Would have expected a better RPN comment from /.
on
William Hewlett Dead
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· Score: 4
Hewlett-Packard: responsible for confusing generations of calculator users.
How many of you have over the years thoroughly enjoyed handing your HP to someone asking to borrow your calculator, only to see the look of horror and disbelief on their face seconds later? Better yet, how many friends have you made when the borrower knew how to use RPN?
When I was at Rose-Hulman Institute of Tech (before it was coed) we'd get together and have calculator races with our HPs (yes, on Saturday night). I was so disappointed when the carrying case of my most recent HP48G didn't have a belt loop! What have we become???
It's not that bad, I've had to do it several times (motherboard swaps, new hard drives, etc.). Each time I just emailed Wolfram and got a new key, no questions asked.
I think it's funny that a lot of these authors are the first ones to jump on the bandwagon for "save the planet" and "let's all recycle and reuse" when the cameras come out at press events.
I think Partition Magic works better under Windows because it is for Windows. You can use fips (free, look in dosutils directory of distribution) if you have Linux only.
Ever called the cops in a situation like this? Someone broke into my car several years ago by prying open the side window, thus breaking the retaining mechanism inside and allowing the window to be slid down quietly. I couldn't get the car into the shop immediately, so I put a wedge in to hold the window shut. Three days later someone forced the window open in spite of my half-assed wedge solution, and stole the stereo. You know who the cop blamed... ME for not getting the window fixed right away (never mind that the window mechanism could have just been broken again) and installing alarm (like the world needs one more alarm going off needlessly while people are trying to sleep). I don't know what dream land you live in, but in the U.S if you leave your front door unlocked and someone enters your house and rips you off, the cops will probably smack you up side the head for being such an idiot and then bothering them.
Absolutely right, they weren't keeping up with patches on a server with known security problems. That's more along the lines of negligence, not a hacker problem.
Reminds me of the old restroom joke... Dude finishes at the urinal and heads for the door. Guy sees this, says "Shouldn't you wash your hands?" Dude says "I've learned to not piss on my hands."
While I agree with studying code and testing small parts of it in isolation, a debugger can be a useful tool to use along with this... maybe the problem is not debuggers, but people wanting to totally rely on them for insight. The complexity of an application (esp. a multithreaded one) seems to imply that there is a limit to how much can be found by just studying code. There are limits to human processing at work, eg., short-term memory limits such as the "seven +/- two pieces of information" rule of Miller (Psychology Review vol. 63(2)) that we run across in software design books. If you've got five threads, each with multiple issues to keep track of, you are going to lose track of what is going on. A debugger could be useful in this situation.
By your logic, presumably, C++ would be even better if each time the developer left a dangling reference they received a high-voltage shock to the nipples
You're making some assumptions about the character of C++ programmers (like myself) that may not lead to the intended results. Remember, we chose to become C++ programmers... what does this say about our (possibly masochistic) personality? Maybe those electric shocks would increase dangling references:-)
This was the same app written in java that I thought of as well... I've used Togethersoft for about a year. It never crashes on me, but is only decently responsive to input on my system (a 600Mhz P3 with 128M ram). It's worthless or won't even work on machines with under 128 ram and a cpu less than P2/P-pro.
The cable to the TV was killed (which was good, I requested that), but I figure the guy that came out to do it didn't bother reading the part where I said '_DONT_ disconnect the cable modem'.
When I got my DSL (Mindspring/Earthlink) up and going I called to cancel the the old dialup account, making BIG notes not to cancel the DSL. Of course, guess what happened anyway. Not only that, but because the request had to be treated the way it carried out, both accounts had to be reactivated to get the DSL back. Plus they charged a reconnect fee ($100). I haven't tried recancelling the dialup, I'll wait until I have time to mess with the (likely) possibility of repeat disservice, so I'm paying for an unused account to protect the other.
What fucking morons! You took action on what I pointed out to you, and moderated me down. Well I don't give a shit about my karma in this environment, so eat my fuck and die.
Didn't Brittany Spears' autobiography come out a year or two ago? I would think Linus would have more to say than she did, so what the hell, he may as well get his book out there. It may have been better to wait until there's more to say on the Transmeta phase of his life, unless he wants the book to end with some uncertainty there, thus he can have a dramatic close to the book that leaves his future success in question.
No No No... sorry, I don't think in nationalistic terms so that possibility was not anywhere on my mind. I mean us, humans, citizens, whatever, as long as it's not an oppressive government that wants to control it. I love the WWW for its ability to bring us together to communicate without regard to nationality.
