Yeah, and have you ever navigated a GUI with voice commands only?
I imagine 15 years from now the users will have desktops that look like todays videogames (because today's gamers will be wirking--most of them) and sysadmins will still be writing wicked scripts from the, you guessed it, command prompt.
There's a reason why it's called the command prompt: it's where you issue commands. And that's what sysadmins do.
As var as voice commands go: It'll only work when good AI is available. Imagine writing code with voice only: Oh, semicolon, no, backspace, ok, space, ah shit, no, backspace, colon, onpen paren, no, backspace, open squiggly, ok, quote, damn!, backspace, double-quote, good, a, comma, no, backspace, not "A comma", a, ok, then comman, b, ok, comma... I would imagine some people would map easy to remember words to often used keystroke commands: frig: delete line fuck: backspace cool: newline
Ok. So we both agree that MSWord is not up to par.
As far as your assertion that I don't use windows: that is incorrect.
I have win 2k server at home, a win98 for my wife, a win2k pro at work, and I contract sysadmin a 45 user netword with 8 win2k server and 1 win2k3 server. We run TS, MSSQL2000, AD, and Exchange, IIS, veritas, etc.
I also run Debian, redhat, mandrake, and suse.
On windows, I use python, vbscript (adsi), openoffice, dia, moz, java+jedit, apache+php+mod_python, mysql, but I also support office 97+ (Word, excel (a lot), access, and outlook (bleh)), as well as a variety of legacy apps (all the way back to DOS5).
I can tell you hellish stories when problems have arisen that were impossible to track down and ultimately resulted in our fragmentation of servers to dedicate machines to single tasks because of unforeseen interactions.
For example: did you know that in win 2003 server in TS mode, licensed win2k pro machines no longer get a free TS license? Eh, we found out the hard way. Oh, it was in the legalese all right, at the bottom of page four (or was it five?).
A windows update critical update failed on one of our production web server. Now, we cannot update that machine, because it says an upgrade is being performed, when it is not. Can't undo it. When rerunning it, it hangs the machine.
I spend a good 30 minutes each week researching the problem. So far, no cigar. I could pay $250 for MS professional support, but then again, why should I pay for fixing their mistake? It was windows software that broke the windows software.
We have a disk image from last known good config, but that's a pain too. But I guess we'll have to do it.
Woah, sorry to bother you with all the gory details.
Anyway, from what you describe, you would do really well for yourself to try a new linux distro (mandrake or suse). You might be pleasantly surprised.
Oh, and rdesktop on linux is "Good Enough" for interacting with win2k TS.
I even write python programs to set my registry values for custom stuff, pc inventory, and environment vars (woud get a screenshot, but am on OSX Panther now) sucha s logged in users, current net settings, etc.
I'll give you an example: I want to open a microsoft word file, parse the file, insert information into the file from an Oracle db AND a mySQL db on different servers, save it, send the file to a PDF renderer, have it rendered, saved as pdf, also saved as valid xhtml 1.1 and served by apache+mod_python, and have the pdf encrypted (AES/rijndael) and ftp'd overseas and served by a server running Tomcat (JSP+servlets).
Oh, and if offline, I still want the process to happen, just hold off on the transfer.
Now I want to do that on an entire directory tree. With one script.
The first problem I would come up with is: the MS Word format is proprietory, and so my first step would fail.
Now, I gave a relatively extreme example for the home user. But as you can guess, I'm not just a home user.
By the way, openoffice 1.1.1 with python (pyUNO) looks promising for the above problem. Just having to deal with formatting issues when converting with word to OO.
I'll have to agree, that at least any problem can be troubleshot. In windows, you wander around aimlessly and if you're lucky, find a fix. But must often, it's: "Oh well, can't do anything about it". (and you can't you know.)
So I think that there's a feeling of helplessness that comes from using a less than perfect windows machine, because you know most likely you will have to learn to live with the problem rather than try to solve it.
No, of course. However, there is the notion that if your clients are sued, the suer may sue the equipment manufacturer for loss, if the defendent is unable to pay much. but, IANAL and IDPOOTVE ("I don't play one on TV either" for the initialism challenged)
>Why are companies allowed to get away with this crap just because we pay them for their shoddy wares?
The answer lies within the question: Because we pay them.
If someone paid you to paint a building and didn't care whether you stripped off the old paint first, I guarantee you you would just slap a coat over the old paint.
>And I for one used to hold Netgear in reasonably high regard, too.
Your mistake, then.
>Never again.
