" I'm not seeing this "dot.com" flight that's being reported here, really, or if I am, it's only the worst who are fleeing."
Yeah, 'cause the good ones managed to get several months severance pay, and don't have to go out searching quite so quickly, they can take that vacation they've been looking for...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
I'm glad that engineers are headed back to normal companies. Granted, often large companies (Compaq, IBM, Motorola, Honeywell to name a few) have their own problems, but they usually have some corporate sense in product development, more than startups at any rate. While Dilbert-isms do occur at large companies, at least some advances have been made. If IBM hadn't decided to tinker with the PC when they did, I doubt we'd have the kind of industry we have now anyway. If Xerox hadn't designed (but not built) their GUI-based computer, we probably wouldn't have video cards with more ram than my whole computer had 4 years ago, and if Intel hadn't created the 4004 I shudder to think what computers would have become.
Small companies do contribute, look at what id did for the gaming environment, they were the first to have a popular multiplayer game in 3D available, but these are the exceptions more often than the rule. I've worked at small companies that were small because the owner wouldn't get his head out of his ass and actually let his 'creative people' be creative. Many of my friends worked for dotcoms, and they've described the same problems. Hopefully this craze will not come back in this same fashion EVER again...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
"It's too bad that this kind of theft will probably scare people away from online purchases even when it's a database that's cracked rather than their transactions."
It's even WORSE when databases are cracked! I can easily call my credit card company when I have a dispute to a charge or suspect my credit card is screwed, but if millions of card numbers are stolen, then millions of people have to deal with it. Credit card companies probably don't like having to notify or handle millions of irate customers with disputed charges, and probably don't like having to re-print new cards for all of these cardholders. This is really sad, that this was even able to happen, and that Egghead left the credit card numbers on their server. If they'd be backed up to another computer that only has a hard connection while the backup is in place then this would much more difficult.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
We at the Great News Network present the official transcript from the room where the satellite was being constructed:
Bubba: "Hey Jeb, you got that there SIMM that I need fer the new sat?"
Jeb: "Yeah Bubba, Ah got 'er right here... CATCH!" (throws 8 MB 30 pin SIMM to Bubba, it bounces off of Bubba's head and lands in a cup of cola)
Bubba: "Awwww, dang, what are we gonna do now?! The dern thing fell in the pop and sunk in!"
(Jeb picks up the cup and pours the cola out to retrieve the SIMM)
Jeb: "Just keep quiet about this, maybe none of them controllers will notice, here, get me that there can of WD-40 to clean this pop up..."
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
"If they pull the site again, would that be a violation of the GPL? And could the NSA be sued over it?"
nope... you can download the source code right now. It's then your responsibility for what you do with keeping the code around, not theirs. If Linus wants their code, he needs to download it while it is still there, and if he misses out and they pull both the source and binaries, that's tough luck.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Re:I still like the pdQ Smartphone better...
on
Visor Phone Released
·
· Score: 1
Kyocera Wireless acquired that part of Qualcomm... _NICE_ phones by what I saw...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Not to sound like a troll here, but if your computer manages to boot, what does it matter what bootloader is on there? Granted, that's a 'this is the way we have always done it' answer, but seriously, I don't reboot unless the power goes out, and the power company here is relatively stable. I've got lilo configured and working, and my system boots up just fine, and if I do need to do a kernel upgrade I just add a new kernel and map to/boot, edit lilo.conf (copying the existing lines and changing what little needs to be changed), liloing it, and reboot. It's not rocket science here, and while better ones may exist, I'm not going to waste time changing to one, when it already works. I'd rather see linux coders work with more trippy stuff like USB and Firewire and Video drivers and that sort of thing than lilo... It's not "perfect", but it works quite well.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
I don't think so... until laws are changed that prevent patenting of genetic sequences (which is a crock in itself), I won't help their creation when it means that I cannot afford treatment with them...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
A new codec is great, especially if new nifty features are created, with one exception, that being when multiple different codecs that are very similar in end behaviour are created. One can look at similar products both having an unusual effect on the market in terms of Gnome and KDE, neither of which is a bad product, both doing roughly the same thing, with slightly different ways to achieve the same result. Unfortunately, neither one blows the other out of the water, so I as a user have to keep different sets of stuff on my computer to ensure compatibility.
