Google's search service has always been my go-to service for many years (actually almost since I started reading slashdot, many years ago).
All of their tweaks and enhancements, I felt could be justified. But this? This is not really a fair process. I can't see how this will benefit users to find the things they need on the web.
As such I will be reconsidering the search engine I'm using in my firefox search widget. Duck Duck go these days seems pretty good.
Certainly UI is a matter of opinion, and you may argue about responsiveness.
But "doesn't use as many resources" has pretty much been proven at this point to be utter BS.
"
- We identified a number of factors that mitigate the impact of this
bug. In particular, we discovered that it was fixed on May 21, 2013
(between the releases of glibc-2.17 and glibc-2.18). Unfortunately, it
was not recognized as a security threat; as a result, most stable and
long-term-support distributions were left exposed (and still are):
Debian 7 (wheezy), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 & 7, CentOS 6 & 7,
Ubuntu 12.04, for example. "
So it's actually already been fixed. All that's needed here is for some distributions to push the fix out.
Has anyone else noticed how much nicer Microsoft has been getting (with respect to supporting open standards) now that their market share is dropping? Smells like hypocrisy to me (I say that, but of course I want native support for these formats).
MKV and FLAC are not "geeky". MKV is simply a superior container format for video. Xvid has been on the way out for awhile now, and FLAC is necessary for people that truly care about audio quality, so it's more of an audiophile format. It could be said those people are "audio geeks", I suppose.
Cranky 9 to 5ers are what make the software industry go 'round!
More seriously, management practice (among other things) are what generally cause the pessimism and cynicism to set in. IF you want to prevent this, the best way is to be your own manager; i.e. start your own business. But of course this comes with other personal costs.
Unfortunately, because of third party libraries, you don't actually have a choice whether or not you want to use templates.
Because of STL, you don't actually have a choice either.
There are enough libraries using that junk that,as any developer of a large C++ system can attest, at some point you are forced to use them, unless you take the extreme stance that you are going to program everything yourself. That approach may work fine for (some) open source projects, but not in the real world.
Also, most people will berate you if you try to write your own list or hash map, instead of the STL. So in essence, there is also a peer pressure to use them.
So yes, while it is "techanically" possible to not use them, in practice, they always find a way into your project, like it or not. And I choose not to like it.:)
What follows is all IMHO, of course you are welcome to your own opinion as well.
I've struggled with large C++ codebases on a number of different projects, and while I admit that it is a powerful language, the problem is that there are a half a dozen different ways to do things. The fact that they are trying to give the language even more expressive power is just adding to the amount of rope that we as developers can hang ourselves with.
I yearn for a language which is functionally complete, compiled, small, fast, cross-platform, and oh, NO TEMPLATES PLEASE! Templates/Generics are a blight (a blight I say!) on modern programming -- to say I was pissed when they added them to C# and Java was an understatement. I like my languages without too much syntactic sugar, thanks.
In general, OO programming was never fully grokked by the masses. People spent far too much time trying to make their objects re-usable, and not enough time solving the problem at hand. At least with a language like C you are not fooling yourself, you can write in a procedural style and be happy.
Don't get me wrong, C has a lot of short-comings as well. D is almost perfect, but again, the template blight has reared its ugly head.
I know, a lot of people love templates, and they will argue that they are faster, or they are safer because of type-safety. Faster? Maybe.. slightly.. but not enough for me to want them. Safer? Well not if you take into account the fact that you are using C++, probably the most dangerous language to work with of all. I'll cast the result of my collection operation manually, thanks.
Plus, you make the compiler work really hard, and your project now takes 40 minutes to compile instead of 5. Thanks for the productivity gains, but no thanks!
I did my undergraduate at the U of A, and had the pleasure of being a number of Jonathan Schaeffer's classes. The man is a gifted professor, and rather quirky on top of that.
One day, we were learning about the "Dining Philosopher" problem. The problem is about 3 philosophers that have to acquire two (shared) utensils on either side of them before they can eat the food in front of them. Those of you familiar with the problem should understand..