Hey hey, you just reminded me of something that I would think some on Slashdot would appreciate. I was driving along the coast in Nova Scotia six years ago (btw, Digby scallops rule!) and noticed that every few miles (or km, didn't mean to be insulting) there would be a Radio Shack store, right out by itself in the middle of nowhere. It seemed funny at first, but the pattern continued everywhere... tons of Radio Shacks. Sure, it's pretty sparse there, but are people in Nova Scotia really into electronics, or do they really get into do-it-yourself communications systems? If so, they must kick ass at electronics and/or just really like talking to people. Seriously, I'd like a techno-Canadian perspective, because when I asked locals there about it, they didn't seem to get my question, but it has always been dogged me, because in the U.S. you don't see a lot of Radio Shacks in the middle of nowhere, they are mostly in the cities, and people make fun of them for being geeky hangouts.
Thanks blane... actually, if you were inside the USA you would find that it's a bit hard being "just American" because so many forces want to divide the country for their own cause. As an individual, it's hard not to feel this, and denying it can be, unfortunately, quite fatal, so you learn to keep a constant awareness about you regarding these issues which I am sure seem quite unnecessary to anyone who has never been here and feels it is the "melting pot" utopia... an idea that is probably pushed on those in other countries by American officials when they want to extend their arms overseas, or on the American citizenry during civil unrest... however, diversity and division are equally used here when it can separate out groups along demographic lines to an advantage, say at election time.
Oh man, yet another case of Slashdot putting up a comparison that can't possibly be made, but it will generate a lot of traffic and bring down servers to make it look like this is the happening place when it's just a geek version of Jerry Springer. This survey has been an old story on the Oracle newsgroups for a week and it's not resolvable, just "We're better than you" followed by "no, we're better, biatch." If you use these systems, you know what happens... different products are work better under different circumstances, nothing new. You are starting up a website, have no money but lots of know-how and want to get something up and running until you get loaded with cash (okay, dream). Right, you download MySQL for nothing and get up and running. You are getting a huge number of hits from tons of users (row locks become a little bit of an issue, right?) and you have some money, you get set up with Oracle. Which is better? I hit a website (a newcomer site, not up and going for very long) Friday night to place an order and for the second weekend in a row (okay, it was a food delivery place - I have no life and order in, what's the surprise?) I was returned a MySQL error. But you know what? A week ago I got multiple ORA-00020, and ORA-00018 errors trying to access my work late at night (and guess whose product that is). Lot's of factors come in, not the least of which is the talent running the whole show. It seems to me like this is a big picture issue, and isn't it good for us all that there are free alternatives that get us through testing and maybe even up and running, but realistically, how far can something free take us? Then if our idea works, and the users come, we pony-up the dough for something else. That seems to work. So what does everyone think?
Um, actually, until I was almost twenty years old and got called a mick for the first time, I thought I was as Irish as Ghandi. I didn't know that I was anything but American. Anyway, I don't have a "fucking clue" about wherever you are from, and it seems you don't have one about the U.S. By the way, I don't donate cash to the IRA, so if one of their bombs blew off your leg (doubtless, that has not happened you chickenshit) don't blame my freckled ass you pasty-faced limey bastard who needed my uncles to come over and bail you out of your goddamn wars.
I'm glad somebody else got my joke on how irrelevant Slashdot has become. This weekend I tried to get a discussion going on networks, but there are more posts on grits and Battlefield Earth than anything else. Then today it's cell phone rates. What's next, the price of gasoline?
Why is Irish Americans in quotations? I was just wondering if that is a slam. I am of Irish descent and not long ago had a manager say that he was surprised in my performance at work and that I was "pretty smart for a Mick." I was not terribly shocked because it was hardly the first time I had received such comments at work or socially - one recent evening I sat across the dinner table from a woman talking about how horrible it was in Boston these days because of all the Irish immigrants. Anyway, didn't mean to wear out my welcome with ranting, but in case you are interested, even though my ancestors came to the States well over a hundred years ago as indentured servants, I still have enough red in my hair to be identified as Irish by some, apparently not enough to be noticed by others, and anything prejudiced or hateful feels... well, you figure it out. Oh well, who cares, I get that extra appreciation of Dennis Leary's and Colin Quinn's stand-up humor, and Guinness makes everything just fine! Oh Danny Boy....
