
Instead, the author has chosen to go for the dramatic, attention grabbing headline - and has in some respects succeeded, in that as he has gotten his article slashdotted.
Nothing interesting here, don't waste your time RTFA, move on.
Here in Oz we have a choice between the current party who have a particular bent towards nanny stating but otherwise aren't too bad, the Liberal party who are no longer liberal and seem to support the idea of moving back to the 1950's
Mod parent up - (s)he's hit the nail on the head..
With elections looming around the corner, I feel more more like my vote is going to be cast as a choice made between the lesser of two evils, rather than someone I would actually want in power.
The spokeswoman said reports that a promise to introduce the filter before the next election had been shelved were incorrect.
What they are doing:
A spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said yesterday the legislation would not be introduced next month's or the June sittings of parliament.
With parliament not sitting again until the last week of August, the laws are unlikely to be passed before the election.
Politicians say one thing and then go ahead and do another. When confronted, they'll double-speak, reframe the issue, or change the topic. Happens all the time - nothing new to politics.
But in this particular case, the gov't's packpedalling on their promises results in a good thing, so I'm not complaining.
Yup - that is exactly what I have got at work as well. I think the half-height walls are great cos they give you your own private area where you can zone out just code - but you still have the options of standing up to have a chat with anyone else on the team.
The only problem I have with it are the L-shaped desks. These are problematic when two or more developers are looking at the same screen - which I find happens quite often, especially when making architectural decisions about the software, and when one dev is showing another dev how to do ${programmingTask}. What tends to happen is we push the chair out of the corner of the L, and both of us sit on the table, which is not ideal.
I think the best desk configuration would be a cross shape, with half height walls, and straight (not L-shaped) desks.
Oh, and throw in one pair of noise-cancelling headphones for each dev. Those are worth their weight in gold in increasing productivity.
You are confusing programming language and OS - If I were to code an app in Java or Python or C or C++, it can compile and run/interpret in Linux, Windows and Mac.
Would you be happy if another OS, let's say Linux, decided that they will only let apps written in C run in the OS? (I know this will never happen, it's a hypothetical)
Or another scenario: If you were a developer who currently develops apps for Windows, and one day Microsoft announced that from Windows 8 onwards, only apps written using Visual Studio are allowed to run on the OS, would you be happy?
In each of the above hypothetical scenarios, sure some of the developers who are unaffected by the change will be content, as they have been using the officially "blessed" programming language for the OS all along.
OTOH, there will be a boatload of developers who are not, and they will be fuming because they are faced with an ultimatum: drop support for this OS entirely or invest considerable time and energy to rewrite your applications in a different language?
the bellyachers that want to develop for the platform... by not developing for the platform. They need their logic adjusted.
These developers were indeed developing for iPhone OS 3.x. They then find out that their apps are illegal in iPhone OS 4.x. That is not very friendly to them is it? It really is a slap in the face for these developers.
Disclaimer: Do not own or develop for the iPhone – my stand on the matter is based purely on moral grounds, as well as the freedoms and rights I believe I should be entitled to when developing software.
2. That his central point is moot:
"They are not telling people to use Xcode, they are telling people they can only publish application 'originally written' in Objective C. This is quite different."
Who knows, in the few days that the Great Firewall of China crossed the Pacific, the kind of damage that could have been done, or perhaps even already been done?
This should never have been allowed to happen in the first place, and when it had, it shouldn't have been allowed to persist for a few days before being made public and taking action.
People who are good at math tend to be good at logical thinking.
Similarly, people who are good at logical thinking tend to be good at math.
Relevance? To be a good programmer you need to be really really good at logical thinking - without it, you'd take way too long to "crack" a problem or devise a new algorithm or plan an inheritance hierarchy, etc. A strong background in math is therefore advantageous, but is not an absolute necessity.
It boils down to what exactly you are coding. If you are writing a specialised statistical tool or engineering software or..... no doubt math skills are essential. Otherwise, as several others have already pointed out, there's probably already a library that does the basic things for you.
Case in point: Let's say average Joe programmer is working on a GUI that displays statistics in the form of fancy looking 3D charts. Someone with really good mathematical knowledge of graphing techniques (not to mention the math involved with the 3D bits) created a library that has all the graphing functionality in it. Joe programmer comes along, with a relatively rudimentary knowledge of math, plugs the library into his GUI, and has to figure out how to use its API - overall, the task is quite easily accomplished.
However, let's say that Joe programmer was just a GUI that merely displays the statistics, but one which actually understands it and even does some highly specific detailed analysis of said statistics - then the situation would be completely different - Joe programmer would need to acquire the necessary math skills, before even being able to competently code the application.
