Re:This is dumb and dangerous.
on
Do-it-yourself UPS
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
You wouldn't want a person without a CS degree writing software; we shouldn't have folks without EE degrees designing power supplies.
That's a pretty ignorant attitude. Plenty of people professionally write software without a CS degree (either they have some unrelated degree, or no degree at all). Do you think everyone developing the Linux kernel has a CS degree? Not even close. The fact is, programming isn't all that uncommon of a hobby, and people can get started at surprisingly young ages. It doesn't take long for them to get to the point where they're qualified to write good software if they do things right.
The statement is more true for "non-EEs shouldn't be designing power supplies", but still false.
Like GaTech, the UW-Madison CS department used to have strict "no collaboration" rules and policies for intro level CS courses. They had code analysis tools to find copied code among student's assignment submissions.
They found that cheating was so rampant, it could not be enforced. They got sick of dealing with it.
The new policy (which has been in effect for a couple years at least), is that collaboration is permitted, but assignments make up a smaller portion of your overall grade now.
Typically, there are ~3 big exams counting for ~90 % of your final grade. The last ~10% is made up of several assignments given throughout the semester (YMMV depending on the course).
The rationale is that if you collaborate in a bad way (to the extent that you're not learning the material), you will surely fail when exam time comes. Seemed fair to me, though I personally never collaborated (didn't know anyone, didn't trust others abilities, etc.)
Re:CmdrTaco, you idiot, you're missing the point!
on
April Fools Wrap Up
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· Score: 1
We can't be sure of his motives. I think you're giving him too much credit, and you think it was all intended just to get people to flame him. Though there's no way we can be sure of who's right, this STILL leaves two main possibilities for the two cases:
1) He believes people were genuinely tricked by the fake stories. He sees some flames and assumes that's what they're about. He laughs at them for being stupid enough to fall for it, and enjoys the fact that he thinks he fooled some lamers.
2) He posted a ridiculous amount of lame stories on purpose, in hopes of pissing his readers off. By being extremely annoying, he could get the flames he so dearly wants.
If 1) is true, then he's pretty naive considering that's not what people are mad about at all.
If 2) is true, then it's still stupid. Trying really hard to just be annoying is not funny. It's just that -- annoying.
Re:CmdrTaco, you idiot, you're missing the point!
on
April Fools Wrap Up
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· Score: 1
"Thanks for the usual April Fools Day flame- every year people fall for it. It never ceases to amaze me how angry and venomous, yet utterly clueless a few people can be despite the blatant obviousness of the joke."
Right. That's the point. This line shows that CmdrTaco believes that all the flames he got today were people who were "fooled". You know, something like "gosh darn you, I really thought Linus was retiring from kernel development. You bastard!!!".
But rather, the flames were "stop this crap, it's extremely lame".
I'm still right.
Re:CmdrTaco, you idiot, you're missing the point!
on
April Fools Wrap Up
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· Score: 1
I think you're reading into it too much and giving the editors way too much credit.
Initially, I would have agreed with your assessment.
But, as per my comment I posted above, I would argue that this is only true for the current embedded software engineers. There was probably a time when user-space applications programmers were extremely talented and technical, and made their own choices. Today this is obviously not the case. If some of these guys are still around today, I wouldn't be surprised if they think back about the good ol' days when programmers were real programmers.
My theory is that if Microsoft has its way, the same thing will happen in the embedded world someday. You'll have clueless "Microsoft Certified Embedded Systems Engineers" providing "100% Microsoft Solutions", and they will be numerous.
I would like to think that the amount of technical ability requied for embedded development is too great to allow this to happen. But then again, the user-space application programmers several years ago probably thought the same thing when they were squeezing every ounce of performance out with hand-optimized assembly.
Anyone else notice how MS seemingly wants to do for the embedded world what they did for applications development? Today they have an army of relatively clueless VB developers who supports Windows.
If you look at the kinds of things they're offering (a 'windows embedded studio', with wizard looking things, MCSE/cookbook type classes for wannabe embedded systems programmers), it becomes apparent. It's like they want to make embedded systems programming a point-n-click process.
Why does every congressman seem to feel that their accomplishments directly correlate with the number of bills they get passed?
They are constantly searching for so-called problems, and then they feel it is their duty to add a "patch" law to fix it -- almost always at the cost of freedom.
