I thought we were talking about rulesets here. GP:
I'd like to point out though, that just because a game has simple rules, doesn't mean it isn't very complicated to play.
The ruleset for Go is one of the simplest for any strategy game. It's definitely simpler than checkers, not to mention chess. And the result is a game of beautiful depth and complexity.
1. It had no factual basis. The poster didn't claim to be an interviewer, interviewee, or even a bank employee. 2. It was an obvious and plain attempt to make an emotional appeal. Usually, this sort of appeal is intended to get mod points, but as often as not it is just trolling, pure and simple. 3. It appealed to a lowest-common-denominator level of discourse. Sometimes that's cool, but here it just didn't fit.
None of which warranted a Flamebait mod. Overrated would have done just fine (assuming I agreed with you, which I don't... all of the points you cited could apply to any number of +5 Insightful posts).
But, of course, flamebait around here is code for 'I disagree with you', so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
Heck, Go is even simpler than checkers, and it's nowhere even close to being solved (the current, top-ranked computer program is roughly 2p, and easily defeated by a strong professional player).
To them your problems are irrelevant, not different than the hundreds of other issues they see every day.
But that's my whole point. That very attitude would sink another company. Just look at companies like Dell, Lenovo, or others, that live or die by the quality of their support. People deliberately select organizations that *don't* treat them as simply numbers, because they're fucking *customers* for Christ's sake, and thus it's their job to assist those customers as best they can.
This whole attitude that banks should somehow be exceptions to this rule is absurd. I should not be obligated to visit my local branch and "build relationships" in order to receive decent service. I *earned* that fucking service the minute I deposited my money into my account. I don't give a shit if my issues are "not different than the hundreds of other issues they see every day" because it *doesn't matter*. What matters is that I'm a paying fucking customer.
Wow, looks like the mods are on fire today... this one and the reply both got flamebait for no reason whatsoever. You'd almost think some bank employee was trawling Slashdot and downmodding people who point out that many (particularly large) banks are run by dickholes...
Depending on the implementation, my idea could result in a bloated mess. I readily admit that. But it's really easy to criticize an idea and call it impossible
I never said it was impossible, I said it was completely unreasonable.
They'd be writing to a general case, which could be made very simple and efficient.
See, statements like this demonstrate that you're not a developer.
Writing code for the general case is *harder*. It makes code more *complicated and slow*. Why? Because ever piece of added flexibility means more lines of code to implement that flexibility. Hell, just look at the massive complexity of the GtkTreeView widget to see what can happen... great, it uses an MVC architecture to make it possible to display a whole range of different tree and list styles, allowing a single control to be used for multiple purposes. But the result is extremely complex.
They'd be writing to a general case, which could be made very simple and efficient. Then another piece of code would apply a style to this element. CSS has already shown that styles can be applied with great efficiency.
Hint: CSS affects presentation, not behaviour. And every GUI toolkit out there *already* makes it possible to customize presentation, they're called themes.
What you're talking about is customizing *behaviour*, and that must be coded into the widget/framework/tool from the get-go, and every piece of customized behaviour is more lines of code and more bloat.
As for the other AC suggesting plugins, once again, clearly someone doesn't understand how software is written. In order to build plugins for customizing behaviour, you have to implement the software so that there are entrypoints for those plugins to hook into. That means every piece of behaviour you might possibly want to configure will need to be specially designed so it can be hooked into and overridden. That's highly non-trivial. And you'd have to do this *for every single application*.
In short, it just makes no sense. The best solution, IMHO, is to go down the path we're already going down: standardize desktop protocols and APIs so that people can slap together a window manager, panel, file manager, etc, that suit their preferences. Fortunately, EWMH already exists, and Freedesktop is working hard to standardize other desktop-related APIs.
My point is, we can all complain that banks are evil machines not caring about people, but we're part of the problem because we treat them like machines.
Woah woah, wait... let me get this straight. I *choose* to patronize a bank, enriching them through my custom. Now you're telling me, that's not enough? That I essentially have to bribe them for good fucking service?
I'm sorry, buddy, but that's pure, complete bullshit. I am their fucking client. It's their job to please *me*, not the other way around. Now, do these employees deserve to be treated with kindness, dignity, and respect? Yes, of course, just like every other human being out there. But I am not, and should not, be obligated to buy fucking flowers for the local bank branch manager just so that I get decent service. Hell, the very fact that you believe that's necessary speaks to their rank arrogance. It's utterly absurd.
