Just watch a kid with a new videogame. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens.
Heck, I must have been one strange kid then... Usually the very first thing I'd do was read the manual, especially the background story. My cousin or my friends on the other hand didn't. Never really thought about it, but I always figured I was the normal, albeit somewhat brainy type, and the others were just lazy or dumb or something. Now it appears I was the weird kid, and they were the normals...
Just out of curiosity... How many of you guys actually read the manuals to each and every piece of hardware or software you ever bought? I assume the proportion of anal retentive manual readers in the general population is somewhat elevated here in our beloved slashdot community.;)
Whoah, hang on... Verizon is offering broadband over plain old coaxial TV cable? Whoopty-frickin-doo! With tech like that, the rumors must be right... Man DID land on the moon last month!
Hey, come on now... They tried connecting the Mac Mini to an LCD, and it worked! Then they went on to connecting some USB tuner card to the Mini, and it worked as well! Surely, there's a lot of useful info in this article, and it's not bad for a weeks work, don't you agree?
Yeah, me neither... Must be a slow newsweek or something...
Very strange indeed; all speeches from saturday should be there in theory. They're still encoding some speeches from sunday, so you won't find them online yet, but they've already posted the valgrind speech given sunday afternoon which should indicate that all speeches from Saturday should be online already.
The only guy who flatout refused to have his speech filmed was Tomasz Kojm from ClamAV, so you'll never see that one online. Unfortunately, I was one of the volunteers who was forced to undergo it in order to give him his 15 and 5 minutes warning before his speech would end, and given the quality of the speech in question, I certainly understand why he didn't want that one committed to film.;)
Hmm, I see something with Stallman talking, titled "GPL"... It's this one.
If you run Linux, start downloading it with wget, and when you get a couple hundred KB, watch the file with mplayer while it's rolling in... This way you can check out if it's the one you need, and stop the wget process + delete the file if it isn't.
We recorded all the speeches this year and the movies can be found here. Not everything is up yet, and they're still working on ogg/theora versions, and the filenames may not be too descriptive if you weren't there, but whatever... I already sent some feedback and those issues will probably be fixed soon.
Disclaimer: I was but a humble volunteer; don't spam me with any questions 'coz this is about all I know about the movies.;)
I don't own a tivo; I live in Belgium, we don't have tivo. I do however have a tuner card in the PC, pay for cable and barely watch it (haven't seen TV at my place in like 2 months). But yes, I can afford better food than some junk burger. Like stuff I cook myself.
And on the subject of Firefly: I just haven't seen it in stores yet. I don't shop much, except for food. The supermarket is next to the building I live in; the record shop is on the other side of town. The online record shop I order from didn't carry Firefly nor Serenity last time I checked. So what? You gonna sue me for being lazy?
My thoughts exactly: why the hell would I want to get interactive with a commercial for some 99 cent burger? If I can afford a tivo, I surely can afford better food than that... Offer me a coupon for a free Mercedes, and you might get my attention.
Commercials ruin the whole TV experience for me. I watched Firefly from DVDs I borrowed from a friend, and I enjoyed it tremendously. The DVDs are already on my to-buy list as soon as I can spot them in a store nearby. They recently started airing them in my country though, and they're interrupted twice for commercials. Those commercials ruin the whole pacing of the episode, and leave me in a state of confusion as soon as the show resumes because by then I'll have forgotten some of the subtle stuff that happened because I was distracted by the commercials, and I'll need a couple of minutes to get back into the show. Imagine how much worse it would be if I actually had to interact with the damn commercials in between, completely ruining my concentration. Heck, stuff that burger where the damn sun don't shine; I'll happily skip past commercials whenever I get the chance.
Wouldn't work. AGP can send a lot faster than PCI can receive, so your PCI reception speed is the bottleneck for that network. The PCI reception speed is equal to the PCI transmission speed. So it makes no sense to use anything that can send faster than PCI if the receiving end is also PCI.
However, if you need to stream a lot of different data to a couple of separate machines, you might be able to implement a multihead network card in AGP, and split the superior bandwidth over multiple physically separated connections. This way you can put that extra bandwidth to use without flooding the receiving end.
