Yes does it deserve 20 years and 5 years of pay, no.
Do you realise how powerful laser pointers are getting? You can buy 400mw (!!) lasers. These things are getting insanely dangerous. I can totally see some asshole wanting to prove what a huge dick he has by getting the most powerful laser he can find and being stupid with it.
I'm actually amazed that we don't see an epidemic of people getting getting blinded and burned by these things. If I was a gang member, I'd pack one of these babies.
The potential for mayhem with these is getting pretty scary. I'm not saying everyone with a 1mw laser pointer ought to get the max penalty, but the max penalty *should* be high, considering the potential for damage.
Quit with the bullshit formats and half assed attempts.
With you here.
If you are really that desperate to protect your precious from the Evil consumers then get it on iTunes and be done with it. I am sick of having to go to random websites and having to use the half-assed players you guys think are acceptable.
What? There is nothing more evil than that POS iTunes on Windows. They must have used the million monkey method to develop that thing, then cheaped out on the monkeys. It's even worse than the Quicktime Player on Windows, and that's saying a lot.
And does Apple even allow other video formats than Quicktime to be on iTunes? The last thing we need is to embrace Apple lock-in. I want straight.mpg files.
But what do you call it when pretty much every company standardizes on the same platform? Coincidence? Please, I assume we both know enough math to calculate the chances of that.
It's called "Microsoft has the best product" -- as defined by the metric the vast majority of the market cares about, which I already explained in my previous post. To quote myself:
"The reason Microsoft has a large marketshare these days is because that's where the applications are. People use applications, not operating systems. Microsoft mostly has a monopoly because of the traditional incompetence of the competition, because they think the operating system matters. It doesn't. The applications are everything."
Exactly what "dirty trick" is Microsoft using at this point to lock people in? As you point out, "The competition between MS Office and OpenOffice is non-existent despite the massive price difference." The reason is because, despite a lot of fanboi-ism, the applications for MS Windows (not just Office, but on the average across the spectrum) are superior. This also despite the extreme mediocrity of the Windows OS. People just want to get their work done.
But back to the original question: does Microsoft have a monopoly? Are there *no* viable alternatives? Is it impractically difficult to live a Microsoft free life, either at work or at home? I would say there are numerous Mac people who would say 'no', as well as numerous Linux people. Does Windows have the best application base? Unquestionably, which is why they dominate. Are the other platforms so inferior as to be impossible to use? No. Hence, Microsoft has a dominant marketshare, but does *not* have a monopoly.
I totally agree, and have another act you might want to have a good look at listening through: Pink Floyd. Yeah, I know, cliche, but they're one of the best bands ever to come out of the UK, or indeed anywhere.
Pink Floyd happens to be one of my favorite bands.:) No doubt they are genius.
Porcupine Tree are excellent...
Haven't heard of them, but listening to the Wikipedia snippets, I like their sound. I'll have to check them out.
I've developed a fondness for the classics: Mozart, Bach, those guys: Not the Stones or Beatles.
Funny enough, I've always listened to classical music (and still do) and also listen to rock, but lately I've been on a Beatles kick. I've actually been thinking of doing a Slashdot journal post on the subject.
The Beatles were *unbelievably* good. You really can't appreciate them until you sit and listen to all their albums. The sheer number of styles and genres they either touched on or flat-out invented is incredible. I can't imagine someone who likes rock, no matter what style, not finding *some* song they like. Hard Rock? Acid Rock? Pop? Bubblegum? Folk? Avante Garde? Orchestral? Epic? Soul? Blues? Psychedelic? Art? Progressive? Hell, even (pseudo)-Religious? They did it all.
I know it's not news that Beatles were good (heh), but you don't really "get it" until you really listen to their stuff. And it still sounds fresh 40 years later. At this moment I'm actually listening to "Hey Bulldog", one of their obscure, throwaway songs (they actually knocked it out in one day for a video promo they had to do -- the video I linked to is actually footage of them creating the song, it's pretty cool), and it's a great song. The base line is incredibly rocking. Their throwaways are better than anything written these days.
