Intelligently setup windows boxes don't need OS reinstalls with any more frequency than their *nix counterparts
That's not really true, the registry gets filled up with cruft that you cannot delete, and the WinSxS directory gets filled up to bursting with crap everytime you install something. In both case sthe OS cannot remove things, the registry for example is filled with things that might be used by a different user - so when you delete something, the OS has to leave it behind in case someone else still has is installed. At least, that's the reason given by Microsoft why the installer doesn't do it.
I'm sure there are more similar reasons, like.NET cruft that gets installed and kept 'just in case its needed later', COM objects, user application setting folders (in the hidden folders, have you seen that they get left behind, casual users don't because they're hidden from view to prevent tampering).
You're missing the point, he;'s not about selling a corporate version with support, but selling things that people can buy, take home, plug in and at least have a good expectation that they will work.
Go into a shop, but a webcam, take it home and find that the drivers don't work with the customer's version of Linux they run. You have no idea which one they run, it'll probably be Ubuntu but even then, which version?
This is his complaint. If there was a stable ABI, then something that was tested and supported for v1 of Disto X would also work for v2. It'd also work for v1 of Disto Y.
Now that doesn't make things perfect as some things will still break and be incompatible, but it would be an improvement. The same applies to a stable environment, the LSB tries to make things a little easier for developers, and admins so each distro doens't have silly incompatibilities like which directory they install some software, or which user id they run it (or even like Apache, the name of the software! httpd or apache?)
Yes, but you could say the same about the Chrome developers - the best thing they could have done is work with an existing product that already had market share and works great like Firefox.
and I guess we could say the same about Firefox..
No, if this has some additional features that makes it better, like being as tiny as you can get, drivable through a text stream API, being able to fit it into windows so you can have your web browsing embedded into your desktop window manager, then it might yet become a better Chrome/ChromeOS than Chrome!
Now that said, vi bindings were a terrible, dreadful, incomprehensible mistake:)
I think you'll find, if you read more than some trolling blog posts, that Microsoft intends for you to add stuff to Office documents, and also has a whole Office developer section for people to "use way more of their code", its perfectly ok if its offered to you as a feature of the product they want you to use.
Anyway, i4i had a separate product that, in this case, was taken by MS and included into Word documents. This article gives a better description of why everyone thinks MS is the thief.
i4i does have an actual product, and they claim that Microsoft is competing against their product; after convincing a judge of that, they got the injunction.
I thought the case revolved around Microsoft stealing their product, not competing against it. That Microsoft took their product and bundled their own rather-similar-indeed implementation directly into Word, and that the patent is the only thing i4i has that they can sue MS over. But yes, to re-iterate i4i is not, in any shape or form, a patent troll and this is one case where the patent system is actually working as intended!
Microsoft was very naughty and deserves to sit on the 'do not collect $200 per copy' step.
When you know the total population of the UK is roughly 30 million households, that's a fair chunk of the population. (total population is roughly 60 million people)
Out of the total population, only 18.7 million have broadband. Guess roughly 40% of the population is a pirate then. We should make it legal, government being there for the populace and all that.
so somebody who is actually learning outside of their everyday requirements, somebody who is raising their qualification and is able to apply this knowledge when it is needed... is the worst candidate for you ?
I've hired one of them - he did brilliantly at interview. Unfortunately, he could recite the words from the web, but had difficulty applying it. Also, he continued to 'raise his qualifications' during work time. We had to let him go.
I've known others like him, people who always want to apply a new or different technology to work problems, always because the boring work of work is not fun enough or too difficult and the 'grass always seems greener'. They don't *do* anything but chase the latest technology craze, I suppose continually dropping things when they get difficult is a nice alternative to working, wish I could do it!
That's the trouble, when hiring you need someone who has done the stuff you want, not a theoretician. If he knew how to apply his knowledge, by doing some of it, he'd be significantly more desirable as a candidate. Web surfing is not a qualification for a job.
it is a good point about tests.. there are 3 kinds of people in the world when it comes to puzzles, those who havn't a clue how to solve it, those who figure it out slowly by thinking it through, and those who read the answer while they were surfing the web when they should have been working.