Neither do I, this doesn't mean I have to hide behind that fact. If you speak Dutch, that means you're either from Belgium, like me, or from the Netherlands. Both countries air movies and TV shows in their original (usually English) spoken language and use subtitles. So you should at least have it easier than say the French when it comes to learning the syntax/vocabulary. All that remains is the spelling, and you get that at school at what age? 14? Tops! Probably earlier if you live in the Netherlands since I doubt French is as high a priority there as it is over here, and we start learning French at age 10.
my english is much better then your dutch probably
My English is probably a lot better than your Dutch. Oh, and for the record: my Dutch is probably as good or better than yours.
contribute something usefull to this thread
contribute something useful to this thread
The only English word ending in "full" is the word "full". That should be an easy one to memorize...
Not being a Native English speaker is no excuse for laziness. It's not exactly swahili; English is a lot easier, and a lot more important to international communications than that. So my suggestion is: why don't you stop bitching and start learning?
Agreed; CVS/SVN or any other versioning system you feel comfortable with is the way to go. Also, don't limit yourself to just the often used stuff; versioning systems are great for work in progress as well, even if you're the only coder on the project. Boss/client wants a major change in the tool? No problem; you're stored the last known good version in your versioning system and tagged it, so even if you screw up while applying the changes, you can always check out that version and start over. You can accomplish the same by just making a backup copy of your known working code, but storing it in a versioning system has additional benefits like being able to track the changes, comitting only the changed files after every minor change instead of having to take another copy of the complete source code etc...
Other than that, on the code side of things, make sure your often used code is separated from the main logic of your projects, and just include the oft used functions/classes where appropriate. This is obvious to most seasoned coders, but since you mention you're self taught I felt compelled to point this out.
An example would be my own php stuff at work: all our tools at work look the same, same basic layout, just different menus and code on the application logic level of the site. We have a bunch of useful functions/classes stored in a separate CVS project called "empty framework" which we can just check out, including a couple of database tables which share the same layout across all our projects. We just check out the bare framework, create a tablespace for it and populate the user table with at least one admin user, edit the config file to point to this tablespace and then fill in the blanks like our menu (for which we have a menu editing module that's accessible from within the tool and stores its menu in the DB, already set up at creation time to contain a link to its own so we can start editing the menu from within the new tool) and the application specific code. This approach assumes you write your "framework" code in such a way that it's fairly independent of the application itself, and accepts a couple of parameters to tweak it to the specific needs for your app.
Example: I work in the helpdesk business; most tools are just simple call logging tools. Presenting a sortable table of all call log entries which can be searched and filtered involves no more than setting a couple of variables and calling one function that renders the whole table, X rows per page, with navigation buttons for prev/next page, clickable column headers to change the sorting and a view/edit/delete button per call log. This is so basic for all our tools, we split the code off in its own class, and just call that class to do the hard work for us. So basically what I'm saying is: split off your oft used code so you can reference it instead of copy/pasting it in your tool.
The good thing about this is that when a bug is found in the basic framework, we can fix it once there, and just overwrite the appropriate file in all our tools if it doesn't break the API. New projects wil automatically benefit from the fix.
When asked whether the name change is indicative of a change in direction for the Half-Life 2 franchise, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi replied, 'episodic.' When asked the follow-up question of whether the new name meant that beginning of a regular flow of content, Lombardi replied, 'yes.'
My reply to this so called "article": "Oh, haha, how very fucking funny you are. Now go back to picking your ass with a stick while us homo sapiens continue on the task of actually finding out more about the universe we live in, to better our lives, instead of making fun of everyone with an IQ higher than our own."
There, I said it, you're a fucking monkey. Have a nice day.
No, seriously, think about it: The first book that shows professional.NET developers how to incorporate A[rtifical]I[ntelligence] into their daily programming.
That's like what? AI for dummies? When was the last time you saw a book on "How to use <$paradigm> in [C++/C/Perl/...] using [vi/emacs]"? Why do these so called.NET "programmers" need everything spelled out for them? Is it perhaps because they couldn't code their way out of a paper bag without a manual written specifically for that occasion? My experience with.NET coders I happen to know personally seems to support that statement...
I think it's rather sad to see how we're turning IT, and more specifically programming, into a conveyor belt job that any moron can do as long as he can find the right manual/book, as opposed to the intellectual and creative process it once used to be.
Personally, I find the idea of paying a levy on every piece of media I *could* use to pirate music repugnant.
