Now that the LZW patent has exprired, whoop-de-doo. Where were they when we really needed good png support?
What we need now is something that isn't a petri dish full of a rich agar browth waiting for every sort of web infection to take root and mulitply to the destruction of your computer, and something that adheres to CSS2 standards. But we already know that these needs aren't going to be met, so all I can draw as a conclusion is IE7? Bugger off. Waste of Time. Non-starter. Count on using Firefox for the foreseeable future.
I spent a good part of my life in New England. There is only one major population center there, metro Boston, and the city center has a population well under one million. Everything else is spread out all through eastern MA and into southern NH. The only potentially interesting high speed rail run is into New York City which is currently actually served by Acela. I've even taken it. It sucks. If you need to go into the suburbs (you will) you need a rent a car, and you will have to drive through the worst traffic and twisty street system you can imagine. If you are coming from metro NY to Metro Boston, and like most people don't live in the city centers travel by car is FAR better. You avoid the city center traffic, You can leave/arrive when you want. It is faster because you don't have to deal with the origination/termination issues.
Cities in Texas?
Texas? Texas is bigger than the entire country of France, and has 1/3 or less the population. No way it has the population density.
California coast?
You ARE joking, right? California cities invented urban sprawl. San Diego city is 342 freaking square miles. The distance between San Diego and San Francisco is 1600 miles, way more than is practical for a high speed rail run.
This late in the product cycle the Xbox should be a cash cow throwing off the money needed to fund future consoles, repay the investment in the first console, etc.
Instead it is just a big old rathole into which money continues to flow.
The flight is 1.5 hours, you need to show up over an hour earlier, and wait a half hour for your baggage; plus all that walking between terminals. The 3 hour train would be faster.
The problem is that you still have to go to the train station, arrive and leave on their schedule, rent a car when you arrive, etc. The plane ends up being faster.
High speed trains on the other hand become competitive with planes on medium runs of about 300-500 mi. This results in a lot of connection that can be successful.
MAYBE you will be able to come up with a FEW such connections. But the fact is that population density is the killer. In Europe and Japan high density urban centers push 15,000 people per sq. mile, but in the US the densest centers are 6,000 people per square mile, plus the cities are not distributed radially, but along a coastline, AND most of the distances between the largest US cities are thousands of miles. If you lay out the potential connections and ridership, the numbers look like a high speed rail station in the US could attract maybe 20% the numbers that it would in Japan or Europe. And that is being generous.
High speed rail in the US just doesn't fit in with the population distribution patterns.
I think that high speed trains in the US are a lost cause. The population distribution just does not favor such a thing. Even in the areas that are most often cited, say the Wash DC to Boston corridor the long thin shape rather than a single center with outlying cities that you find in Europe (take a look at France for example) is unfavorable. Not to mention that even in these 'dense' areas, the population density is still much greater in Europe.
I've spent time and travelled in Europe via train - and it is very nice compared to a short plane trip. But LA to Portland is a far greater distance than Lyons to Paris. Eurpoeans who think Americans are nuts for not using trains just don't apprciate the scale of the US.
People also forget that the US *used* to have the highest speed train system in the world - prior to mass aviation the steam powered trains running between cities for various rail lines used to compete on time, and win or lose business based on how fast they could do it. Sustained speeds on special runs of 80 mph were common, and peak speeds reached over 100 mph. Names like Zephr, Presidential and Hiawatha recall the glory years of US passenger rail, and unfortunately the geography of the US doesn't seem to allow for use of high speed rain the way it is used in Europe or Japan.
I just want to say that most major businesses out there have at least one developer-type person who interacts with the marketing department to tell them "yes, we WILL be able to deliver on this promise".
Yes, and that developer-type person is usually a project manager looking for a promotion into marketing, rather than a real developer.
Some guy in marketing thought it would be nice to promise monthly updates without realizing that the developers didn't have the resources to deliver anything like this.
Happens in every company, and the marketing guys should be held accountable for making such stupid promises.
In a technical field it is very easy to reject candidates in a phone screen interval - total lack of knowledge, unwillingness to solve problems, lack of interest in the job, all these things can kill you within 45-60 minutes.
I think a technical quiz phone screen is a total B.S. way to determine the potential value of an employee. You are attempting to quiz somebody on formulaic stuff most of which can be found in 5-10 minutes online anyway. The real value of an employee comes from skills that cannot be demonstrated in 30 minutes, but rather how they handle complex issues like influencing the attitudes of their coworkers, solving issues that are complex blend of personal relationships and technical problem, whether they have a good sense of when a problem can be solved vs. when it should be left alone.