Trouble is CEOs tend to hire the latter ones. The reality is that the former group can be as good, if not better workers that the other 2 groups, when they're not asked stupid arbitrary tests, and apply themselves to real world problems.
I went to an interview a few years ago, the boss gave the test, on a flipchart. It was a 'write code' type test, unfortunately he asked relatively open ended questions ("how would you implement a stream class") but the answer had to be the one he expected or wanted, and as I did it differently, I was obviously a useless candidate.
So the problem is how to make your tests applicable to real people, in the real world. I would suggest you give them a large problem to solve, one that has no 'right' or 'wrong' answer, and make sure they explain what they're doing and why. The why matters more than anything.
If you're still thinking about this, why not post your test to a slashdot comment. Then I guarantee you'll get a load more candidates who pass your test with flying colours, I'm sure none of them will be the kind who surf the web during their work hours....
I mean, why not put cheaper DDR RAM on the motherboard, with a big capacitor or battery to allow it to flush all writes out to disc when the power stops?
In fact, why bother putting ram as an IO cache when you could add the RAM to the motherboard anyway and allow the OS to cache writes. Intel - stop thinking like this, and just hand out free 1GB DRAM sticks with every motherboard, job solved.
no, I didn't. Just picked on one aspect that could have been... how can I say this... shorter.
Its possibly the one film the director's cut version should have 30 minutes removed without harming the movie at all. (actually, I can think of a few others that that applies to, but not with the same intention:)
To cite Microsoft alone, was shipping Windows Media Player with Windows a crime?
Erm.. yes, it might have been, but Microsoft settled out of court - the court in San Jose that is. I guess that makes it not a crime, technically.
How much did MS have to pay out to other American companies, $4.6bn last time I looked. So the fact that the EU got involved with dodgy dealings by Microsoft isn't really without cause, and isn't somehow anti-American.
but if you postpone upgrades long enough, you won't be running the current RH version, you'll still be on RH3 (for example). And then, yes, you will have problems upgrading and they'll be worse than if you upgraded every time a new version appeared, but you will have the benefit of your old setup working seamlessly.
I would say that upgrading a system from MySQL 3 to MySQL 4, and then from 4 to 5, and so on, is only slightly less painful than waiting a few years and doing a big upgrade from 3 to 8 all in one go.
Capitalism had sweet FA to do with it. What we need to re-encourage technological growth is a war. No, make that 2 wars. 2 wars involving pretty much everyone on the planet. *
Perhaps we could start things off with a war against Patent and IP lawyers?...
* ok, it might not have been the wars that drove innovation but a metal arm, or a saucer-shaped craft, or Megatron stuffed in a basement lab, desert base or under the Hoover Dam; but I still prefer the war against lawyers option.
probably someone's opinion. MS may lose money hand over fist for a lot of their products, but they have plenty to use to subsidise the loss-makers. (did I hear someone shout 'anti-competitive' at the back?)
Look at Bing - spent billions of dollars, tied-up with Yahoo... got a massive 10% market share in return.
Look at Xbox, lose billions of dollar (not spent, lost), and still come second place to Sony playstation (PS2 admittedly, PS3 seems to be too expensive and a little before its time with the blu-ray player)
Look at Zune, just a joke even to Microsoft employees (read the comments)
Look at WinMo, currently in 4th place in the mobile phone marketplace, behind Symbian at #1 with 50%, Blackberry with 20%, iPhone with 15%. If Google could get some handsets out I reckon it'd be at 5th place before you could blink. I mean, there are more Linux based phones out there than WinMobile! More Linux! Yes, more... I think I need to go lie down.
The question is - what information does it collect, and where does it collect it from? I mean, if it scans my hard drive for files, my in-game experience will look ore like Duke Nukem's dancing girl posters, or (god forbid) work!
If it scans my bookmarks, cookies, etc, then I'll be viewing slashdot in-game.
Either way, its not good for the security of my PC, if a game can collect this information, the scammers and botnets can do the same, all they have to do is persuade me to install something - a game for example.
'The people' have already paid for the BBC via their TV license fees, it is in no way 'free'.
Unlike SkyTV charging you a monthly fee to receive their broadcasts, and then making you watch adverts too. They (News intl. corp) needs to be investigated, and broken up.