Anyway, he came in with a pot of spaghetti, forks, and plates. He actually had some students sit down and go through the algorithm. When the first one took a bite off the plate, he asked "Pretty Good, huh?" (of course the student agreed). He also threw some spaghetti against the wall to prove that it was well cooked.
So, after the first student went through the algorithm and used the fork, you can imagine the grimace from the second student that had to use the same shared fork as the first student..
hah! Still makes me laugh.
I won't ever forget about acquiring mutexes in the correct order, however.
But then, I am developing for the platform, which is IMHO the most awful development environment known to mankind. The "ActiveSync" product has received lots of flack at the MEDC2006 conference for being buggy. And, I can't for the life of me figure out why VS2005 won't give me a full stack trace when I pause the program while debugging (and yes, I have compiled with debug information on).
It's amazing the garbage that people put up with to develop MS products.
When a doctor diagnoses RSI, they will tell you to "stop doing what you are doing". That is the only way to relieve the problem.
For your "patient" this means that they need to stop mousing with the right hand. The solution is that they need to learn to mouse with the left hand. Once they have "trained" themselves with the left hand (it doesn't take long, from personal experience I can tell you that I was reasonably proficient after a week or two of persisting at this), they will find that they can use this "ambi-mousetris" technique to switch the mouse back and forth and "load share" the mouse between two arms, which has quite a benefit.
Myself for instance, mouse on the right at home, and on the left at work. Seems to (mostly) do the trick, except for extreme situations where I am doing a lot of work. When my RSI flares up I will then use a cold compress on the inflamed tendons and a combination of stretching exercises recommended to me by a phisiotherapist.
FYI, the post-Win98 command is "fixmbr" from the recovery console.
Also, if you don't have a recovery console available (since some laptop manufacturers don't provide this), you can use the "System Rescue" Linux distro. and boot into FreeDOS. Once there, the fdisk/mbr thing works as well (but check it with fdisk/? first, to make sure I got the format right).
I was just about to post the same thing, but alas someone beat me to it.
It seems that the open source community has what we call an opportunity to really pull the rug out from the feet of M$ and beat them at their own game. What a coup that would be!
The path to dominating the desktop market does not go through requiring the end user to recompile the kernel!
Joe and Jane everyman have no skillz and simply will not do it. If they can't get their brand new xxx or yyy peripheral working within 1/2 an hour maximum, Linux will be dead in their eyes. You can also be sure they will tell their friends about it.
I am a seasoned programmer, and I just spent the entire day trying to get my @#$% USB video camera to actually show any pictures. Still doesn't work. damn...
(Begins with a picture of the sun rising over two mountain peaks)
Announcer (Graham Chapman): Mount Everest. Forbidding, aloof, terrifying. The mountain with the biggest tits in the world.
(Gong crashes, a disgusted voice interrupts) Voice Over: Start again! (A hideous clown in green plaid shirt, 14-inch wide blue polka-dotted bow tie, red curly wig, false teeth and an ugly mask steps in front of the picture of the mountain for a second and waves.)
Announcer: Mount Everest. Forbidding, aloof, terrifying. This year, this remote Himalayan mountain, this mystical temple, surrounded by the most difficult terrain in the world, repulsed yet another attempt to conquer it. (Picture changes to wind-swept, snowy tents and people) This time, by the International Hairdresser's Expedition. In such freezing, adverse conditions, man comes very close to breaking point. What was the real cause of the disharmony which destroyed their chances at success?
(Hairdresser #1 is a snowy, bundled up climber with a very gay voice. Hairdressers #2 and #3 are even more gay and windswept.)
Hairdresser #1: Well, people keep taking your hairdryer on every turn.
Hairdresser #2: There's a lot of bitching in the tents.
Hairdresser #3: You couldn't get near the mirror.
(Cut to the announcer, a stuffy looking older man, delicately trimming millimeters off the leaves of cabbages growing in his country garden.)