Why am I wrong? I will leave out he "grotesquely ugly" part because I didn't post enough of myself to, in my opinion at least, form a judgement on that, and that seems irrelevant to any above topics. But I enjoy discussing technology issues and would possibly enjoy hearing from you why you think I am wrong, if not here then email me since I did not post AC (which is fine, and seems to me a way that technology let's you express yourself anonymously if that enables your expression), and even so it's just a Hotmail account so if you become a pest that's Microsoft's problem:-)
Yeah, I know about the article and was referring to it. But what's all the hype because people have been using radios and headsets for over twenty years, so where's the "antenna" effect there? It just seems like people are pissed off about cell phones because the person they are standing next to in the train, elevator, or whatever, are talking to someone. You are going to here some noise, who gives a shit if it's some girl talking about how the waiter just messed up her order at lunch, or elevator muzac (remember people bitching about "shaft music"). Plus, you can fuck with people because it's not some inanimate thing, like the elevator speaker. For example, this one day I get on the elevator with two women, one is a friend on her cell phone screaming at another friend. My friend gets off the elevator, and the woman still on with me says something rude about the woman who just left and how loud she is talking. So I told this woman that she is my friend, and she was horrified because she got caught. So, you see, I wonder if these cancer causing cell phones will improve our quality of life because through the connectivity we will learn to be NICER to each other and realize that there are consequences to our rude actions.
Do you have any links regarding this? I (a Yank) can't really just up and come to South Africa and subscribe to cellular service and conduct my day-to-day life without a major disruption in, well, my day-to-day life, which I enjoy. But your comment interests me and I wish to learn more through OUR great World Wide Web without leaving my humble abode, and I hate it when someone calls me with a WRONG NUMBER and asks about someone I know nothing about (because apparently our telco operators do not have enough numbers to go around or something) multiple times thus EATING UP MY minutes. I have wished immensely that we in the States of America (United or Otherwise) did not have to pay for receiving calls. So please ILLUMINATE me because I believe in what you have to say so far and would enjoy seeing your propogation of resources to educate us all on the ways of the FUTURE. Because let me tell you, my South African brother (and we are brothers because you know and I know that we come from common roots no matter what even if you are in South Africa and I am in Chicago in the early morning, an Irish American with a Vodka buzz able to type because I code when I am not sleeping, we came from the same glob of ooz, and if not, then what is the likelihood some aliens created us out of different strands of DNA) that we will all be connected through cellular BRAIN IMPLANTS eventually, and I'll be goddamn if I want my brainwaves fucked up by the collections department at some store looking for some dumbass who had my cellphone number three months ago.
Slashdot Mirror
How many of you have over the years thoroughly enjoyed handing your HP to someone asking to borrow your calculator, only to see the look of horror and disbelief on their face seconds later? Better yet, how many friends have you made when the borrower knew how to use RPN?
When I was at Rose-Hulman Institute of Tech (before it was coed) we'd get together and have calculator races with our HPs (yes, on Saturday night). I was so disappointed when the carrying case of my most recent HP48G didn't have a belt loop! What have we become???
It's not that bad, I've had to do it several times (motherboard swaps, new hard drives, etc.). Each time I just emailed Wolfram and got a new key, no questions asked.
Linus at Linux Today on the gcc-2.96 compiler is much more interesting than this ZDNet story.
I think it's funny that a lot of these authors are the first ones to jump on the bandwagon for "save the planet" and "let's all recycle and reuse" when the cameras come out at press events.
I think Partition Magic works better under Windows because it is for Windows. You can use fips (free, look in dosutils directory of distribution) if you have Linux only.
Ever called the cops in a situation like this? Someone broke into my car several years ago by prying open the side window, thus breaking the retaining mechanism inside and allowing the window to be slid down quietly. I couldn't get the car into the shop immediately, so I put a wedge in to hold the window shut. Three days later someone forced the window open in spite of my half-assed wedge solution, and stole the stereo. You know who the cop blamed... ME for not getting the window fixed right away (never mind that the window mechanism could have just been broken again) and installing alarm (like the world needs one more alarm going off needlessly while people are trying to sleep). I don't know what dream land you live in, but in the U.S if you leave your front door unlocked and someone enters your house and rips you off, the cops will probably smack you up side the head for being such an idiot and then bothering them.
Absolutely right, they weren't keeping up with patches on a server with known security problems. That's more along the lines of negligence, not a hacker problem.
