The problem is that I'm interested in some of the Microsoft stories. Articles like this one aren't very good...the linked article wasn't any longer than the blurb posted on/. It had no information other than the headline. I'd just like to see a little more selectivity when it comes to MS stories.
Sure, no problem. It doesn't quite say that the states have dropped the demo, but it does say how the states really pissed off the judge. I expect CNN to post news about the states officially dropping the demo soon.
Is anyone else tired of seeing tiny scraps of news about MS on Slashdot everyday? There's two articles about MS today, one yesterday. Thinking back, it seems that there have been one or two stories posted about Microsoft everyday lately.
I like Slashdot for stories about tech, science and geek curios. Could the editors leave reporting every detail of the trial to CNN, and focus on more interesting stuff? Please?
It's a little more than a couple of weeks, but you're right. It's certainly not two or three years of straight coding. Quite a bit of time is used by product managers thinking stuff up and testing.
Oh yeah. I hate Clippy. I think Windows XP looks like crap. Whoever decided to put auto-execution of scripts in Outlook needs a head-examination. And why oh why can't Windows ship with bash?
I just get tired of seeing tons of ignorant, blatant, and unprovoked MS bashing. Thanks for the support...it doens't calm the nerves to try to be the voice of reason (as far as MS is concerned) around here:)
If you blame all MS employees for all of MS's mistakes, then you'd have to blame:
- Folks at the Post Office for US foreign policy blunders
- The 16 year-old who serves you your Big Mac for McDonald's poor environmental record
- The guy in the Mickey Mouse suit at DisneyLand for the shitty crap the MPAA does (given that Disney is a vocal member of the MPAA).
- etc, etc, etc
If you blame all those folks for all those transgressions, congrats, you're not a hypocrite.
Unfortunately, most people on Slashdot don't care to really think about Microsoft or really look into the events that make the press. They just repeat "M$ sucks! Linux is l337!" drabble.
The truth is that Microsoft is out to make money, like any other company. And MS isn't particularly worse than any other big company. Apple has a very draconian history in terms of licensing technology. IBM ran the accounting machines for the Third Reich. Big car companies (all of them) decide to issue recalls on defective products only if the cost of litigations will exceed the cost of the recall--not because the defective product will kill people. Big media companies like Disney are far worse than MS because they are trying to control flow of information (all forms of it), and directly influence the way people think. And they aren't out to preserve an ideal democratic society.
I know a number of folks who work at Microsoft. It's an awesome place to work, and MS employees are good people. There certainly isn't a company policy of stealing code, killing babies, or whatever else you read on Slashdot. If MS stole code, I'm sure the developers honestly thought that it was legit, and some manager and/or legal person fucked up. People screw up.
As for "fans" of the company, there are a number of legitimate reasons to like Microsoft:
The company's vision statement is "A computer on every desk and in every home." That vision is seeing completion (at least in the Western world). How much of it being attributed to Microsoft can be debated. However, Microsoft has been instrumental in enforcing standards upon the industry so that an open PC platform could flourish. Microsoft also provides software that almost anyone can use and use to be productive.
Microsoft is consistently one of the most philantropic corporations around. They gives tons of money to schools, libraries and universities. They just gave 8 million bucks to build my new CS building. How many of y'all got donations from MS while you were an undergrad?
Bill Gates has given $24 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, which will spend the money on AIDS research, cancer research, and vaccinations for the third world (among God knows how many other uses).
Microsoft products are actually pretty nice. If you're an experienced Unix administrator or do-it-yourself Linux guru, I'm sure you can find lots of reasons to not like MS software. But it's typically easier for common folk to use than competing products (Windows) and sometimes just downright superior (Office).
I'm not saying you have to like Microsoft, I'm just saying that there are reasons why a person would.
Unfortunately, the anti-MS bias is so strong here on Slashdot, I'll probably be modded down like nobody's business. Well, go ahead, mod away.
We'll probably be very dead before the universe is. As such: I don't care.
Of course, it could be argued that the matter of the universe will re-form into a big ball to start the cycle over again. I think there is some debate as to how likely that is. I suppose that thought is somewhat comforting.