It's easy to see how they fall in this situation. Imagine you're a Senator after this terrorism act occurs. You feel that your people need you, and want action taken. After all, it is your job to legislate -- so why not find a remotely related source for the tragedy and try to fix it with Yet Another Bill? It's what all your Senators around you do, and it makes you look to be the good guy, furthering the advancement of your political career.
It is truly sad that this is how things seem to work. In my opinion, it would be much more preferable for congressmen to spend their time weeding out broken laws and refining existing ones to be more sane. There is a serious lack of ideology -- and an abundance of "patching" to a huge mess.
So far, nearly every response I've read criticizing ESR's remarks are pretty much the same -- "he's a wacko", "this is disgusting", "stick to software", etc.
Rather than things like this, and conspiring about personal agendas, could you give a legitimate argument against his piece? It's not very unreasonable at all.
Here's my take on his view in short:
Government restricts personal liberties of citizens for our "protection". Good citizens abide. Bad citizens bypass/ignore restrictions, leaving good citizens defenseless. Something is very wrong here, and ESR suggests that perhaps the restrictions shouldn't exist. Yesterday's incident is evidence of this scenario.
To the jerk with moderator points who has gone through this article and moderated down everyone who said anything bad about StarOffice, FUCK YOU.
There is a post by a guy who said "it's slow on my K6 266mhz, but I'll try it again when the new version comes out" and you moderated him as a "-1, troll"?
That moderator did the right thing. He was a troll. The line about trying it again when a new version comes out was just filler space attempting to make the troll less obvious. Detecting trolls is an art, and this one was still fairly obvious. "I think it's coded in Java" ??? Duh..
Re:Quality controllers?
on
MAME on X-Box
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· Score: 1
The X-box controllers are big, but that's not what makes them so horrible. The button placement is really poor, and the spacing is just off enough to make it unnatural to use.
Re:Xbox controllers are really crappy
on
MAME on X-Box
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· Score: 1
I have held the controller, and I think it's awful. Very awkward to hold and manipulate.
You can't really call that a fairer test. Fact is, there IS no truly fair test for comparing startup times.
For example, you could also demand that you start galeon's CORBA server interface before running it, which would result in galeon starting in less than a second.
1. Meridith Cable (local to Twin Cities)
2. MediaOne buys local company, cable modem service because MediaOne Express
3. MediaOne buys out RoadRunner, cable modem service becomes MediaOne RoadRunner
4. AT&T buys out MediaOne, cable modem service becomes AT&T BroadBand
And I must say, the service has gotten slightly (gradually) suckier with each buyout. I don't know if the two are related or not, but I'm still basically satisfied despite their lame customer service.
At least after AOL/TW take over AT&T's cable modem service (if they do anyways), there's no one left really to buy them out.
I read the article, and was ready to click "Next" for page 2, only to find that I had already read the entire thing. The article was advertised as a tutorial/howto document, yet I found "quotes" from developers in it (looked really out of place, almost as if a journalist was writing a technical tutorial rather than a competent teacher).
No mention of Glade, no mention of Kylix, or the Qt form designer. No mention of Python or Perl for beginners, and really nothing helpful at all.
Because sending me e-mail cost me money. I pay my ISP for access. And downloading spam takes time. Time that I'm paying for. Much like with junk faxes, the reciver has to pay for it.
Spam filter. Lots of ISPs probably have some even. Just as technology has made it easy for advertisers to spam people, technology has also made it easier to ignore them (you don't have to download the whole message before determining what it is... see the TOP POP3 command for example).
How would you like to receive collect phone calls WITHOUT approving them before hand.
I wouldn't.. of course, note that it's the phone company that setting the collect call policy, and not the government. It seems to work fine..
Do you honestly think I haven't heard this argument before, or thought of the analogous real-world situation? Obviously I've already considered this.
Perhaps you should have read the first sentence there more carefully. I'll repeat it again:
The only concept of "private property" on the Internet is through implementing security measures.
This makes the Internet special. Over time it's been generally agreed upon that we need some type of government to protect our rights and property in the real world. However, we can't assume the same to be true for the Internet.. in fact, I'd say the opposite seems to be true thus far.
Slashdot Mirror
You wouldn't want a person without a CS degree writing software; we shouldn't have folks without EE degrees designing power supplies.
