Perl is spelled P-e-r-l not P-E-R-L, this is the first sign you don't know what you are talking about.
Perl is no more or less hard to understand or maintain than any other language if you code correctly. Sure I can make Perl look like line noise, but I can also make it easy to read and maintain.
Re:Netwinders, Cobalt, and the glorious past
on
Netwinder is Back
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· Score: 1
There is nothing more unfunny than having to explain a joke, but here it goes:
$$ is the process id (PID) of the current proccess in many shell languages.
You said "...to spend extra $$ on Win2k and Compaq hardware."
I said " What do extra PIDs have to do with Win2k and Compaq?"
P.S. That enhanced text link they speak of can't (as far as I can tell) be opened in a seperate window. It forses the focal window to honor the link request...
In what browser? In galeon I can right click and open in another window or in a tab.
Re:Netwinders, Cobalt, and the glorious past
on
Netwinder is Back
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· Score: 1
I also liked the Rebel.Net idea. Ok, maybe not the name, but bundling a Netwinder as a SOHO/SMB server with DSL service seemed like a real value and a way help those businesses not have to spend extra $$ on Win2k and Compaq hardware.
What do extra PIDs have to do with Win2k and Compaq?
Source code *is* useless to about 99% of the people that use the program.
Bullshit, it is only useless if you consider direct action. Let us say that someone releases a program and there is a bug in it. 99% of the people could care less about the source code, since they can't understand it, but that last 1% looks at the source and fixes it and then rereleases it. All 100% benefit from the fix.
[standard stuff about installing everthing into its own directory and then symlinking to/usr/bin, etc.] NO NEED FOR A PACKAGE MANAGER....
There is still one very important reason (and pretty much the only good one) for a packaging system: dependencies. Sure I can remove a package with a quick "rm -rf packageX", but will the removal of that program adversly affect packageY? How can I tell if packageZ conflicts with packageJ? To solve these problems we use a package managment tool. But wait, if I am already using this package management tool to do the installs (for the reasons above), do I really care where it puts the executables? My answer is yes, but not very much. It would be nice if everything were installed in the manner described in the previous comment, but it is not really necessary.
[The voice activated interface] offers a number of advantages over conventional interfaces, biomentric security, easy of use & accessability, even for your technophobic mother/granny.
I have never seen (or is it heard) how people think talking to a computer is easier than typeing or interacting with a mouse. The levels of ambiguity are simple astounding. classic example "I had to reinstall all of my software because I told my computer to delete windows. Hey! It did it again!"
Imagine a home entertainment gateway accessed by voice, no worries about little Johnny snooping your adult PIN. The inherent Biometric security, will make no difference, if he overhears your PIN.
Yeah, but his handy voice recorder seems to work just fine.
Imagine re-tuning you IP Radio Alarm, by voice, without opening your eyes.
What if you talk in your sleep?
Or change channels without having to figure out which of those six seperate remote you need to use, simply by saying 'TV, select channel 4', or 'TV, News' or any number of other scenarios.
And changing the channel of the TVs in the next room.
I think the killer application for [the voice activated interface] is Home Automation.
Oh, I agree. Just imagine Joe Six-Pack telling his wife "Remember, don't say 'Computer, turn on garbage disposal.'" while he has his hand in the garbage disposal.
In the end, I think it all boils down to the fact that humans often get confused by voice comunicaton and we have yet to build a computer smarter than ourselves. I still think we should be doing research into voice interfaces, but the idea that they will be useful for anything but very specialized tasks is foolish.
But they don't have to post those stories. All they have to do is post a kernel release story and they know that some whiner will complain that they aren't focusing on relevent software like X and Y. This person will then get modded up to level four or five and everybody can get what they want.
If ever Google is on the verge of dying, the government(s) should bail them out. The service they provide is too valuable to let them slip away. The internet (well, the web) would be rather useless without Google (or another similarly excellent search facility).
