although they have a monopoly, that has come through selling good software at low prices and therefore high volume.
This is getting a bit off-topic, but: Do you really mean good? I think a more accurate description would be just barely good enough for consumers who didn't know any better. The damage to consumers comes from this "just barely good enough" attitude combined with their monopoly position.
By the way, there is nothing illegal about being a monopoly (referring to the "although" in your comment). What is illegal is using that monopoly position to compete unfairly in new markets. The big squishy thing in this whole set of debates about Microsoft is defining the boundaries of these various markets. (Microsoft says everything is one big market; their competitors say that OSs and applications are different markets.)
XML is great if you have to specify something of moderate complexity
and a GUI is not necessary. Instead of just hacking a parser of some
little language invented for some specific purpose, or building the
stupid GUI, you can just lay out your data in XML, and then use the
SAX parser to deliver the data to your application.
If you're using Java, then a properties file is a good alternative,
but if your data gets too complex, (e.g. repeating fields), XML will
be much simpler.
I bought this new CD burner. But now I realize that the CDs I've copied are inadequate. They
"ache from the sense that they may not be 'complete,' that they're inexorably removed from their so-called peers". This sucks.
There's a big difference between the song (which the RIAA might want to remove from Napster) and the name on a file that may or may not contain that song. Suppose the RIAA says that "Seek & Destroy" by Metallica is copyrighted and has to be blocked by Napster.
If I have "Seek_and_Destroy.mp3" does that get blocked?
What about "Metallica_Seek_and_Destroy.mp3"?
What about "Metalica_Seek_and_Destroy.mp3"?
What about "Metallica_Seek_n_Destroy.mp3"?
What if I rot-13 the file name?
What about "yortseD_dna_keeS_acillateM.mp3"?
What if I one-way-hash the file name with a well-known algorithm?
"Processing large datasets" brings to mind a set of well-known techniques. From the NYT article, it looks like he had to invent quite a lot of new stuff.
The fact that he is 41 is inspirational to aging geek hackers like myself.
Yes, I know this is off-topic, and please don't take this as a flame, but I'm really interested in the answer to this question: Why are they teaching UML? The absolute best software engineers I've known disdain UML. On projects where I've seen UML applied, it's been, at best, a minor distraction, and at worst, a project destroyer.
What do you have to do to apply UML successfully, and what does it buy you that you couldn't get from simply thinking carefully about things up front?
1) Too many drugs: I'm serious -- did they control for this variable?
2) Look at this quote: "One high-flying 28-year-old salesman treated by Dr Sawaguchi was forced to give up his job when he found himself forgetting where he was going, who he was supposed to be seeing or, when he finally got there, what he was selling." Maybe he's just trying to do too much and is burning out, PDA or no.
I've been using Xerces and have had no problems with it. Haven't tried the others.
SAX is really simple to use. You write event handlers, where an event is something like "start of document", "end of foobar tag", etc.
If you can write your application using the SAX event model, then you'd find DOM too complex. DOM is good when you need the entire document as a tree structure, e.g. to do some analysis.
If you use SAX, and you find yourself writing a lot of code to remember what you've seen, then you should probably consider DOM. If you can look at each tag or data item once and then forget about it, SAX is the way to go.
Kamen designed a wheelchair. That term doesn't really do it justice. His device can go on flat surfaces, climb stairs, elevate the rider to normal standing height, and hold its own when someone tries to shove the rider off balance. It's pretty astounding. Kamen and his invention were covered in Wired recently.
I wouldn't be surprised if Ginger is some variant of Kamen's wheelchair, designed to be fast, light and compact.
Clearcase is grounds for quitting. I've never used CVS, but I prefer everything else I've seen to Clearcase.
You can't escape their god-damned tools if you want to. It requires a full time IT staff to administer. You have to build an entire layer of tools on top for it to be usable. The benefits compared to simpler, lighter-weight solutions do not outweigh the disadvantages. I can't think of a piece of software I loath so much, with the possible exception of RealPlayer.
When I was 15, my father said, "how can you listen to this? It's noise! There's no melody, it's just boom boom boom!". He was talking about the Beatles. Today, I am horrified to find myself saying the same thing about all rap/hip-hop/whatever, Britney Spears, N Sync, and just about everything else I hear that's been recorded recently. I don't buy much new music, but lately I've been buying CDs to replace my old LPs (The Who, Genesis, and yes, The Beatles).
At least there's Elvis (C, not P), They Might Be Giants, and Komeda.
Is it just me, or my g-g-g-generation, or does new music really suck? What are you listening to?
By the way, I was stunned to find that Jethro Tull is still putting out new stuff. A recent one is called j-tull.com. I am not kidding.
Does anyone know how the numbers were stolen? Were they obtained purely from the outside, or with inside help? Were the numbers encrypted in the database? So far, I haven't seen an account of how the theft occurred.
... it's going to get really hard to ignore ads on the web soon.
And really easy to stop visiting web sites that use obnoxious techniques for displaying ads. Once visitation metrics start plummeting, the ads causing this change in behavior will disappear.