So is driving your 20 year-old Pinto because you don't want to pay for a new car. Cars have since improved, and if you can afford a better car, then you'd probably get one.
Working with x86-asm is horrible!
My point exactly. Intel put a lot of work into IA-64 to make it superior to what's currently available. Definitely better than x86. That's why I hope that x86 eventually gets canned. If x86-64 takes off as the next "standard", then we'll be stuck writing crappy x86 for another 10 or 15 years.
Just your average computer science senior. I like doing assembly work for something like MIPS, and I don't like doing it in x86. The "usual rant" is that x86 is a very old architechture, with ad-hoc features added every so often to let it keep up. As usual as that rant may be, it's quite true. 8 general purpose registers suck. We can do a lot better nowadays.
The engineer in me doesn't like x86 because it's kludgy, and overly complex (has 4 operating modes of which most folks use 2, for example). Intel and AMD have to waste a lot of silicon that translates x86 instructions into their internal instructions. Seems like it's about time to start using something modern, not built on a legacy ISA.
Admittedly, I haven't done too much assembly work. Perhaps x86 is great. But most of the reading I've done and the system architechture classes I've taken lead me to believe that x86 is just a little too dated.
I'm gonna hold off on thinking that MS is supporting x86-64 completely. They already have code that works in IA-64. If I had to guess, I would say that MS will release products for both architechtures. The source code for Windows or office is the same for either 64-bit platform, and all it takes is compiling for one or the other. They already have tools that works for IA-64, and I read somewhere they have x86-84 stuff in the works. It won't cost them any money to publish both versions.
They'll probably push one or the other once the market starts leaning in a particular direction. I really hope it's IA-64. I want x86 to die as soon as possible.
Right now, an appalling amount of "recycled" PC's get shipped to Asia and dumped. If they tack on a fee every time folks buy a computer (which might be a pretty good idea), then they better make sure that the PC's get recycled properly.
Aren't the machines on the ISS Solaris boxes? I think I remember reading some of the logs where Commander Shephard (first expedition) complained about fighting with Sun boxes. Appearantly, astronauts aren't the greatest Solaris administrators (which is fine IMHO).
Yup, true enough. Humans are changing the ecology of the planet. Very fast. Organisms that cannot keep up die off. The real question is whether or not we like these changes.
I like having birds, whales, trees, and even condors around. I think some conservation is in order.
I'd wager to say that most people probably agree with me. If most folks don't agree with me, then I ask: how much of Earth has to look like L.A. before we change our habits?
True, Iceland has been using geothermic energy for their electricity needs. The article discusses using geothermic energy (I'm not sure if they use it directly or generate electricity first) to make hydrogen. The hydrogen will be used to fuel cars, busses, ships, etc.
Iceland is still dependant on oil for fuels. They aim to fix that. Maybe reading the article would enlighten you...
I agree. Please mod it up. The Slashdot headline is patently biased, and is only going to feed the "M$ sucks!" mentality... The BBC article mentioned is much more objective.
The Coast Guard has done some experiments on breaking ice bergs up, and apparently [quote]:
a 1,000 lb charge of TNT would be needed to break up approximately 70,000 cubic ft of ice (1,960 tons) and a hundred such charges would be needed for the destruction of an average berg. Furthermore, to melt a medium size berg of 100,000 tons would require the complete theoretical heat of combustion of 2.4 million gallons of gasoline. Such methods are, of course, economically, as well as practically unsound.
I don't have time to look at the article at the moment, but the headline reminds me of BrainFuck. It's a cute little language that emulates the functions of a Turing machine.
Maybe someone can brush me up on my theory: is a Universal Machine a Turing Machine?
Do you have a better suggestion for how the folks who keep Slashdot running would put food on the table?
I'd pay for slashdot because it's one of the sites I frequent many times in a day, every day. I doubt I'm alone in thinking that slashdot is worth $5 a month.
Slashdot Mirror
The warmth you feel from the sun is infrared radiation. So yes, they give out lots of infrared. I don't know much about I-R detectors however...