Then we should be willing to pay a subscription for it shouldn't we? Don't kid yourself, if commercial searching engines are replaced with a government project then we will still be paying a subscription; it is called income tax. The only difference between paying a subscription and paying taxes is that you pay a subscription when you want to use a service and you are forced to pay taxes regardless of use. Personally I prefer the NPR/PBS version of subscription: we need X dollars or we go away, it is your responsibility to keep us afloat. The trick is talking a private/public company into becoming a non-profit/not-for-profit company.
I wouldn't care if they hardcoded it; I wouldn't use their fork of the kernel then (and I am willing to bet that Linus wouldn't accept it either). What I am worried about is a system -- written by the NSA -- that happily accepts new sub-systems at run-time. Let me give you an example of what I am scared of: a worm (written by the NSA) that exploits Apache/bind/whatever and then installs some new sub-system. I realize this sort of thing can be done with modules, but it just worries me that there is yet antoher possible weakness in the kernel and that the NSA is the one putting it there.
"They're putting hooks into lots of places in the kernel... so that anyone can plug in their own implentation of any of the sub-systems"
Does anyone else worry about the NSA making the Linux kernel easy to modify? All I could think about while reading the above comment was "what else are they planning to put in?" I am not normally a very paranoid person and I applaud the NSA for its effort, but I can't help but get the feeling that they should be watched like hawks.
You are right (about leaving the class), and I do tend to vote with my feet. When places of business (and colleges are a business) do things I don't like I don't go back. I am not saying there should be a law suit or that people's fundamental rights are being abridged. I am saying that the policy is stupid and that if a college I was going to tried to pull this crap I would walk out. Life is too short to put up with stupid policies.
My wife is an English professor and she loves the online essay providers. She loves the way she can simply load the RTF file she requests from her students into EVE and watch the computer tell her which students she needs to drum out of college (she averages around five or six a semester). She also uses google to search for phrases that don't sound like the students work. Take a look at the Essay Verifacation Engine (EVE) at http://www.canexus.com/eve/index.shtml.
As for using google to answer questions, well if your questions are so simple or fact based that google returns a good answer in a reasonable amount of time then your question was bad. Good questions require thought and processing.
Quizes and tests are a different matter altogether; computers should be on the floor with the book(s) unless it is an open book test.
The thing to remember about cheaters is that they are lazy (and I am not talking about laziness as a virtue here). They tend to fuck up and get caught.
The only people who fear technology are those who don't understand it.
I don't know about you, but I paid money to go to classes when I was in college and so long as I wasn't doing anything that disrupted the other students then I feel they have no right to stop me. I paid for the privledge to be there, but that doesn't mean they should be able to force me to do things their way. The only reason I went to (some) classes at all was the possibility that something interesting/insightful/important would be said; however, the vast majority time I should not have even bothered. So instead I wrote programs long-hand on legal pads (I would have killed for a laptop). Should the professor have stopped me?
Re:how many kernels realeased a year?
on
2.4.9 Kernel Released
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· Score: 5, Informative
Here are the counts by year. Only the release versions are counted because development kernels can run into the hundreds.
Already done. bsod is a program from the XScreenSaver package from the great JWZ. And of course since it is opensource we have all sorts of neat features in it that arn't in the MS Windows version (Sad Macs, Amiga Guru meditations, etc.)
Re:This has been mentioned before, but...
on
Why not Ruby?
·
· Score: 4
Because every language you learn affects how you program. Lets get meta here for a second. Think about how you think. I can only think in English, C, or Perl. This limits the number of things I can think about. As you learn new languages your capacity for think of new things increases and your understanding of the things you already knew deepens. I didn't really understand English until I started learning Latin (not that I remember much of it today). I could speak and write English, but I didn't really understand why I formed sentences in the way I do. Similarly, when I learned x86 assembler I suddenly understood why some things in C work the way they do. In the end all languages are worth learning (except Visual Basic).
Seriously, does anyone buy that.NET exists in any real sense? What is Ximian thinking? We need an open source version of Exchange before we need a version of a non-existant product.