Hardware accelerated websites is not in the spirit of the web
Wow, amazing! I had no idea it was *you* who was responsible for defining for the rest of us what the "spirit of the web" is. I suggest you first to talk to guys like Google about your decree, as they're clearly already violating your definition. 'course, it's a little strange... I mean, Gmail seems *awfully* popular. Yet, you'd think, given what the spirit of the web apparently is, that things like rich web interfaces would be shunned by the user base. Oh well, presumably that's just because they haven't gotten your memo, yet.
I feel sad about it when hardware acceleration is needed for rendering, what, websites.
It isn't. You're viewing Slashdot just fine, aren't you?
On the other hand, hardware acceleration may very well be needed for next-generation web-based applications which take advantage of advanced HTML5 features. 'course, if you don't like it, don't use those applications. There, problem solved.
So only use the ECMA bits (which will soon be factored out), and use the free software stack bindings for everything else, just like, well, basically all existing Gnome Mono applications (last I checked, F-Spot wasn't using winforms).
The contract that Novell signed is not the same as the "promise" that Microsoft published later. There is a difference.
Yes, there is a difference. In one case, Microsoft can't sue because of a contract. In the other, they can't sue because of promissory estoppel. Either way, they can't sue.
But enjoy the hat, I'm sure it's very shiny and stylish.
I'm really tired of the trade-off between simplicity and functionality. This trade-off should not be inherent to either windowing system. Rather, the variety of options presented to the user should be configurable. Each distribution should be able to decide how simple or how configurable they want to make their windowing environment when it is first installed.
Uhuh.
And then people would bitch about bloat because supporting all those features, options, and workflows would required a fuckton more code.
So here's an idea: pick the environment that fits your needs. Gnome, KDE, XFCE, or heck, throw components together that fit your needs. But quit expecting these projects to be infinitely flexible, it's completely unreasonable.
Rarely asked outside of Slashdot. Don't overestimate how insignificant we are. When's the last time you heard a policy maker asking it?
Is a "policy maker" gonna be reading Slashdot? No. So given the audience, your post isn't terribly insightful or even that original, as we've all heard that issue mentioned time and time (and time) again whenever an article about green tech pops up.
And this is ignoring the fact that, frankly, your supposition is simply wrong. Factoring manufacturing cost into total cost and energy efficiency is standard practice all over the damn place. Hell, any time someone wants to debunk green tech (solar is a favorite whipping boy), it's the first argument that's trotted out. Why do you think you can find numbers on total energy consumption for the manufacture of an electric car battery? Or a CFL bulb?
So, I repeat, don't overestimate how brilliant you are. The last thing we need around here is another know-it-all computer nerd who thinks he can debunk science and technologies from his computer chair, armed only with the trickle of information available in a Slashdot summary and his limited knowledge gleaned from pop-sci articles, bloggers, and wikipedia articles.
Re:Officially?
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It was harsh but the result was that while Welch led GE, the company did very, very well. Welch defined the fitness function and let evolution build GE for him. It was hard for a manager who had a good staff to have to fire his least productive workers on a regular basis but since everyone knew that was how the company was run, the people who didn't like it moved on.
And that works great so long as the bell curve for employee quality is nice and evenly distributed around "average" in every group. But like you say, the minute you have a group of people who are all above average or exceptional, blindly sticking to a system like that simply ensures that you cut loose great employees while actively eliminating experience from the group. Wow, what a brilliant system!
C is a fine language, as long as you know it well.
Yeah.
On the other hand, POSIX is *horrendous*. Have you ever seen the block of code necessary to actually reliably read from a socket (handling all cases, ie EINTR, etc)? It's dozens and dozens of lines long.
Maybe if there was a common set of portable, higher-level abstraction libraries, C would be bearable. But as it stands, all it is is a dangerous weapon wielded by people who, by and large, don't know how to use it safely.
Meh, it still use it. I could switch to, say, Python, but I have very little reason to... Python doesn't buy me anything (I'm actually capable of writing clean, maintainable Perl), and so there's little point in investing time in yet-another-scripting-language. And it's hard to give up the vast resource that is CPAN.