Announcer: The leader of the expedition was Colonel Sir John Cheesy-Weezy Butler, veteran K2, Annapurna, and Vidal. His plan was to ignore the usual route around the south and to make straight for the top.
(next part shows a map of the mountain)
Cheesy-Weezy: We established Base Salon here, and climbed quite steadily up to Mario's, here. From here, using crampons and cutting ice steps as we went, we moved steadily up the face to the north ridge, establishing Camp Three, where we could get a hot meal, a manicure, and a shampoo and set.
Announcer: Could it work? Could this 18-year old hairdresser from Brixton succeed where others had failed? The situation was complicated by the imminent arrival of the monsoon storms. Patrice takes up the story.
(cut to Patrice (Eric Idle) in a salon, very effeminately brushing and blow- drying a customer's hair.)
Patrice: Well, we knew as well as anyone that the monsoons were due. But the thing was, Ricky and I had just had a blow dry and rinse, and we couldn't go out for a couple of days.(Picture of mountaineers climbing down mountain)
Announcer: After a blazing row, the Germans and Italians had turned back, taking with them the last of the hairnets. On the third day, a blizzard blew up. Temperatures fell to minus 30 degrees centigrade. Inside the little tent, things were getting desperate.
(Ricky (Michael Palin) and John Cleese are crowded inside a little tent, sporting beards, hairnets, and curlers. They sit beneath stationary hairdryers. Cleese is reading, Ricky is buffing his nails.)
Ricky: Well, things have gotten so bad that we've been forced to use the last of the heavy oxygen equipment just to keep the dryers going. (A woman hands him a cup of tea.) Oh, she's a treasure.
Cleese: Shhh!
(another mountain climbing scene)
Announcer: But a new factor had entered the race. A team of French chiropodists, working with brand new corn plasters and Dr. Scholl's Mountaineering Sandals, were close behind. The Glasgow Orpheus male voice choir were tackling the difficult north part. All together, fourteen expeditions were at the scene. This was it. Ricky had to make a decision.
(back to Patrice at his salon)
Patrice: Well, we decided to open a salon. Announcer: It was a tremendous success.
(the following is accompanied by pictures of great mountaineering heros upon whom are pasted elaborate Marie Antoinette style hairdos)
Announcer: Challenging Everest? Why not drop in at Ricky Pule's, only 2400 feet from this cinema. (A huge pink neon sign reading 'Ricky's' appears on the mountain.) Ricky and Maurice offer a variety of styles for the well-groomed climber. Why should Tensing and Sir Edmond Hillary be number one on top, when you're number one on top?
So, they are probably using the language filter "chef" to filter the web-page just before displaying it.
I once heard of a sys-admin that wanted to get revenge on someone else, so he ran all his outgoing mail through one of these filters. Hilarity ensued!
Just to give you an idea, I'll re-run my comment through the "jive" filter, a rather politically incorrect filter which is supposed to simulate black urban-speak. Imagine doing this to MSN!
[here goes]
So, dey are probably usin' de language filta' "chef" t'filta' de web-page plum befo'e displayin' it.
I once heard uh a sys-admin dat wants'ed t'get revenge on someone else, so's he ran all his outgoin' mail drough one uh dese filters. 'Sup, dudelarity ensued. Right On!
Just t'give ya' an idea, I'll re-run mah' comment drough de "JIBE" filter, a rada' politically inco'rect filta' which be supposed t'simulate brother urban-speak. Imagine doin' dis t'MSN. Right On!
Slashdot Mirror
Google's search service has always been my go-to service for many years (actually almost since I started reading slashdot, many years ago). All of their tweaks and enhancements, I felt could be justified. But this? This is not really a fair process. I can't see how this will benefit users to find the things they need on the web. As such I will be reconsidering the search engine I'm using in my firefox search widget. Duck Duck go these days seems pretty good.