There is quite likely a plethora of different dates in our calendar year that map to the fist digits of pi in decimal form, or the digits in its improper fraction approximations. So yes, there will likely never be any agreement on what is the "real" pi day.
Not to mention/. isn't where one should seek consensus anyway!
IANAL, but I think parent is right in saying that these guys have actually not done anything illegal
The issue here is more of morality: while they didn't actually scam anyone per se, as a direct result of their actions, thousands of legitimate concert-goers had to pay more for their tickets than they should have needed to. In other words, they were sneaky and manipulated all these people into paying them more $.
...
OTOH, it is possible that the ticket vendors had some sort of legal agreement that you had to "Agree" to when purchasing the tickets that tickets were for personal usage only, or cannot be resold, etc. In such a case, what these guys did would actually have violated some rules on A) a large scale, and B) with malicious intent, and possibly C) fraud.
Mod parent up. While I don't live there, I have been to the slums of both Bombay and Kolkata. The sights (and the smells) are indeed gripping:
the drunkard husband, the garbage picker kids, the housemaid wife, the precocious teenager dreaming of a gangster life. Vivid, poignant & stark at the same time.
That hit the nail on the head. Add to that rackets who mutilate or amputate scores of children just to increase their begging ability, and other such nauseating scenes. Makes you think - even if they really do have less of an impact on the environment - so what? That is not the least of their concerns, and it certainly should be the least of your concerns as a relatively well off and comfortable 3rd party observer.
Except that the judge's ruling dismissed the case on the grounds that BoingBoing did indeed make accurate claims - evidence from TFA:
After it failed to do so, a California judge dismissed MagicJack's suit late last year. She noted that in its complaint, MagicJack essentially admitted the very act it claims to be defamed by.
As to the statements based on the EULA, such statements, read in context, do not imply that the plaintiff is eavesdropping on its customers calls. Instead, the statements clearly constitute the opinion of the author that analyzing phone numbers for purposes of targeted advertising amounts to "spy[ing]," "snoop[ing]," and "systematic privacy invasion."
What really strikes me here is that all this "Refused Classification" stuff has been in the media circus for a really long time now, and there's been an instant backlash from those who get it - IT guys, gen Y, etc. But Aussie politicians just don't seem to get it at all - their attitude toward the whole thing, their reactions and replies to all the backlash so far can all be explained with the following assumption:
They think the internet is some sort of extension of traditional media like newspapers and radio. And they are trying to treat it it as such - attempted censorship, case in point.
What they have yet to realise that these traditional media are broadcast media - i.e. Single source, many recipients, very minimal feedback loop.
The internet is a direct contradiction of this media type - the feedback loop is the main thing (Slashdot, or any any other forum, case in point, especially this comment). Many sources, many recipients. Lack of centralised control.
And all of this applies to the world of HTTP... don't get me started of p2p networks and VPNs...
IMHO, if they really understood the internet properly, they would see the pointlessness in censoring it.
It just struck me that the main bone BoingBoing had to pick with MagicJack's EULA is that its users' calls are monitored, and are played targeted ads (obtained from said monitoring). How is this really much different from Google's adsense inside of gmail, where ads containing keywords found in your email's body are displayed next to your emails?
Not that I am supporting MagicJack or Google in anyway, but what really was the difference? Did it boil down to Google's better wording or selling of its adsense, or are we just more sensitive when it is done to audio/ voice as opposed to when it is done in text/ email?
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/22/dailly-news-gtas-original-design-document/
(it is also linked in the comments of the currently linked article)
I'd love to see Skype come out with a supported, up to date version of their client for Linux first. Oh, and also, not to drop my calls as often. Et cetera.
Mustard/ gravy is a nice to have, but not very useful when the steak and potatoes aren't already on the plate.
When laying claim to a statment that "X is the most important of Y", one would expect that to be backed up my statisitics proving that point.
The only half-serious attempt that the author has made at this is in the 3rd paragraph. And even then, he is merely quoting select figures from distrowatch, without further derivation or detail, let alone an attempt to paint a balanced picture. The rest of the article is basically a listing of the various distros based off debian.
That is precisely what the title of this article should have been: "List of distros based on debian"
Instead, the author has chosen to go for the dramatic, attention grabbing headline - and has in some respects succeeded, in that as he has gotten his article slashdotted.
Nothing interesting here, don't waste your time RTFA, move on.
