I have many books that I got as a child, and several that my parents had as kids. I read them to my own kids. I will give some of them to my kids where they may be read to my (future) grand kids.
Will e-books allow this ?
What happens when the reader breaks or is replaced by a new model, will the e-book work ?
What happens when the e-book manufacturer goes out of business or simply decides that it is not worth while to support the reader or the books that I have paid for, will I be able to read them ? (This happened in August 2008 when MS stopped support of MSN Music, so you lost the ability to recover your keys if they became corrupt through no fault of your own).
What happens when the e-book gets old and runs out of copyright, will you be able to give a copy to anyone who asks ?
I suspect that the answer to all of the above questions is: no.
The trouble is that most people don't do this, it looks different so they panic and can't use the machine. I have seen people unable to use their machine because the icons have moved around -- I kid you not!
Well, tough shit. Cry me a river.
Either you learn how to use it, or you don’t use it. Simple as that.
Same thing with the car example.
In life, you don’t get spoon-fed. The things that are worth it, are worth learning.
In that case many people will stay with MS Windows.
It depends on where you stand, I would very much like to see greater adoption of Linux[**], for that to happen we need to understand and address the reasons why many people don't want to make the transition. I want to help people, not say to them that they will find it frightening.
The problem is, that by just imitating Windows, there is no reason to ever move to Linux.
(No, the cost argument is false too, since everyone already downloads Windows for free, or gets it with his computer.)
How about stability & security? Cost is relevant, you will have to pay if you want the full version of MS Office, etc.
[**] Actually I am more interested in s/ware that uses well documented, free standards — so that anyone can interface/... with it. Linux is today's best candidate.
I don't see why it would make a difference. If you drive a Volkswagen and then go and drive a Toyota, the indicator and wiper switches are the opposite way round on the steering column, and the instrument panel looks different.... Then they get used to it.
The trouble is that most people don't do this, it looks different so they panic and can't use the machine. I have seen people unable to use their machine because the icons have moved around — I kid you not!
Having never used Windows before it took me about two hours to get my head round XP,
You are exceptional, as a most of us who read slashdot, we will take something new as a challenge, play with it & try to understand how it works — then start using it.
The thing that most of us geeks fail to understand is that most users have little insight into how their machine works, they know that if they press this button something happens; but the why escapes them (even a why that is ''obvious'' to most of us). Because of this if anything changes they are no longer on familiar territory and become worried.
This could be fixed by teaching/training that dealed with a computer/word-processor/... by teaching understanding — but even if a user gets any training the teacher probably does not have the insight to do this. Also such training would take a bit longer and be harder than the ''point, click, do'' courses that are most of what is on offer — so they would not sell in spite of the long term benefits.
If this was really an al-Qaeda plot - then why did he not succeed in crashing the airplane ? Are you really trying to convince me that they are a bunch of incompetents who just manage to cause a little damage but that is all ?
These guys are not stupid, if they wanted to do it they would succeed. I suspect that the bloke is a lone nutter who wanted to draw attention to himself or had some grudge or something. He may even have sympathised with al-Qaeda - but that does not make it an al-Qaeda plot.
However the result of this is that the various security agencies around the world will use this as as excuse to increase the boarding checks resulting in more pain to us and their continued employment.
Go to conferences, send others in your dept to conferences
Get together with related Govt organisations and see what s/ware you can share; set up a common repository; making that repository world visible (may be harder)
If you produce interfaces for the public to use, fully document them so that FLOSS applications can use them
At no point will Microsoft "slipstream" the ballot into a production version of Windows -- say, Windows 7 Service Pack 1, or Windows 8. The ballot will always be delivered as a Windows Update item.
In other words the user will have already been using the machine for some time, they will have got used to clicking the IE icon and... this pesky ballot appears... oh, well, these mysterious things happen, just wait for it to complete... go back to using IE as he was used to.
This should have been included at first boot time, along with asking you for your timezone, etc.