Well, if I'd get something in return (like being legally allowed to download and copy/burn whatever I want), I'll gladly pay the fee. I'd just see it as "culture/entertainment tax". After all, I'm paying road taxes right now here in Belgium, and I haven't driven every road in Belgium yet, and I never will either... I have the privilege of being allowed to drive our roads for free though, our highways don't have toll booths... I'm not complaining about how repugnant it is, having to pay road taxes for every road I *might* want to make use of. See, I don't mind paying for a privilege I might or might not want to put to use. What I do mind though is that I have to pay a levy on blank media, but I'm still not allowed to do anything more than I was allowed to do before the levy came.
They introduced the levy here to help the music industry recoup some of the "lost sales" from people downloading music off the Internet. They're basically accusing everyone who ever bought a CDR of being a thief. No "innocent untill proven guilty"; no... If you buy a CDR, you're a thief and you shall pay a small fine. The music industry is compensated for the loss of sales, but they still get to keep the stick of legislation to beat you with if they find you downloading music off the Net. Best of both worlds for them; the consumer however is treated with disrespect and gets absolutely nothing out of the deal. No, wait, let me rephrase that... The consumer gets the assurance that people like Britney Spears get to make another album...
Yeah, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside...
Oh, and something else to think about: how come we have to pay levy on blank media on the RIAA's behalf (and/or the IFPI and other big entertainment lobbyists), but not on the BSA's behalf? After all, illegal copies of software must surely account for a rather hefty amount of CDR sales, right? Maybe the BSA has more clue than the RIAA/IFPI; maybe they just haven't caught on yet...
I wouldn't be too sure about that. For centuries man thought it impossible to prove the existence of atoms, things so small one could never discern them not even with the best of microscopes. Right now we know about the existance of even smaller things in our universe...
So what makes you think that we'll never be able to prove the existence of places we could never visit in physical form, not even in the strongest and most powerful of spaceships?;)
Not only that; the comparison is Linux/Unix including MacOS... How many kernels are we talking about here? There's the Linux kernel, 3 different BSD kernels, the MacOS kernel based on BSD (I assume it's different enough to count as a separate kernel, don't really know), HP-UX, AIX, SCO Unixware, Solaris (just check the vulnerability list) and probably some other Unix variants I forgot to mention compared against one OS. Yeah, sure, there's different Windows versions out there, but all Windows XP "distros" are based on the same kernel, with some "advanced" features compiled out of configed out...
Even assuming they're not just counting Windows XP vulnerabilities, but also the ones found some of the other Windows versions that are still in use, it's still a shitload of unix variants compared to a small amount of Windows versions. Fair comparison indeed. Doing statistics like this could even make the Ford Pinto look safe. After all, the number of deadly incidents involving a Ford Pinto pales in comparison to the number of accidents involving all other brands and models if you add them up.
Other than that, just look at the damn report... Most bugs aren't even OS bugs, but bugs in third party software. How the hell is a bug in Acrobat Reader, 3Com 3CDaemon, F-Secure Antivirus or Platinum FTP Server MS's fault? If you look at it like that, of course you're gonna find a lot more bugs in the linux/unix category: there's simply a lot more software for those OS's. Your average Linux distro has more unique applications on board than most people would ever install on a Windows box, and a lot of it is indeed of dubious quality because it simply wasn't written with security in mind. Just like all that shareware crap for Windows.
I don't question the validity of the report, but I do question the journalistic integrity of the people reporting this. This is a list of application vulnerabilities broken down per OS, where OS is one of the following: "Windows" and "Other"; not some measure of the security of the OS's in question. Heck, lots of stuff on the Windows list is dubious software I wouldn't wanna install on my box anyway. Exeem? Chris Moneymaker's World Poker Championship? Crazy Browser? Optimal Desktop? Heck, add every piece of malware to the list and count it as an "insecure application" while you're at it.
Yeah, I wanted to take a bunch of friends to see it a couple of weeks after it'd come out, only to realise it only ran for two weeks at the Kinepolis in Brussels. That was the only theater I know of that even ran the movie...
The movie was just as poorly marketed as the series was; someone obviously didn't want this movie to do well.
On top of that, assuming these projects aren't open-source themselves -- how are OSS groups able to know that companies are stealing their code if OSS groups can't review the code itself?
Sometimes it's possible to deduce this from looking at the compiled code. Especially with libraries. Now I'm not an expert on the issue, but cases of closed source vendors getting caught in the act of including opensource portions in their product have been discussed often enough here on slashdot, so I find it odd that you seem to be unaware of this.