You should not say never if you want to reach them. This just makes the company execs think that since they can never reach you as a customer again, they won't make the effort. What you should say instead is: "I will purchase products from other companies since theirs do not address my needs at this time."
This is reasonable to them, and they won't discount you as a hot-head but rather may take your advice.
Anytime somebody talks about computer security and starts off by spewing "Hackers this and hackers that" I just move on.
It's like some so-called explosive expert not knowing what C-4 is.
For those dense people out there who are having a problem using a dictionary or an encyclopedia:
The word hacker does not carry the same meaning as the word cracker.
from Dictionary.com, from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:
cracker: 2) One that cracks, especially: d) One who makes unauthorized use of a computer, especially to tamper with data or programs.
Note the word: Unauthorized.
Hackers are always authorized to use the computer resources, because if they start doing unauthorized stuff, they automatically become a cracker.
Now, can a hacker be a cracker too? Yes. But a policeman is also a gunman. Just because you (policeman/hacker) have the tools and the technical skills (pistol and shoooting/computer and coding) does not make you a murderer/cracker.
The beauty of open source is that once something is in open source software, everybody and their brother's lawyers can show prior art and overthrow patents and invalidate copyrights.
The Lord of the Ring book is open source, if you think about it. I can see the entirity of the source code. Is it free as in beer? No. Is it free as in speech? No. You are limited in what reproductions you may make. You are bound by Copyright Law as to what you can do with the "source code".
Should the publisher and/or owners of the copyright decide to no longer issue new copies of the book, only existing copies would be available, and as time passes those would be rarer and rarer, therefore more expensive.
Likewise, the Java Virtual Machine, while its code is open-source, is not free of copyright restrictions, and you are at the mercy of the copyright holder as to what you may and may not do with it, now or in the future.
That's great, and CPython (the C implementation of Python -- as opposed to Jython) can directly call C modules like Python modules. Optimize your modules in C that need the speed, write everythong else in Python.
On windows you can access COM components from Python.
By the way, did you know that Python is really OO with multiple inheritance (diamond-style class traversing added recently) and has hundreds of built-in libraries?
Like I said: what happens when Sun is bought by Megacorp X?
Java may be built by a community, but the JVM is owned by Sun.
Sun dictates plenty of terms: see the Java JVM EULA
> like linux is not directly competing with UNIX Linux and UNIX generally do not run on the same platforms. They are the platforms.
> Its doing fine so far. But, I guess you, in contrast to most of the IT industry, know better.
Just because the ground is flat now does not mean it will be in ten miles (meet the cliffs of Dover and the 100 foot drop into the Atlantic). By the same token, just because something _has_ been going well does not mean it always will (Martha, Enron, Worldcom, etc. Did we learn nothing?)
>Python is great, but Java has true power-level features such as security management and robust portable multithreading.
Python will evolve more in three years that Java in three years.
>Java is built by a community. You are just opposing it because its not your community. If you want to join the Java community, you can. I know a fellow who has come up with some major feature designs which have been implemented in Java.
Don't get me wrong. I like java. My favorite editor is jEdit, and I would sorely miss it.
>if you want to go back to 70s-level technologies and coding. The Bus Error rules! Well, some of us want grown-up coding with decent features.
Excellent. Me too. And is Java good enough now? Yes. Is Java good enough in three years? Five years? 8 years? Is the code I write today going to run on machines in 8 years? Will Java be around? That is the question.
I imagine the first true voice recognition systems for phone to pc will sound a lot like that.
Of course, we could outsource that to India, and have typists at $5/day. That would come up to less than a penny per minute. I talk, you type, the computer reads it out to me. I talk some more, you type some more, I hear what the computer says....sorry, gotta run, got a patent to file.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, and have you ever navigated a GUI with voice commands only?
I imagine 15 years from now the users will have desktops that look like todays videogames (because today's gamers will be wirking--most of them) and sysadmins will still be writing wicked scripts from the, you guessed it, command prompt.
There's a reason why it's called the command prompt: it's where you issue commands. And that's what sysadmins do.
As var as voice commands go: It'll only work when good AI is available. Imagine writing code with voice only: Oh, semicolon, no, backspace, ok, space, ah shit, no, backspace, colon, onpen paren, no, backspace, open squiggly, ok, quote, damn!, backspace, double-quote, good, a, comma, no, backspace, not "A comma", a, ok, then comman, b, ok, comma...
I would imagine some people would map easy to remember words to often used keystroke commands:
frig: delete line
fuck: backspace
cool: newline
talk about needing privacy to program.
She was married?