When does the FAT patent expire ? Getting manufacturers to adopt a new, patent encumbered, standard will give them another 20 years of harassing Linux users.
Could we have a human variant of this please -- I would like to feed it to bankers so that the money contained inside them would come spewing out and available for the rest of us.
He gives a few things that he calls CRAP and then goes on to extol the GNU programming style. I do agree that documentation is key, the problem is that many people say that they will ''add the comments after the code is debugged'' - this is what is wrong, you write the comments when you write the code, if you change the code 6 times you change the comments 6 times.
I fear that he is really trying to bring everyone down to the level of the novice programmer rather than raising the standard. I have met managers like that, they say things like ''we won't do that here'' (meaning: ''I have not seen that construct before and am afraid of something new''); ''goto is forbidden'' (meaning: ''someone important said goto is harmful'' - not having understood that Dijkstra was talking about code where 25% of statements were goto - in the days fore things like while loops).
We need to educate programmers, make them better - not dumb down programming.
Given that the LHC is under the French/Swiss border, I was wondering what import/export paperwork the CERN operators need to fill in (and tariffs to pay) every time the beam travels from one country to another....:-)
As a good, law abiding citizen you need to keep abreast of any new laws that may affect you. So, presumably, you will be spending $200 every year just be sure that you ''don't do wrong''.
What a way to squeeze money from a few people and make criminals of the rest of us.
To do this they need to hit each other first. Their cross section is tiny (10^-35m, size of an electron is 16^-15m), they will be moving slowly (about 11km/second if they are created with zero velocity at CERN) - so the chance of them hitting each other is small. If they came across an atom - most of that is empty space; the protons & neutrons are mostly empty space (between the quarks) to something as small as the black hole.
Now that he has admitted this -- is there a case for a massive class lawsuit from people who have had this and wasted a lot of time as a result?
The point would be to bankrupt him and, hopefully, make such other scam artists think twice before trying something similar.
What makes this different is the intention of this, as opposed to some bug.
'There is this idea that because medicine has been so good at reducing mortality rates, that means that natural selection is no longer operating in humans,' says Stephen Stearns of Yale University.
What he says in the opposite:
“The idea that natural selection has stopped operating in humans because we have gotten better at keeping people alive is just plain wrong,” said Stephen C. Stearns,
Reproductive selection will always operate, it is just that the ''selection criteria'' may change, physical fitness may no longer be so important, supplanted by taking advantage of social security/... to enable them to have more children than they can support by the ''sweat of their own brows'', the government picks up the bill.
Appoint a knowledgable committee to look into something and the do something else based on what a mate told them on the golf course, or some well funded pressure group said (party donations help).
The UK parliament is in enough trouble through them dishonestly claiming too much expenses -- time for a real reform. Men of honour don't seem to exist in politics (in large enough numbers), so we need real transparency and accountability.
Guy Fawkes night is soon -- maybe a real reenactment is about due!
Uhh, how is a platform neutral bytecode format that's then compiled to native code at all similar to fat binaries? Oh right. It's not. It's a completely different solution to what is, admittedly, the same problem.
One of the first things that I learned in IT is to try to provide the user with something that does what he wants to achieve, rather than what he asked for. You need to have an open mind, not just look at what is there before you.
Architecture Neutral Distribution Format was tried some 20 years ago. The idea was to have a binary that could be installed on any machine. From what I can remember it involved compiling to some intermediate form and when installed compilation to the target machine code was done.
It never really flew.
If someone wants to do this then something like Java would be good enough for many types of software. There will always be some things for which a binary tied to the specific target is all that would work; I think that it would be better to adopt something that works for most software rather than trying to achieve 100%.
Some years ago I did some work at a bank in Luxembourg for a few days. One machine there was a ST400 - a SWIFT machine that could be used to ''wire'' money anywhere in the world. You send a message to this box (over a TCP/IP connection) and it would send money anywhere in the world. There was no protection on this, no login/... to control access. Everyone had a laptop (with working floppy) and could connect to the ST400. There were SWIFT books around the place describing the message format, many of those were familiar with the format.