Here in Oz we have a choice between the current party who have a particular bent towards nanny stating but otherwise aren't too bad, the Liberal party who are no longer liberal and seem to support the idea of moving back to the 1950's
Mod parent up - (s)he's hit the nail on the head..
With elections looming around the corner, I feel more more like my vote is going to be cast as a choice made between the lesser of two evils, rather than someone I would actually want in power.
Dismal choice to have to make, I tell ya.
The spokeswoman said reports that a promise to introduce the filter before the next election had been shelved were incorrect.
What they are doing:
A spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said yesterday the legislation would not be introduced next month's or the June sittings of parliament.
With parliament not sitting again until the last week of August, the laws are unlikely to be passed before the election.
Politicians say one thing and then go ahead and do another. When confronted, they'll double-speak, reframe the issue, or change the topic. Happens all the time - nothing new to politics.
But in this particular case, the gov't's packpedalling on their promises results in a good thing, so I'm not complaining.
When you say "The rest of us", you should say just yourself.
"The web is under attack from hackers. RescueTheWeb.org is working to reduce their chances of success."
I take issue with their ignorance toward the difference between a hacker and a cracker. (links to Eric Raymond's "The Jargon File")
While its assertions are believable, I'd now like to see the methods and data
Yup - that is exactly what I have got at work as well. I think the half-height walls are great cos they give you your own private area where you can zone out just code - but you still have the options of standing up to have a chat with anyone else on the team.
The only problem I have with it are the L-shaped desks. These are problematic when two or more developers are looking at the same screen - which I find happens quite often, especially when making architectural decisions about the software, and when one dev is showing another dev how to do ${programmingTask}. What tends to happen is we push the chair out of the corner of the L, and both of us sit on the table, which is not ideal.
I think the best desk configuration would be a cross shape, with half height walls, and straight (not L-shaped) desks.
Oh, and throw in one pair of noise-cancelling headphones for each dev. Those are worth their weight in gold in increasing productivity.
Would you be happy if another OS, let's say Linux, decided that they will only let apps written in C run in the OS? (I know this will never happen, it's a hypothetical)
Or another scenario: If you were a developer who currently develops apps for Windows, and one day Microsoft announced that from Windows 8 onwards, only apps written using Visual Studio are allowed to run on the OS, would you be happy?
In each of the above hypothetical scenarios, sure some of the developers who are unaffected by the change will be content, as they have been using the officially "blessed" programming language for the OS all along.
OTOH, there will be a boatload of developers who are not, and they will be fuming because they are faced with an ultimatum: drop support for this OS entirely or invest considerable time and energy to rewrite your applications in a different language?
the bellyachers that want to develop for the platform... by not developing for the platform. They need their logic adjusted.
These developers were indeed developing for iPhone OS 3.x. They then find out that their apps are illegal in iPhone OS 4.x. That is not very friendly to them is it? It really is a slap in the face for these developers.
Disclaimer: Do not own or develop for the iPhone – my stand on the matter is based purely on moral grounds, as well as the freedoms and rights I believe I should be entitled to when developing software.
This writer is just a total and utter wanker
Mod parent +1 insightful (not sarcastic) - All you have to do is read the comments on his post so far and they tell you that -
1. That he is rehashing someone else's ideas from a day earlier:
http://sachin.posterous.com/ie6-caused-the-web-to-mature-slower-than-it-w
2. That his central point is moot:
"They are not telling people to use Xcode, they are telling people they can only publish application 'originally written' in Objective C. This is quite different."
Who knows, in the few days that the Great Firewall of China crossed the Pacific, the kind of damage that could have been done, or perhaps even already been done?
This should never have been allowed to happen in the first place, and when it had, it shouldn't have been allowed to persist for a few days before being made public and taking action.
because if this eventual-epic-fail causes Rupert Murdoch to lose just some of his monopoly power over the media, the world will be better off for it.
People who are good at math tend to be good at logical thinking.
Similarly, people who are good at logical thinking tend to be good at math.
Relevance? To be a good programmer you need to be really really good at logical thinking - without it, you'd take way too long to "crack" a problem or devise a new algorithm or plan an inheritance hierarchy, etc. A strong background in math is therefore advantageous, but is not an absolute necessity.
It boils down to what exactly you are coding. If you are writing a specialised statistical tool or engineering software or..... no doubt math skills are essential. Otherwise, as several others have already pointed out, there's probably already a library that does the basic things for you.
Case in point: Let's say average Joe programmer is working on a GUI that displays statistics in the form of fancy looking 3D charts. Someone with really good mathematical knowledge of graphing techniques (not to mention the math involved with the 3D bits) created a library that has all the graphing functionality in it. Joe programmer comes along, with a relatively rudimentary knowledge of math, plugs the library into his GUI, and has to figure out how to use its API - overall, the task is quite easily accomplished.