Quizing people on off the cuff regurgitated technotrivia on the phone is unfortunately easier that really understanding what kind of employee they will be, so it is the path people tend to take. But it isn't the way you get the best employee. It's how you get somebody with a the ability to sound knowledgable on the phone.
US business complains that they can't find top talent for low wages domestically. Why do you think that is? Because outsourcing and the previous wave of imported talent depressed wages and drove up unemployment in the field so much that it has discouraged people from taking up CS as a major (universities are reporting huge dropoffs in CS majors).
Too goddam bad. The only thing that is going to cure that is a good long period of good wage growth and low unemployment in the field. If that causes US tech businesses a little pain, well they should have thought about that before lobbying Congress for a quick fix. Business isn't under any obligation to consider external factors, but surely government is. Since they bear a lot of responsibility for creating the current situation at the behest of business, they are going to have to stop up their ears until things right themselves.
Comapnies used to treasure their talent pipelines. Now they abuse them, and run to congress when they find that the pipeline isn't full.
Now that the passive side is well on its way to completion, all we a missing is the active side. I can see it now - movie theaters install MRIs to make you hunger for their bad popcorn and overpriced drinks. Car dealers install MRIs that cause you to accept rustproofing even if you live in Southern Nevada. Appliance dealers in Alaska use MRIs to sell freezers to their Inuit customers.
The IRS uses them so that you will actually enjoy paying taxes.
Here's a question for everyone: Which is better? An expertly designed and elegant C++ program with all the proper abstractions, frameworks, and methodologies that 1% of software developers can comprehend quickly, or a C program with a flat set of files, simple structs, and a few shell scripts to build it, which everyone understands (and can even debug)?
The simple flat file C program that everyone can debug is also a small program. OO really comes into it's own when you get over 20,000 lines of code. Then the kiss C style starts breaking down.
And its exhaust a little bit too hot for cooling HDs, perhaps?
Well, they have three basic models. One kind has an internal shrouded fan powered by a turbine (turbo fan), another has external fan blades powered by a turbine (tuboprop) and the third kind has external fan blades powered by a piston engine. Only the first kind would have a temperature problem.
A return to C++ would be nice, especially in educational institutions, as it provides all the necessities of modern languages, bar effective string-handling, while maintaining the simplicity of older languages.
. You may complain about Java etc. being inefficient or coddling developers, but the design of C++ is strictly a case of bolting object orientation onto a procedural language in a very crude manner, then throwing in the kitchen sink just so that it has feature xyz. It collapses of it's own weight. C was/is fine with it's minimalist approach and economy of expression. Java and other GC languages have thei place because by handling GC they markedly improve programmer productivity.
But C++ is an abomination - a siamese twin floor wax/desert topping that should have been seperated into C and a real OO language years ago. I can't imagine why it survives at all. It is like one of those Cadillacs from the 60's with the giant tail fins and 400 pounds of chrome, and no consistency of design. It is so bad that it took a decade just to get compilers that worked properly - and from what I've seen there are still a lot of C++ compilers out there that fail to completely implement the language.
I was hot to try some of the Java 5 features so I installed netbeans 4.1. You have got to be kidding me. It's like Eclipse was three years ago plus unstable. It stays up about an hour on my R40 before croaking, and by croaking I mean blue screen, not some wimpy Java error.
planned Longhorn features to meet this goal, such as auto-defragmenting in the background, the ability to have files in more than one folder simultaneously
1. Auto-defragmenting files in the background.
Multitasking + crond.
2. he ability to have files in more than one folder simultaneously
Slashdot Mirror
Now that the LZW patent has exprired, whoop-de-doo. Where were they when we really needed good png support?
What we need now is something that isn't a petri dish full of a rich agar browth waiting for every sort of web infection to take root and mulitply to the destruction of your computer, and something that adheres to CSS2 standards. But we already know that these needs aren't going to be met, so all I can draw as a conclusion is IE7? Bugger off. Waste of Time. Non-starter. Count on using Firefox for the foreseeable future.
But how about the entirety of NE?