The Stones are a great band, if only for sheer volume of work and longevity, but nothing they did approached the Beatles at their best.
So the part that you said would be interesting doesn't count because it's not the entirety of the complaint?
Essentially, yes. It would interest me if someone sued Microsoft for not following standards, and that was the focus of the lawsuit. In this case, it's just spice around the main bundling complaint.
That "would be" an interesting lawsuit? That is part of this one. Re-read the summary. Then go read the press release:
They threw that in, but it's complete B.S. If that was their motivation, then that would be the lawsuit. That they also put in the "unbundling" nonsense means that's the real motivation.
Well, the REAL real motivation is a publicity stunt, but forcing MS to maintain standards ain't the motivation.
I'm probably just an aging geek, but an *operating system* should not depend on an *application* that runs on it being available. [...] As a user or system integrator, you do expect to be able to unbundle any app you don't want, and replace it with one that you do.
How about a shell? Typically Unix uses shell scripts for the standard boot procedure. You can install another (incompatible) shell if you want, but you can't delete the core shell that all the system scripts expect to be there. Or try and replace the command line tool set and see what happens. By your logic, Unix should use some core boot process that doesn't touch any tools outside the kernel.
I think in this age of gigabytes of disk space, it's silly to insist an operating system not use any standard tools.
Regarding your analogy, it's not as if Microsoft's TCP/IP stack violates major standards and makes everyone else in the world have to adjust their network hardware/software to be able to ping Windows. Nor is it like Notepad violates ASCII specs -- ok, CR/LF is kind of annoying, but also completely open, transparent, and easy to deal with. And the Windows clock does generally show you the right time. Are you seeing a pattern?
Actually, I believe in the past MS's TCP/IP stack did have some annoying traits, but I'm too lazy to chase down a link.:) CRLF is actually the older standard (think teletype).
But anyway, the difference between the above and IE is that IE is about 1,000 times more complex that those applications. Do I wish IE was more strict about rendering HTML? Of course. But I think that's more traditional Microsoft mediocrity than malice.
If Opera wants to sue Microsoft into following established web standards (not that anyone has any true authority, but anyway...), that would be an interesting lawsuit. But a lawsuit to force Microsoft to not bundle a browser is anticonsumer and stupid.
Which is why all the corporate networks are so diversified with many different systems you can choose from when you start a job?
That's silly. Of course a particular company is going to tend to standardize on one platform, on the average. On the other hand, there are numerous companies that allow both PCs and Macs on their network, plus their IT department may be using some Unix-derivative. I'm sure many people use Linux in their corporate setup.
Large marketshare does not make a monopoly. [...] Both Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster disagree.
Er, the M-W link seems to agree with me. I don't see anything in that link that talks about large marketshare.
It's not the size of the market share.
And then you happily contradict yourself and agree with me! Easiest argument I've ever won.:D
The question is not if you have 100%, 90% or 80% of the market, but whether you control the market, to the exclusion of others, and can dictate the price of the product. Or in other words: Whether the price-finding mechanics of the free market have been destroyed.
Exactly my point. Microsoft has none of that. Put it this way: could Microsoft jack up the price of their basic Vista or XP to, say, $1000? And would people just eat it, because they have no choice? The answer is "no", because they do have alternatives.
The reason Microsoft has a large marketshare these days is because that's where the applications are. People use applications, not operating systems. Microsoft mostly has a monopoly because of the traditional incompetence of the competition, because they think the operating system matters. It doesn't. The applications are everything.
I'll go right out and install a browser on my hundreds of servers that don't have them. I didn't know it was required! I'm amazed the systems even boot.
Operating systems also boot without TCP/IP stacks, time clocks, shells, and numerous other things -- and could still do useful work. What's your point?
Ten years you might have made the argument that Microsoft was a monopoly (and you'd be wrong, but that's another tangent). Today the idea is absurd. There are numerous alternatives to Microsoft. Large marketshare does not make a monopoly.