In this new codec, it sounds nice, but I'm curious as to what features, features that will actually matter, will seperate it from DivX. If there really aren't any then wouldn't it just make sense to approach the DivX people and see if they are interested in revising the codec? I remember when QuickTime and Intel's AVI fought it out, and at the time I was using them the Quicktime codec seemed to blow chunks compared to the AVI, but the AVI format wouldn't play cross-platform. now, we have MP3 format, which is nice, cross platform, pretty good compression, no watermarking capabilities, etc, with the only drawback being the whole royalties thing. Microsoft introduced their proprietary format, which from what I've seen is not taking off. The lesser of evils here is clear.
I don't see how DivX and this new one really have major differences, in the end, that will affect me, but I'm not an expert. What I do see getting ready to develop is two formats fighting to be 'dominant', and neither one winning, instead fragmenting the users similar to how KDE and Gnome, vi and Emacs, etc have, and making people coding universal players stock up on asprin. If people are willing to rally behind a standard that is 'good enough', without settling for crap and staying with something actually worthwhile, it's okay if it's not "bleeding edge", after all, most people aren't there anyway...
</rant>
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
... because it looked and felt more like a phone. Don't get me wrong, from what I saw looking at their site, that's a really really nice device for the Handspring units, but unfortunately there didn't seem to be much in stating if it would work with other Palm style units or not (granted, I didn't comb the entire site for every page, but nothing stood out). I have and old Pilot 5000, and I seriously doubt something like this would work, and I wonder if it would work on any of the other non-Handspring models. At least the pdQ Smartphone was it's own PDA in addition to the phone, with all the nifty features like a hotsync, IR, address/phone book, etc. and still had that flip down cover for protection from the elements, and I think that it had a dial-keypad on it to make it useful without ever getting out a stylus (but I could be wrong, it's been a while since I looked at it). I wish the pdQ Smartphone had taken off, I'd have liked to have seen it like, in stores or something...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
I'm not really good with physics on the scale that is required here, so I'm wondering a few things, things like what mass, or an increase in mass, would do to/for the ISS. Would an increase in mass the size of Mir help the new station with maintaining orbit at all? It wouldn't even need to be powered on or environmentally connected to the new station, but if increased mass would help, and if it would make sense to spend the money now to move it instead of moving ISS several times later (assuming that mass would be a help), wouldn't it work?Br>
Another thing that is somewhat worrying is the 'space fungus' problem that is mentioned. Is the cause or origin of the fungus known to be something we tracked up on a mission, or did it come from somewhere else? If we brought it up, wouldn't it be prudent to know how it affects systems, how it spreads, and how to potentially eradicate it? If people are going to be living in the station, and if they really don't want to have to evacuate for some really dumb reason, we're going to need to know this. It seems like it would be a good learning experience to try to remove the fungus from Mir, with the idea that if it works, we have a technique, and if it fails, well, we lost a piece of junk that was going to be abandoned anyway.