Certainly UI is a matter of opinion, and you may argue about responsiveness. But "doesn't use as many resources" has pretty much been proven at this point to be utter BS.
http://wanem.sourceforge.net/
" - We identified a number of factors that mitigate the impact of this bug. In particular, we discovered that it was fixed on May 21, 2013 (between the releases of glibc-2.17 and glibc-2.18). Unfortunately, it was not recognized as a security threat; as a result, most stable and long-term-support distributions were left exposed (and still are): Debian 7 (wheezy), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 & 7, CentOS 6 & 7, Ubuntu 12.04, for example. "
So it's actually already been fixed. All that's needed here is for some distributions to push the fix out.
Has anyone else noticed how much nicer Microsoft has been getting (with respect to supporting open standards) now that their market share is dropping? Smells like hypocrisy to me (I say that, but of course I want native support for these formats).
MKV and FLAC are not "geeky". MKV is simply a superior container format for video. Xvid has been on the way out for awhile now, and FLAC is necessary for people that truly care about audio quality, so it's more of an audiophile format. It could be said those people are "audio geeks", I suppose.
Speaking as a Canadian, where it gets dark at 4:30pm, I hate you.
OK. :) Here's your $0 back.
Cranky 9 to 5ers are what make the software industry go 'round! More seriously, management practice (among other things) are what generally cause the pessimism and cynicism to set in. IF you want to prevent this, the best way is to be your own manager; i.e. start your own business. But of course this comes with other personal costs.
Ah.. I wish it were that simple!
:)
Unfortunately, because of third party libraries, you don't actually have a choice whether or not you want to use templates.
Because of STL, you don't actually have a choice either.
There are enough libraries using that junk that,as any developer of a large C++ system can attest, at some point you are forced to use them, unless you take the extreme stance that you are going to program everything yourself. That approach may work fine for (some) open source projects, but not in the real world.
Also, most people will berate you if you try to write your own list or hash map, instead of the STL. So in essence, there is also a peer pressure to use them.
So yes, while it is "techanically" possible to not use them, in practice, they always find a way into your project, like it or not. And I choose not to like it.
What follows is all IMHO, of course you are welcome to your own opinion as well.
.. slightly .. but not enough for me to want them. Safer? Well not if you take into account the fact that you are using C++, probably the most dangerous language to work with of all. I'll cast the result of my collection operation manually, thanks.
I've struggled with large C++ codebases on a number of different projects, and while I admit that it is a powerful language, the problem is that there are a half a dozen different ways to do things. The fact that they are trying to give the language even more expressive power is just adding to the amount of rope that we as developers can hang ourselves with.
I yearn for a language which is functionally complete, compiled, small, fast, cross-platform, and oh, NO TEMPLATES PLEASE! Templates/Generics are a blight (a blight I say!) on modern programming -- to say I was pissed when they added them to C# and Java was an understatement. I like my languages without too much syntactic sugar, thanks.
In general, OO programming was never fully grokked by the masses. People spent far too much time trying to make their objects re-usable, and not enough time solving the problem at hand. At least with a language like C you are not fooling yourself, you can write in a procedural style and be happy.
Don't get me wrong, C has a lot of short-comings as well. D is almost perfect, but again, the template blight has reared its ugly head.
I know, a lot of people love templates, and they will argue that they are faster, or they are safer because of type-safety. Faster? Maybe
Plus, you make the compiler work really hard, and your project now takes 40 minutes to compile instead of 5. Thanks for the productivity gains, but no thanks!
That sounds complicated.
Are you really sure you want to jump into that without a review first?
True enough;
;)
I think the problem may have been an overall shortage of chopsticks in Alberta.
I did my undergraduate at the U of A, and had the pleasure of being a number of Jonathan Schaeffer's classes. The man is a gifted professor, and rather quirky on top of that.
..
One day, we were learning about the "Dining Philosopher" problem. The problem is about 3 philosophers that have to acquire two (shared) utensils on either side of them before they can eat the food in front of them. Those of you familiar with the problem should understand
Anyway, he came in with a pot of spaghetti, forks, and plates. He actually had some students sit down and go through the algorithm. When the first one took a bite off the plate, he asked "Pretty Good, huh?" (of course the student agreed). He also threw some spaghetti against the wall to prove that it was well cooked.