Network companies sue Microsoft for bundling TCP/IP.
Editor companies sue Microsoft for bundling Notepad and Wordpad.
Clock software companies sue Microsoft for bundling a clock on the desktop.
And so it goes...
This is just stupid. This is not 1990. A browser is an integral part of an operating system in 2007. It's a standardized document display application. The operating system depends on it being there.
Just so long as we keep Republicans and private enterprise the hell away from it. The last thing we need is fucking Enron-style bullshit with the nukers. Run public utilities as non-profit monopolies operated in the public's best interest. Treat any free market deregulation dittohead as a saboteur to be shot on sight.
I'm probably biting on a troll post, but it's possible you really could be that ignorant. Enron's golden years were during the Clinton administration, which pretty much let companies get away with murder when it came to accounting. The Bush administration is the one that wielded the hammer and sent people to jail (Lay got 45 years, too bad he died first), not to mention blowing up Arthur Andersen. Note also that Sarbanes-Oxley was passed during the Bush administration.
"The result of E1 << is E1 left-shifted E2 bit positions; vacated bits are filled with zeroes. If E1 has an unsigned type, the value of the result is E1 multiplied by the quantity, 2 raised to the power E2, reduced modulo ULONG_MAX+1 if E1 has type unsigned long, UINT_MAX+1 otherwise.
"The result of E1 >> E2 is E1 right-shifted E2 bit positions. If E1 has an unsigned type or if E1 has a signed type and a nonnegative value, the value of the result is the integral part of the quotient of E1 divided by the quantity, 2 raised to the power E2. If E1 has a signed type and a negative value, the resulting value is implementation-defined."
Sure. If we're talking about the classic C89, it's ISO/IEC 9899:1990, section 6.1.2.5 ("Types"): "The type char, the signed and unsigned integer types, and the enumerated types are collectively called integral types. The representations of integral types shall define values by use of a pure binary numeration system".
Hmm. My version of the C89 standard ("The Annotated C Standard, by Schildt, 1990, regarding ANSI/ISO 9899-1990") says:
"The type char, the sign and unsigned integer types, and the floating types are collectively called the basic types. Even if the implementation defines two or more basic types to have the same representation, the are nevertheless different types."
No mention of integral types at all, so it's possible they tightened up the definitions in some later standards (C89 was the last time I cared about the C standard.:)). I'm actually surprised they needed to specify that.
Note that bitwise shift in C is not a "mathematical operation" of power-of-two - it is a bit shift, defined as such in the standard.
According to my version of the standard (which may have changed), it says:
"The result of E1
"The result of E1 >> E2 is E1 right-shifted E2 bit positions. If E1 has an unsigned type or if E1 has a signed type and a nonnegative value, the value of the result is the integral part of the quotient of E1 divided by the quantity, 2 raised to the power E2. If E1 has a signed type and a negative value, the resulting value is implementation-defined."
Granted, it gives the "short version" in terms of bits for easy understanding, but the formal definition is mathematical.
But, based on your quotes, it sounds like they gave up on a lot of the more esoteric portability aspects of C in later versions.
This is not correct. The C Standard explicitly requires encoding of integers to be either two's complement or one's complement binary.
You're going to have to quote the standard on this -- I can find nothing that specifies the encoding of integers.
Which kinda makes sense, since if no specific representation was required, the bitwise operators on integers would be rather useless (because then you wouldn't be able to rely on the fact that (int)0 is all bits reset, and int(1) is first bit set).
The logical operators have nothing to do with the representation. As a trivial example, byte ordering of machines can be very different. All that matters is that 1 is 2^0, and 2 is 2^1, and 4 is 2^2, etc. It's a mathematical operation.
What have you been smoking? Since when does C require ints to be 32 bits?
It doesn't, but I realize I phrased my post poorly. I meant that C requires an integer with at least 32 bits, which is typically not native to an 8 bit processor.
It doesn't. It does, however, require a 32 bit integer data type (which the OP said). It doesn't. It does, however, require a 32 bit integer data type (which the OP said).