That's a pretty ignorant attitude. Plenty of people professionally write software without a CS degree (either they have some unrelated degree, or no degree at all). Do you think everyone developing the Linux kernel has a CS degree? Not even close. The fact is, programming isn't all that uncommon of a hobby, and people can get started at surprisingly young ages. It doesn't take long for them to get to the point where they're qualified to write good software if they do things right.
The statement is more true for "non-EEs shouldn't be designing power supplies", but still false.
Like GaTech, the UW-Madison CS department used to have strict "no collaboration" rules and policies for intro level CS courses. They had code analysis tools to find copied code among student's assignment submissions.
They found that cheating was so rampant, it could not be enforced. They got sick of dealing with it.
The new policy (which has been in effect for a couple years at least), is that collaboration is permitted, but assignments make up a smaller portion of your overall grade now.
Typically, there are ~3 big exams counting for ~90 % of your final grade. The last ~10% is made up of several assignments given throughout the semester (YMMV depending on the course).
The rationale is that if you collaborate in a bad way (to the extent that you're not learning the material), you will surely fail when exam time comes. Seemed fair to me, though I personally never collaborated (didn't know anyone, didn't trust others abilities, etc.)
We can't be sure of his motives. I think you're giving him too much credit, and you think it was all intended just to get people to flame him. Though there's no way we can be sure of who's right, this STILL leaves two main possibilities for the two cases:
1) He believes people were genuinely tricked by the fake stories. He sees some flames and assumes that's what they're about. He laughs at them for being stupid enough to fall for it, and enjoys the fact that he thinks he fooled some lamers.
2) He posted a ridiculous amount of lame stories on purpose, in hopes of pissing his readers off. By being extremely annoying, he could get the flames he so dearly wants.
If 1) is true, then he's pretty naive considering that's not what people are mad about at all.
If 2) is true, then it's still stupid. Trying really hard to just be annoying is not funny. It's just that -- annoying.
"Thanks for the usual April Fools Day flame- every year people fall for it. It never ceases to amaze me how angry and venomous, yet utterly clueless a few people can be despite the blatant obviousness of the joke."
Right. That's the point. This line shows that CmdrTaco believes that all the flames he got today were people who were "fooled". You know, something like "gosh darn you, I really thought Linus was retiring from kernel development. You bastard!!!".
But rather, the flames were "stop this crap, it's extremely lame".
I'm still right.
I think you're reading into it too much and giving the editors way too much credit.
It simply wasn't funny. At all.
I actually wasn't concerned with being able to use it so much. I was more interested in hearing Red Hat's rationale for no longer including it.
:/
Although, with the number of people out there who feel constrained to use whatever their distro provides, I can see why you would have posted this
Anyone else notice that there are no longer gcc3 packages included (as with RH 7.2, although it was optional).
Skipjack includes only an updated version of 2.96.
The parent post was cut and pasted from here.
I probably shouldn't have said "user-space applications programmers", but just applications programmers.. since that really has varied.
Initially, I would have agreed with your assessment.
But, as per my comment I posted above, I would argue that this is only true for the current embedded software engineers. There was probably a time when user-space applications programmers were extremely talented and technical, and made their own choices. Today this is obviously not the case. If some of these guys are still around today, I wouldn't be surprised if they think back about the good ol' days when programmers were real programmers.
My theory is that if Microsoft has its way, the same thing will happen in the embedded world someday. You'll have clueless "Microsoft Certified Embedded Systems Engineers" providing "100% Microsoft Solutions", and they will be numerous.
I would like to think that the amount of technical ability requied for embedded development is too great to allow this to happen. But then again, the user-space application programmers several years ago probably thought the same thing when they were squeezing every ounce of performance out with hand-optimized assembly.
Anyone else notice how MS seemingly wants to do for the embedded world what they did for applications development? Today they have an army of relatively clueless VB developers who supports Windows.
If you look at the kinds of things they're offering (a 'windows embedded studio', with wizard looking things, MCSE/cookbook type classes for wannabe embedded systems programmers), it becomes apparent. It's like they want to make embedded systems programming a point-n-click process.
God help us..
Err, not really. Crusoe is still very much synchronous design. Changing that is extremely non-trivial.
Why does every congressman seem to feel that their accomplishments directly correlate with the number of bills they get passed?
They are constantly searching for so-called problems, and then they feel it is their duty to add a "patch" law to fix it -- almost always at the cost of freedom.