Your friend was incompetent. KWebGet is a download manager (and a pretty spiffy one at that). It is listed on freshmeat. So is GTM a Gnome/Gtk download manager. They are both frontends to the excelent wget commandline utility.
How about the preson who walks down the hall trying door handles until he finds one unlocked, and then opens the door (entering your property), locks it, and then closes the door. Is this person doing something good or bad?
Slashdot Mirror
What makes you think it will be cheaper? Textbook manufacturers have a captive audience; they don't need to compete on price.
Perl is spelled P-e-r-l not P-E-R-L, this is the first sign you don't know what you are talking about.
Perl is no more or less hard to understand or maintain than any other language if you code correctly. Sure I can make Perl look like line noise, but I can also make it easy to read and maintain.
There is nothing more unfunny than having to explain a joke, but here it goes:
$$ is the process id (PID) of the current proccess in many shell languages.
You said "...to spend extra $$ on Win2k and Compaq hardware."
I said " What do extra PIDs have to do with Win2k and Compaq?"
ha-ha-ha, godiamtiredandjustwantallofthenoisetojuststop.
Bullshit, it is only useless if you consider direct action. Let us say that someone releases a program and there is a bug in it. 99% of the people could care less about the source code, since they can't understand it, but that last 1% looks at the source and fixes it and then rereleases it. All 100% benefit from the fix.
There is still one very important reason (and pretty much the only good one) for a packaging system: dependencies. Sure I can remove a package with a quick "rm -rf packageX", but will the removal of that program adversly affect packageY? How can I tell if packageZ conflicts with packageJ? To solve these problems we use a package managment tool. But wait, if I am already using this package management tool to do the installs (for the reasons above), do I really care where it puts the executables? My answer is yes, but not very much. It would be nice if everything were installed in the manner described in the previous comment, but it is not really necessary.
[The voice activated interface] offers a number of advantages over conventional interfaces, biomentric security, easy of use & accessability, even for your technophobic mother/granny.
I have never seen (or is it heard) how people think talking to a computer is easier than typeing or interacting with a mouse. The levels of ambiguity are simple astounding. classic example "I had to reinstall all of my software because I told my computer to delete windows. Hey! It did it again!"
Imagine a home entertainment gateway accessed by voice, no worries about little Johnny snooping your adult PIN. The inherent Biometric security, will make no difference, if he overhears your PIN.
Yeah, but his handy voice recorder seems to work just fine.
Imagine re-tuning you IP Radio Alarm, by voice, without opening your eyes.
What if you talk in your sleep?
Or change channels without having to figure out which of those six seperate remote you need to use, simply by saying 'TV, select channel 4', or 'TV, News' or any number of other scenarios.
And changing the channel of the TVs in the next room.
I think the killer application for [the voice activated interface] is Home Automation.
Oh, I agree. Just imagine Joe Six-Pack telling his wife "Remember, don't say 'Computer, turn on garbage disposal.'" while he has his hand in the garbage disposal.
In the end, I think it all boils down to the fact that humans often get confused by voice comunicaton and we have yet to build a computer smarter than ourselves. I still think we should be doing research into voice interfaces, but the idea that they will be useful for anything but very specialized tasks is foolish.
But they don't have to post those stories. All they have to do is post a kernel release story and they know that some whiner will complain that they aren't focusing on relevent software like X and Y. This person will then get modded up to level four or five and everybody can get what they want.
I wouldn't care if they hardcoded it; I wouldn't use their fork of the kernel then (and I am willing to bet that Linus wouldn't accept it either). What I am worried about is a system -- written by the NSA -- that happily accepts new sub-systems at run-time. Let me give you an example of what I am scared of: a worm (written by the NSA) that exploits Apache/bind/whatever and then installs some new sub-system. I realize this sort of thing can be done with modules, but it just worries me that there is yet antoher possible weakness in the kernel and that the NSA is the one putting it there.
Does anyone else worry about the NSA making the Linux kernel easy to modify? All I could think about while reading the above comment was "what else are they planning to put in?" I am not normally a very paranoid person and I applaud the NSA for its effort, but I can't help but get the feeling that they should be watched like hawks.