I for one found the end to be very fitting, plus it opens up an interesting possibility: another writer could now pick up the story of the Dark Tower, and write it as he sees fit, tying it into his own bibliography... I know it ain't gonna happen, no way King is gonna sign the rights to TDT away, but maybe someone might pick up the story again once it ends up in the public domain. Doubt I'd still be around to read the result though; last time I checked my due date was way before 2500AD.;)
No, what I had more trouble with was the rushed feel to the last couple of novels... The first one is a mess, to be sure, but it was a charming little mess and it wasn't too long... Books 2 and 3 were goddamn genius. But then it went downhill; the cliffhanger with Blaine was concluded too easily and felt like a rather cliché way of moving the story on so he could get sidetracked by the whole "Roland's Youth" story.
After that there were too many loose ends, like what the heck was Father Callahan doing in Wolves of the Calla? If King needed an ally there, anyone would do, but why did he have to pick Father Callahan? He makes it look like it has some sort of deeper meaning, as if the Father will become part of the ka-tet, and then the poor sod dies in the stupidest way ever: "Run, Jake! There's no particular reason why we couldn't escape together, but I wanna sacrifice myself. Sorry if it's hard for you to emotionally detach yourself and get running, but I feel like dying for no particular reason today"...
And please, don't get me started on Flagg and the Red King... They were supposed to be the god damn major enemies, men of great power and cunning, yet they died easier than a blindfolded slow mutant in a boobytrapped maze. And what the heck was with the Harry Potter thing anyway? If you gotta reference stuff from our world, at least reference the classics, not that J.K. Rowling kiddy crap.
Don't get me wrong; I still love the series, but book 4 was somewhat of a disappointment: waiting for years for the story to progress, and being treated to a history lesson instead. And everything after that felt somehow rushed and... cheap...
I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees it this way...
Doesn't look nearly as funny as you trying to fish your carkeys out of your pockets; I just look like a discrete ball scratcher, whereas you, my dear friend...;)
Slashdot Mirror
Just watch a kid with a new videogame. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens.
Heck, I must have been one strange kid then... Usually the very first thing I'd do was read the manual, especially the background story. My cousin or my friends on the other hand didn't. Never really thought about it, but I always figured I was the normal, albeit somewhat brainy type, and the others were just lazy or dumb or something. Now it appears I was the weird kid, and they were the normals...
Just out of curiosity... How many of you guys actually read the manuals to each and every piece of hardware or software you ever bought? I assume the proportion of anal retentive manual readers in the general population is somewhat elevated here in our beloved slashdot community. ;)
Whoah, hang on... Verizon is offering broadband over plain old coaxial TV cable? Whoopty-frickin-doo! With tech like that, the rumors must be right... Man DID land on the moon last month!
Hey, come on now... They tried connecting the Mac Mini to an LCD, and it worked! Then they went on to connecting some USB tuner card to the Mini, and it worked as well! Surely, there's a lot of useful info in this article, and it's not bad for a weeks work, don't you agree?
Yeah, me neither... Must be a slow newsweek or something...
Very strange indeed; all speeches from saturday should be there in theory. They're still encoding some speeches from sunday, so you won't find them online yet, but they've already posted the valgrind speech given sunday afternoon which should indicate that all speeches from Saturday should be online already.
The only guy who flatout refused to have his speech filmed was Tomasz Kojm from ClamAV, so you'll never see that one online. Unfortunately, I was one of the volunteers who was forced to undergo it in order to give him his 15 and 5 minutes warning before his speech would end, and given the quality of the speech in question, I certainly understand why he didn't want that one committed to film. ;)
Hmm, I see something with Stallman talking, titled "GPL"... It's this one.
If you run Linux, start downloading it with wget, and when you get a couple hundred KB, watch the file with mplayer while it's rolling in... This way you can check out if it's the one you need, and stop the wget process + delete the file if it isn't.
We recorded all the speeches this year and the movies can be found here. Not everything is up yet, and they're still working on ogg/theora versions, and the filenames may not be too descriptive if you weren't there, but whatever... I already sent some feedback and those issues will probably be fixed soon.
Disclaimer: I was but a humble volunteer; don't spam me with any questions 'coz this is about all I know about the movies. ;)
Boy, you lost me, but at least I'm gonna try and make an effort to answer to your most on-topic question/remark:
I don't own a tivo; I live in Belgium, we don't have tivo. I do however have a tuner card in the PC, pay for cable and barely watch it (haven't seen TV at my place in like 2 months). But yes, I can afford better food than some junk burger. Like stuff I cook myself.
