Web-based communication is largely interpreted, as opposed to compiled. Are there any successful examples of high-performance interpreted 3D out there?
According to Wired, Bin Laden didn't use cryptography so much as he used steganography. Story here. It's more creative than cryptography because it embeds a message within another message.
Get somebody who knows how to copyedit and knows a thing or two about programming, and pump out as much stuff as possible. Locate it centrally on a website somewhere so that anybody can access it immediately. Accept feedback for corrections, suggestions and examples.
Take a look at PHP's website (currently they have a sympathy message on their homepage, you can progress from there). It's support section is great, and many people can help themselves through it.
Don't be naive. There is a reason that the United States isn't a popular nation worldwide. Some group will likely claim responsibility for this, and when they do, you can bet that this was about retribution.
My heart breaks for the people killed in these attacks, but please don't rush to stupid conclusions about what must be done in the emotional rush of the moment. Any rampant retalliatory acts the U.S. government engages in will likely be revisited upon its citizens, in much the same manner as what happened today.
People are already saying that this was an act of war. You've got to understand that many nations feel that they've been at war with the U.S. long before this first strike back.
Actually, the point of the joke was that they're announcing version 2 of a product whose version 1 hasn't even been released yet. So, the original moderator was right on saying that it was flamebait.
Now, the REAL question is whether or not THIS post will get modded +1 Informative.
1. If you can help it, try not to fall in love with features that only proprietary companies have. If there's something in MS Word that you want but that no other suite has, begin lobbying the crap out of StarOffice, KOffice, Gnome Office, etc. to get that feature.
2. Learn Python. It's rapidly becoming Linux's answer to VBA. Since you've already mentioned that you're writing macros for Excel, you might be interested to know that KSpread can be scripted using several different languages too. Go into your macros and figure out how you might go about translating them into a different language.
3. Learn XML, and figure out how to convert your existing data to and from XML. You can justify this to management easily by saying it's a good safety backup and migration technique just in case something horrible happens. The truth is, if you map out your data properly you could probably dump something from an MS solution and rebuild it using a non-MS solution that has some scripting capabilities.
4. Come up with five practical (ie: non-MS bashing) reasons why you don't need.NET. Keep them on hand when the obligatory meeting happens exploring the issue. Figure out what makes.NET attractive and come up with counter-proposals for those features.
5. Learn Samba. At least this way you can integrate different systems and don't need to settle for all your machines being MS-based just because you can't help but have one that's MS-based.
6. Familiarize yourself with different options starting now. Make it an on-going project for yourself to only work with non-MS products. For instance, bring in a Linux machine and do all your word-processing on WordPerfect8. If they won't let you do it at work, try simulating office procedures at home. You can't expect that your company will want to switch over if you can't yourself. If nothing else, the idea of migration to a non-MS platform will be way more attractive if they believe training won't be a problem, which is why you should get this training out of the way now.
7. Remember that the sort of manager who's interested in any sort of change is a forward-mover. This means that you won't be of any value to this person if you keep telling them why they can't do something. If they're looking for changes, it means that they think their existing systems are inadequate and they want to upgrade them -- your job is to show them how a Linux (or whatever) solution can be an even better upgrade. Simply telling them that such-and-such a software solution is unsafe or unnecessarily expensive won't work for them. You've got to counter with another suggestion that'll address their reasons for wanting to change in the first place.
This isn't just a comparison of languages, it's a question of programming approaches. Kylix offers a full IDE suite, while gcc is really just a compiler.
I'm also wondering how many of these applications that were developed, assuming this thing wasn't just dreamt up by a PR department, were done so using pre-built components. It would obviously be quicker to build some of those applications with all the base classes done for you already, especially the socket ones. You'd probably have to do a fair bit of digging to find the exact class that you wanted using just g++ and whatever comes with your Linux distro, than you would with a point-and-click interface with a "Server Applications" tab in a pop-up-window.
As for this...
By definition, higher level languages should be easier to code for than low level languages.
Actually, by definition, higher level languages are more abstracted from the way the computer thinks. This does not always make coding easier for the programmer. And I'm not talking about the inherent flaws of, say, Visual Basic before the latest service pack. I'm just talking about someone who's been spending so long in the world of C that no other language makes sense. The more sophisticated and complicated the programming you're used to doing, the less likely you're going to want to work with a language that tries to do your thinking for you.
"You couldn't use this process to harvest the gold from the ocean. The cost in pumping the water would be more than how much gold you could recover," he said. The gold particles excreted by the microbes are so tiny it would take about a million microbes to produce a gram of solid gold.