Close, but not correct. C requires *at least* 16 bits for a short, and *at least* 32 bits for a long. It actually doesn't require an exactly 32 bit integer datatype. Well, to be really pedantic, the C Standard specifies a range of values that a datatype must support, so technically a binary machine is not required.
C only has the data types supported by the hardware, so it is not a high-level language.
Uh, no. C has guaranteed data types that must be present in every implementation, such as 32 bit integers (not native to 8 bit processors) and floating point (not native to many processors). It is true that C has flexible data types that can be optimized for particular hardware.
One more thing to break, probably (including a 2GB SD card) a $40-$50 increase in cost per machine, for what advantage?
So it can run the industry standard operating system, if the *user* desires. I know that many here are rabidly anti-Microsoft, but sometimes people are going to want to be able to run what nearly everyone else runs.
And Microsoft just asked for an added slot, which certainly wouldn't add much cost. Are you arguing that the machine should be intentionally crippled just to prevent Windows from running?
Well, duh. Why would I produce a video and/or watch a video that says something mainstream that everyone already knows? That's not news. I'm going to produce something that is different from the norm. And people are going to gravitate toward videos that tell them something they don't already know.
They are the ones that understand that the only way we're going to survive long-term as a species is if we manage to colonize several other planets and other star systems.
There are only a couple of planets in the solar system that are even potentially hospitable. If your concern is the future of the human race, then having a few thousand spinning colonies (and we can always build more) is a better risk than a couple of planets.
but really, if there was a colony there, I can think of many, many scientists who would love to go - namely, anyone on the Spirit and Opportunity teams.
Sure, just like a few people go to the station in Antarctica. How many of those same people would want to go there permanently and raise their family there?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes does it deserve 20 years and 5 years of pay, no.
Do you realise how powerful laser pointers are getting? You can buy 400mw (!!) lasers. These things are getting insanely dangerous. I can totally see some asshole wanting to prove what a huge dick he has by getting the most powerful laser he can find and being stupid with it.
I'm actually amazed that we don't see an epidemic of people getting getting blinded and burned by these things. If I was a gang member, I'd pack one of these babies.
The potential for mayhem with these is getting pretty scary. I'm not saying everyone with a 1mw laser pointer ought to get the max penalty, but the max penalty *should* be high, considering the potential for damage.
Does anybody still care about that game?
If it's a good game, people will care. If it's not, people won't. Really, what difference does it make how long it took to develop?
With all the rewrites, this is really Duke 7 anyway, with Duke 4-6 just not getting released.
Quit with the bullshit formats and half assed attempts.
With you here.
If you are really that desperate to protect your precious from the Evil consumers then get it on iTunes and be done with it. I am sick of having to go to random websites and having to use the half-assed players you guys think are acceptable.
What? There is nothing more evil than that POS iTunes on Windows. They must have used the million monkey method to develop that thing, then cheaped out on the monkeys. It's even worse than the Quicktime Player on Windows, and that's saying a lot.
And does Apple even allow other video formats than Quicktime to be on iTunes? The last thing we need is to embrace Apple lock-in. I want straight .mpg files.
But what do you call it when pretty much every company standardizes on the same platform? Coincidence? Please, I assume we both know enough math to calculate the chances of that.
It's called "Microsoft has the best product" -- as defined by the metric the vast majority of the market cares about, which I already explained in my previous post. To quote myself:
"The reason Microsoft has a large marketshare these days is because that's where the applications are. People use applications, not operating systems. Microsoft mostly has a monopoly because of the traditional incompetence of the competition, because they think the operating system matters. It doesn't. The applications are everything."
Exactly what "dirty trick" is Microsoft using at this point to lock people in? As you point out, "The competition between MS Office and OpenOffice is non-existent despite the massive price difference." The reason is because, despite a lot of fanboi-ism, the applications for MS Windows (not just Office, but on the average across the spectrum) are superior. This also despite the extreme mediocrity of the Windows OS. People just want to get their work done.