So, after the first student went through the algorithm and used the fork, you can imagine the grimace from the second student that had to use the same shared fork as the first student..
hah! Still makes me laugh.
I won't ever forget about acquiring mutexes in the correct order, however.
It's good to see that prostate examinations are finally going digital!
Twice a year? You're lucky.
In my case it is literally more than twice a day.
But then, I am developing for the platform, which is IMHO the most awful development environment known to mankind. The "ActiveSync" product has received lots of flack at the MEDC2006 conference for being buggy. And, I can't for the life of me figure out why VS2005 won't give me a full stack trace when I pause the program while debugging (and yes, I have compiled with debug information on).
It's amazing the garbage that people put up with to develop MS products.
When a doctor diagnoses RSI, they will tell you to "stop doing what you are doing". That is the only way to relieve the problem.
For your "patient" this means that they need to stop mousing with the right hand. The solution is that they need to learn to mouse with the left hand. Once they have "trained" themselves with the left hand (it doesn't take long, from personal experience I can tell you that I was reasonably proficient after a week or two of persisting at this), they will find that they can use this "ambi-mousetris" technique to switch the mouse back and forth and "load share" the mouse between two arms, which has quite a benefit.
Myself for instance, mouse on the right at home, and on the left at work. Seems to (mostly) do the trick, except for extreme situations where I am doing a lot of work. When my RSI flares up I will then use a cold compress on the inflamed tendons and a combination of stretching exercises recommended to me by a phisiotherapist.
FYI, the post-Win98 command is "fixmbr" from the recovery console.
/mbr thing works as well (but check it with fdisk /? first, to make sure I got the format right).
Also, if you don't have a recovery console available (since some laptop manufacturers don't provide this), you can use the "System Rescue" Linux distro. and boot into FreeDOS. Once there, the fdisk
Why do they make you use the command line? It doesn't make sense.
... clever ...
Ah! I see you are employing the Chewbacca defense!
I was just about to post the same thing, but alas someone beat me to it.
It seems that the open source community has what we call an opportunity to really pull the rug out from the feet of M$ and beat them at their own game. What a coup that would be!
I can easily believe a robot conducting like a human. After all, I've seen many humans conducting whom I felt looked a lot like robots..
I've another one:
It seems opportune,
Darl strikes like a cornered rat!
Wait; where is the cheese?!?
The path to dominating the desktop market does not go through requiring the end user to recompile the kernel!
Joe and Jane everyman have no skillz and simply will not do it. If they can't get their brand new xxx or yyy peripheral working within 1/2 an hour maximum, Linux will be dead in their eyes. You can also be sure they will tell their friends about it.
I am a seasoned programmer, and I just spent the entire day trying to get my @#$% USB video camera to actually show any pictures. Still doesn't work. damn...
No, No, No ...
Monopoly money is only good at Microsoft.
For SCO, you need a game like Stock Ticker.
(Begins with a picture of the sun rising over two mountain peaks)
Announcer (Graham Chapman): Mount Everest. Forbidding, aloof, terrifying. The mountain with the biggest tits in the world.
(Gong crashes, a disgusted voice interrupts)
Voice Over: Start again!
(A hideous clown in green plaid shirt, 14-inch wide blue polka-dotted bow tie, red curly wig, false teeth and an ugly mask steps in front of the picture of the mountain for a second and waves.)
Announcer: Mount Everest. Forbidding, aloof, terrifying. This year, this remote Himalayan mountain, this mystical temple, surrounded by the most difficult terrain in the world, repulsed yet another attempt to conquer it. (Picture changes to wind-swept, snowy tents and people) This time, by the International Hairdresser's Expedition. In such freezing, adverse conditions, man comes very close to breaking point. What was the real cause of the disharmony which destroyed their chances at success?