However, let's say that Joe programmer was just a GUI that merely displays the statistics, but one which actually understands it and even does some highly specific detailed analysis of said statistics - then the situation would be completely different - Joe programmer would need to acquire the necessary math skills, before even being able to competently code the application.
So 500 billion = 1/2 trillion... I am onto something!
I've obviously failed at being funny!
shortchanging Medicare by about 500 billion, increasing our national debt another 1/2 trillion per year, and so on.
Isn't 1 trillion = 100 billion?
So 500 billion = 1/2 trillion... I am onto something!
Is Microsoft About To Declare Patent War On Linux?
Title is sensationalist, has nothing to with the first article. And well, parent has rightly pointed out the FUD-ness of the 2nd article.
There is quite likely a plethora of different dates in our calendar year that map to the fist digits of pi in decimal form, or the digits in its improper fraction approximations. So yes, there will likely never be any agreement on what is the "real" pi day.
Not to mention /. isn't where one should seek consensus anyway!
It is a sad day when one decides to value the dollar worth of a human life.
Don't let 4chan get a hold of this software - lest they set upon the world a series of abominations that is a Rick Astley cover of all known songs!
Q:
What's illegal about what they have done??
A: Nothing
IANAL, but I think parent is right in saying that these guys have actually not done anything illegal
The issue here is more of morality: while they didn't actually scam anyone per se, as a direct result of their actions, thousands of legitimate concert-goers had to pay more for their tickets than they should have needed to. In other words, they were sneaky and manipulated all these people into paying them more $.
...
OTOH, it is possible that the ticket vendors had some sort of legal agreement that you had to "Agree" to when purchasing the tickets that tickets were for personal usage only, or cannot be resold, etc. In such a case, what these guys did would actually have violated some rules on A) a large scale, and B) with malicious intent, and possibly C) fraud.
Mod parent up. While I don't live there, I have been to the slums of both Bombay and Kolkata. The sights (and the smells) are indeed gripping:
the drunkard husband, the garbage picker kids, the housemaid wife, the precocious teenager dreaming of a gangster life. Vivid, poignant & stark at the same time.
That hit the nail on the head. Add to that rackets who mutilate or amputate scores of children just to increase their begging ability, and other such nauseating scenes. Makes you think - even if they really do have less of an impact on the environment - so what? That is not the least of their concerns, and it certainly should be the least of your concerns as a relatively well off and comfortable 3rd party observer.
Except that the judge's ruling dismissed the case on the grounds that BoingBoing did indeed make accurate claims - evidence from TFA:
After it failed to do so, a California judge dismissed MagicJack's suit late last year. She noted that in its complaint, MagicJack essentially admitted the very act it claims to be defamed by.
As to the statements based on the EULA, such statements, read in context, do not imply that the plaintiff is eavesdropping on its customers calls. Instead, the statements clearly constitute the opinion of the author that analyzing phone numbers for purposes of targeted advertising amounts to "spy[ing]," "snoop[ing]," and "systematic privacy invasion."
What really strikes me here is that all this "Refused Classification" stuff has been in the media circus for a really long time now, and there's been an instant backlash from those who get it - IT guys, gen Y, etc. But Aussie politicians just don't seem to get it at all - their attitude toward the whole thing, their reactions and replies to all the backlash so far can all be explained with the following assumption:
They think the internet is some sort of extension of traditional media like newspapers and radio. And they are trying to treat it it as such - attempted censorship, case in point.
What they have yet to realise that these traditional media are broadcast media - i.e. Single source, many recipients, very minimal feedback loop.
The internet is a direct contradiction of this media type - the feedback loop is the main thing (Slashdot, or any any other forum, case in point, especially this comment). Many sources, many recipients. Lack of centralised control.
And all of this applies to the world of HTTP ... don't get me started of p2p networks and VPNs...
IMHO, if they really understood the internet properly, they would see the pointlessness in censoring it.
It just struck me that the main bone BoingBoing had to pick with MagicJack's EULA is that its users' calls are monitored, and are played targeted ads (obtained from said monitoring). How is this really much different from Google's adsense inside of gmail, where ads containing keywords found in your email's body are displayed next to your emails?
Not that I am supporting MagicJack or Google in anyway, but what really was the difference? Did it boil down to Google's better wording or selling of its adsense, or are we just more sensitive when it is done to audio/ voice as opposed to when it is done in text/ email?