But back to the original question: does Microsoft have a monopoly? Are there *no* viable alternatives? Is it impractically difficult to live a Microsoft free life, either at work or at home? I would say there are numerous Mac people who would say 'no', as well as numerous Linux people. Does Windows have the best application base? Unquestionably, which is why they dominate. Are the other platforms so inferior as to be impossible to use? No. Hence, Microsoft has a dominant marketshare, but does *not* have a monopoly.
I totally agree, and have another act you might want to have a good look at listening through: Pink Floyd. Yeah, I know, cliche, but they're one of the best bands ever to come out of the UK, or indeed anywhere.
Pink Floyd happens to be one of my favorite bands. :) No doubt they are genius.
Porcupine Tree are excellent...
Haven't heard of them, but listening to the Wikipedia snippets, I like their sound. I'll have to check them out.
I've developed a fondness for the classics: Mozart, Bach, those guys: Not the Stones or Beatles.
Funny enough, I've always listened to classical music (and still do) and also listen to rock, but lately I've been on a Beatles kick. I've actually been thinking of doing a Slashdot journal post on the subject.
The Beatles were *unbelievably* good. You really can't appreciate them until you sit and listen to all their albums. The sheer number of styles and genres they either touched on or flat-out invented is incredible. I can't imagine someone who likes rock, no matter what style, not finding *some* song they like. Hard Rock? Acid Rock? Pop? Bubblegum? Folk? Avante Garde? Orchestral? Epic? Soul? Blues? Psychedelic? Art? Progressive? Hell, even (pseudo)-Religious? They did it all.
I know it's not news that Beatles were good (heh), but you don't really "get it" until you really listen to their stuff. And it still sounds fresh 40 years later. At this moment I'm actually listening to "Hey Bulldog", one of their obscure, throwaway songs (they actually knocked it out in one day for a video promo they had to do -- the video I linked to is actually footage of them creating the song, it's pretty cool), and it's a great song. The base line is incredibly rocking. Their throwaways are better than anything written these days.
The Stones are a great band, if only for sheer volume of work and longevity, but nothing they did approached the Beatles at their best.
So the part that you said would be interesting doesn't count because it's not the entirety of the complaint?
Essentially, yes. It would interest me if someone sued Microsoft for not following standards, and that was the focus of the lawsuit. In this case, it's just spice around the main bundling complaint.
That "would be" an interesting lawsuit? That is part of this one. Re-read the summary. Then go read the press release:
They threw that in, but it's complete B.S. If that was their motivation, then that would be the lawsuit. That they also put in the "unbundling" nonsense means that's the real motivation.
Well, the REAL real motivation is a publicity stunt, but forcing MS to maintain standards ain't the motivation.
I'm probably just an aging geek, but an *operating system* should not depend on an *application* that runs on it being available. [...] As a user or system integrator, you do expect to be able to unbundle any app you don't want, and replace it with one that you do.
How about a shell? Typically Unix uses shell scripts for the standard boot procedure. You can install another (incompatible) shell if you want, but you can't delete the core shell that all the system scripts expect to be there. Or try and replace the command line tool set and see what happens. By your logic, Unix should use some core boot process that doesn't touch any tools outside the kernel.
I think in this age of gigabytes of disk space, it's silly to insist an operating system not use any standard tools.
Regarding your analogy, it's not as if Microsoft's TCP/IP stack violates major standards and makes everyone else in the world have to adjust their network hardware/software to be able to ping Windows. Nor is it like Notepad violates ASCII specs -- ok, CR/LF is kind of annoying, but also completely open, transparent, and easy to deal with. And the Windows clock does generally show you the right time. Are you seeing a pattern?
Actually, I believe in the past MS's TCP/IP stack did have some annoying traits, but I'm too lazy to chase down a link. :) CRLF is actually the older standard (think teletype).
But anyway, the difference between the above and IE is that IE is about 1,000 times more complex that those applications. Do I wish IE was more strict about rendering HTML? Of course. But I think that's more traditional Microsoft mediocrity than malice.
