In this economy, even if it was running at a small loss, the only compassionate thing for Microsoft to do would be continuing the product line, to keep the people working on Zune in their jobs.
The compassionate thing would be to cut deadwood so that there's enough net income to fund the rest of their operations.
Not quite: you can find evidence that strongly supports a theory too, e.g. by making and testing a prediction (which is what I really meant when I carelessly used the word "prove").
But even that only demonstrates that the theory supports that specific set of conditions. Now, given wide enough coverage, you can make a strong case that the theory is accurate and useful.
For the record, I'm 100% pro-science. I'm also not hacking at this from a mathematical point of view. The scientific method works by trying to disprove ideas and keeping the ones that don't fall to experimental data.
Hey, it's true, though! People say things like "scientists haven't proven evolution, so even they admit it's not a fact" without understanding that nothing in science is proven. At most, you can say that no one has found evidence disproving a given theory, but that's not the same as proving the theory. It's a very important distinction and a fundamental aspect of science.
until that smart guy with the bad hair came up with a better theory which someone then went out and proved. That's how science is supposed to work.
Nitpick: science can't prove anything, by definition. You can demonstrate that an experiment happens a certain way 1,000 times in a row, but that's not proof that it'll work again the next time you try it. The best you can do is fail to disprove a hypothesis.
I've tried 1,000 times to get a computer and Internet access for my mom, but she flatly rejects it. She actively doesn't want a computer. It's not because she doesn't know how to use them, but that she put in her years running a mainframe and is utterly burnt out on the subject.
Me: So at work, we have one computer with lots of hard drives and set the other computers to store their users' information on it instead of their own hard drives.
Mom: So your home directories are on NFS?
Me: Are you sure you don't want a computer, maybe a nice Mac?
Mom: No, and quit asking!
...or...
Me: I got a DSL connection.
Mom: Is that fast?
Me: In network terms, it's around 8 megabits.
Mom: So, about 5 T1s?
Me: Not even a little laptop?
Mom: No, and quit asking!
She's not skipping the "Internet revolution" because it's above her head. She's skipping it because she was there when they were building it, she did her time, and now wants to do other stuff.
Their battle is making people accept Intellectual Property being enforced.
Umm, I'm all for certain types of IP being enforced (Copyright: good. Trademark: good. Software patents: terrible). You can be OK with copyright and still find their actions despicable.
You aren't going to be doing any system programming in Python, Java, or Perl. While in my opinion these are all 'real' programming languages, the distinction between compiled and interpreted is legitimate.
Careful: all existing C# compilers generate bytecode and not native instructions. From what I can tell, Microsoft is indeed doing system programming in C#.
Static typing is appropriate for projects which you expect to have to maintain.
I keep hearing this but it seems to be rooted in theory rather than practice. In reality, it's been at least as easy to maintain large Python projects as large C projects. In fact, I'd assert that it's easier to extend Python codebases because of dynamic typing. If you have a function that accepts a file-like object and performs operations on it, then it will automatically handle any input source that acts like a file. Sample uses include pointing a function at a local file for testing, then passing it the contents of a web page for live operation.
I was under the impression that they are 'scripting languages' because they don't compile.
Python compiles to bytecode exactly like Java does. The difference is that it happens at runtime instead of as an extra step. For example, if you run import foo, the Python runtime looks for a file named "foo.py" in a given set of directories. If there's a corresponding "foo.pyc" in the same directory that's newer than foo.py, then it loads that. If not, it reads in foo.py, compiles it into bytecode, then writes the bytecode out to foo.pyc so that it can skip the compilation step next time.
So is Python a scripting language? Sure, as long as Java is too.
Yes because a compiled, statically-typed, procedural language (C)
Cool! When did they change C to be statically typed? And how do you work around the removal of void* and unions and all the other stuff that breaks typing?
On that I'm not sure. We just ordered a Dell with a Perc 6 controller, and the ordering process wouldn't let us mix and match because they claimed that it wouldn't work. I haven't actually verified or tested this, but you definitely want to check into it before making hardware purchases.
Since those are both pretty easy-to-find options (Office orb at the top left -> Save, and orb -> Print)
That's easy enough once you know about it, but it would never occur to me to click on a product logo to get functionality other than an "about" dialog.
You're right, Derek. It's three years after the conversion, but I yield to your superior knowledge of my company's business needs and use cases at that time. I apologize for the poor planning that resulted in this successful endeavor and agree to solicit your advice should we feel the need for your informed and considered opinion of our situation.