Heh, I'll give you a miracle of science too. Give me two bucks and presto! I'll give you back one.
There's bias in both sites. Slashdot's is just less expertly disguised.
The day before the Findings of Fact on MS's monopoly were announced, MSNBC ran an editorial explaining why Microsoft was not a Monopoly. What do you think the MS in MSNBC stands for?
...because there's no such thing as an impartial investor in a news sight. This isn't an issue merely related to tech journalism.
You put money in hoping to get something back, right? Journalism has been used as a tool for those with ulterior motives for the longest time -- even back in the early days of the printing press and North American democracy, being a newspaper baron was often a prerequisite to becoming a politician. These days, though, the power resides with corporations, not the politicians, so you're going to find news sights that have content which mirrors the corporate interests of those who invest in them. And I'm not just talking about advertising or sponsorship -- I'm talking about things like Burston Marsteller doing PR for a newspaper and suppressing environmental news stories in that newspaper because it doesn't jive with a logging company, which also happens to be another PR client of theirs.
The best you can hope for is that enough warring corporations use the newspapers against each other, so that at least you'll have dissenting viewpoints on major issues. This is why it is important in principle to have dissent in public debate, regardless of what the dissenting opinion happens to be.
When there starts to be collusion between newspapers on opposing sides of an issue, THEN you really have to worry. Until then, we've got situations like Slashdot being a counter MSNBC. Neither is perfect, but the existence of both is a pretty good alternative.
Young man,
there's no need to feel down
Because your plane
back home can't get off the ground
I said young man,
Get comfy in your new town
There's no need to be unhappy.
Young man,
There's no place you can go
I said young man,
Until you cough up some dough
You will stay here
until you've served all your time
For your insignificant crime.
It's fun to stay in the U S of A,
Because of that old grand D M C A
For cracking DVD's,
Or an e-book or three,
You'll get jailed for eterniteeeee...
It's fun to stay in the U S of A
Because of that old grand D M C A
For proving to the world
That our encryption's a toy
You'll get jailed with all the boyyyyyyys...
If you don't like something, saying 'it sucks' is one of the greatest disservices that you can do. Explain why you think it sucks, at the very least.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Part of the reason Dogma infuriated me was because it spent so much time trying to be an intelligent and novel movie, even though it came up absolutely zero on the profound scale. Its excuse for this, of course, is to say that it's satire and blame the lack of depth on the subject that it's satirizing.
It's a Catch-22. If you love the ideas in the satire, then you love the satire. If you detest the ideas in the satire, then what you're really detesting is the object of the satire. It's a cop-out that skilled storytellers don't engage in. Kevin Smith, who's done some good work, shouldn't have fallen into this trap.
Beyond this, it just wasn't very funny. I've read enough satire that isn't funny in writing workshops to fill a canyon. Dogma got made because of his successes with Chasing Amy and Clerks, not because of its own inherent value. There's more insight into religion in C.S. Lewis's belly-button lint than there is in this movie.
As far as I'm concerned, intelligent criticism of a movie that cowardly tries to hide behind various excuses for its mediocrity is effort wasted. Dogma is such a film.
Totally agree that the Dogma-bashing is warranted. The movie sucked. It also proved the one drawback about satire -- it's the only avenue of comedy open to those with no sense of humour. Here's a bunch of not-very-well-though-out-clever-and-novel-ideas-ab out-the-church. Didn't find them funny? Oh, well, that's because it's supposed to be satirical. You're supposed to go "Hmmmmm!" and then laugh. Gag.
And now it's Hollywood, eh? If Katz is saying that this is a satire in the same way that Dogma is a satire, that's all the info I need to make an informed choice to skip this movie.
John Hurt does an interesting breakdown of six different methods of programming sound for games, and talks about the advantages and disadvantages of each (not just the programming part).
According to him OSS is a pretty entrenched technology, but ALSA's continuing to grow. The fact that ALSA's retaining nearly 100% compatibility with OSS probably means that at some point you'll be able to make a full shift from OSS to ALSA...
Microsoft is totally trustworthy. I mean, I trust that they're going to spread fud about competitors' products; I trust that they're going to try to usurp protocols and make them proprietary; I trust that they're going to create crappy software; I trust that they're going to continue their constant quest to render technologies obsolete and replace them with their own...
Hey, they're relentless and consistent. Evil, maybe, but hardly untrustworthy.
Maybe I'm not understanding the whole concept of a Human Markup Language, but what's the difference between developing HML, and just coming up with a DTD for human characteristics tags and make it XML?
My point is, aren't projects like these the sort of thing XML was made for?
In the section on other acts of corporate philanthropy...