Nah, if I'm gonna expend effort to learn a language, I'd rather it be something actually innovative, like Haskell.
Pick just about ANY language out there, go ahead pick any one of them. It was written in C or C and Assembler. Even the ones that now can compile themselves the main language used to build the compiler that can compile itself was, wait for it... C.
I'm sorry, but that's just deeply idiotic reasoning. By your logic: Every language compiler was once written in C. Every C compiler was once written in assembly language. Every assembler was once written in machine code. Therefore every programming language that has ever and will ever exist is written in machine code.
Do you see how stupid this is?
If we ignore that bit of silliness, there are plenty of languages that are self-hosting (ie, written in themselves). Haskell immediately comes to mind, but I'm certain there are many others (I'm just too lazy to go and find them).
Would you ditch the cancer stick, or your friends ?
Honestly? Probably my friends. I can't think of anything more annoying than a bunch of self-righteous dickholes telling me what I should and shouldn't do, and I suspect that's true of a lot of people.
While you may be right that reducing exposure to smoking young will discourage them from getting started, I see no reason to be assholes to people who choose not to kick the habit (assuming they're polite about it and don't inconvenience others with their smoking). People are already surrounded by a non-stop barrage of anti-smoking rhetoric... nasty pictures of cancerous lungs on the packs, not being allowed to smoke in bars and other public places, PSAs on TV, etc, etc, etc. Honestly, if none of that will stop a person from quitting, I really doubt a bunch of friends choosing to be dicks about their habit will do much else except piss them off and alienate them.
As has alreay been pointed out, the worst this "exploit" can do is elevate to the same rights as the user.
Yeah, and then you're just a local privilege exploit away from being fully owned.
And this is ignoring the fact that malicious users can do plenty with a non-privileged account (here's hoping you don't store any sensitive information unencrypted in your home directory).
Just because they threatened, doesn't mean they have a leg to stand on. They're just betting the developer folds before they go to court and find the case summarily dismissed.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought we were talking about rulesets here. GP:
The ruleset for Go is one of the simplest for any strategy game. It's definitely simpler than checkers, not to mention chess. And the result is a game of beautiful depth and complexity.
None of which warranted a Flamebait mod. Overrated would have done just fine (assuming I agreed with you, which I don't... all of the points you cited could apply to any number of +5 Insightful posts).
But, of course, flamebait around here is code for 'I disagree with you', so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
Heck, Go is even simpler than checkers, and it's nowhere even close to being solved (the current, top-ranked computer program is roughly 2p, and easily defeated by a strong professional player).
To them your problems are irrelevant, not different than the hundreds of other issues they see every day.
But that's my whole point. That very attitude would sink another company. Just look at companies like Dell, Lenovo, or others, that live or die by the quality of their support. People deliberately select organizations that *don't* treat them as simply numbers, because they're fucking *customers* for Christ's sake, and thus it's their job to assist those customers as best they can.
This whole attitude that banks should somehow be exceptions to this rule is absurd. I should not be obligated to visit my local branch and "build relationships" in order to receive decent service. I *earned* that fucking service the minute I deposited my money into my account. I don't give a shit if my issues are "not different than the hundreds of other issues they see every day" because it *doesn't matter*. What matters is that I'm a paying fucking customer.
Wow, looks like the mods are on fire today... this one and the reply both got flamebait for no reason whatsoever. You'd almost think some bank employee was trawling Slashdot and downmodding people who point out that many (particularly large) banks are run by dickholes...
Depending on the implementation, my idea could result in a bloated mess. I readily admit that. But it's really easy to criticize an idea and call it impossible
I never said it was impossible, I said it was completely unreasonable.
They'd be writing to a general case, which could be made very simple and efficient.
See, statements like this demonstrate that you're not a developer.
Writing code for the general case is *harder*. It makes code more *complicated and slow*. Why? Because ever piece of added flexibility means more lines of code to implement that flexibility. Hell, just look at the massive complexity of the GtkTreeView widget to see what can happen... great, it uses an MVC architecture to make it possible to display a whole range of different tree and list styles, allowing a single control to be used for multiple purposes. But the result is extremely complex.
They'd be writing to a general case, which could be made very simple and efficient. Then another piece of code would apply a style to this element. CSS has already shown that styles can be applied with great efficiency.