Which is another way of saying that I know a whole lot more about how my company works than you do, and when I tell you that our migration plan was appropriate for our needs, your only proper response is "oh, then that makes sense." Anything else presumes far more familiarity with our internal operations than you could possibly have.
6. Pidgin is GTK+ and Kopete is still very immature compared to it.
Did you mean that sarcastically? Pidgin doesn't even doesn't even support proper metacontacts last time I checked.
Every time I've been stuck using Pidgin, it becomes a game of finding out what they've removed "to make it easier".
I'm a huge fan of Netbook Remix and "maximus". The former provides an awesome launcher sort of like the Eee's default interface but way better, and the second provides fullscreen, borderless windows. You might see what you think of it.
Unfortunately for that comparison, mouse input is highly srialized while keyboarding is very parallel. I only have one arm to manipulate a mouse but 10 fingers to manipulate a keyboard.
$0.00 training costs are nice. But how many $xxx.00 did you lose to lost productivity because you refused to pay for training?
$0.00 we're not a word processing company; we do other stuff.
How many $xxx.00 in lowered morale?
$0.00: all employees get bonuses based on the company's bottom line.
How much trust and capital did the IT department squander?
$0.00: the owner bought into the idea. Besides, we were in the situation the submitter is in where we were doing an upgrade from an old version. We weren't about to install Office 2K again, and Office XP or later would've been a bigger change than OOo. So we had a familiar interface, lower costs, better bonuses, and happier employees. There was no downside whatsoever.
But calling your users Luddites and worse sure ain't the way to go.
But he wasn't saying that all protesters were Luddites. I totally agree with everything you said, but also understand his frustration about people who protest all change, regardless of how carefully planned or coordinated with the end users, seemingly for the sake of having something to complain about. Those were the people he is railing against.
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In this economy, even if it was running at a small loss, the only compassionate thing for Microsoft to do would be continuing the product line, to keep the people working on Zune in their jobs.
The compassionate thing would be to cut deadwood so that there's enough net income to fund the rest of their operations.
Not quite: you can find evidence that strongly supports a theory too, e.g. by making and testing a prediction (which is what I really meant when I carelessly used the word "prove").
But even that only demonstrates that the theory supports that specific set of conditions. Now, given wide enough coverage, you can make a strong case that the theory is accurate and useful.
For the record, I'm 100% pro-science. I'm also not hacking at this from a mathematical point of view. The scientific method works by trying to disprove ideas and keeping the ones that don't fall to experimental data.
Who let the bloody mathematicians in here? :-)
Hey, it's true, though! People say things like "scientists haven't proven evolution, so even they admit it's not a fact" without understanding that nothing in science is proven. At most, you can say that no one has found evidence disproving a given theory, but that's not the same as proving the theory. It's a very important distinction and a fundamental aspect of science.
until that smart guy with the bad hair came up with a better theory which someone then went out and proved. That's how science is supposed to work.
Nitpick: science can't prove anything, by definition. You can demonstrate that an experiment happens a certain way 1,000 times in a row, but that's not proof that it'll work again the next time you try it. The best you can do is fail to disprove a hypothesis.
If your Mom is asking about T1 connections and NFS partitions, it doesn't seem like this is over her head,
That was the point: it's not over her head. She has other reasons for not wanting broadband (or even dialup for that matter).
Good for your mom.
She's a great tech role model. How many little kids got to play with hard drive platters from crashed disk packs?
Or extreme starvation: "we dropped our fish in the fireplace, but we'll surely die if we don't eat it anyway!"
I've tried 1,000 times to get a computer and Internet access for my mom, but she flatly rejects it. She actively doesn't want a computer. It's not because she doesn't know how to use them, but that she put in her years running a mainframe and is utterly burnt out on the subject.
Me: So at work, we have one computer with lots of hard drives and set the other computers to store their users' information on it instead of their own hard drives.
Mom: So your home directories are on NFS?
Me: Are you sure you don't want a computer, maybe a nice Mac?
Mom: No, and quit asking!
...or...
Me: I got a DSL connection.
Mom: Is that fast?
Me: In network terms, it's around 8 megabits.
Mom: So, about 5 T1s?
Me: Not even a little laptop?
Mom: No, and quit asking!
She's not skipping the "Internet revolution" because it's above her head. She's skipping it because she was there when they were building it, she did her time, and now wants to do other stuff.
Second: Can someone knit this for my wife?
She didn't like it.
It seems you are confusing static and strong typing.
Nope.
C is indeed statically typed, but also weakly typed.
That's generally true, but it's not purely statically typed in the same way as, say, ML.