* Microsoft. The software giant last year announced it will donate $100 million in cash and software over 5 years to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America to build 3,000 centers where kids can use PCs.
Far be it for me to sound cynical, but I wonder how much of that $100 million "in cash and software" is software licenses?
Slashdot Mirror
Web-based communication is largely interpreted, as opposed to compiled. Are there any successful examples of high-performance interpreted 3D out there?
According to Wired, Bin Laden didn't use cryptography so much as he used steganography. Story here. It's more creative than cryptography because it embeds a message within another message.
Get somebody who knows how to copyedit and knows a thing or two about programming, and pump out as much stuff as possible. Locate it centrally on a website somewhere so that anybody can access it immediately. Accept feedback for corrections, suggestions and examples.
Take a look at PHP's website (currently they have a sympathy message on their homepage, you can progress from there). It's support section is great, and many people can help themselves through it.
Really twisted. I hope the Better Business Bureau can get on this.
Heh heh. I've been using the WrinkledShirt handle in several areas for well over a year and a half now. It's just a coincidence.
Lots of people will begin to live in fear.
This is, of course, what the terrorists want.
Don't be naive. There is a reason that the United States isn't a popular nation worldwide. Some group will likely claim responsibility for this, and when they do, you can bet that this was about retribution.
My heart breaks for the people killed in these attacks, but please don't rush to stupid conclusions about what must be done in the emotional rush of the moment. Any rampant retalliatory acts the U.S. government engages in will likely be revisited upon its citizens, in much the same manner as what happened today.
People are already saying that this was an act of war. You've got to understand that many nations feel that they've been at war with the U.S. long before this first strike back.
Now, the REAL question is whether or not THIS post will get modded +1 Informative.
I get violent when they make me use Java, too.
The children that I'm planning on having just announced that they're going to have children! I'm going to be a grandfather! Woo-hoo!
1. If you can help it, try not to fall in love with features that only proprietary companies have. If there's something in MS Word that you want but that no other suite has, begin lobbying the crap out of StarOffice, KOffice, Gnome Office, etc. to get that feature.
.NET. Keep them on hand when the obligatory meeting happens exploring the issue. Figure out what makes .NET attractive and come up with counter-proposals for those features.
2. Learn Python. It's rapidly becoming Linux's answer to VBA. Since you've already mentioned that you're writing macros for Excel, you might be interested to know that KSpread can be scripted using several different languages too. Go into your macros and figure out how you might go about translating them into a different language.
3. Learn XML, and figure out how to convert your existing data to and from XML. You can justify this to management easily by saying it's a good safety backup and migration technique just in case something horrible happens. The truth is, if you map out your data properly you could probably dump something from an MS solution and rebuild it using a non-MS solution that has some scripting capabilities.
4. Come up with five practical (ie: non-MS bashing) reasons why you don't need
5. Learn Samba. At least this way you can integrate different systems and don't need to settle for all your machines being MS-based just because you can't help but have one that's MS-based.
6. Familiarize yourself with different options starting now. Make it an on-going project for yourself to only work with non-MS products. For instance, bring in a Linux machine and do all your word-processing on WordPerfect8. If they won't let you do it at work, try simulating office procedures at home. You can't expect that your company will want to switch over if you can't yourself. If nothing else, the idea of migration to a non-MS platform will be way more attractive if they believe training won't be a problem, which is why you should get this training out of the way now.
7. Remember that the sort of manager who's interested in any sort of change is a forward-mover. This means that you won't be of any value to this person if you keep telling them why they can't do something. If they're looking for changes, it means that they think their existing systems are inadequate and they want to upgrade them -- your job is to show them how a Linux (or whatever) solution can be an even better upgrade. Simply telling them that such-and-such a software solution is unsafe or unnecessarily expensive won't work for them. You've got to counter with another suggestion that'll address their reasons for wanting to change in the first place.
This isn't just a comparison of languages, it's a question of programming approaches. Kylix offers a full IDE suite, while gcc is really just a compiler.
I'm also wondering how many of these applications that were developed, assuming this thing wasn't just dreamt up by a PR department, were done so using pre-built components. It would obviously be quicker to build some of those applications with all the base classes done for you already, especially the socket ones. You'd probably have to do a fair bit of digging to find the exact class that you wanted using just g++ and whatever comes with your Linux distro, than you would with a point-and-click interface with a "Server Applications" tab in a pop-up-window.
As for this...
By definition, higher level languages should be easier to code for than low level languages.