Hint: CSS affects presentation, not behaviour. And every GUI toolkit out there *already* makes it possible to customize presentation, they're called themes.
What you're talking about is customizing *behaviour*, and that must be coded into the widget/framework/tool from the get-go, and every piece of customized behaviour is more lines of code and more bloat.
As for the other AC suggesting plugins, once again, clearly someone doesn't understand how software is written. In order to build plugins for customizing behaviour, you have to implement the software so that there are entrypoints for those plugins to hook into. That means every piece of behaviour you might possibly want to configure will need to be specially designed so it can be hooked into and overridden. That's highly non-trivial. And you'd have to do this *for every single application*.
In short, it just makes no sense. The best solution, IMHO, is to go down the path we're already going down: standardize desktop protocols and APIs so that people can slap together a window manager, panel, file manager, etc, that suit their preferences. Fortunately, EWMH already exists, and Freedesktop is working hard to standardize other desktop-related APIs.
My point is, we can all complain that banks are evil machines not caring about people, but we're part of the problem because we treat them like machines.
Woah woah, wait... let me get this straight. I *choose* to patronize a bank, enriching them through my custom. Now you're telling me, that's not enough? That I essentially have to bribe them for good fucking service?
I'm sorry, buddy, but that's pure, complete bullshit. I am their fucking client. It's their job to please *me*, not the other way around. Now, do these employees deserve to be treated with kindness, dignity, and respect? Yes, of course, just like every other human being out there. But I am not, and should not, be obligated to buy fucking flowers for the local bank branch manager just so that I get decent service. Hell, the very fact that you believe that's necessary speaks to their rank arrogance. It's utterly absurd.
Hardware accelerated websites is not in the spirit of the web
Wow, amazing! I had no idea it was *you* who was responsible for defining for the rest of us what the "spirit of the web" is. I suggest you first to talk to guys like Google about your decree, as they're clearly already violating your definition. 'course, it's a little strange... I mean, Gmail seems *awfully* popular. Yet, you'd think, given what the spirit of the web apparently is, that things like rich web interfaces would be shunned by the user base. Oh well, presumably that's just because they haven't gotten your memo, yet.
I feel sad about it when hardware acceleration is needed for rendering, what, websites.
It isn't. You're viewing Slashdot just fine, aren't you?
On the other hand, hardware acceleration may very well be needed for next-generation web-based applications which take advantage of advanced HTML5 features. 'course, if you don't like it, don't use those applications. There, problem solved.
In one case, only ecma mono is covered.
So only use the ECMA bits (which will soon be factored out), and use the free software stack bindings for everything else, just like, well, basically all existing Gnome Mono applications (last I checked, F-Spot wasn't using winforms).
There, problem solved. Happy now?
The contract that Novell signed is not the same as the "promise" that Microsoft published later. There is a difference.
Yes, there is a difference. In one case, Microsoft can't sue because of a contract. In the other, they can't sue because of promissory estoppel. Either way, they can't sue.
But enjoy the hat, I'm sure it's very shiny and stylish.
I'm really tired of the trade-off between simplicity and functionality. This trade-off should not be inherent to either windowing system. Rather, the variety of options presented to the user should be configurable. Each distribution should be able to decide how simple or how configurable they want to make their windowing environment when it is first installed.
Uhuh.
And then people would bitch about bloat because supporting all those features, options, and workflows would required a fuckton more code.
So here's an idea: pick the environment that fits your needs. Gnome, KDE, XFCE, or heck, throw components together that fit your needs. But quit expecting these projects to be infinitely flexible, it's completely unreasonable.
Rarely asked outside of Slashdot. Don't overestimate how insignificant we are. When's the last time you heard a policy maker asking it?
Is a "policy maker" gonna be reading Slashdot? No. So given the audience, your post isn't terribly insightful or even that original, as we've all heard that issue mentioned time and time (and time) again whenever an article about green tech pops up.
And this is ignoring the fact that, frankly, your supposition is simply wrong. Factoring manufacturing cost into total cost and energy efficiency is standard practice all over the damn place. Hell, any time someone wants to debunk green tech (solar is a favorite whipping boy), it's the first argument that's trotted out. Why do you think you can find numbers on total energy consumption for the manufacture of an electric car battery? Or a CFL bulb?