You are right (about leaving the class), and I do tend to vote with my feet. When places of business (and colleges are a business) do things I don't like I don't go back. I am not saying there should be a law suit or that people's fundamental rights are being abridged. I am saying that the policy is stupid and that if a college I was going to tried to pull this crap I would walk out. Life is too short to put up with stupid policies.
My wife is an English professor and she loves the online essay providers. She loves the way she can simply load the RTF file she requests from her students into EVE and watch the computer tell her which students she needs to drum out of college (she averages around five or six a semester). She also uses google to search for phrases that don't sound like the students work. Take a look at the Essay Verifacation Engine (EVE) at http://www.canexus.com/eve/index.shtml.
As for using google to answer questions, well if your questions are so simple or fact based that google returns a good answer in a reasonable amount of time then your question was bad. Good questions require thought and processing.
Quizes and tests are a different matter altogether; computers should be on the floor with the book(s) unless it is an open book test.
The thing to remember about cheaters is that they are lazy (and I am not talking about laziness as a virtue here). They tend to fuck up and get caught.
The only people who fear technology are those who don't understand it.
I don't know about you, but I paid money to go to classes when I was in college and so long as I wasn't doing anything that disrupted the other students then I feel they have no right to stop me. I paid for the privledge to be there, but that doesn't mean they should be able to force me to do things their way. The only reason I went to (some) classes at all was the possibility that something interesting/insightful/important would be said; however, the vast majority time I should not have even bothered. So instead I wrote programs long-hand on legal pads (I would have killed for a laptop). Should the professor have stopped me?
Here are the counts by year. Only the release versions are counted because development kernels can run into the hundreds.
1994 - 10 (1.0.0 - 1.0.9)
1995 - 14 (1.2.0 - 1.2.13)
1996 - 28 (2.0.0 - 2.0.27)
1997 - 6 (2.0.28 - 2.0.33)
1998 - 3 (2.0.34 - 2.0.36)
1999 - 2/14 (2.0.37 - 2.0.28 & 2.2.0 - 2.2.13)
2000 - 5 (2.2.14 - 2.2.18)
2001 - 1/1/10 (2.0.39 & 2.2.19 & 2.4.0 - 2.4.9)
avg number of kernels per year: 11.75
The benefit is that you can have the latest and greatest version now instead of six months from now.
Already done. bsod is a program from the XScreenSaver package from the great JWZ. And of course since it is opensource we have all sorts of neat features in it that arn't in the MS Windows version (Sad Macs, Amiga Guru meditations, etc.)
Because every language you learn affects how you program. Lets get meta here for a second. Think about how you think. I can only think in English, C, or Perl. This limits the number of things I can think about. As you learn new languages your capacity for think of new things increases and your understanding of the things you already knew deepens. I didn't really understand English until I started learning Latin (not that I remember much of it today). I could speak and write English, but I didn't really understand why I formed sentences in the way I do. Similarly, when I learned x86 assembler I suddenly understood why some things in C work the way they do. In the end all languages are worth learning (except Visual Basic).
Seriously, does anyone buy that .NET exists in any real sense? What is Ximian thinking? We need an open source version of Exchange before we need a version of a non-existant product.
I doesn't have to since everybody elses does [forbids benchmarking] there will be nothing to compare it to!
Your friend was incompetent. KWebGet is a download manager (and a pretty spiffy one at that). It is listed on freshmeat. So is GTM a Gnome/Gtk download manager. They are both frontends to the excelent wget commandline utility.
How about the preson who walks down the hall trying door handles until he finds one unlocked, and then opens the door (entering your property), locks it, and then closes the door. Is this person doing something good or bad?
Thats funny, I read it as binary (10 = 2). Are you sure your a geek?
Actually it would be worse. The issue is repetive tasks. The larger the character set the better.
If you scroll down you can see some nice buzz-words in english. The one that piqued my interest was "Spring board modules"