And on the subject of Firefly: I just haven't seen it in stores yet. I don't shop much, except for food. The supermarket is next to the building I live in; the record shop is on the other side of town. The online record shop I order from didn't carry Firefly nor Serenity last time I checked. So what? You gonna sue me for being lazy?
My thoughts exactly: why the hell would I want to get interactive with a commercial for some 99 cent burger? If I can afford a tivo, I surely can afford better food than that... Offer me a coupon for a free Mercedes, and you might get my attention.
Commercials ruin the whole TV experience for me. I watched Firefly from DVDs I borrowed from a friend, and I enjoyed it tremendously. The DVDs are already on my to-buy list as soon as I can spot them in a store nearby. They recently started airing them in my country though, and they're interrupted twice for commercials. Those commercials ruin the whole pacing of the episode, and leave me in a state of confusion as soon as the show resumes because by then I'll have forgotten some of the subtle stuff that happened because I was distracted by the commercials, and I'll need a couple of minutes to get back into the show. Imagine how much worse it would be if I actually had to interact with the damn commercials in between, completely ruining my concentration. Heck, stuff that burger where the damn sun don't shine; I'll happily skip past commercials whenever I get the chance.
Wouldn't work. AGP can send a lot faster than PCI can receive, so your PCI reception speed is the bottleneck for that network. The PCI reception speed is equal to the PCI transmission speed. So it makes no sense to use anything that can send faster than PCI if the receiving end is also PCI.
However, if you need to stream a lot of different data to a couple of separate machines, you might be able to implement a multihead network card in AGP, and split the superior bandwidth over multiple physically separated connections. This way you can put that extra bandwidth to use without flooding the receiving end.
not everybody speaks english at home
Neither do I, this doesn't mean I have to hide behind that fact. If you speak Dutch, that means you're either from Belgium, like me, or from the Netherlands. Both countries air movies and TV shows in their original (usually English) spoken language and use subtitles. So you should at least have it easier than say the French when it comes to learning the syntax/vocabulary. All that remains is the spelling, and you get that at school at what age? 14? Tops! Probably earlier if you live in the Netherlands since I doubt French is as high a priority there as it is over here, and we start learning French at age 10.
my english is much better then your dutch probably
My English is probably a lot better than your Dutch. Oh, and for the record: my Dutch is probably as good or better than yours.
contribute something usefull to this thread
contribute something useful to this thread
The only English word ending in "full" is the word "full". That should be an easy one to memorize...
Not being a Native English speaker is no excuse for laziness. It's not exactly swahili; English is a lot easier, and a lot more important to international communications than that. So my suggestion is: why don't you stop bitching and start learning?
Agreed; CVS/SVN or any other versioning system you feel comfortable with is the way to go. Also, don't limit yourself to just the often used stuff; versioning systems are great for work in progress as well, even if you're the only coder on the project. Boss/client wants a major change in the tool? No problem; you're stored the last known good version in your versioning system and tagged it, so even if you screw up while applying the changes, you can always check out that version and start over. You can accomplish the same by just making a backup copy of your known working code, but storing it in a versioning system has additional benefits like being able to track the changes, comitting only the changed files after every minor change instead of having to take another copy of the complete source code etc...
Other than that, on the code side of things, make sure your often used code is separated from the main logic of your projects, and just include the oft used functions/classes where appropriate. This is obvious to most seasoned coders, but since you mention you're self taught I felt compelled to point this out.
An example would be my own php stuff at work: all our tools at work look the same, same basic layout, just different menus and code on the application logic level of the site. We have a bunch of useful functions/classes stored in a separate CVS project called "empty framework" which we can just check out, including a couple of database tables which share the same layout across all our projects. We just check out the bare framework, create a tablespace for it and populate the user table with at least one admin user, edit the config file to point to this tablespace and then fill in the blanks like our menu (for which we have a menu editing module that's accessible from within the tool and stores its menu in the DB, already set up at creation time to contain a link to its own so we can start editing the menu from within the new tool) and the application specific code. This approach assumes you write your "framework" code in such a way that it's fairly independent of the application itself, and accepts a couple of parameters to tweak it to the specific needs for your app.
