"Heh, like Java. Well, almost. You have to box some primitives."
It is possible to write something in Java that should be OO but it's instead done all in one class. I've seen CS students that were first taught basic C and then Java become totally lost with this multiple files, multiple objects thing. They tried to write all these tree objects, nodes, linked lists, etc all into one class file with their main program. They just didn't get it.
If it is true the Eiffel forces OO, then it would probably be a good tool for teaching such confused souls how they should take advantage of OO. Once you get it, it can be a time saver because you don't have to send pointers to the moon and back, and you don't have to deal with pointers to pointers to pointers to... Of course I still become squeamish when I want to write int a[n];. If you were brought up on C, you know why;-)
"This is one way to deal with spam, but if you spam a spammer, you will become a spammer (...) So @ the end the whole internet will slow down. I think we can better look for better alternatives."
An alternative might be to poison his system. Keep in mind that Ralksy sells spamming services. He sells the service of using e-mail to advertise products that other companies sell. He doesn't actually sell penis enlargers and fake diplomas himself.
So we could poison this system by actually responding to every spam and providing erroneous payment details, mailing details, etc to the companies who want to hawk their products by spam. Obviously they would waste plenty of money processing and shipping these orders, only to find out that they are getting no profit for it. This way, Ralksy's customers go under. Essentially, Ralksy's air supply would be cut off.
"This man suffers from a common human ailment. He does not have the ability to see what he does as wrong. Everyone else is a rube for him to exploit. He (in his own mind) can do whatever he wants, but if someone dares try the same stunt on him, they're going DOWN."
"I wonder how many people actually need higher end hardware. I still use a PII/266, and the only thing that I really would like to do that I can't is software DVD decoding. That becomes feasible at about a PII/400."
Just in case you didn't know, you can also get PCI cards to do that. It might be a more versatile solution on the long run.
"Isn't bundling applications with an operating system and computer what got Microsoft in trouble in the first place? I hardly think a large multinational like Sony would be any more generous than the money-grubbers in Redmond. Beware."
MSFT got into trouble because they used monopoly power combined with bundling to squash other web browsers. Sony does not have a monooply on PCs so bundling staroffice is not illegal.
"It would be much more sensible to create a domain of non-kid-"safe" content. That would facilitate filtering without creating the need for current content providers to make redundant registrations."
Yeah, but soccer moms want to know their kids are in the 'safe zone' as opposed to 'not in a danger zone' . It's whitelisting versus blacklisting.
On a philosophical level, I do prefer the creation of a 'mature content' domain but I don't see how it could be implemented successfully.
"Don't you know about mke2fs -j ? Don't you know about mirroring of 2 cheap disks?
First thing you need for computer reliability is your brains. Money and high-end things are secondary."
I would set up a Type 1 RAID before I did something like that. But still, I would have two cheap drives instead of one. The chance of data loss would be lower, but in the long run, the chance of having a failed hard drive would be higher. It would also futher commoditize (sp?) the hard drive market because I would be buying into the high quantity / low quality business model that is being pushed.
Sorry, I say quality over quantity and I am willing to pay for it.
"I think this is further proof that PCs (hardware and software) are becoming commodity goods. Customers don't care about bells and whistles, they just want to browse the web and do email. The really scary thing is, people are starting to realize that you don't need expensive hardware and software to do the basic things most people do."
I think this is scary because people like us who actually need/use higher end hardware will end up paying more. If only the cheap hardware market moves units in large numbers, then higher end, quality products will be manufactured in smaller numbers and be harder to come by.
If I want to build a super-reliable desktop now adays, I have to buy a very high end hard drive in the SCSI range if I want to get a decent warranty. Ever notice that all the reasonably priced network cards have cheapo Realtek chipsets? Cases are really cheap and I want a good one, I probably have to send CAD$200+ to get an aluminium one with good airflow and slots for HDD cooling fans. Server quality mobos aren't exactly cheap either.
I'm just saying that the commoditisation of the hardware market will make things harder for users who really do need pro quality equipment.
The QOTD that loaded for me at the bottom of this article was:
I feel better about world problems now!
My karma for QOTD must be well in focus today, because I loaded up the Will Shatner interview and then Wil Wheaton's profile and on both of them, I got:
" Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that this is the same country in which the farmer was sued for using seeds from last year's canola crop, rather than buying them (again) from Monsanto."
Like practically every other country, there's lots of stupidity going on in Canada. Being Canadian, I can say this;-)
"# Do they need to know how to install the OS first, or should I let them look that up on their own while I make them power-users?"