Why is the web different from radio or TV in this respect? Because audience behavior is so easily quantified.
So ask yourself, which is more important to you, seeing mob bosses, terrorists, and child pornographers get caught before they can hurt anybody, or protecting yourself from having some FBI bureaucrat reading over your shopping list?
I think you're serious, so here's my answer: It is more important to me to protect myself from having FBI agents (not bureaucrats, agents) reading my shopping list, my political manifestos, my notes on how to protect myself from script kiddies (proof positive that I'm a hacker, after all), and my (probably) fictional account of Dubya and Jim Baker exchanging bodily fluids (not intended for publication).
The FBI has proven that it is not above using its power for political purposes.
If the FBI were not free to violate the 4th amendment, we wouldn't have anarchy -- we'd simply have a tolerable FBI. Do you really believe they'd have (your words) no power if they had to respect the 4th amendment?
Slashdot Mirror
And the truly amazing thing is that this binary number is the gzipped DeCSS code.
Sure, but Linux consumers are quite a bit more discriminating than Microsoft consumers.
This is getting a bit off-topic, but: Do you really mean good? I think a more accurate description would be just barely good enough for consumers who didn't know any better. The damage to consumers comes from this "just barely good enough" attitude combined with their monopoly position.
By the way, there is nothing illegal about being a monopoly (referring to the "although" in your comment). What is illegal is using that monopoly position to compete unfairly in new markets. The big squishy thing in this whole set of debates about Microsoft is defining the boundaries of these various markets. (Microsoft says everything is one big market; their competitors say that OSs and applications are different markets.)
If you're using Java, then a properties file is a good alternative, but if your data gets too complex, (e.g. repeating fields), XML will be much simpler.
I bought this new CD burner. But now I realize that the CDs I've copied are inadequate. They "ache from the sense that they may not be 'complete,' that they're inexorably removed from their so-called peers". This sucks.
Instead of just pondering this in such dramatic fashion, just find some twins and ask them. Sheesh!
Movie reviewer? Over-the-top "the sky is falling" rhetoric? Do we know that this guy isn't just JonKatz in disguise?
JonKatz wrote it?
What do you have to do to apply UML successfully, and what does it buy you that you couldn't get from simply thinking carefully about things up front?
2) Look at this quote: "One high-flying 28-year-old salesman treated by Dr Sawaguchi was forced to give up his job when he found himself forgetting where he was going, who he was supposed to be seeing or, when he finally got there, what he was selling." Maybe he's just trying to do too much and is burning out, PDA or no.
SAX is really simple to use. You write event handlers, where an event is something like "start of document", "end of foobar tag", etc.
If you can write your application using the SAX event model, then you'd find DOM too complex. DOM is good when you need the entire document as a tree structure, e.g. to do some analysis.
If you use SAX, and you find yourself writing a lot of code to remember what you've seen, then you should probably consider DOM. If you can look at each tag or data item once and then forget about it, SAX is the way to go.
You don't mention lightweight. On that count, only JavaScript qualifies.
... JonKatz wrote it?
Bail after giving your buddies at the company plenty of warning. If you do things right, you might even be able to bring them with you.
I wouldn't be surprised if Ginger is some variant of Kamen's wheelchair, designed to be fast, light and compact.
You can't escape their god-damned tools if you want to. It requires a full time IT staff to administer. You have to build an entire layer of tools on top for it to be usable. The benefits compared to simpler, lighter-weight solutions do not outweigh the disadvantages. I can't think of a piece of software I loath so much, with the possible exception of RealPlayer.
Hey, can I charge Switchboard for listing my phone number? Mapquest for listing my address?
At least there's Elvis (C, not P), They Might Be Giants, and Komeda.
Is it just me, or my g-g-g-generation, or does new music really suck? What are you listening to?
By the way, I was stunned to find that Jethro Tull is still putting out new stuff. A recent one is called j-tull.com. I am not kidding.
Does anyone know how the numbers were stolen? Were they obtained purely from the outside, or with inside help? Were the numbers encrypted in the database? So far, I haven't seen an account of how the theft occurred.
And really easy to stop visiting web sites that use obnoxious techniques for displaying ads. Once visitation metrics start plummeting, the ads causing this change in behavior will disappear.
Why is the web different from radio or TV in this respect? Because audience behavior is so easily quantified.
I think you're serious, so here's my answer: It is more important to me to protect myself from having FBI agents (not bureaucrats, agents) reading my shopping list, my political manifestos, my notes on how to protect myself from script kiddies (proof positive that I'm a hacker, after all), and my (probably) fictional account of Dubya and Jim Baker exchanging bodily fluids (not intended for publication).
The FBI has proven that it is not above using its power for political purposes.
If the FBI were not free to violate the 4th amendment, we wouldn't have anarchy -- we'd simply have a tolerable FBI. Do you really believe they'd have (your words) no power if they had to respect the 4th amendment?
How about reusing parameterized type syntax, e.g. long<64>, long<128>. For that matter, long would be identical to int<2> or even char<4>.
Seriously, they are just asking for trouble.