(Hairdresser #1 is a snowy, bundled up climber with a very gay voice. Hairdressers #2 and #3 are even more gay and windswept.)
Hairdresser #1: Well, people keep taking your hairdryer on every turn.
Hairdresser #2: There's a lot of bitching in the tents.
Hairdresser #3: You couldn't get near the mirror.
(Cut to the announcer, a stuffy looking older man, delicately trimming millimeters off the leaves of cabbages growing in his country garden.)
Announcer: The leader of the expedition was Colonel Sir John Cheesy-Weezy Butler, veteran K2, Annapurna, and Vidal. His plan was to ignore the usual route around the south and to make straight for the top.
(next part shows a map of the mountain)
Cheesy-Weezy: We established Base Salon here, and climbed quite steadily up to Mario's, here. From here, using crampons and cutting ice steps as we went, we moved steadily up the face to the north ridge, establishing Camp Three, where we could get a hot meal, a manicure, and a shampoo and set.
Announcer: Could it work? Could this 18-year old hairdresser from Brixton succeed where others had failed? The situation was complicated by the imminent arrival of the monsoon storms. Patrice takes up the story.
(cut to Patrice (Eric Idle) in a salon, very effeminately brushing and blow- drying a customer's hair.)
Patrice: Well, we knew as well as anyone that the monsoons were due. But the thing was, Ricky and I had just had a blow dry and rinse, and we couldn't go out for a couple of days.(Picture of mountaineers climbing down mountain)
Announcer: After a blazing row, the Germans and Italians had turned back, taking with them the last of the hairnets. On the third day, a blizzard blew up. Temperatures fell to minus 30 degrees
centigrade. Inside the little tent, things were getting desperate.
(Ricky (Michael Palin) and John Cleese are crowded inside a little tent, sporting beards, hairnets, and curlers. They sit beneath stationary hairdryers. Cleese is reading, Ricky is buffing his nails.)
Ricky: Well, things have gotten so bad that we've been forced to use the last of the heavy oxygen equipment just to keep the dryers going. (A woman hands him a cup of tea.) Oh, she's a treasure.
Cleese: Shhh!
(another mountain climbing scene)
Announcer: But a new factor had entered the race. A team of French chiropodists, working with brand new corn plasters and Dr. Scholl's Mountaineering Sandals, were close behind. The Glasgow Orpheus
male voice choir were tackling the difficult north part. All together, fourteen expeditions were at the scene. This was it. Ricky had to make a decision.
(back to Patrice at his salon)
Patrice: Well, we decided to open a salon.
Announcer: It was a tremendous success.
(the following is accompanied by pictures of great mountaineering heros upon whom are pasted elaborate Marie Antoinette style hairdos)
Announcer: Challenging Everest? Why not drop in at Ricky Pule's, only 2400 feet from this cinema. (A huge pink neon sign reading 'Ricky's' appears on the mountain.) Ricky and Maurice offer a variety of styles for the well-groomed climber. Why should Tensing and Sir Edmond Hillary be number one on top, when you're number one on top?
So, they are probably using the language filter "chef" to filter the web-page just before displaying it.
I once heard of a sys-admin that wanted to get revenge on someone else, so he ran all his outgoing mail through one of these filters. Hilarity ensued!
Just to give you an idea, I'll re-run my comment through the "jive" filter, a rather politically incorrect filter which is supposed to simulate black urban-speak. Imagine doing this to MSN!
[here goes]
So, dey are probably usin' de language filta' "chef" t'filta' de web-page plum befo'e displayin' it.
I once heard uh a sys-admin dat wants'ed t'get revenge on someone else, so's he ran all his outgoin' mail drough one uh dese filters. 'Sup, dudelarity ensued. Right On!
Just t'give ya' an idea, I'll re-run mah' comment drough de "JIBE" filter, a rada' politically inco'rect filta' which be supposed t'simulate brother urban-speak. Imagine doin' dis t'MSN. Right On!