...similarly related Star Wars physics and Dungeons & Dragons physics? My old character could do a 200ft standing jump. I'd like to know why :)
The problem is that I'm interested in some of the Microsoft stories. Articles like this one aren't very good...the linked article wasn't any longer than the blurb posted on /. It had no information other than the headline. I'd just like to see a little more selectivity when it comes to MS stories.
Sure, no problem. It doesn't quite say that the states have dropped the demo, but it does say how the states really pissed off the judge. I expect CNN to post news about the states officially dropping the demo soon.
Is anyone else tired of seeing tiny scraps of news about MS on Slashdot everyday? There's two articles about MS today, one yesterday. Thinking back, it seems that there have been one or two stories posted about Microsoft everyday lately.
I like Slashdot for stories about tech, science and geek curios. Could the editors leave reporting every detail of the trial to CNN, and focus on more interesting stuff? Please?
It's a little more than a couple of weeks, but you're right. It's certainly not two or three years of straight coding. Quite a bit of time is used by product managers thinking stuff up and testing.
Damn right. Consider that releases of Office come every two or years--and that's improving code that already exists.
Congrats to the AbiWord team.
Even you do the occasional MS bashing
:)
Oh yeah. I hate Clippy. I think Windows XP looks like crap. Whoever decided to put auto-execution of scripts in Outlook needs a head-examination. And why oh why can't Windows ship with bash?
I just get tired of seeing tons of ignorant, blatant, and unprovoked MS bashing. Thanks for the support...it doens't calm the nerves to try to be the voice of reason (as far as MS is concerned) around here
--jim
If you blame all MS employees for all of MS's mistakes, then you'd have to blame:
- Folks at the Post Office for US foreign policy blunders
- The 16 year-old who serves you your Big Mac for McDonald's poor environmental record
- The guy in the Mickey Mouse suit at DisneyLand for the shitty crap the MPAA does (given that Disney is a vocal member of the MPAA).
- etc, etc, etc
If you blame all those folks for all those transgressions, congrats, you're not a hypocrite.
The truth is that Microsoft is out to make money, like any other company. And MS isn't particularly worse than any other big company. Apple has a very draconian history in terms of licensing technology. IBM ran the accounting machines for the Third Reich. Big car companies (all of them) decide to issue recalls on defective products only if the cost of litigations will exceed the cost of the recall--not because the defective product will kill people. Big media companies like Disney are far worse than MS because they are trying to control flow of information (all forms of it), and directly influence the way people think. And they aren't out to preserve an ideal democratic society.
I know a number of folks who work at Microsoft. It's an awesome place to work, and MS employees are good people. There certainly isn't a company policy of stealing code, killing babies, or whatever else you read on Slashdot. If MS stole code, I'm sure the developers honestly thought that it was legit, and some manager and/or legal person fucked up. People screw up.
As for "fans" of the company, there are a number of legitimate reasons to like Microsoft:
- The company's vision statement is "A computer on every desk and in every home." That vision is seeing completion (at least in the Western world). How much of it being attributed to Microsoft can be debated. However, Microsoft has been instrumental in enforcing standards upon the industry so that an open PC platform could flourish. Microsoft also provides software that almost anyone can use and use to be productive.
- Microsoft is consistently one of the most philantropic corporations around. They gives tons of money to schools, libraries and universities. They just gave 8 million bucks to build my new CS building. How many of y'all got donations from MS while you were an undergrad?
- Bill Gates has given $24 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, which will spend the money on AIDS research, cancer research, and vaccinations for the third world (among God knows how many other uses).
- Microsoft products are actually pretty nice. If you're an experienced Unix administrator or do-it-yourself Linux guru, I'm sure you can find lots of reasons to not like MS software. But it's typically easier for common folk to use than competing products (Windows) and sometimes just downright superior (Office).
I'm not saying you have to like Microsoft, I'm just saying that there are reasons why a person would.Unfortunately, the anti-MS bias is so strong here on Slashdot, I'll probably be modded down like nobody's business. Well, go ahead, mod away.
We'll probably be very dead before the universe is. As such: I don't care.