This is what capitalism is all about right?
No, this is clearly about oatmeal! I mean, as long as we're dragging in wholly irrelevant issues, let's go for broke.
True or false: they also have lawyers in socialist and communist economies.
Their battle is making people accept Intellectual Property being enforced.
Umm, I'm all for certain types of IP being enforced (Copyright: good. Trademark: good. Software patents: terrible). You can be OK with copyright and still find their actions despicable.
You aren't going to be doing any system programming in Python, Java, or Perl. While in my opinion these are all 'real' programming languages, the distinction between compiled and interpreted is legitimate.
Careful: all existing C# compilers generate bytecode and not native instructions. From what I can tell, Microsoft is indeed doing system programming in C#.
Static typing is appropriate for projects which you expect to have to maintain.
I keep hearing this but it seems to be rooted in theory rather than practice. In reality, it's been at least as easy to maintain large Python projects as large C projects. In fact, I'd assert that it's easier to extend Python codebases because of dynamic typing. If you have a function that accepts a file-like object and performs operations on it, then it will automatically handle any input source that acts like a file. Sample uses include pointing a function at a local file for testing, then passing it the contents of a web page for live operation.
I was under the impression that they are 'scripting languages' because they don't compile.
Python compiles to bytecode exactly like Java does. The difference is that it happens at runtime instead of as an extra step. For example, if you run import foo, the Python runtime looks for a file named "foo.py" in a given set of directories. If there's a corresponding "foo.pyc" in the same directory that's newer than foo.py, then it loads that. If not, it reads in foo.py, compiles it into bytecode, then writes the bytecode out to foo.pyc so that it can skip the compilation step next time.
So is Python a scripting language? Sure, as long as Java is too.
Yes because a compiled, statically-typed, procedural language (C)
Cool! When did they change C to be statically typed? And how do you work around the removal of void* and unions and all the other stuff that breaks typing?
Piranhaa says: Have you seen my staplur?
Have you tried looking next to the diktionnairy?
Can I mix and match?
On that I'm not sure. We just ordered a Dell with a Perc 6 controller, and the ordering process wouldn't let us mix and match because they claimed that it wouldn't work. I haven't actually verified or tested this, but you definitely want to check into it before making hardware purchases.
You're obviously not a touch typist.
Or a pianist.
Since those are both pretty easy-to-find options (Office orb at the top left -> Save, and orb -> Print)
That's easy enough once you know about it, but it would never occur to me to click on a product logo to get functionality other than an "about" dialog.
You're right, Derek. It's three years after the conversion, but I yield to your superior knowledge of my company's business needs and use cases at that time. I apologize for the poor planning that resulted in this successful endeavor and agree to solicit your advice should we feel the need for your informed and considered opinion of our situation.
Which is another way of saying that I know a whole lot more about how my company works than you do, and when I tell you that our migration plan was appropriate for our needs, your only proper response is "oh, then that makes sense." Anything else presumes far more familiarity with our internal operations than you could possibly have.
6. Pidgin is GTK+ and Kopete is still very immature compared to it.
Did you mean that sarcastically? Pidgin doesn't even doesn't even support proper metacontacts last time I checked. Every time I've been stuck using Pidgin, it becomes a game of finding out what they've removed "to make it easier".
I'm a huge fan of Netbook Remix and "maximus". The former provides an awesome launcher sort of like the Eee's default interface but way better, and the second provides fullscreen, borderless windows. You might see what you think of it.
Unfortunately for that comparison, mouse input is highly srialized while keyboarding is very parallel. I only have one arm to manipulate a mouse but 10 fingers to manipulate a keyboard.
$0.00 training costs are nice. But how many $xxx.00 did you lose to lost productivity because you refused to pay for training?
$0.00 we're not a word processing company; we do other stuff.
How many $xxx.00 in lowered morale?
$0.00: all employees get bonuses based on the company's bottom line.
How much trust and capital did the IT department squander?
$0.00: the owner bought into the idea. Besides, we were in the situation the submitter is in where we were doing an upgrade from an old version. We weren't about to install Office 2K again, and Office XP or later would've been a bigger change than OOo. So we had a familiar interface, lower costs, better bonuses, and happier employees. There was no downside whatsoever.
But calling your users Luddites and worse sure ain't the way to go.
But he wasn't saying that all protesters were Luddites. I totally agree with everything you said, but also understand his frustration about people who protest all change, regardless of how carefully planned or coordinated with the end users, seemingly for the sake of having something to complain about. Those were the people he is railing against.