One last thing that I wonder about is if Mir is still considered to be space-worthy in terms of mantaining atmospheric pressure and the like. If it is, or if it would be reasonable to make it such, wouldn't having it around for a backup plan be prudent? Assuming that it could be kept something like 100 meters away from ISS, wouldn't it be useful for such things as relatively hazardous materials (from/for experiments) storage, or emergency rations, or emergency fuel, or something? Turning Mir into a barge might be a little weird, but if the fungus doesn't eat everything and if the station doesn't depressurize, it could be useful to keep supplies around longer.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
and it sometimes was a pain for the TV stuff. I think that I once may have gotten it into TV mode in Linux by setting it in Windows (back when I dual-booted), and loading the UMSDOS linux stuff. I've since gotten rid of the card in favour of a Guillemot MaxiGamer Phoenix, so I won't be able to help too much more. If it's absolutely essential that you get TV out, you might try running Linux under a VMWare session in Windows NT/2000, and seeing if the driver for VMWare will not jack up the TV out. "Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Didn't the last time these two fought the consumer end up with Java? I remember the HELL from IE and Netscapes 3 and up, how no Java and/or Javascript seemed to want to run on both. As much as I generally like Sun and generally dislike Microsoft, maybe NEITHER should define this spec. Maybe someone else *cough*ANSI*cough* could potentially do a better job. Look at the various older languages, like C and C++... the ANSI variants compile with little to no porting on dozens of platforms, with behaviour being different only through the rest of the platform, not through the compiler. Obviously the natures of these languages are very different, but the idea can be applied similarly. If ANSI can't/won't do it, maybe some consortium (like, oh, the w3 or something) should, and if a company fails to adhere to the standards then that company loses its voice in the consortium. Regardless of how this gets mediated, something needs to be done, 'cause I don't want tohave to worry about "Microsoft XML" and "Sun XML"...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
If Linux is used in registers, there has to be some form of UI, even if it's not one that is really seen. I'd be more apt to think that they'd be using X, everyone from the DMV (at least, here) to the grocery store has been installing new registers and/or customer service terminals that use a GUI, and if this is indeed what they are doing, they could add to development. Remember, if the registers are all Linux, there could be use for the server being Linux, or at least something UNIX. If the server is something UNIX and the company writing the Point of Sale, for the Linux box, is also writing the store management and region management software for the inventory control, accounts payable/receivable, payroll and other HR, etc, then they might want to develop it ALL on the same platform. It would be cheaper for the developers, they don't have to purchase costly development tools, and everyone develops for the same platform so workarounds or methods for one app could be applied to another. Depending on the contract that Home Depot has with the software developer, it could be easier to maintain the system too, since remote management tools actually work for Linux. This at least means that app development will occur, and likely some tweaks on window managers, video drivers (depending on what kind of stuff they want to use), and possibly installation of some of the GPL or at least free office suites, to let these managers use their adminstrative computers for basic stuff like word processing and spreadsheets, which could also be integrated into the system. There are lots of possible benefits. They might just not seem incredibly obvious. "Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
I tried to buy a 3/8" 20 threads per inch nut there for my car shocks (the old shocks had a thicker thread bolt) and the moron employee either didn't want to help me find the part, or he didn't know how to find the part. They're really going down hill... "Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Most of the customers (like, all but one) didn't even have a clue what was in their computer. When they have such a lack of knowledge then maybe they get what they deserve, but go pick up your newspaper, and turn to the section where the cheapass stores list their computers. $599 computer? $499 computer? that's what usually show up here, and these don't have MSN rebates or the like. The tech shops buy the cheap parts because the consumer doesn't know that a motherboard with video, sound network, modem (Etc) integrated will be unrepairable if something breaks, let alone that the board is shoddy to begin with, and as long as tech shops want to take this board and turn around and mark it up what percent they do, someone will supply it. Out of the three different service companies I worked for, only one was run by a technically minded person. The other two were run by 'businessmen', people basically with a business to make money who didn't really care how they made their money, but they got a degree in business and dammit, they were gonna make a buck. They were going to buy those cheapass parts en masse, mark them up sometimes as high as 30%, and sell them, one year warranty, period. Suckers would come flying in to buy, because they were cheap. These 'businessmen' didn't listen to us techs, they just bought the crap and made us deal with the irate customer, and would come out when the customer was yelling with the problem and be apolegetic and give them a deal or something. Yeah, a good computer might sell for $3500 and make the company $800 in profit, but a bunch of $599 computers with only $300 worth of parts would sell like hot cakes. Since someone has to supply the parts, they get made more and more cheaply, so the cost of QA and engineering doesn't have to be amortized through the profits nearly as much, and the junk supplier makes more money. The one hurt in all of this is the consumer. I sure as hell am not going to trust a company that claims to be a PC company, not after what I was made to do to customers.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
... are not designed to work around quality control.
If you work in software, you want non-obvious bugs that are eventually found and require the $59.95 (or higher) upgrade version, or require all new purchases. These keep your revenue stream coming in for a long, long time, and let you technically get away with calling your release a 'new product' without actually changing many of the features (See Microsoft Office).