While I agree with studying code and testing small parts of it in isolation, a debugger can be a useful tool to use along with this... maybe the problem is not debuggers, but people wanting to totally rely on them for insight. The complexity of an application (esp. a multithreaded one) seems to imply that there is a limit to how much can be found by just studying code. There are limits to human processing at work, eg., short-term memory limits such as the "seven +/- two pieces of information" rule of Miller (Psychology Review vol. 63(2)) that we run across in software design books. If you've got five threads, each with multiple issues to keep track of, you are going to lose track of what is going on. A debugger could be useful in this situation.
You're making some assumptions about the character of C++ programmers (like myself) that may not lead to the intended results. Remember, we chose to become C++ programmers... what does this say about our (possibly masochistic) personality? Maybe those electric shocks would increase dangling references :-)
This was the same app written in java that I thought of as well... I've used Togethersoft for about a year. It never crashes on me, but is only decently responsive to input on my system (a 600Mhz P3 with 128M ram). It's worthless or won't even work on machines with under 128 ram and a cpu less than P2/P-pro.
When I got my DSL (Mindspring/Earthlink) up and going I called to cancel the the old dialup account, making BIG notes not to cancel the DSL. Of course, guess what happened anyway. Not only that, but because the request had to be treated the way it carried out, both accounts had to be reactivated to get the DSL back. Plus they charged a reconnect fee ($100). I haven't tried recancelling the dialup, I'll wait until I have time to mess with the (likely) possibility of repeat disservice, so I'm paying for an unused account to protect the other.
What fucking morons! You took action on what I pointed out to you, and moderated me down. Well I don't give a shit about my karma in this environment, so eat my fuck and die.
Didn't Brittany Spears' autobiography come out a year or two ago? I would think Linus would have more to say than she did, so what the hell, he may as well get his book out there. It may have been better to wait until there's more to say on the Transmeta phase of his life, unless he wants the book to end with some uncertainty there, thus he can have a dramatic close to the book that leaves his future success in question.
If I eat at a bar, I can't sit here and read Slashdot during dinner... Thanks for the suggestion, mate!
No No No... sorry, I don't think in nationalistic terms so that possibility was not anywhere on my mind. I mean us, humans, citizens, whatever, as long as it's not an oppressive government that wants to control it. I love the WWW for its ability to bring us together to communicate without regard to nationality.
Hey hey, you just reminded me of something that I would think some on Slashdot would appreciate. I was driving along the coast in Nova Scotia six years ago (btw, Digby scallops rule!) and noticed that every few miles (or km, didn't mean to be insulting) there would be a Radio Shack store, right out by itself in the middle of nowhere. It seemed funny at first, but the pattern continued everywhere... tons of Radio Shacks. Sure, it's pretty sparse there, but are people in Nova Scotia really into electronics, or do they really get into do-it-yourself communications systems? If so, they must kick ass at electronics and/or just really like talking to people. Seriously, I'd like a techno-Canadian perspective, because when I asked locals there about it, they didn't seem to get my question, but it has always been dogged me, because in the U.S. you don't see a lot of Radio Shacks in the middle of nowhere, they are mostly in the cities, and people make fun of them for being geeky hangouts.
Thanks blane... actually, if you were inside the USA you would find that it's a bit hard being "just American" because so many forces want to divide the country for their own cause. As an individual, it's hard not to feel this, and denying it can be, unfortunately, quite fatal, so you learn to keep a constant awareness about you regarding these issues which I am sure seem quite unnecessary to anyone who has never been here and feels it is the "melting pot" utopia... an idea that is probably pushed on those in other countries by American officials when they want to extend their arms overseas, or on the American citizenry during civil unrest... however, diversity and division are equally used here when it can separate out groups along demographic lines to an advantage, say at election time.
Oh man, yet another case of Slashdot putting up a comparison that can't possibly be made, but it will generate a lot of traffic and bring down servers to make it look like this is the happening place when it's just a geek version of Jerry Springer. This survey has been an old story on the Oracle newsgroups for a week and it's not resolvable, just "We're better than you" followed by "no, we're better, biatch." If you use these systems, you know what happens... different products are work better under different circumstances, nothing new. You are starting up a website, have no money but lots of know-how and want to get something up and running until you get loaded with cash (okay, dream). Right, you download MySQL for nothing and get up and running. You are getting a huge number of hits from tons of users (row locks become a little bit of an issue, right?) and you have some money, you get set up with Oracle. Which is better? I hit a website (a newcomer site, not up and going for very long) Friday night to place an order and for the second weekend in a row (okay, it was a food delivery place - I have no life and order in, what's the surprise?) I was returned a MySQL error. But you know what? A week ago I got multiple ORA-00020, and ORA-00018 errors trying to access my work late at night (and guess whose product that is). Lot's of factors come in, not the least of which is the talent running the whole show. It seems to me like this is a big picture issue, and isn't it good for us all that there are free alternatives that get us through testing and maybe even up and running, but realistically, how far can something free take us? Then if our idea works, and the users come, we pony-up the dough for something else. That seems to work. So what does everyone think?