If Opera wants to sue Microsoft into following established web standards (not that anyone has any true authority, but anyway...), that would be an interesting lawsuit. But a lawsuit to force Microsoft to not bundle a browser is anticonsumer and stupid.
Microsoft mostly has a monopoly because of the traditional incompetence of the competition, because they think the operating system matters.
LOL. Oops, freudian slip. Of course, I meant "Microsoft mostly has a large marketshare", not monopoloy in the legal sense we've been discussing.
Which is why all the corporate networks are so diversified with many different systems you can choose from when you start a job?
That's silly. Of course a particular company is going to tend to standardize on one platform, on the average. On the other hand, there are numerous companies that allow both PCs and Macs on their network, plus their IT department may be using some Unix-derivative. I'm sure many people use Linux in their corporate setup.
Large marketshare does not make a monopoly. [...] Both Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster disagree.
Er, the M-W link seems to agree with me. I don't see anything in that link that talks about large marketshare.
It's not the size of the market share.
And then you happily contradict yourself and agree with me! Easiest argument I've ever won. :D
The question is not if you have 100%, 90% or 80% of the market, but whether you control the market, to the exclusion of others, and can dictate the price of the product. Or in other words: Whether the price-finding mechanics of the free market have been destroyed.
Exactly my point. Microsoft has none of that. Put it this way: could Microsoft jack up the price of their basic Vista or XP to, say, $1000? And would people just eat it, because they have no choice? The answer is "no", because they do have alternatives.
The reason Microsoft has a large marketshare these days is because that's where the applications are. People use applications, not operating systems. Microsoft mostly has a monopoly because of the traditional incompetence of the competition, because they think the operating system matters. It doesn't. The applications are everything.
I'll go right out and install a browser on my hundreds of servers that don't have them. I didn't know it was required! I'm amazed the systems even boot.
Operating systems also boot without TCP/IP stacks, time clocks, shells, and numerous other things -- and could still do useful work. What's your point?
The rules change for monopoly corporations.
Ten years you might have made the argument that Microsoft was a monopoly (and you'd be wrong, but that's another tangent). Today the idea is absurd. There are numerous alternatives to Microsoft. Large marketshare does not make a monopoly.
In other news:
Network companies sue Microsoft for bundling TCP/IP.
Editor companies sue Microsoft for bundling Notepad and Wordpad.
Clock software companies sue Microsoft for bundling a clock on the desktop.
And so it goes...
This is just stupid. This is not 1990. A browser is an integral part of an operating system in 2007. It's a standardized document display application. The operating system depends on it being there.
Just so long as we keep Republicans and private enterprise the hell away from it. The last thing we need is fucking Enron-style bullshit with the nukers. Run public utilities as non-profit monopolies operated in the public's best interest. Treat any free market deregulation dittohead as a saboteur to be shot on sight.
I'm probably biting on a troll post, but it's possible you really could be that ignorant. Enron's golden years were during the Clinton administration, which pretty much let companies get away with murder when it came to accounting. The Bush administration is the one that wielded the hammer and sent people to jail (Lay got 45 years, too bad he died first), not to mention blowing up Arthur Andersen. Note also that Sarbanes-Oxley was passed during the Bush administration.
Damn! Here's the quote again:
"The result of E1 << is E1 left-shifted E2 bit positions; vacated bits are filled with zeroes. If E1 has an unsigned type, the value of the result is E1 multiplied by the quantity, 2 raised to the power E2, reduced modulo ULONG_MAX+1 if E1 has type unsigned long, UINT_MAX+1 otherwise.
"The result of E1 >> E2 is E1 right-shifted E2 bit positions. If E1 has an unsigned type or if E1 has a signed type and a nonnegative value, the value of the result is the integral part of the quotient of E1 divided by the quantity, 2 raised to the power E2. If E1 has a signed type and a negative value, the resulting value is implementation-defined."
