I wish that more keyboards were available without numeric keypads. If you're right-handed and use a mouse a lot, the extra keyboard length puts the mouse in an unnatural position.
This is not a problem for left-handers, but alas for them, it's hard to find a true left-handed mouse - most mice these days are designed to be mediocre for either hand.
Actually, you will alternate hands more using Dvorak than QWERTY because the latter makes you use the left hand a lot more than the right. Unless all the analysis of letter frequency in English has been wrong.
Despite the alleged poorness of the research, it's hard to imagine how reaching for keys and then pressing them is faster than just pressing ones already below your fingers.
Vince Foster? Yeah, I blame Clinton for hiring an unstable guy, but Foster's death really didn't have much effect on the country.
"Also, there's a difference between getting freaky in the oval office and shaking your finger at at the camera going "I did not have sexual relations with that woman...""
If you were 13 years old and you bragged to your friends that you had "sexual relations" with a girl and then they found out it was just a BJ, they'd rag on you for lying. There was no ambiguity about what "having sex" meant until the politicians got involved.
Well, I wasn't responding to the original post, was I? So it's not surprising that my post doesn't address it.
If want to argue about the original post, let's argue. What's the evidence that MS is better at marketing than it is at making products? Keep in mind that even if you could prove that all of MS's products were junk, it still wouldn't prove that their marketing is better.
As if said before, this whole marketing thing is a red herring. If you think that everything MS does is crap, fine. But don't insult the people who disagree on the basis that MS's marketing has them hypnotized.
"Correct, because the best defense from an allegation is to find an example of someone else doing something similar to the allegation."
Except that wasn't what I was doing. I was illustrating the kind of marketing that MS could have done if they were really a "marketing company that has some tech leanings".
Let's face it, this idea of MS as a marketing company is just code for saying MS is no good technically. Some people can't accept the idea that MS customers might actually like MS products, so they use this concept of MS as a marketing wiz to explain their success.
The fact is that MS marketing has been significantly inferior to Sun's, IBM's and in particular, Apple's.
I'm sure that many Slashdotters will expect "a lot of astroturfing and scaremongering" because that's the way they think. Truth will not influence them one way or another.
" First, they are a way to enforce various stylistic guidelines on code that make future maintenance much easier."
Yes, I've heard that for many years, but have yet to see any proof that it's true. Perhaps stylistic guidelines are really used because of our compulsion to create order where none is required.
Besides, checking those guidelines could be performed by any competent admin prior to a review.
I agree. There's some definite value in paying for the future in the future. That's particularly true when the future you expect may never occur (e.g. that section of code never gets touched again).
I don't recall that my position was as you describe. However, as I've said on several other occasions, MS patents are most unlikely to be phrased in such a way that they are limited to.Net - that's not what legally smart companies do. They make it as broad as possible.
So if there were a patent covering.Net that MS could successfully argue in court is violated in Mono, it's likely that some FOSS code which provides similar functionality but doesn't explicitly tie itself to a MS product will be equally vulnerable.
"And to perfectly blunt, the damage they cause is mostly to the geek's bruised ego - he can't let go the thought that the Internet was once his private playground."
And that bruised ego is probably sympathy pains because most geeks weren't even on the Internet in the pre-commercial days.
Can you post a link to where Miguel says that if you use Mono on a non-Novel distro "all bets are off"? Keep in mind that the mono project predates Novell's involvement.
"Did you forget that it's Windows only and there goes against everything the internet stands for."
Since the origins of the Internet are from a US military project, I assume it stands for world-wide military intervention. I didn't realize that Windows was so peace-loving.
You can substitute any computer language in place of C++ in that statement and I still wouldn't believe it. Programming isn't that hard, it's just that some people value other things more so they don't put enough effort in to learn it. Sure, to be a programming "God" (if there is such a thing) may not be in the cards for you, but you could learn to be competent.
I'm not aware of anybody being sued on the basis of a single joke. But you could give somebody a sheet of paper with a joke on it that you haven't even read - how can that be considered speech?
"I don't understand why you would wish concepts like "plausibility" to rest at the very foundations of law."
I don't understand why you wouldn't wish that the enforcement of laws would include logic. Would you prefer a summary judgement for or against free speech without any evaluation of the circumstances or facts?
If you pay a hooker to have sex with you is that protected speech?
"How do you think stories survived before the printing press or even the written word? Retelling. In their entirety."
I'm not sure how practices that predate both the establishment of free speech and copyright law are applicable to them. I suspect that if you told the "wrong" kind of stories, you'd be banished. Besides, most stories were not passed on word-for-word. Haven't you ever played telephone?
If Computer Science were about computers they'd call it astronomy. No, that's not right. They'd call it Telescope Science. No, that's not right either. If Computer Science were about computers they'd call it Computer..Hmm.
Slashdot Mirror
Xerox's mistake was never releasing a low-cost version of their GUI based computers.
I wish that more keyboards were available without numeric keypads. If you're right-handed and use a mouse a lot, the extra keyboard length puts the mouse in an unnatural position.
This is not a problem for left-handers, but alas for them, it's hard to find a true left-handed mouse - most mice these days are designed to be mediocre for either hand.
Actually, you will alternate hands more using Dvorak than QWERTY because the latter makes you use the left hand a lot more than the right. Unless all the analysis of letter frequency in English has been wrong.