It's easy to see how they fall in this situation. Imagine you're a Senator after this terrorism act occurs. You feel that your people need you, and want action taken. After all, it is your job to legislate -- so why not find a remotely related source for the tragedy and try to fix it with Yet Another Bill? It's what all your Senators around you do, and it makes you look to be the good guy, furthering the advancement of your political career.
It is truly sad that this is how things seem to work. In my opinion, it would be much more preferable for congressmen to spend their time weeding out broken laws and refining existing ones to be more sane. There is a serious lack of ideology -- and an abundance of "patching" to a huge mess.
Am I alone here?
So far, nearly every response I've read criticizing ESR's remarks are pretty much the same -- "he's a wacko", "this is disgusting", "stick to software", etc.
Rather than things like this, and conspiring about personal agendas, could you give a legitimate argument against his piece? It's not very unreasonable at all.
Here's my take on his view in short:
Government restricts personal liberties of citizens for our "protection". Good citizens abide. Bad citizens bypass/ignore restrictions, leaving good citizens defenseless. Something is very wrong here, and ESR suggests that perhaps the restrictions shouldn't exist. Yesterday's incident is evidence of this scenario.
This is NOT saying "everyone should carry a gun".
I've heard that USB 2.0 is considerably more taxing on the processor compared to FireWire.
How come? Mozilla is written in C, KDE and Konqueror - C++ - both are totally different creatures
Mozilla is very much written in C++.
To the jerk with moderator points who has gone through this article and moderated down everyone who said anything bad about StarOffice, FUCK YOU.
There is a post by a guy who said "it's slow on my K6 266mhz, but I'll try it again when the new version comes out" and you moderated him as a "-1, troll"?
That moderator did the right thing. He was a troll. The line about trying it again when a new version comes out was just filler space attempting to make the troll less obvious. Detecting trolls is an art, and this one was still fairly obvious. "I think it's coded in Java" ??? Duh..
The X-box controllers are big, but that's not what makes them so horrible. The button placement is really poor, and the spacing is just off enough to make it unnatural to use.
I have held the controller, and I think it's awful. Very awkward to hold and manipulate.
You can't really call that a fairer test. Fact is, there IS no truly fair test for comparing startup times.
For example, you could also demand that you start galeon's CORBA server interface before running it, which would result in galeon starting in less than a second.
1. Meridith Cable (local to Twin Cities)
2. MediaOne buys local company, cable modem service because MediaOne Express
3. MediaOne buys out RoadRunner, cable modem service becomes MediaOne RoadRunner
4. AT&T buys out MediaOne, cable modem service becomes AT&T BroadBand
And I must say, the service has gotten slightly (gradually) suckier with each buyout. I don't know if the two are related or not, but I'm still basically satisfied despite their lame customer service.
At least after AOL/TW take over AT&T's cable modem service (if they do anyways), there's no one left really to buy them out.
No kidding.
I read the article, and was ready to click "Next" for page 2, only to find that I had already read the entire thing. The article was advertised as a tutorial/howto document, yet I found "quotes" from developers in it (looked really out of place, almost as if a journalist was writing a technical tutorial rather than a competent teacher).
No mention of Glade, no mention of Kylix, or the Qt form designer. No mention of Python or Perl for beginners, and really nothing helpful at all.
Why exactly did Slashdot link this piece of crap?
now now, no need to moderate this guy down. it's always nice to hear from the gay community.
i'm willing to bet your name is dobey or timecop though.
Because sending me e-mail cost me money. I pay my ISP for access. And downloading spam takes time. Time that I'm paying for. Much like with junk faxes, the reciver has to pay for it.
Spam filter. Lots of ISPs probably have some even. Just as technology has made it easy for advertisers to spam people, technology has also made it easier to ignore them (you don't have to download the whole message before determining what it is... see the TOP POP3 command for example).
How would you like to receive collect phone calls WITHOUT approving them before hand.
I wouldn't.. of course, note that it's the phone company that setting the collect call policy, and not the government. It seems to work fine..
Do you honestly think I haven't heard this argument before, or thought of the analogous real-world situation? Obviously I've already considered this.
Perhaps you should have read the first sentence there more carefully. I'll repeat it again:
The only concept of "private property" on the Internet is through implementing security measures.
This makes the Internet special. Over time it's been generally agreed upon that we need some type of government to protect our rights and property in the real world. However, we can't assume the same to be true for the Internet.. in fact, I'd say the opposite seems to be true thus far.