Now that I didn't realise existed. I always knew you could clear history etc, but not the last x hours. That's a cool feature (and not just for porn) but anything I might browse around for that I'm not going to be interested in having suggested to me ever again - at the moment its a new property to rent, I don't want the old links coming up everytime I type the url.
That feature should be emphasised more, much more than porn mode (which would be useful if it allowed a set of history, passwords, bookmarks to be kept in the 'secure' zone)(eg my bank website that I do keep my userid stored in, but would prefer to only have it accessible in porn mode, but don't really want to have to remember the url everytime).
RE: git-push, this is the same with all VCSs, until you commit to a remote repository your work is in danger. The difference between DVCS and traditional ones is that you *know* its not committed until you commit it, with a DVCS some people will think that its safe once committed, not realising its not safe until its pushed upstream.
Internet dongles... Vodafone sells one in the UK, £39 for the dongle, comes with 1GB transfer, operates over 3G or GPRS. The other carriers sell them, and give a lot more transfer capacity, but they expire after a month. You can get them on a plan as well, but given how little I use it away from a ethernet cable it's very cost effective (assuming you don't surf youtube using it). Surely they sell such a thing in the USA?
DVCS advantages are in merging (SVN branching is really good - its very easy, the problem is merging back). The real advantage is partly due to the source being local (but if you have a 12 Gig repo like I have, that's not such an advantage), and partly due to some SVN design issues - but the latter are being worked on, and even then DVCS merging is still not as good as Clearcase.
Slashdot Mirror
Intelligently setup windows boxes don't need OS reinstalls with any more frequency than their *nix counterparts
That's not really true, the registry gets filled up with cruft that you cannot delete, and the WinSxS directory gets filled up to bursting with crap everytime you install something. In both case sthe OS cannot remove things, the registry for example is filled with things that might be used by a different user - so when you delete something, the OS has to leave it behind in case someone else still has is installed. At least, that's the reason given by Microsoft why the installer doesn't do it.
I'm sure there are more similar reasons, like .NET cruft that gets installed and kept 'just in case its needed later', COM objects, user application setting folders (in the hidden folders, have you seen that they get left behind, casual users don't because they're hidden from view to prevent tampering).
You're missing the point, he;'s not about selling a corporate version with support, but selling things that people can buy, take home, plug in and at least have a good expectation that they will work.
Go into a shop, but a webcam, take it home and find that the drivers don't work with the customer's version of Linux they run. You have no idea which one they run, it'll probably be Ubuntu but even then, which version?
This is his complaint. If there was a stable ABI, then something that was tested and supported for v1 of Disto X would also work for v2. It'd also work for v1 of Disto Y.
Now that doesn't make things perfect as some things will still break and be incompatible, but it would be an improvement. The same applies to a stable environment, the LSB tries to make things a little easier for developers, and admins so each distro doens't have silly incompatibilities like which directory they install some software, or which user id they run it (or even like Apache, the name of the software! httpd or apache?)
Yes, but you could say the same about the Chrome developers - the best thing they could have done is work with an existing product that already had market share and works great like Firefox.
and I guess we could say the same about Firefox..
No, if this has some additional features that makes it better, like being as tiny as you can get, drivable through a text stream API, being able to fit it into windows so you can have your web browsing embedded into your desktop window manager, then it might yet become a better Chrome/ChromeOS than Chrome!
Now that said, vi bindings were a terrible, dreadful, incomprehensible mistake :)
Don't confuse "newer" and "better"
Insightful.
X ran quickly on computers with 1/000 the performance of even a modest desktop system today, but it's slow on these modern computers?
You, sir, know what you're talking about. If only more were like you.
I think you'll find, if you read more than some trolling blog posts, that Microsoft intends for you to add stuff to Office documents, and also has a whole Office developer section for people to "use way more of their code", its perfectly ok if its offered to you as a feature of the product they want you to use.
Anyway, i4i had a separate product that, in this case, was taken by MS and included into Word documents. This article gives a better description of why everyone thinks MS is the thief.
i4i does have an actual product, and they claim that Microsoft is competing against their product; after convincing a judge of that, they got the injunction.