So, I repeat, don't overestimate how brilliant you are. The last thing we need around here is another know-it-all computer nerd who thinks he can debunk science and technologies from his computer chair, armed only with the trickle of information available in a Slashdot summary and his limited knowledge gleaned from pop-sci articles, bloggers, and wikipedia articles.
Note to self, next time, include sarcasm tags...
It was harsh but the result was that while Welch led GE, the company did very, very well. Welch defined the fitness function and let evolution build GE for him. It was hard for a manager who had a good staff to have to fire his least productive workers on a regular basis but since everyone knew that was how the company was run, the people who didn't like it moved on.
And that works great so long as the bell curve for employee quality is nice and evenly distributed around "average" in every group. But like you say, the minute you have a group of people who are all above average or exceptional, blindly sticking to a system like that simply ensures that you cut loose great employees while actively eliminating experience from the group. Wow, what a brilliant system!
C is a fine language, as long as you know it well.
Yeah.
On the other hand, POSIX is *horrendous*. Have you ever seen the block of code necessary to actually reliably read from a socket (handling all cases, ie EINTR, etc)? It's dozens and dozens of lines long.
Maybe if there was a common set of portable, higher-level abstraction libraries, C would be bearable. But as it stands, all it is is a dangerous weapon wielded by people who, by and large, don't know how to use it safely.
Ahh... I see your problem.
You see, Guido is right.
You're wrong.
Don't worry, you'll get it eventually. :)
Meh, it still use it. I could switch to, say, Python, but I have very little reason to... Python doesn't buy me anything (I'm actually capable of writing clean, maintainable Perl), and so there's little point in investing time in yet-another-scripting-language. And it's hard to give up the vast resource that is CPAN.
Nah, if I'm gonna expend effort to learn a language, I'd rather it be something actually innovative, like Haskell.
If you use Python, Java or whatever you are too far away from the metal to do the interesting stuff.
You have an interesting definition of interesting...
See, mine is that you get to solve cool problems in innovative ways.
Yours, apparently, is that you get to fuck around with pointers. Woo, awesome.
Pick just about ANY language out there, go ahead pick any one of them. It was written in C or C and Assembler. Even the ones that now can compile themselves the main language used to build the compiler that can compile itself was, wait for it... C.
I'm sorry, but that's just deeply idiotic reasoning. By your logic: Every language compiler was once written in C. Every C compiler was once written in assembly language. Every assembler was once written in machine code. Therefore every programming language that has ever and will ever exist is written in machine code.
Do you see how stupid this is?
If we ignore that bit of silliness, there are plenty of languages that are self-hosting (ie, written in themselves). Haskell immediately comes to mind, but I'm certain there are many others (I'm just too lazy to go and find them).
I'm not saying anything, I'm asking a question. It's one which is rarely asked
Bullshit. It's one that's asked *every fucking time* an article about renewable energy pops up on Slashdot.
Seriously.
Don't overestimate how brilliant you are. Believe it or not, you're not the only one to think about this issue. Not by a long shot.
Honestly, if none of that will stop a person from quitting...
Err... "if none of that will get a person to quit". *sigh*
It's been a long day.
Would you ditch the cancer stick, or your friends ?
Honestly? Probably my friends. I can't think of anything more annoying than a bunch of self-righteous dickholes telling me what I should and shouldn't do, and I suspect that's true of a lot of people.
While you may be right that reducing exposure to smoking young will discourage them from getting started, I see no reason to be assholes to people who choose not to kick the habit (assuming they're polite about it and don't inconvenience others with their smoking). People are already surrounded by a non-stop barrage of anti-smoking rhetoric... nasty pictures of cancerous lungs on the packs, not being allowed to smoke in bars and other public places, PSAs on TV, etc, etc, etc. Honestly, if none of that will stop a person from quitting, I really doubt a bunch of friends choosing to be dicks about their habit will do much else except piss them off and alienate them.
As has alreay been pointed out, the worst this "exploit" can do is elevate to the same rights as the user.
Yeah, and then you're just a local privilege exploit away from being fully owned.
And this is ignoring the fact that malicious users can do plenty with a non-privileged account (here's hoping you don't store any sensitive information unencrypted in your home directory).
And Facebook isn't on sound legal ground, either.
Just because they threatened, doesn't mean they have a leg to stand on. They're just betting the developer folds before they go to court and find the case summarily dismissed.