If hardware is your game, you want your hardware to cease to function after two to three years, right after the warranty runs out. That way, the customer has to take their computer into Ma and Pa's computer repair, and Ma and/or Pa has to try to fix it, and it turns out that the new video card for your computer needs a different bus, so you need a new motherboard, so you need a new processor, and you need faster ram, etc, and in the end you are screwed. Everyone in the industry benefits from everyone else making shoddy hardware. The customer is mad in the end, but what can (s)he do about it?
I worked field/bench service for 2 1/2 years, and had way too many of these types of problems to deal with. PCChips, Amptron, the now somewhat defunct Packard Bell, HP (pavilion series), Compaq (Presario series), and Acers were the biggest offenders. The Amptron and PCChips boards (which are from the same manufacturer) were the ones that we carried, because unless the customer asked for better, they wouldn't know the difference and sooner or later they'd be back. If they went to someone else because our hardware died, well, the chances were likely that a customer of another shop would come to us. Everyone juggled everyone else's customers, and in the end we all made a marginal profit off of screwing people perpetually.
I refuse to buy components that I don't have experience with now. I work in a QA department, with mostly industrial PCs, and of all that caught me off guard, the cheap SIS AGP video cards are actually pretty damn good for 2d uses. The obvious ones like ASUS and ABIT and 3Com and such stand out, and we get to really pound stuff. If you really want to know what to put in your PC, don't ask your friendly neighbourhood service technician, ask someone who works QA with servers and high end workstations. That way, you'll get a real answer.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Slashdot Mirror
" I'm not seeing this "dot.com" flight that's being reported here, really, or if I am, it's only the worst who are fleeing."
Yeah, 'cause the good ones managed to get several months severance pay, and don't have to go out searching quite so quickly, they can take that vacation they've been looking for...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
"If you were building The Matrix: NT or Unix? (I thought so :)"
NT actually, so it'd be as evil as I could get it to be!
But, A/UX (Apple Unix) could be a good choice as well, if I could get it to run on anything, it also falls in to that 'twisted' category...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
I'm glad that engineers are headed back to normal companies. Granted, often large companies (Compaq, IBM, Motorola, Honeywell to name a few) have their own problems, but they usually have some corporate sense in product development, more than startups at any rate. While Dilbert-isms do occur at large companies, at least some advances have been made. If IBM hadn't decided to tinker with the PC when they did, I doubt we'd have the kind of industry we have now anyway. If Xerox hadn't designed (but not built) their GUI-based computer, we probably wouldn't have video cards with more ram than my whole computer had 4 years ago, and if Intel hadn't created the 4004 I shudder to think what computers would have become.
Small companies do contribute, look at what id did for the gaming environment, they were the first to have a popular multiplayer game in 3D available, but these are the exceptions more often than the rule. I've worked at small companies that were small because the owner wouldn't get his head out of his ass and actually let his 'creative people' be creative. Many of my friends worked for dotcoms, and they've described the same problems. Hopefully this craze will not come back in this same fashion EVER again...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
"It's too bad that this kind of theft will probably scare people away from online purchases even when it's a database that's cracked rather than their transactions."
It's even WORSE when databases are cracked! I can easily call my credit card company when I have a dispute to a charge or suspect my credit card is screwed, but if millions of card numbers are stolen, then millions of people have to deal with it. Credit card companies probably don't like having to notify or handle millions of irate customers with disputed charges, and probably don't like having to re-print new cards for all of these cardholders. This is really sad, that this was even able to happen, and that Egghead left the credit card numbers on their server. If they'd be backed up to another computer that only has a hard connection while the backup is in place then this would much more difficult.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
We at the Great News Network present the official transcript from the room where the satellite was being constructed:
Bubba: "Hey Jeb, you got that there SIMM that I need fer the new sat?"
Jeb: "Yeah Bubba, Ah got 'er right here... CATCH!"
(throws 8 MB 30 pin SIMM to Bubba, it bounces off of Bubba's head and lands in a cup of cola)
Bubba: "Awwww, dang, what are we gonna do now?! The dern thing fell in the pop and sunk in!"