In a bar one evening I pointed out ''how simple it would be to send a few million to a bank in Rio''. I was told ''Who wants to live in Rio?''. They were not interested in trying to fix it.
About that time I did some work at a bank in London. Every morning the director of securities arrived in the IT department with a list of errors from the overnight run (all audit trailed, etc). He got a programmer to fix them which he did by running up an SQL interpreter. There was no oversight, the director walked away before this was completed, there was nothing to stop the programmer from doing it whenever he wanted. The programmer was employed through an agency, not a bank employee.
I met someone at a social function, asked him what he did: ''I am a banker, I get to rob people legally'' -- at least he was honest!
It depends on what is contained in the version control system. I agree that diffing the output would be bad, as would if the source format was something like MS Word. If the source was something like Tex or Latex then the differences would be quite sensible and easy to understand.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that the answer to all of the above questions is: no.
The trouble is that most people don't do this, it looks different so they panic and can't use the machine. I have seen people unable to use their machine because the icons have moved around -- I kid you not!
Well, tough shit. Cry me a river.
Either you learn how to use it, or you don’t use it. Simple as that. Same thing with the car example.
In life, you don’t get spoon-fed. The things that are worth it, are worth learning.
In that case many people will stay with MS Windows.
It depends on where you stand, I would very much like to see greater adoption of Linux[**], for that to happen we need to understand and address the reasons why many people don't want to make the transition. I want to help people, not say to them that they will find it frightening.
The problem is, that by just imitating Windows, there is no reason to ever move to Linux. (No, the cost argument is false too, since everyone already downloads Windows for free, or gets it with his computer.)
How about stability & security? Cost is relevant, you will have to pay if you want the full version of MS Office, etc.
[**] Actually I am more interested in s/ware that uses well documented, free standards — so that anyone can interface/... with it. Linux is today's best candidate.
I don't see why it would make a difference. If you drive a Volkswagen and then go and drive a Toyota, the indicator and wiper switches are the opposite way round on the steering column, and the instrument panel looks different .... Then they get used to it.
The trouble is that most people don't do this, it looks different so they panic and can't use the machine. I have seen people unable to use their machine because the icons have moved around — I kid you not!
Having never used Windows before it took me about two hours to get my head round XP,
You are exceptional, as a most of us who read slashdot, we will take something new as a challenge, play with it & try to understand how it works — then start using it.
The thing that most of us geeks fail to understand is that most users have little insight into how their machine works, they know that if they press this button something happens; but the why escapes them (even a why that is ''obvious'' to most of us). Because of this if anything changes they are no longer on familiar territory and become worried.
This could be fixed by teaching/training that dealed with a computer/word-processor/... by teaching understanding — but even if a user gets any training the teacher probably does not have the insight to do this. Also such training would take a bit longer and be harder than the ''point, click, do'' courses that are most of what is on offer — so they would not sell in spite of the long term benefits.
These guys are not stupid, if they wanted to do it they would succeed. I suspect that the bloke is a lone nutter who wanted to draw attention to himself or had some grudge or something. He may even have sympathised with al-Qaeda - but that does not make it an al-Qaeda plot.
However the result of this is that the various security agencies around the world will use this as as excuse to increase the boarding checks resulting in more pain to us and their continued employment.
In other words the user will have already been using the machine for some time, they will have got used to clicking the IE icon and ... this pesky ballot appears ... oh, well, these mysterious things happen, just wait for it to complete ... go back to using IE as he was used to.
This should have been included at first boot time, along with asking you for your timezone, etc.
When does the FAT patent expire ? Getting manufacturers to adopt a new, patent encumbered, standard will give them another 20 years of harassing Linux users.
Could we have a human variant of this please -- I would like to feed it to bankers so that the money contained inside them would come spewing out and available for the rest of us.