Which do people learn first: How do drive, or how to rebuild a car's engine?
Show the kids the cool things they can do with the software first, and once they're interested, then they will understand why they need to learn how to install it and do that on their own.
"Note: The current BannerBlind install package contains an error that causes BannerBlind to not register properly. Please keep watching this site for announcement of new update."
HP wants its customers to pay for PC disposal, but it knows that regular people would oppose legislation forcing them to do such things. So they make a chivalrous 'pro-environmental' move to legislate that the corporations should pay for disposal.
But of course the regular people will still pay because the corporations will just factor disposal cost into the purchase price.
It's the same result as making people directly pay for disposal, but HP looks a lot better and there's no public outcry.
Nevertheless, I give kudos to HP for recognising that we can't just ship off all our old computers to China and must act responsibly to dispose of them in an environmentally and socially responsible way.
"I've never clicked on any of their ads either (or any popup/banner ad for that matter), but I wonder if that means I can't join the class action suit..."
Banner ads?
I had almost forgotten that there were banner ads on the web. I suggest all mozilla users take a quick look at bannerblind.
" Who, if anyone, deserves this more than Bonzi? I say nail them to the wall. Don't even get me started on the "Bonzi Buddy" scam . .."
"Bonzi Buddy" is a pile of steaming sh~t trojan horse program that brings up a fuzzzy purple gorilla on the screen. (It used to be a parrot in older versions.) It tells jokes, acts as an e-mail client, tries to sell you add-ons, profiles your browsing habits, etc.
"Actually I don't get why this would be such a great thing. I mean why not download the whole track? The bandwidth you save because of the already downloaded bits from your low-quality sample is neglegtible."
Because whoever owns the server doesn't have to create and maintain multiple copies of the original file encoded at different bitrates. That would save them on hard drive space and file management too.
How will the authorities know if the taxi driver had the radio turned on or off? Will they have a sting operation where an undercover officer hails a taxi, gets in, and then busts the the driver if they turn on the radio but haven't payed the fee?
" Bitrate peeling is a briliant idea, and would be a major win for Vorbis if they ever actually provide an implementation of it. It's something that the format supposedly supports, but right now it's still just a hypothetical application."
They (as in the ogg vorbis dev community) are saying it would be pretty cool for sampler tracks if you could save the 'peeled' bits. You could offer the low bitrate version for free. If people like it, they can pay extra for the peeled bits and then use some tool to re-integrate the free and peeled bits to get the full quality file.
" Since over half the slashdot crowd uses IE, should there not be stories out when MS releases new versions of it?"
Because MSIE is not a community project. There are many, many slashdot readers who contribute to mozilla in terms of code, bug reports, add-ons and so on. There's a whole community of people surrounding this project and many of them also congregate here.
You can't say that about IE. There is no development community. It's all privately developed by a corporation.
The mozilla updates are announced so much more than MSIE because they are important because they are developed and perpetuated by members of this community.
"Spamassassin really works. They claim it filters about 95%, which should put your spam level between 12.5 to 15 messages per day.... very close to the desired goal of 10 (and nobody needs to die)."
Slashdot Mirror
It is possible to write something in Java that should be OO but it's instead done all in one class. I've seen CS students that were first taught basic C and then Java become totally lost with this multiple files, multiple objects thing. They tried to write all these tree objects, nodes, linked lists, etc all into one class file with their main program. They just didn't get it.
If it is true the Eiffel forces OO, then it would probably be a good tool for teaching such confused souls how they should take advantage of OO. Once you get it, it can be a time saver because you don't have to send pointers to the moon and back, and you don't have to deal with pointers to pointers to pointers to ... Of course I still become squeamish when I want to write int a[n];. If you were brought up on C, you know why ;-)
An alternative might be to poison his system. Keep in mind that Ralksy sells spamming services. He sells the service of using e-mail to advertise products that other companies sell. He doesn't actually sell penis enlargers and fake diplomas himself.
So we could poison this system by actually responding to every spam and providing erroneous payment details, mailing details, etc to the companies who want to hawk their products by spam. Obviously they would waste plenty of money processing and shipping these orders, only to find out that they are getting no profit for it. This way, Ralksy's customers go under. Essentially, Ralksy's air supply would be cut off.
It's called a Dogbert complex.
Just in case you didn't know, you can also get PCI cards to do that. It might be a more versatile solution on the long run.
MSFT got into trouble because they used monopoly power combined with bundling to squash other web browsers. Sony does not have a monooply on PCs so bundling staroffice is not illegal.
No, .ca is Canada.