I thought the case revolved around Microsoft stealing their product, not competing against it. That Microsoft took their product and bundled their own rather-similar-indeed implementation directly into Word, and that the patent is the only thing i4i has that they can sue MS over. But yes, to re-iterate i4i is not, in any shape or form, a patent troll and this is one case where the patent system is actually working as intended!
Microsoft was very naughty and deserves to sit on the 'do not collect $200 per copy' step.
When you know the total population of the UK is roughly 30 million households, that's a fair chunk of the population. (total population is roughly 60 million people)
Out of the total population, only 18.7 million have broadband. Guess roughly 40% of the population is a pirate then. We should make it legal, government being there for the populace and all that.
so somebody who is actually learning outside of their everyday requirements, somebody who is raising their qualification and is able to apply this knowledge when it is needed... is the worst candidate for you ?
I've hired one of them - he did brilliantly at interview. Unfortunately, he could recite the words from the web, but had difficulty applying it. Also, he continued to 'raise his qualifications' during work time. We had to let him go.
I've known others like him, people who always want to apply a new or different technology to work problems, always because the boring work of work is not fun enough or too difficult and the 'grass always seems greener'. They don't *do* anything but chase the latest technology craze, I suppose continually dropping things when they get difficult is a nice alternative to working, wish I could do it!
That's the trouble, when hiring you need someone who has done the stuff you want, not a theoretician. If he knew how to apply his knowledge, by doing some of it, he'd be significantly more desirable as a candidate. Web surfing is not a qualification for a job.
it is a good point about tests.. there are 3 kinds of people in the world when it comes to puzzles, those who havn't a clue how to solve it, those who figure it out slowly by thinking it through, and those who read the answer while they were surfing the web when they should have been working.
Trouble is CEOs tend to hire the latter ones. The reality is that the former group can be as good, if not better workers that the other 2 groups, when they're not asked stupid arbitrary tests, and apply themselves to real world problems.
I went to an interview a few years ago, the boss gave the test, on a flipchart. It was a 'write code' type test, unfortunately he asked relatively open ended questions ("how would you implement a stream class") but the answer had to be the one he expected or wanted, and as I did it differently, I was obviously a useless candidate.
So the problem is how to make your tests applicable to real people, in the real world. I would suggest you give them a large problem to solve, one that has no 'right' or 'wrong' answer, and make sure they explain what they're doing and why. The why matters more than anything.
If you're still thinking about this, why not post your test to a slashdot comment. Then I guarantee you'll get a load more candidates who pass your test with flying colours, I'm sure none of them will be the kind who surf the web during their work hours....
I mean, why not put cheaper DDR RAM on the motherboard, with a big capacitor or battery to allow it to flush all writes out to disc when the power stops?
In fact, why bother putting ram as an IO cache when you could add the RAM to the motherboard anyway and allow the OS to cache writes. Intel - stop thinking like this, and just hand out free 1GB DRAM sticks with every motherboard, job solved.
no, I didn't. Just picked on one aspect that could have been ... how can I say this ... shorter.
Its possibly the one film the director's cut version should have 30 minutes removed without harming the movie at all. (actually, I can think of a few others that that applies to, but not with the same intention :)
To cite Microsoft alone, was shipping Windows Media Player with Windows a crime?
Erm.. yes, it might have been, but Microsoft settled out of court - the court in San Jose that is. I guess that makes it not a crime, technically.
How much did MS have to pay out to other American companies, $4.6bn last time I looked. So the fact that the EU got involved with dodgy dealings by Microsoft isn't really without cause, and isn't somehow anti-American.
As for Intel.. they've never been sued by any American company for anti-competitive practices, have they?
Well, 2001: A Space Odyssey did have nothing but flashing lights that everyone stared at for what seemed like hours.
At least it seemed to take that long, and I wasn't even stoned!
but if you postpone upgrades long enough, you won't be running the current RH version, you'll still be on RH3 (for example). And then, yes, you will have problems upgrading and they'll be worse than if you upgraded every time a new version appeared, but you will have the benefit of your old setup working seamlessly.
I would say that upgrading a system from MySQL 3 to MySQL 4, and then from 4 to 5, and so on, is only slightly less painful than waiting a few years and doing a big upgrade from 3 to 8 all in one go.