Example: I work in the helpdesk business; most tools are just simple call logging tools. Presenting a sortable table of all call log entries which can be searched and filtered involves no more than setting a couple of variables and calling one function that renders the whole table, X rows per page, with navigation buttons for prev/next page, clickable column headers to change the sorting and a view/edit/delete button per call log. This is so basic for all our tools, we split the code off in its own class, and just call that class to do the hard work for us. So basically what I'm saying is: split off your oft used code so you can reference it instead of copy/pasting it in your tool.
The good thing about this is that when a bug is found in the basic framework, we can fix it once there, and just overwrite the appropriate file in all our tools if it doesn't break the API. New projects wil automatically benefit from the fix.
When asked whether the name change is indicative of a change in direction for the Half-Life 2 franchise, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi replied, 'episodic.' When asked the follow-up question of whether the new name meant that beginning of a regular flow of content, Lombardi replied, 'yes.'
What is he, a vorlon?
My reply to this so called "article": "Oh, haha, how very fucking funny you are. Now go back to picking your ass with a stick while us homo sapiens continue on the task of actually finding out more about the universe we live in, to better our lives, instead of making fun of everyone with an IQ higher than our own."
There, I said it, you're a fucking monkey. Have a nice day.
No, seriously, think about it: The first book that shows professional .NET developers how to incorporate A[rtifical]I[ntelligence] into their daily programming.
That's like what? AI for dummies? When was the last time you saw a book on "How to use <$paradigm> in [C++/C/Perl/...] using [vi/emacs]"? Why do these so called .NET "programmers" need everything spelled out for them? Is it perhaps because they couldn't code their way out of a paper bag without a manual written specifically for that occasion? My experience with .NET coders I happen to know personally seems to support that statement...
I think it's rather sad to see how we're turning IT, and more specifically programming, into a conveyor belt job that any moron can do as long as he can find the right manual/book, as opposed to the intellectual and creative process it once used to be.
In firefox it's ctrl-l; it does something similar in IE, but not quite the same...
Personally, I find the idea of paying a levy on every piece of media I *could* use to pirate music repugnant.
Well, if I'd get something in return (like being legally allowed to download and copy/burn whatever I want), I'll gladly pay the fee. I'd just see it as "culture/entertainment tax". After all, I'm paying road taxes right now here in Belgium, and I haven't driven every road in Belgium yet, and I never will either... I have the privilege of being allowed to drive our roads for free though, our highways don't have toll booths... I'm not complaining about how repugnant it is, having to pay road taxes for every road I *might* want to make use of. See, I don't mind paying for a privilege I might or might not want to put to use. What I do mind though is that I have to pay a levy on blank media, but I'm still not allowed to do anything more than I was allowed to do before the levy came.
They introduced the levy here to help the music industry recoup some of the "lost sales" from people downloading music off the Internet. They're basically accusing everyone who ever bought a CDR of being a thief. No "innocent untill proven guilty"; no... If you buy a CDR, you're a thief and you shall pay a small fine. The music industry is compensated for the loss of sales, but they still get to keep the stick of legislation to beat you with if they find you downloading music off the Net. Best of both worlds for them; the consumer however is treated with disrespect and gets absolutely nothing out of the deal. No, wait, let me rephrase that... The consumer gets the assurance that people like Britney Spears get to make another album...
Yeah, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside...
Oh, and something else to think about: how come we have to pay levy on blank media on the RIAA's behalf (and/or the IFPI and other big entertainment lobbyists), but not on the BSA's behalf? After all, illegal copies of software must surely account for a rather hefty amount of CDR sales, right? Maybe the BSA has more clue than the RIAA/IFPI; maybe they just haven't caught on yet...
I wouldn't be too sure about that. For centuries man thought it impossible to prove the existence of atoms, things so small one could never discern them not even with the best of microscopes. Right now we know about the existance of even smaller things in our universe...
So what makes you think that we'll never be able to prove the existence of places we could never visit in physical form, not even in the strongest and most powerful of spaceships? ;)
Not only that; the comparison is Linux/Unix including MacOS... How many kernels are we talking about here? There's the Linux kernel, 3 different BSD kernels, the MacOS kernel based on BSD (I assume it's different enough to count as a separate kernel, don't really know), HP-UX, AIX, SCO Unixware, Solaris (just check the vulnerability list) and probably some other Unix variants I forgot to mention compared against one OS. Yeah, sure, there's different Windows versions out there, but all Windows XP "distros" are based on the same kernel, with some "advanced" features compiled out of configed out...