Of course, it could be argued that the matter of the universe will re-form into a big ball to start the cycle over again. I think there is some debate as to how likely that is. I suppose that thought is somewhat comforting.
Yes, but x86 is practical.
So is driving your 20 year-old Pinto because you don't want to pay for a new car. Cars have since improved, and if you can afford a better car, then you'd probably get one.
Working with x86-asm is horrible!
My point exactly. Intel put a lot of work into IA-64 to make it superior to what's currently available. Definitely better than x86. That's why I hope that x86 eventually gets canned. If x86-64 takes off as the next "standard", then we'll be stuck writing crappy x86 for another 10 or 15 years.
Just your average computer science senior. I like doing assembly work for something like MIPS, and I don't like doing it in x86. The "usual rant" is that x86 is a very old architechture, with ad-hoc features added every so often to let it keep up. As usual as that rant may be, it's quite true. 8 general purpose registers suck. We can do a lot better nowadays.
The engineer in me doesn't like x86 because it's kludgy, and overly complex (has 4 operating modes of which most folks use 2, for example). Intel and AMD have to waste a lot of silicon that translates x86 instructions into their internal instructions. Seems like it's about time to start using something modern, not built on a legacy ISA.
Admittedly, I haven't done too much assembly work. Perhaps x86 is great. But most of the reading I've done and the system architechture classes I've taken lead me to believe that x86 is just a little too dated.
I'm gonna hold off on thinking that MS is supporting x86-64 completely. They already have code that works in IA-64. If I had to guess, I would say that MS will release products for both architechtures. The source code for Windows or office is the same for either 64-bit platform, and all it takes is compiling for one or the other. They already have tools that works for IA-64, and I read somewhere they have x86-84 stuff in the works. It won't cost them any money to publish both versions.
They'll probably push one or the other once the market starts leaning in a particular direction. I really hope it's IA-64. I want x86 to die as soon as possible.
Here's some articles about the problem:
Aren't the machines on the ISS Solaris boxes? I think I remember reading some of the logs where Commander Shephard (first expedition) complained about fighting with Sun boxes. Appearantly, astronauts aren't the greatest Solaris administrators (which is fine IMHO).
the ones that can't die off
Yup, true enough. Humans are changing the ecology of the planet. Very fast. Organisms that cannot keep up die off. The real question is whether or not we like these changes. I like having birds, whales, trees, and even condors around. I think some conservation is in order.
I'd wager to say that most people probably agree with me. If most folks don't agree with me, then I ask: how much of Earth has to look like L.A. before we change our habits?
True, Iceland has been using geothermic energy for their electricity needs. The article discusses using geothermic energy (I'm not sure if they use it directly or generate electricity first) to make hydrogen. The hydrogen will be used to fuel cars, busses, ships, etc.
Iceland is still dependant on oil for fuels. They aim to fix that. Maybe reading the article would enlighten you...
I agree. Please mod it up. The Slashdot headline is patently biased, and is only going to feed the "M$ sucks!" mentality... The BBC article mentioned is much more objective.
The Coast Guard has done some experiments on breaking ice bergs up, and apparently [quote]:
a 1,000 lb charge of TNT would be needed to break up approximately 70,000 cubic ft of ice (1,960 tons) and a hundred such charges would be needed for the destruction of an average berg. Furthermore, to melt a medium size berg of 100,000 tons would require the complete theoretical heat of combustion of 2.4 million gallons of gasoline. Such methods are, of course, economically, as well as practically unsound.
Curious to learn more about icebergs, I found this nifty FAQ. Figured I'd share.
I don't have time to look at the article at the moment, but the headline reminds me of BrainFuck. It's a cute little language that emulates the functions of a Turing machine.
Maybe someone can brush me up on my theory: is a Universal Machine a Turing Machine?
A space-faring Winnebago? Hells yeah... I'd pay serious cash to fly in one of those.
If you'd like to see a picture of the craft, it's on the BBC.
Do you have a better suggestion for how the folks who keep Slashdot running would put food on the table?
I'd pay for slashdot because it's one of the sites I frequent many times in a day, every day. I doubt I'm alone in thinking that slashdot is worth $5 a month.