How many people will buy several of these and never play games on them?
Probably more than you think, go to AV forums and you'll see a lot of people using the PS3 mainly to watch Blu-ray discs, especially now you can get the BBC iPlayer on it.
Capitalism had sweet FA to do with it. What we need to re-encourage technological growth is a war. No, make that 2 wars. 2 wars involving pretty much everyone on the planet. *
Perhaps we could start things off with a war against Patent and IP lawyers? ...
* ok, it might not have been the wars that drove innovation but a metal arm, or a saucer-shaped craft, or Megatron stuffed in a basement lab, desert base or under the Hoover Dam; but I still prefer the war against lawyers option.
However, if you want to use VS2008, you need professional edition which is considerably more expensive than $200.
probably someone's opinion. MS may lose money hand over fist for a lot of their products, but they have plenty to use to subsidise the loss-makers. (did I hear someone shout 'anti-competitive' at the back?)
Look at Bing - spent billions of dollars, tied-up with Yahoo... got a massive 10% market share in return.
Look at Xbox, lose billions of dollar (not spent, lost), and still come second place to Sony playstation (PS2 admittedly, PS3 seems to be too expensive and a little before its time with the blu-ray player)
Look at Zune, just a joke even to Microsoft employees (read the comments)
Look at WinMo, currently in 4th place in the mobile phone marketplace, behind Symbian at #1 with 50%, Blackberry with 20%, iPhone with 15%. If Google could get some handsets out I reckon it'd be at 5th place before you could blink. I mean, there are more Linux based phones out there than WinMobile! More Linux! Yes, more... I think I need to go lie down.
Your car can tweet when you leave your garage
I think we all know the actual means of monetizing this - nip round after he's announced he's left the building and help yourself to his TV.
Instead of going with a licensed OS like Windows...
They had to, Microsoft canned Flight Sim. Though I know of a load of unemployed guys who have some experience in writing this kind of software :)
The question is - what information does it collect, and where does it collect it from? I mean, if it scans my hard drive for files, my in-game experience will look ore like Duke Nukem's dancing girl posters, or (god forbid) work!
If it scans my bookmarks, cookies, etc, then I'll be viewing slashdot in-game.
Either way, its not good for the security of my PC, if a game can collect this information, the scammers and botnets can do the same, all they have to do is persuade me to install something - a game for example.
Some critics regard the space programme as a waste of resources in a country where millions still lack basic services.
well, I've been to rural Alabama. Which country was the critics talking about again?
'The people' have already paid for the BBC via their TV license fees, it is in no way 'free'.
Unlike SkyTV charging you a monthly fee to receive their broadcasts, and then making you watch adverts too. They (News intl. corp) needs to be investigated, and broken up.
Now that I didn't realise existed. I always knew you could clear history etc, but not the last x hours. That's a cool feature (and not just for porn) but anything I might browse around for that I'm not going to be interested in having suggested to me ever again - at the moment its a new property to rent, I don't want the old links coming up everytime I type the url.
That feature should be emphasised more, much more than porn mode (which would be useful if it allowed a set of history, passwords, bookmarks to be kept in the 'secure' zone)(eg my bank website that I do keep my userid stored in, but would prefer to only have it accessible in porn mode, but don't really want to have to remember the url everytime).
RE: git-push, this is the same with all VCSs, until you commit to a remote repository your work is in danger. The difference between DVCS and traditional ones is that you *know* its not committed until you commit it, with a DVCS some people will think that its safe once committed, not realising its not safe until its pushed upstream.
Internet dongles... Vodafone sells one in the UK, £39 for the dongle, comes with 1GB transfer, operates over 3G or GPRS. The other carriers sell them, and give a lot more transfer capacity, but they expire after a month. You can get them on a plan as well, but given how little I use it away from a ethernet cable it's very cost effective (assuming you don't surf youtube using it). Surely they sell such a thing in the USA?
DVCS advantages are in merging (SVN branching is really good - its very easy, the problem is merging back). The real advantage is partly due to the source being local (but if you have a 12 Gig repo like I have, that's not such an advantage), and partly due to some SVN design issues - but the latter are being worked on, and even then DVCS merging is still not as good as Clearcase.