(Jeb picks up the cup and pours the cola out to retrieve the SIMM)
Jeb: "Just keep quiet about this, maybe none of them controllers will notice, here, get me that there can of WD-40 to clean this pop up..."
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
"If they pull the site again, would that be a violation of the GPL? And could the NSA be sued over it?"
nope... you can download the source code right now. It's then your responsibility for what you do with keeping the code around, not theirs. If Linus wants their code, he needs to download it while it is still there, and if he misses out and they pull both the source and binaries, that's tough luck.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Kyocera Wireless acquired that part of Qualcomm... _NICE_ phones by what I saw...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Not to sound like a troll here, but if your computer manages to boot, what does it matter what bootloader is on there? Granted, that's a 'this is the way we have always done it' answer, but seriously, I don't reboot unless the power goes out, and the power company here is relatively stable. I've got lilo configured and working, and my system boots up just fine, and if I do need to do a kernel upgrade I just add a new kernel and map to /boot, edit lilo.conf (copying the existing lines and changing what little needs to be changed), liloing it, and reboot. It's not rocket science here, and while better ones may exist, I'm not going to waste time changing to one, when it already works. I'd rather see linux coders work with more trippy stuff like USB and Firewire and Video drivers and that sort of thing than lilo... It's not "perfect", but it works quite well.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
"And you thought mir had problems before!!!:) I'm sure one of the excuses for needing beer in space is to "improve their vision"....:)"
How else do you think they can convince them to go up there?
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
They aren't the same thing... DivX is a new codec, DVIX is an old, bad, dumb DVD method that allowed for that stupid pay per play stuff...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
They are NOT the same thing... It's an entirely new beast...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
I don't think so... until laws are changed that prevent patenting of genetic sequences (which is a crock in itself), I won't help their creation when it means that I cannot afford treatment with them...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
<rant>
A new codec is great, especially if new nifty features are created, with one exception, that being when multiple different codecs that are very similar in end behaviour are created. One can look at similar products both having an unusual effect on the market in terms of Gnome and KDE, neither of which is a bad product, both doing roughly the same thing, with slightly different ways to achieve the same result. Unfortunately, neither one blows the other out of the water, so I as a user have to keep different sets of stuff on my computer to ensure compatibility.
In this new codec, it sounds nice, but I'm curious as to what features, features that will actually matter, will seperate it from DivX. If there really aren't any then wouldn't it just make sense to approach the DivX people and see if they are interested in revising the codec? I remember when QuickTime and Intel's AVI fought it out, and at the time I was using them the Quicktime codec seemed to blow chunks compared to the AVI, but the AVI format wouldn't play cross-platform. now, we have MP3 format, which is nice, cross platform, pretty good compression, no watermarking capabilities, etc, with the only drawback being the whole royalties thing. Microsoft introduced their proprietary format, which from what I've seen is not taking off. The lesser of evils here is clear.
I don't see how DivX and this new one really have major differences, in the end, that will affect me, but I'm not an expert. What I do see getting ready to develop is two formats fighting to be 'dominant', and neither one winning, instead fragmenting the users similar to how KDE and Gnome, vi and Emacs, etc have, and making people coding universal players stock up on asprin. If people are willing to rally behind a standard that is 'good enough', without settling for crap and staying with something actually worthwhile, it's okay if it's not "bleeding edge", after all, most people aren't there anyway...