I spent a good part of my life in New England. There is only one major population center there, metro Boston, and the city center has a population well under one million. Everything else is spread out all through eastern MA and into southern NH. The only potentially interesting high speed rail run is into New York City which is currently actually served by Acela. I've even taken it. It sucks. If you need to go into the suburbs (you will) you need a rent a car, and you will have to drive through the worst traffic and twisty street system you can imagine. If you are coming from metro NY to Metro Boston, and like most people don't live in the city centers travel by car is FAR better. You avoid the city center traffic, You can leave/arrive when you want. It is faster because you don't have to deal with the origination/termination issues.
Cities in Texas?
Texas? Texas is bigger than the entire country of France, and has 1/3 or less the population. No way it has the population density.
California coast?
You ARE joking, right? California cities invented urban sprawl. San Diego city is 342 freaking square miles. The distance between San Diego and San Francisco is 1600 miles, way more than is practical for a high speed rail run.
This late in the product cycle the Xbox should be a cash cow throwing off the money needed to fund future consoles, repay the investment in the first console, etc.
Instead it is just a big old rathole into which money continues to flow.
The flight is 1.5 hours, you need to show up over an hour earlier, and wait a half hour for your baggage; plus all that walking between terminals. The 3 hour train would be faster.
The problem is that you still have to go to the train station, arrive and leave on their schedule, rent a car when you arrive, etc. The plane ends up being faster.
High speed trains on the other hand become competitive with planes on medium runs of about 300-500 mi. This results in a lot of connection that can be successful.
MAYBE you will be able to come up with a FEW such connections. But the fact is that population density is the killer. In Europe and Japan high density urban centers push 15,000 people per sq. mile, but in the US the densest centers are 6,000 people per square mile, plus the cities are not distributed radially, but along a coastline, AND most of the distances between the largest US cities are thousands of miles. If you lay out the potential connections and ridership, the numbers look like a high speed rail station in the US could attract maybe 20% the numbers that it would in Japan or Europe. And that is being generous.
High speed rail in the US just doesn't fit in with the population distribution patterns.
I think that high speed trains in the US are a lost cause. The population distribution just does not favor such a thing. Even in the areas that are most often cited, say the Wash DC to Boston corridor the long thin shape rather than a single center with outlying cities that you find in Europe (take a look at France for example) is unfavorable. Not to mention that even in these 'dense' areas, the population density is still much greater in Europe.
I've spent time and travelled in Europe via train - and it is very nice compared to a short plane trip. But LA to Portland is a far greater distance than Lyons to Paris. Eurpoeans who think Americans are nuts for not using trains just don't apprciate the scale of the US.
People also forget that the US *used* to have the highest speed train system in the world - prior to mass aviation the steam powered trains running between cities for various rail lines used to compete on time, and win or lose business based on how fast they could do it. Sustained speeds on special runs of 80 mph were common, and peak speeds reached over 100 mph. Names like Zephr, Presidential and Hiawatha recall the glory years of US passenger rail, and unfortunately the geography of the US doesn't seem to allow for use of high speed rain the way it is used in Europe or Japan.
335K Rosemary Lane. Who do you think the real identity thieves are?
Most likely the people who are screen-scraping slashdot for names and addresses,
If you are going to sup with the devil, bring a long spoon...
No. The 50 million does not include upgrades.
I just want to say that most major businesses out there have at least one developer-type person who interacts with the marketing department to tell them "yes, we WILL be able to deliver on this promise".
Yes, and that developer-type person is usually a project manager looking for a promotion into marketing, rather than a real developer.
KApple, Krapple, Crapple, I think I have heard those before.
Some guy in marketing thought it would be nice to promise monthly updates without realizing that the developers didn't have the resources to deliver anything like this.
Happens in every company, and the marketing guys should be held accountable for making such stupid promises.
"There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed."
In related news it was found that spyware and spam hackers have een filtering bug reports from the inbound queues on Microsoft's mail servers.
While I think Splitzer can be a bit overzealous and grandstanding (plus laying groundwork for his run for political office),
All of that may be true, however he is also doing a lot of good in the process. As far as I am concerned we could use a few more like him.
In a technical field it is very easy to reject candidates in a phone screen interval - total lack of knowledge, unwillingness to solve problems, lack of interest in the job, all these things can kill you within 45-60 minutes.