Ok. So we both agree that MSWord is not up to par.
As far as your assertion that I don't use windows: that is incorrect.
I have win 2k server at home, a win98 for my wife, a win2k pro at work, and I contract sysadmin a 45 user netword with 8 win2k server and 1 win2k3 server. We run TS, MSSQL2000, AD, and Exchange, IIS, veritas, etc.
I also run Debian, redhat, mandrake, and suse.
On windows, I use python, vbscript (adsi), openoffice, dia, moz, java+jedit, apache+php+mod_python, mysql, but I also support office 97+ (Word, excel (a lot), access, and outlook (bleh)), as well as a variety of legacy apps (all the way back to DOS5).
I can tell you hellish stories when problems have arisen that were impossible to track down and ultimately resulted in our fragmentation of servers to dedicate machines to single tasks because of unforeseen interactions.
For example: did you know that in win 2003 server in TS mode, licensed win2k pro machines no longer get a free TS license? Eh, we found out the hard way. Oh, it was in the legalese all right, at the bottom of page four (or was it five?).
A windows update critical update failed on one of our production web server. Now, we cannot update that machine, because it says an upgrade is being performed, when it is not. Can't undo it. When rerunning it, it hangs the machine.
I spend a good 30 minutes each week researching the problem. So far, no cigar. I could pay $250 for MS professional support, but then again, why should I pay for fixing their mistake? It was windows software that broke the windows software.
We have a disk image from last known good config, but that's a pain too. But I guess we'll have to do it.
Woah, sorry to bother you with all the gory details.
Anyway, from what you describe, you would do really well for yourself to try a new linux distro (mandrake or suse). You might be pleasantly surprised.
Oh, and rdesktop on linux is "Good Enough" for interacting with win2k TS.
Yeah.
I'm the bane of the registry.
I even write python programs to set my registry values for custom stuff, pc inventory, and environment vars (woud get a screenshot, but am on OSX Panther now) sucha s logged in users, current net settings, etc.
I'll give you an example:
I want to open a microsoft word file, parse the file, insert information into the file from an Oracle db AND a mySQL db on different servers, save it, send the file to a PDF renderer, have it rendered, saved as pdf, also saved as valid xhtml 1.1 and served by apache+mod_python, and have the pdf encrypted (AES/rijndael) and ftp'd overseas and served by a server running Tomcat (JSP+servlets).
Oh, and if offline, I still want the process to happen, just hold off on the transfer.
Now I want to do that on an entire directory tree. With one script.
The first problem I would come up with is: the MS Word format is proprietory, and so my first step would fail.
Now, I gave a relatively extreme example for the home user. But as you can guess, I'm not just a home user.
By the way, openoffice 1.1.1 with python (pyUNO) looks promising for the above problem. Just having to deal with formatting issues when converting with word to OO.
I'll have to agree, that at least any problem can be troubleshot. In windows, you wander around aimlessly and if you're lucky, find a fix. But must often, it's: "Oh well, can't do anything about it". (and you can't you know.)
So I think that there's a feeling of helplessness that comes from using a less than perfect windows machine, because you know most likely you will have to learn to live with the problem rather than try to solve it.
No, of course. However, there is the notion that if your clients are sued, the suer may sue the equipment manufacturer for loss, if the defendent is unable to pay much. but, IANAL and IDPOOTVE ("I don't play one on TV either" for the initialism challenged)
That's a management issue. Like all management issues, nothing gets done until there is an enormous and highly publicized break-in.
Do you shop around for cars? Do you drive a few, ask your friends/coworkers before you decide what kind of Toyota to get?
Yeah, except that you could not activate it via wireless. Or could you...
I for one like my whores anonymous. It keeps things simpler...
Oh, what exactly are we talking about again?
>Why are companies allowed to get away with this crap just because we pay them for their shoddy wares?
.016 euro
The answer lies within the question: Because we pay them.
If someone paid you to paint a building and didn't care whether you stripped off the old paint first, I guarantee you you would just slap a coat over the old paint.
>And I for one used to hold Netgear in reasonably high regard, too.
Your mistake, then.
>Never again.
You should not say never if you want to reach them. This just makes the company execs think that since they can never reach you as a customer again, they won't make the effort. What you should say instead is: "I will purchase products from other companies since theirs do not address my needs at this time."
This is reasonable to them, and they won't discount you as a hot-head but rather may take your advice.
Just my
Yeah,
Anytime somebody talks about computer security and starts off by spewing "Hackers this and hackers that" I just move on.
It's like some so-called explosive expert not knowing what C-4 is.