And there are subdomains: .bc.ca refers to British Columbia, Canada.
If I recall correctly, .ca is also a subdomain for .us - Meaning .ca.us would refer to california, USA. I don't think california has a TLD at all.
Yeah, but soccer moms want to know their kids are in the 'safe zone' as opposed to 'not in a danger zone' . It's whitelisting versus blacklisting.
On a philosophical level, I do prefer the creation of a 'mature content' domain but I don't see how it could be implemented successfully.
I would set up a Type 1 RAID before I did something like that. But still, I would have two cheap drives instead of one. The chance of data loss would be lower, but in the long run, the chance of having a failed hard drive would be higher. It would also futher commoditize (sp?) the hard drive market because I would be buying into the high quantity / low quality business model that is being pushed.
Sorry, I say quality over quantity and I am willing to pay for it.
I think this is scary because people like us who actually need/use higher end hardware will end up paying more. If only the cheap hardware market moves units in large numbers, then higher end, quality products will be manufactured in smaller numbers and be harder to come by.
If I want to build a super-reliable desktop now adays, I have to buy a very high end hard drive in the SCSI range if I want to get a decent warranty. Ever notice that all the reasonably priced network cards have cheapo Realtek chipsets? Cases are really cheap and I want a good one, I probably have to send CAD$200+ to get an aluminium one with good airflow and slots for HDD cooling fans. Server quality mobos aren't exactly cheap either.
I'm just saying that the commoditisation of the hardware market will make things harder for users who really do need pro quality equipment.
These things sell well for the same reason that Deer Hunter is a bestselling game and Microsoft became an empire selling Windows:
For the vast majority of people, price is way more important than quality. If it's cheap and reasonably useable, people will buy it in large numbers.
I feel better about world problems now!
My karma for QOTD must be well in focus today, because I loaded up the Will Shatner interview and then Wil Wheaton's profile and on both of them, I got:
He's dead, Jim.
Like practically every other country, there's lots of stupidity going on in Canada. Being Canadian, I can say this ;-)
Which do people learn first: How do drive, or how to rebuild a car's engine?
Show the kids the cool things they can do with the software first, and once they're interested, then they will understand why they need to learn how to install it and do that on their own.
I found a workaround for this which can be found in the bannerblind bugzilla.
HP wants its customers to pay for PC disposal, but it knows that regular people would oppose legislation forcing them to do such things. So they make a chivalrous 'pro-environmental' move to legislate that the corporations should pay for disposal.
But of course the regular people will still pay because the corporations will just factor disposal cost into the purchase price.
It's the same result as making people directly pay for disposal, but HP looks a lot better and there's no public outcry.
Nevertheless, I give kudos to HP for recognising that we can't just ship off all our old computers to China and must act responsibly to dispose of them in an environmentally and socially responsible way.
Banner ads?
I had almost forgotten that there were banner ads on the web. I suggest all mozilla users take a quick look at bannerblind.
"Bonzi Buddy" is a pile of steaming sh~t trojan horse program that brings up a fuzzzy purple gorilla on the screen. (It used to be a parrot in older versions.) It tells jokes, acts as an e-mail client, tries to sell you add-ons, profiles your browsing habits, etc.
The scariest part is that some people actually like this trojan horse piece of garbage.
Because whoever owns the server doesn't have to create and maintain multiple copies of the original file encoded at different bitrates. That would save them on hard drive space and file management too.
How will the authorities know if the taxi driver had the radio turned on or off? Will they have a sting operation where an undercover officer hails a taxi, gets in, and then busts the the driver if they turn on the radio but haven't payed the fee?
Who says I'm in the USA or can write $US cheques without serious banking fees?
I really would like to donate, but not through PayPal. Could you please offer some other method of payment like the Amazon Honour System or Element5?
They (as in the ogg vorbis dev community) are saying it would be pretty cool for sampler tracks if you could save the 'peeled' bits. You could offer the low bitrate version for free. If people like it, they can pay extra for the peeled bits and then use some tool to re-integrate the free and peeled bits to get the full quality file.
So Rob is basically admitting that he doesn't even monitor the homepage that frequently. No wonder there are so many dupes.
Because MSIE is not a community project. There are many, many slashdot readers who contribute to mozilla in terms of code, bug reports, add-ons and so on. There's a whole community of people surrounding this project and many of them also congregate here.
You can't say that about IE. There is no development community. It's all privately developed by a corporation.
The mozilla updates are announced so much more than MSIE because they are important because they are developed and perpetuated by members of this community.
Except the spam. It gets assassinated ;-)