I think a technical quiz phone screen is a total B.S. way to determine the potential value of an employee. You are attempting to quiz somebody on formulaic stuff most of which can be found in 5-10 minutes online anyway. The real value of an employee comes from skills that cannot be demonstrated in 30 minutes, but rather how they handle complex issues like influencing the attitudes of their coworkers, solving issues that are complex blend of personal relationships and technical problem, whether they have a good sense of when a problem can be solved vs. when it should be left alone.
Quizing people on off the cuff regurgitated technotrivia on the phone is unfortunately easier that really understanding what kind of employee they will be, so it is the path people tend to take. But it isn't the way you get the best employee. It's how you get somebody with a the ability to sound knowledgable on the phone.
Wonderful. What a pile of steenking crap.
US business complains that they can't find top talent for low wages domestically. Why do you think that is? Because outsourcing and the previous wave of imported talent depressed wages and drove up unemployment in the field so much that it has discouraged people from taking up CS as a major (universities are reporting huge dropoffs in CS majors).
Too goddam bad. The only thing that is going to cure that is a good long period of good wage growth and low unemployment in the field. If that causes US tech businesses a little pain, well they should have thought about that before lobbying Congress for a quick fix. Business isn't under any obligation to consider external factors, but surely government is. Since they bear a lot of responsibility for creating the current situation at the behest of business, they are going to have to stop up their ears until things right themselves.
Comapnies used to treasure their talent pipelines. Now they abuse them, and run to congress when they find that the pipeline isn't full.
It makes me sick.
Now that the passive side is well on its way to completion, all we a missing is the active side. I can see it now - movie theaters install MRIs to make you hunger for their bad popcorn and overpriced drinks. Car dealers install MRIs that cause you to accept rustproofing even if you live in Southern Nevada. Appliance dealers in Alaska use MRIs to sell freezers to their Inuit customers.
The IRS uses them so that you will actually enjoy paying taxes.
etc.
overnight, somewhere around 70 million television sets now connected to rabbit ears or roof-top antennas will suddenly and forever go blank
And the downside is???
Java, for one, doesn't allow for RAD. It requires a structured design and systematic coding.
Not true at all. Agile programming has addressed that concern by advocating frequent refactoring rather than top down design.
Here's a question for everyone: Which is better? An expertly designed and elegant C++ program with all the proper abstractions, frameworks, and methodologies that 1% of software developers can comprehend quickly, or a C program with a flat set of files, simple structs, and a few shell scripts to build it, which everyone understands (and can even debug)?
The simple flat file C program that everyone can debug is also a small program. OO really comes into it's own when you get over 20,000 lines of code. Then the kiss C style starts breaking down.
And its exhaust a little bit too hot for cooling HDs, perhaps?
Well, they have three basic models. One kind has an internal shrouded fan powered by a turbine (turbo fan), another has external fan blades powered by a turbine (tuboprop) and the third kind has external fan blades powered by a piston engine. Only the first kind would have a temperature problem.
A return to C++ would be nice, especially in educational institutions, as it provides all the necessities of modern languages, bar effective string-handling, while maintaining the simplicity of older languages.
. You may complain about Java etc. being inefficient or coddling developers, but the design of C++ is strictly a case of bolting object orientation onto a procedural language in a very crude manner, then throwing in the kitchen sink just so that it has feature xyz. It collapses of it's own weight. C was/is fine with it's minimalist approach and economy of expression. Java and other GC languages have thei place because by handling GC they markedly improve programmer productivity.
But C++ is an abomination - a siamese twin floor wax/desert topping that should have been seperated into C and a real OO language years ago. I can't imagine why it survives at all. It is like one of those Cadillacs from the 60's with the giant tail fins and 400 pounds of chrome, and no consistency of design. It is so bad that it took a decade just to get compilers that worked properly - and from what I've seen there are still a lot of C++ compilers out there that fail to completely implement the language.
Also: please show me the fan that uses a non electic motor. I REALLY wanna see it.
Go to the airptort and look at the things hanging off the wings. They are all fans powered by non-electric motors.
Of course they might be a bit noisy for your computer case.
I was hot to try some of the Java 5 features so I installed netbeans 4.1. You have got to be kidding me. It's like Eclipse was three years ago plus unstable. It stays up about an hour on my R40 before croaking, and by croaking I mean blue screen, not some wimpy Java error.
planned Longhorn features to meet this goal, such as auto-defragmenting in the background, the ability to have files in more than one folder simultaneously
1. Auto-defragmenting files in the background.
Multitasking + crond.
2. he ability to have files in more than one folder simultaneously
Finally symlinks for Windows.