Um, actually, until I was almost twenty years old and got called a mick for the first time, I thought I was as Irish as Ghandi. I didn't know that I was anything but American. Anyway, I don't have a "fucking clue" about wherever you are from, and it seems you don't have one about the U.S. By the way, I don't donate cash to the IRA, so if one of their bombs blew off your leg (doubtless, that has not happened you chickenshit) don't blame my freckled ass you pasty-faced limey bastard who needed my uncles to come over and bail you out of your goddamn wars.
I'm glad somebody else got my joke on how irrelevant Slashdot has become. This weekend I tried to get a discussion going on networks, but there are more posts on grits and Battlefield Earth than anything else. Then today it's cell phone rates. What's next, the price of gasoline?
Why is Irish Americans in quotations? I was just wondering if that is a slam. I am of Irish descent and not long ago had a manager say that he was surprised in my performance at work and that I was "pretty smart for a Mick." I was not terribly shocked because it was hardly the first time I had received such comments at work or socially - one recent evening I sat across the dinner table from a woman talking about how horrible it was in Boston these days because of all the Irish immigrants. Anyway, didn't mean to wear out my welcome with ranting, but in case you are interested, even though my ancestors came to the States well over a hundred years ago as indentured servants, I still have enough red in my hair to be identified as Irish by some, apparently not enough to be noticed by others, and anything prejudiced or hateful feels... well, you figure it out. Oh well, who cares, I get that extra appreciation of Dennis Leary's and Colin Quinn's stand-up humor, and Guinness makes everything just fine! Oh Danny Boy....
Why am I wrong? I will leave out he "grotesquely ugly" part because I didn't post enough of myself to, in my opinion at least, form a judgement on that, and that seems irrelevant to any above topics. But I enjoy discussing technology issues and would possibly enjoy hearing from you why you think I am wrong, if not here then email me since I did not post AC (which is fine, and seems to me a way that technology let's you express yourself anonymously if that enables your expression), and even so it's just a Hotmail account so if you become a pest that's Microsoft's problem :-)
BTW, what are the Cranberries doing these days? I like them much more than U2.
Yeah, I know about the article and was referring to it. But what's all the hype because people have been using radios and headsets for over twenty years, so where's the "antenna" effect there? It just seems like people are pissed off about cell phones because the person they are standing next to in the train, elevator, or whatever, are talking to someone. You are going to here some noise, who gives a shit if it's some girl talking about how the waiter just messed up her order at lunch, or elevator muzac (remember people bitching about "shaft music"). Plus, you can fuck with people because it's not some inanimate thing, like the elevator speaker. For example, this one day I get on the elevator with two women, one is a friend on her cell phone screaming at another friend. My friend gets off the elevator, and the woman still on with me says something rude about the woman who just left and how loud she is talking. So I told this woman that she is my friend, and she was horrified because she got caught. So, you see, I wonder if these cancer causing cell phones will improve our quality of life because through the connectivity we will learn to be NICER to each other and realize that there are consequences to our rude actions.
Do you have any links regarding this? I (a Yank) can't really just up and come to South Africa and subscribe to cellular service and conduct my day-to-day life without a major disruption in, well, my day-to-day life, which I enjoy. But your comment interests me and I wish to learn more through OUR great World Wide Web without leaving my humble abode, and I hate it when someone calls me with a WRONG NUMBER and asks about someone I know nothing about (because apparently our telco operators do not have enough numbers to go around or something) multiple times thus EATING UP MY minutes. I have wished immensely that we in the States of America (United or Otherwise) did not have to pay for receiving calls. So please ILLUMINATE me because I believe in what you have to say so far and would enjoy seeing your propogation of resources to educate us all on the ways of the FUTURE. Because let me tell you, my South African brother (and we are brothers because you know and I know that we come from common roots no matter what even if you are in South Africa and I am in Chicago in the early morning, an Irish American with a Vodka buzz able to type because I code when I am not sleeping, we came from the same glob of ooz, and if not, then what is the likelihood some aliens created us out of different strands of DNA) that we will all be connected through cellular BRAIN IMPLANTS eventually, and I'll be goddamn if I want my brainwaves fucked up by the collections department at some store looking for some dumbass who had my cellphone number three months ago.