</rant>
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
... when they have to retract all of those "Public Safety Medals of Honor" when the act is struck down as unconstitutional...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
... because it looked and felt more like a phone. Don't get me wrong, from what I saw looking at their site, that's a really really nice device for the Handspring units, but unfortunately there didn't seem to be much in stating if it would work with other Palm style units or not (granted, I didn't comb the entire site for every page, but nothing stood out). I have and old Pilot 5000, and I seriously doubt something like this would work, and I wonder if it would work on any of the other non-Handspring models. At least the pdQ Smartphone was it's own PDA in addition to the phone, with all the nifty features like a hotsync, IR, address/phone book, etc. and still had that flip down cover for protection from the elements, and I think that it had a dial-keypad on it to make it useful without ever getting out a stylus (but I could be wrong, it's been a while since I looked at it). I wish the pdQ Smartphone had taken off, I'd have liked to have seen it like, in stores or something...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
I'm not really good with physics on the scale that is required here, so I'm wondering a few things, things like what mass, or an increase in mass, would do to/for the ISS. Would an increase in mass the size of Mir help the new station with maintaining orbit at all? It wouldn't even need to be powered on or environmentally connected to the new station, but if increased mass would help, and if it would make sense to spend the money now to move it instead of moving ISS several times later (assuming that mass would be a help), wouldn't it work?Br>
Another thing that is somewhat worrying is the 'space fungus' problem that is mentioned. Is the cause or origin of the fungus known to be something we tracked up on a mission, or did it come from somewhere else? If we brought it up, wouldn't it be prudent to know how it affects systems, how it spreads, and how to potentially eradicate it? If people are going to be living in the station, and if they really don't want to have to evacuate for some really dumb reason, we're going to need to know this. It seems like it would be a good learning experience to try to remove the fungus from Mir, with the idea that if it works, we have a technique, and if it fails, well, we lost a piece of junk that was going to be abandoned anyway.
One last thing that I wonder about is if Mir is still considered to be space-worthy in terms of mantaining atmospheric pressure and the like. If it is, or if it would be reasonable to make it such, wouldn't having it around for a backup plan be prudent? Assuming that it could be kept something like 100 meters away from ISS, wouldn't it be useful for such things as relatively hazardous materials (from/for experiments) storage, or emergency rations, or emergency fuel, or something? Turning Mir into a barge might be a little weird, but if the fungus doesn't eat everything and if the station doesn't depressurize, it could be useful to keep supplies around longer.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
and it sometimes was a pain for the TV stuff. I think that I once may have gotten it into TV mode in Linux by setting it in Windows (back when I dual-booted), and loading the UMSDOS linux stuff. I've since gotten rid of the card in favour of a Guillemot MaxiGamer Phoenix, so I won't be able to help too much more. If it's absolutely essential that you get TV out, you might try running Linux under a VMWare session in Windows NT/2000, and seeing if the driver for VMWare will not jack up the TV out.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Didn't the last time these two fought the consumer end up with Java? I remember the HELL from IE and Netscapes 3 and up, how no Java and/or Javascript seemed to want to run on both. As much as I generally like Sun and generally dislike Microsoft, maybe NEITHER should define this spec. Maybe someone else *cough*ANSI*cough* could potentially do a better job. Look at the various older languages, like C and C++... the ANSI variants compile with little to no porting on dozens of platforms, with behaviour being different only through the rest of the platform, not through the compiler. Obviously the natures of these languages are very different, but the idea can be applied similarly. If ANSI can't/won't do it, maybe some consortium (like, oh, the w3 or something) should, and if a company fails to adhere to the standards then that company loses its voice in the consortium. Regardless of how this gets mediated, something needs to be done, 'cause I don't want tohave to worry about "Microsoft XML" and "Sun XML"...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
error lpt: the printer is on fire
Put that one in text to speech and tell us what the reaction is!
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
If you want to test it, what better was is there than slashdot?
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
If Linux is used in registers, there has to be some form of UI, even if it's not one that is really seen. I'd be more apt to think that they'd be using X, everyone from the DMV (at least, here) to the grocery store has been installing new registers and/or customer service terminals that use a GUI, and if this is indeed what they are doing, they could add to development. Remember, if the registers are all Linux, there could be use for the server being Linux, or at least something UNIX. If the server is something UNIX and the company writing the Point of Sale, for the Linux box, is also writing the store management and region management software for the inventory control, accounts payable/receivable, payroll and other HR, etc, then they might want to develop it ALL on the same platform. It would be cheaper for the developers, they don't have to purchase costly development tools, and everyone develops for the same platform so workarounds or methods for one app could be applied to another. Depending on the contract that Home Depot has with the software developer, it could be easier to maintain the system too, since remote management tools actually work for Linux. This at least means that app development will occur, and likely some tweaks on window managers, video drivers (depending on what kind of stuff they want to use), and possibly installation of some of the GPL or at least free office suites, to let these managers use their adminstrative computers for basic stuff like word processing and spreadsheets, which could also be integrated into the system. There are lots of possible benefits. They might just not seem incredibly obvious.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
I tried to buy a 3/8" 20 threads per inch nut there for my car shocks (the old shocks had a thicker thread bolt) and the moron employee either didn't want to help me find the part, or he didn't know how to find the part. They're really going down hill...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Replacing that many Sun boxen with one IBM/Linux box? cool!