Actually, by definition, higher level languages are more abstracted from the way the computer thinks. This does not always make coding easier for the programmer. And I'm not talking about the inherent flaws of, say, Visual Basic before the latest service pack. I'm just talking about someone who's been spending so long in the world of C that no other language makes sense. The more sophisticated and complicated the programming you're used to doing, the less likely you're going to want to work with a language that tries to do your thinking for you.
combines the best features of BASIC, assembly language, and Hamlet.
Let me guess. It takes three long, boring hours to figure out (2b | !2b)?
"You couldn't use this process to harvest the gold from the ocean. The cost in pumping the water would be more than how much gold you could recover," he said. The gold particles excreted by the microbes are so tiny it would take about a million microbes to produce a gram of solid gold.
Heh, I'll give you a miracle of science too. Give me two bucks and presto! I'll give you back one.
Was it free?
I'm just wondering if anybody else is hating the fact that they might have to start liking Intel because of this.
There's bias in both sites. Slashdot's is just less expertly disguised.
The day before the Findings of Fact on MS's monopoly were announced, MSNBC ran an editorial explaining why Microsoft was not a Monopoly. What do you think the MS in MSNBC stands for?
...because there's no such thing as an impartial investor in a news sight. This isn't an issue merely related to tech journalism.
You put money in hoping to get something back, right? Journalism has been used as a tool for those with ulterior motives for the longest time -- even back in the early days of the printing press and North American democracy, being a newspaper baron was often a prerequisite to becoming a politician. These days, though, the power resides with corporations, not the politicians, so you're going to find news sights that have content which mirrors the corporate interests of those who invest in them. And I'm not just talking about advertising or sponsorship -- I'm talking about things like Burston Marsteller doing PR for a newspaper and suppressing environmental news stories in that newspaper because it doesn't jive with a logging company, which also happens to be another PR client of theirs.
The best you can hope for is that enough warring corporations use the newspapers against each other, so that at least you'll have dissenting viewpoints on major issues. This is why it is important in principle to have dissent in public debate, regardless of what the dissenting opinion happens to be.
When there starts to be collusion between newspapers on opposing sides of an issue, THEN you really have to worry. Until then, we've got situations like Slashdot being a counter MSNBC. Neither is perfect, but the existence of both is a pretty good alternative.
Young man,
there's no need to feel down
Because your plane
back home can't get off the ground
I said young man,
Get comfy in your new town
There's no need to be unhappy.
Young man,
There's no place you can go
I said young man,
Until you cough up some dough
You will stay here
until you've served all your time
For your insignificant crime.
It's fun to stay in the U S of A,
Because of that old grand D M C A
For cracking DVD's,
Or an e-book or three,
You'll get jailed for eterniteeeee...
It's fun to stay in the U S of A
Because of that old grand D M C A
For proving to the world
That our encryption's a toy
You'll get jailed with all the boyyyyyyys...
I wholeheartedly disagree. Part of the reason Dogma infuriated me was because it spent so much time trying to be an intelligent and novel movie, even though it came up absolutely zero on the profound scale. Its excuse for this, of course, is to say that it's satire and blame the lack of depth on the subject that it's satirizing.
It's a Catch-22. If you love the ideas in the satire, then you love the satire. If you detest the ideas in the satire, then what you're really detesting is the object of the satire. It's a cop-out that skilled storytellers don't engage in. Kevin Smith, who's done some good work, shouldn't have fallen into this trap.
Beyond this, it just wasn't very funny. I've read enough satire that isn't funny in writing workshops to fill a canyon. Dogma got made because of his successes with Chasing Amy and Clerks, not because of its own inherent value. There's more insight into religion in C.S. Lewis's belly-button lint than there is in this movie.
As far as I'm concerned, intelligent criticism of a movie that cowardly tries to hide behind various excuses for its mediocrity is effort wasted. Dogma is such a film.
And now it's Hollywood, eh? If Katz is saying that this is a satire in the same way that Dogma is a satire, that's all the info I need to make an informed choice to skip this movie.
According to him OSS is a pretty entrenched technology, but ALSA's continuing to grow. The fact that ALSA's retaining nearly 100% compatibility with OSS probably means that at some point you'll be able to make a full shift from OSS to ALSA...
Don't know if that's helpful (or even relevent).
Hey, they're relentless and consistent. Evil, maybe, but hardly untrustworthy.
Sorry, have to read more closely next time.
My point is, aren't projects like these the sort of thing XML was made for?
* Microsoft. The software giant last year announced it will donate $100 million in cash and software over 5 years to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America to build 3,000 centers where kids can use PCs.
Far be it for me to sound cynical, but I wonder how much of that $100 million "in cash and software" is software licenses?