Despite the alleged poorness of the research, it's hard to imagine how reaching for keys and then pressing them is faster than just pressing ones already below your fingers.
The most significant factor in MS's success was being chosen by IBM to provide the OS for the PC and allowing MS to sell their own version to others.
Please explain the connection between this factor and violating anti-trust laws.
Vince Foster? Yeah, I blame Clinton for hiring an unstable guy, but Foster's death really didn't have much effect on the country.
"Also, there's a difference between getting freaky in the oval office and shaking your finger at at the camera going "I did not have sexual relations with that woman...""
If you were 13 years old and you bragged to your friends that you had "sexual relations" with a girl and then they found out it was just a BJ, they'd rag on you for lying. There was no ambiguity about what "having sex" meant until the politicians got involved.
Well, I wasn't responding to the original post, was I? So it's not surprising that my post doesn't address it.
If want to argue about the original post, let's argue. What's the evidence that MS is better at marketing than it is at making products? Keep in mind that even if you could prove that all of MS's products were junk, it still wouldn't prove that their marketing is better.
As if said before, this whole marketing thing is a red herring. If you think that everything MS does is crap, fine. But don't insult the people who disagree on the basis that MS's marketing has them hypnotized.
Sure, that's why nobody has ever heard the phrase "do no evil" associated with Google. It's just Google's trade secret.
"Correct, because the best defense from an allegation is to find an example of someone else doing something similar to the allegation."
Except that wasn't what I was doing. I was illustrating the kind of marketing that MS could have done if they were really a "marketing company that has some tech leanings".
Let's face it, this idea of MS as a marketing company is just code for saying MS is no good technically. Some people can't accept the idea that MS customers might actually like MS products, so they use this concept of MS as a marketing wiz to explain their success.
The fact is that MS marketing has been significantly inferior to Sun's, IBM's and in particular, Apple's.
I'm sure that many Slashdotters will expect "a lot of astroturfing and scaremongering" because that's the way they think. Truth will not influence them one way or another.
"Bing just doesn't have any new and exciting features that I like and that Google doesn't already have"
What "exciting" search features does Google "already have"?
"Yes. They're a marketing company that has some tech leanings - it's been this way for as long as I've been into computers (the early 80's)"
Sure, who can forget the famous 1984 commercial and the 16 page insert in Newsweek magazine for Windows 1.0 .. oh wait.
" First, they are a way to enforce various stylistic guidelines on code that make future maintenance much easier."
Yes, I've heard that for many years, but have yet to see any proof that it's true. Perhaps stylistic guidelines are really used because of our compulsion to create order where none is required.
Besides, checking those guidelines could be performed by any competent admin prior to a review.
I agree. There's some definite value in paying for the future in the future. That's particularly true when the future you expect may never occur (e.g. that section of code never gets touched again).
I don't recall that my position was as you describe. However, as I've said on several other occasions, MS patents are most unlikely to be phrased in such a way that they are limited to .Net - that's not what legally smart companies do. They make it as broad as possible.
So if there were a patent covering .Net that MS could successfully argue in court is violated in Mono, it's likely that some FOSS code which provides similar functionality but doesn't explicitly tie itself to a MS product will be equally vulnerable.
"And to perfectly blunt, the damage they cause is mostly to the geek's bruised ego - he can't let go the thought that the Internet was once his private playground."
And that bruised ego is probably sympathy pains because most geeks weren't even on the Internet in the pre-commercial days.
So what is best for Linux, being a version behind on Silverlight or not having it available at all?
Can you post a link to where Miguel says that if you use Mono on a non-Novel distro "all bets are off"? Keep in mind that the mono project predates Novell's involvement.
"Ajax is just JavaScript and XML."
Right. That's why they call it "jax" .. oh wait.
Since people with no programming skills can't write programs by definition, I don't think there's a problem.
"Did you forget that it's Windows only and there goes against everything the internet stands for."
Since the origins of the Internet are from a US military project, I assume it stands for world-wide military intervention. I didn't realize that Windows was so peace-loving.
"but I can't write in C++"
You can substitute any computer language in place of C++ in that statement and I still wouldn't believe it. Programming isn't that hard, it's just that some people value other things more so they don't put enough effort in to learn it. Sure, to be a programming "God" (if there is such a thing) may not be in the cards for you, but you could learn to be competent.
Actually, I shouldn't have said that. I have no idea if you have musical talent or not. I apologize.
I'm not aware of anybody being sued on the basis of a single joke. But you could give somebody a sheet of paper with a joke on it that you haven't even read - how can that be considered speech?
"I don't understand why you would wish concepts like "plausibility" to rest at the very foundations of law."
I don't understand why you wouldn't wish that the enforcement of laws would include logic. Would you prefer a summary judgement for or against free speech without any evaluation of the circumstances or facts?
If you pay a hooker to have sex with you is that protected speech?
"How do you think stories survived before the printing press or even the written word? Retelling. In their entirety."
I'm not sure how practices that predate both the establishment of free speech and copyright law are applicable to them. I suspect that if you told the "wrong" kind of stories, you'd be banished. Besides, most stories were not passed on word-for-word. Haven't you ever played telephone?
If Computer Science were about computers they'd call it astronomy. No, that's not right. They'd call it Telescope Science. No, that's not right either. If Computer Science were about computers they'd call it Computer ..Hmm.