Okay, where's their surplus? I wanna get me some new Sparcs!
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Most of the customers (like, all but one) didn't even have a clue what was in their computer. When they have such a lack of knowledge then maybe they get what they deserve, but go pick up your newspaper, and turn to the section where the cheapass stores list their computers. $599 computer? $499 computer? that's what usually show up here, and these don't have MSN rebates or the like. The tech shops buy the cheap parts because the consumer doesn't know that a motherboard with video, sound network, modem (Etc) integrated will be unrepairable if something breaks, let alone that the board is shoddy to begin with, and as long as tech shops want to take this board and turn around and mark it up what percent they do, someone will supply it. Out of the three different service companies I worked for, only one was run by a technically minded person. The other two were run by 'businessmen', people basically with a business to make money who didn't really care how they made their money, but they got a degree in business and dammit, they were gonna make a buck. They were going to buy those cheapass parts en masse, mark them up sometimes as high as 30%, and sell them, one year warranty, period. Suckers would come flying in to buy, because they were cheap. These 'businessmen' didn't listen to us techs, they just bought the crap and made us deal with the irate customer, and would come out when the customer was yelling with the problem and be apolegetic and give them a deal or something. Yeah, a good computer might sell for $3500 and make the company $800 in profit, but a bunch of $599 computers with only $300 worth of parts would sell like hot cakes. Since someone has to supply the parts, they get made more and more cheaply, so the cost of QA and engineering doesn't have to be amortized through the profits nearly as much, and the junk supplier makes more money. The one hurt in all of this is the consumer. I sure as hell am not going to trust a company that claims to be a PC company, not after what I was made to do to customers.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
... are not designed to work around quality control.
If you work in software, you want non-obvious bugs that are eventually found and require the $59.95 (or higher) upgrade version, or require all new purchases. These keep your revenue stream coming in for a long, long time, and let you technically get away with calling your release a 'new product' without actually changing many of the features (See Microsoft Office).
If hardware is your game, you want your hardware to cease to function after two to three years, right after the warranty runs out. That way, the customer has to take their computer into Ma and Pa's computer repair, and Ma and/or Pa has to try to fix it, and it turns out that the new video card for your computer needs a different bus, so you need a new motherboard, so you need a new processor, and you need faster ram, etc, and in the end you are screwed. Everyone in the industry benefits from everyone else making shoddy hardware. The customer is mad in the end, but what can (s)he do about it?
I worked field/bench service for 2 1/2 years, and had way too many of these types of problems to deal with. PCChips, Amptron, the now somewhat defunct Packard Bell, HP (pavilion series), Compaq (Presario series), and Acers were the biggest offenders. The Amptron and PCChips boards (which are from the same manufacturer) were the ones that we carried, because unless the customer asked for better, they wouldn't know the difference and sooner or later they'd be back. If they went to someone else because our hardware died, well, the chances were likely that a customer of another shop would come to us. Everyone juggled everyone else's customers, and in the end we all made a marginal profit off of screwing people perpetually.
I refuse to buy components that I don't have experience with now. I work in a QA department, with mostly industrial PCs, and of all that caught me off guard, the cheap SIS AGP video cards are actually pretty damn good for 2d uses. The obvious ones like ASUS and ABIT and 3Com and such stand out, and we get to really pound stuff. If you really want to know what to put in your PC, don't ask your friendly neighbourhood service technician, ask someone who works QA with servers and high end workstations. That way, you'll get a real answer.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."