I fear that he is really trying to bring everyone down to the level of the novice programmer rather than raising the standard. I have met managers like that, they say things like ''we won't do that here'' (meaning: ''I have not seen that construct before and am afraid of something new''); ''goto is forbidden'' (meaning: ''someone important said goto is harmful'' - not having understood that Dijkstra was talking about code where 25% of statements were goto - in the days fore things like while loops).
We need to educate programmers, make them better - not dumb down programming.
If the state of a gate depends on one electron, it will be highly sensitive to radiation. So what do we do ? Embed these in large blocks of lead ?
Given that the LHC is under the French/Swiss border, I was wondering what import/export paperwork the CERN operators need to fill in (and tariffs to pay) every time the beam travels from one country to another .... :-)
What a way to squeeze money from a few people and make criminals of the rest of us.
To do this they need to hit each other first. Their cross section is tiny (10^-35m, size of an electron is 16^-15m), they will be moving slowly (about 11km/second if they are created with zero velocity at CERN) - so the chance of them hitting each other is small. If they came across an atom - most of that is empty space; the protons & neutrons are mostly empty space (between the quarks) to something as small as the black hole.
What makes this different is the intention of this, as opposed to some bug.
The proper way of solving this problem is to produce a GM variant that grows the bar code into the skin.
something that is very important in these uncertain times, no one wants to loose their job. ''Hey Joe - I have a new batch of names for our list''
'There is this idea that because medicine has been so good at reducing mortality rates, that means that natural selection is no longer operating in humans,' says Stephen Stearns of Yale University.
What he says in the opposite:
“The idea that natural selection has stopped operating in humans because we have gotten better at keeping people alive is just plain wrong,” said Stephen C. Stearns,
Reproductive selection will always operate, it is just that the ''selection criteria'' may change, physical fitness may no longer be so important, supplanted by taking advantage of social security/... to enable them to have more children than they can support by the ''sweat of their own brows'', the government picks up the bill.
The UK parliament is in enough trouble through them dishonestly claiming too much expenses -- time for a real reform. Men of honour don't seem to exist in politics (in large enough numbers), so we need real transparency and accountability.
Guy Fawkes night is soon -- maybe a real reenactment is about due!
Uhh, how is a platform neutral bytecode format that's then compiled to native code at all similar to fat binaries? Oh right. It's not. It's a completely different solution to what is, admittedly, the same problem.
One of the first things that I learned in IT is to try to provide the user with something that does what he wants to achieve, rather than what he asked for. You need to have an open mind, not just look at what is there before you.
It never really flew.
If someone wants to do this then something like Java would be good enough for many types of software. There will always be some things for which a binary tied to the specific target is all that would work; I think that it would be better to adopt something that works for most software rather than trying to achieve 100%.
Isn't that what they use on the sun!? I don't want that sort of thing in my backyard!
Don't worry -- Larry Ellison bought Sun recently, he will look after you - so that he can fleece you on licenses.
Oh, well - it is fun to grin at the coincidence!
In a bar one evening I pointed out ''how simple it would be to send a few million to a bank in Rio''. I was told ''Who wants to live in Rio?''. They were not interested in trying to fix it.
About that time I did some work at a bank in London. Every morning the director of securities arrived in the IT department with a list of errors from the overnight run (all audit trailed, etc). He got a programmer to fix them which he did by running up an SQL interpreter. There was no oversight, the director walked away before this was completed, there was nothing to stop the programmer from doing it whenever he wanted. The programmer was employed through an agency, not a bank employee.
I met someone at a social function, asked him what he did: ''I am a banker, I get to rob people legally'' -- at least he was honest!
I could go on. This sort of stuff is endemic.
Summary: DHS gets to look more important.
If that is all that they do then be thankful. Be fearful that they start to push pointless rules on everyone.
It depends on what is contained in the version control system. I agree that diffing the output would be bad, as would if the source format was something like MS Word. If the source was something like Tex or Latex then the differences would be quite sensible and easy to understand.