Even assuming they're not just counting Windows XP vulnerabilities, but also the ones found some of the other Windows versions that are still in use, it's still a shitload of unix variants compared to a small amount of Windows versions. Fair comparison indeed. Doing statistics like this could even make the Ford Pinto look safe. After all, the number of deadly incidents involving a Ford Pinto pales in comparison to the number of accidents involving all other brands and models if you add them up.
Other than that, just look at the damn report... Most bugs aren't even OS bugs, but bugs in third party software. How the hell is a bug in Acrobat Reader, 3Com 3CDaemon, F-Secure Antivirus or Platinum FTP Server MS's fault? If you look at it like that, of course you're gonna find a lot more bugs in the linux/unix category: there's simply a lot more software for those OS's. Your average Linux distro has more unique applications on board than most people would ever install on a Windows box, and a lot of it is indeed of dubious quality because it simply wasn't written with security in mind. Just like all that shareware crap for Windows.
I don't question the validity of the report, but I do question the journalistic integrity of the people reporting this. This is a list of application vulnerabilities broken down per OS, where OS is one of the following: "Windows" and "Other"; not some measure of the security of the OS's in question. Heck, lots of stuff on the Windows list is dubious software I wouldn't wanna install on my box anyway. Exeem? Chris Moneymaker's World Poker Championship? Crazy Browser? Optimal Desktop? Heck, add every piece of malware to the list and count it as an "insecure application" while you're at it.Yes, but I don't remember what story... But I've seen a linkless story before...
Yeah, I wanted to take a bunch of friends to see it a couple of weeks after it'd come out, only to realise it only ran for two weeks at the Kinepolis in Brussels. That was the only theater I know of that even ran the movie...
The movie was just as poorly marketed as the series was; someone obviously didn't want this movie to do well.
On top of that, assuming these projects aren't open-source themselves -- how are OSS groups able to know that companies are stealing their code if OSS groups can't review the code itself?
Sometimes it's possible to deduce this from looking at the compiled code. Especially with libraries. Now I'm not an expert on the issue, but cases of closed source vendors getting caught in the act of including opensource portions in their product have been discussed often enough here on slashdot, so I find it odd that you seem to be unaware of this.
Not to nitpick, but it's "MPAA", not "MPIAA".
RIAA == Recording Industry Association of America
MPAA == Motion Picture Association of America
There, learn something new every day. ;)
I for one found the end to be very fitting, plus it opens up an interesting possibility: another writer could now pick up the story of the Dark Tower, and write it as he sees fit, tying it into his own bibliography... I know it ain't gonna happen, no way King is gonna sign the rights to TDT away, but maybe someone might pick up the story again once it ends up in the public domain. Doubt I'd still be around to read the result though; last time I checked my due date was way before 2500AD. ;)
No, what I had more trouble with was the rushed feel to the last couple of novels... The first one is a mess, to be sure, but it was a charming little mess and it wasn't too long... Books 2 and 3 were goddamn genius. But then it went downhill; the cliffhanger with Blaine was concluded too easily and felt like a rather cliché way of moving the story on so he could get sidetracked by the whole "Roland's Youth" story.
After that there were too many loose ends, like what the heck was Father Callahan doing in Wolves of the Calla? If King needed an ally there, anyone would do, but why did he have to pick Father Callahan? He makes it look like it has some sort of deeper meaning, as if the Father will become part of the ka-tet, and then the poor sod dies in the stupidest way ever: "Run, Jake! There's no particular reason why we couldn't escape together, but I wanna sacrifice myself. Sorry if it's hard for you to emotionally detach yourself and get running, but I feel like dying for no particular reason today"...
And please, don't get me started on Flagg and the Red King... They were supposed to be the god damn major enemies, men of great power and cunning, yet they died easier than a blindfolded slow mutant in a boobytrapped maze. And what the heck was with the Harry Potter thing anyway? If you gotta reference stuff from our world, at least reference the classics, not that J.K. Rowling kiddy crap.
Don't get me wrong; I still love the series, but book 4 was somewhat of a disappointment: waiting for years for the story to progress, and being treated to a history lesson instead. And everything after that felt somehow rushed and... cheap...
I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees it this way...
Doesn't look nearly as funny as you trying to fish your carkeys out of your pockets; I just look like a discrete ball scratcher, whereas you, my dear friend... ;)