For those dense people out there who are having a problem using a dictionary or an encyclopedia:
The word hacker does not carry the same meaning as the word cracker.
from Dictionary.com, from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:
cracker:
2) One that cracks, especially:
d) One who makes unauthorized use of a computer, especially to tamper with data or programs.
Note the word: Unauthorized.
Hackers are always authorized to use the computer resources, because if they start doing unauthorized stuff, they automatically become a cracker.
Now, can a hacker be a cracker too? Yes.
But a policeman is also a gunman. Just because you (policeman/hacker) have the tools and the technical skills (pistol and shoooting/computer and coding) does not make you a murderer/cracker.
>The only cannon things are the movies and the live action parts of the Star Wars Christmas Special.
It's canon, like CANON the photography company.
from dictionary.com:
# A secular law, rule, or code of law.
1. An established principle: the canons of polite society.
2. A basis for judgment; a standard or criterion.
A cannon, on the other hand, is a device with which you shoot heavy projectile (like explosive shells)
And you call yourself a geek after THIS?
Yeah, it was an initialism.
s m
see http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=initiali
best would be an autorevert to a several-months-old version of the page every week or so. This would also flush the histories.
You sign up for nr0p?
Two words: Prior Art.
The beauty of open source is that once something is in open source software, everybody and their brother's lawyers can show prior art and overthrow patents and invalidate copyrights.
The Lord of the Ring book is open source, if you think about it. I can see the entirity of the source code. Is it free as in beer? No. Is it free as in speech? No. You are limited in what reproductions you may make. You are bound by Copyright Law as to what you can do with the "source code".
Should the publisher and/or owners of the copyright decide to no longer issue new copies of the book, only existing copies would be available, and as time passes those would be rarer and rarer, therefore more expensive.
Likewise, the Java Virtual Machine, while its code is open-source, is not free of copyright restrictions, and you are at the mercy of the copyright holder as to what you may and may not do with it, now or in the future.
It's free now.
Will it be free tomorrow?
mumble... moveable type... mumble...
When the streets are narrow enough...
That's great, and CPython (the C implementation of Python -- as opposed to Jython) can directly call C modules like Python modules. Optimize your modules in C that need the speed, write everythong else in Python.
s 06.html
see: http://docs.python.org/ext/intro.html for more on that.
On windows you can access COM components from Python.
By the way, did you know that Python is really OO with multiple inheritance (diamond-style class traversing added recently) and has hundreds of built-in libraries?
ultimately, stay with the UNIX philosophy. more here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01
>I would not try and predict anything about the IT business 3 years from now
Exactly.
Like I said: what happens when Sun is bought by Megacorp X?
Java may be built by a community, but the JVM is owned by Sun.
Sun dictates plenty of terms: see the Java JVM EULA
> like linux is not directly competing with UNIX
Linux and UNIX generally do not run on the same platforms. They are the platforms.
> Its doing fine so far. But, I guess you, in contrast to most of the IT industry, know better.
Just because the ground is flat now does not mean it will be in ten miles (meet the cliffs of Dover and the 100 foot drop into the Atlantic). By the same token, just because something _has_ been going well does not mean it always will (Martha, Enron, Worldcom, etc. Did we learn nothing?)
>Python is great, but Java has true power-level features such as security management and robust portable multithreading.
Python will evolve more in three years that Java in three years.
>Java is built by a community. You are just opposing it because its not your community. If you want to join the Java community, you can. I know a fellow who has come up with some major feature designs which have been implemented in Java.
Don't get me wrong. I like java. My favorite editor is jEdit, and I would sorely miss it.
>if you want to go back to 70s-level technologies and coding. The Bus Error rules! Well, some of us want grown-up coding with decent features.
Excellent. Me too. And is Java good enough now? Yes. Is Java good enough in three years? Five years? 8 years?
Is the code I write today going to run on machines in 8 years? Will Java be around? That is the question.
"Interesting, and how does that make you feel?"
...sorry, gotta run, got a patent to file.
Ananova meets Eliza.
I imagine the first true voice recognition systems for phone to pc will sound a lot like that.
Of course, we could outsource that to India, and have typists at $5/day. That would come up to less than a penny per minute. I talk, you type, the computer reads it out to me. I talk some more, you type some more, I hear what the computer says.
(j/k)
>As a professional Java developer, I despise the thought of Java going open source.
It's like the guy who specialized as a Yugo mechanic.
He was out of work after the Serb army shelled the Yugo factory near Sarajevo.
Diversify before it's too late, dude.