Sure. If we're talking about the classic C89, it's ISO/IEC 9899:1990, section 6.1.2.5 ("Types"): "The type char, the signed and unsigned integer types, and the enumerated types are collectively called integral types. The representations of integral types shall define values by use of a pure binary numeration system".
Hmm. My version of the C89 standard ("The Annotated C Standard, by Schildt, 1990, regarding ANSI/ISO 9899-1990") says:
"The type char, the sign and unsigned integer types, and the floating types are collectively called the basic types. Even if the implementation defines two or more basic types to have the same representation, the are nevertheless different types."
No mention of integral types at all, so it's possible they tightened up the definitions in some later standards (C89 was the last time I cared about the C standard. :)). I'm actually surprised they needed to specify that.
Note that bitwise shift in C is not a "mathematical operation" of power-of-two - it is a bit shift, defined as such in the standard.
According to my version of the standard (which may have changed), it says:
"The result of E1
"The result of E1 >> E2 is E1 right-shifted E2 bit positions. If E1 has an unsigned type or if E1 has a signed type and a nonnegative value, the value of the result is the integral part of the quotient of E1 divided by the quantity, 2 raised to the power E2. If E1 has a signed type and a negative value, the resulting value is implementation-defined."
Granted, it gives the "short version" in terms of bits for easy understanding, but the formal definition is mathematical.
But, based on your quotes, it sounds like they gave up on a lot of the more esoteric portability aspects of C in later versions.
This is not correct. The C Standard explicitly requires encoding of integers to be either two's complement or one's complement binary.
You're going to have to quote the standard on this -- I can find nothing that specifies the encoding of integers.
Which kinda makes sense, since if no specific representation was required, the bitwise operators on integers would be rather useless (because then you wouldn't be able to rely on the fact that (int)0 is all bits reset, and int(1) is first bit set).
The logical operators have nothing to do with the representation. As a trivial example, byte ordering of machines can be very different. All that matters is that 1 is 2^0, and 2 is 2^1, and 4 is 2^2, etc. It's a mathematical operation.
What have you been smoking? Since when does C require ints to be 32 bits?
It doesn't, but I realize I phrased my post poorly. I meant that C requires an integer with at least 32 bits, which is typically not native to an 8 bit processor.
It doesn't. It does, however, require a 32 bit integer data type (which the OP said). It doesn't. It does, however, require a 32 bit integer data type (which the OP said).
Close, but not correct. C requires *at least* 16 bits for a short, and *at least* 32 bits for a long. It actually doesn't require an exactly 32 bit integer datatype. Well, to be really pedantic, the C Standard specifies a range of values that a datatype must support, so technically a binary machine is not required.
C only has the data types supported by the hardware, so it is not a high-level language.
Uh, no. C has guaranteed data types that must be present in every implementation, such as 32 bit integers (not native to 8 bit processors) and floating point (not native to many processors). It is true that C has flexible data types that can be optimized for particular hardware.
One more thing to break, probably (including a 2GB SD card) a $40-$50 increase in cost per machine, for what advantage?
So it can run the industry standard operating system, if the *user* desires. I know that many here are rabidly anti-Microsoft, but sometimes people are going to want to be able to run what nearly everyone else runs.
And Microsoft just asked for an added slot, which certainly wouldn't add much cost. Are you arguing that the machine should be intentionally crippled just to prevent Windows from running?
Well, duh. Why would I produce a video and/or watch a video that says something mainstream that everyone already knows? That's not news. I'm going to produce something that is different from the norm. And people are going to gravitate toward videos that tell them something they don't already know.
They are the ones that understand that the only way we're going to survive long-term as a species is if we manage to colonize several other planets and other star systems.
There are only a couple of planets in the solar system that are even potentially hospitable. If your concern is the future of the human race, then having a few thousand spinning colonies (and we can always build more) is a better risk than a couple of planets.
but really, if there was a colony there, I can think of many, many scientists who would love to go - namely, anyone on the Spirit and Opportunity teams.
Sure, just like a few people go to the station in Antarctica. How many of those same people would want to go there permanently and raise their family there?