Some interesting quotes from the article you linked to about Kodak not being able to install their software into Windows:
These are complicated technical issues, and Kodak should have tried harder to work them out with us before running to their lawyers and Washington lobbyists. Any suggestion that we had hidden motives in the design of Windows XP is untrue.
The speaker of this quote is none other than Vivek Varma, the very same person who is whining about AOL's tactics in the main story in this article! For those who haven't seen it yet, what he said about AOL was:
AOL's actions are unprecedented and completely anti-consumer-- AOL is paying [computer makers] to eliminate consumer choice, forcing people to select the most expensive service in the industry.
It's amazing but not unusal to hear such doublespeak from the company, but having the same stooge spout both of these lines is unbelievable. How stupid do they think the public is? Sad thing is, they're obviously right...
UPS screws a lot of stuff up. Even in the US, about 10% of their packages are late. Not meaning to blow my own horn here, but since it *is* on topic, but I work for a company that is involved in getting refunds from UPS, so you might want to put a link up to it on your page you're making. The site is www.ontimeaudit.com . Don't let them screw you over! They guarantee delivery, fight back!
This sounds very much like Sun's argument that HotSpot could potentially be faster than native code because the code isn't constrained to being kept static, but the common cases could be optimized by profiling the execution paths. Does anybody more knowledgable than myself know if the similarities extend beyond the superficial? I thought Sun's line had always been that such dynamic optimizations weren't really possible outside of Java because the pointer arithemetic screws everything up. Perhaps such cases might simply not be optimized.
--Jared in WA PS. pnagel: Any relation to the Platinum Puma?
The difference is that I can't complain to NBC that the picture I receive from them is worse than the picture out my window. However, I CAN publically question why my PBS station is able to provide a picture an order of magnitude better than they are, and without commercials to boot.
I read the article and thought it was great, but I think it was overlooking a key player-- Public TV. Since public TV doesn't have the same motivations for wussing out on HDTV, they ARE likely to take full advantage of their HDTV spectrum. When consumers see a fantastically better picture on PBS than on MSNBC, they'll want to know why. Look for the big networks to try and smear public TV Real Soon Now.
I doubt Linus would ever admit to it, but my guess is that there is at least some motivation for him to get 2.4 out before W2K. I'm sure that M$ will do a big ad campaign when W2K launches, and I think Linus wants all the SMP, scheduler, khttpd, etc., speedups put into 2.3 to be in the standard kernel to curb off some of the benchmarketing that's bound to happen. My guess is he'll want to time the release to be as close to W2K as possible, to steal some of its media thunder, and possibly increase press coverage comparing the two new releases of the heavyweight OSes in their brand new iterations.
I know most of you think that Linus is oblivious to these sorts of things (or would like to believe that anyway), but I frankly doubt it.
Does anyone know if it's possible to tweak the Mozilla ActiveX control to pretend its IE? Could this then be dropped into place on WINE? Seems like it could potentially solve a bunch of problems like this.
I work at a Computer Store in Redmond, and we're seeing the first effects of M$'s plan right now. Starting Friday, M$ is going to give us $400 for every computer we sell, *if* we also sign up the customer for 3 years of MSN with the sale. Our cheapest computer is currently $499, with a $400 system being worked on. This means, within a few weeks, we'll be offering completely free computers-- WITHOUT 24/7 advertisements-- just standard MSN. We're expecting sales to go up dramatically as a result of this promotion.
Needless to say, I've already given them my two weeks notice...
I thought Ender's Game was an incredible book, where I thought Speaker for the Dead seemed like a lame excuse to write another Ender novel.
This is actually a pretty common (and understandable) complaint about Speaker. The ironic thing is that in some ways, Speaker predates Ender (in novel form).
OSC started writing Speaker first, then decided he needed a stronger main character, so he went back to one of his short stories, and expanded it into a novel. Ender was really designed to be a prequel for the Speaker series-- OSC himself thought that Speaker was where the real story was. Ender was supposed to just be foundational.
I think they're both excellent, though they vary dramatically in tone and content. Certainly the least chaper of EG sets up the rest of the series, but apart from that, I never would have thought that the two books needed the same character.
Not simply "deeply religious", he's deeply homophobic. I've read his pieces for the Mormon magazine (Somerset? something like that) where he flat out claims that gays should not be considered human and should not be tolerated in society. Period.
I would be very intersted in seeing this piece. He has had gay characters in his book (Zdorab from the Homecoming series comes to mind), and I didn't see anything that would suggest this attitude. Have you read Ships of Earth?
Concern was brought up mentioning humor points since it is something that is particularily subjective. Perhaps a solution would be to allow points to be added, but not taken away? That way we can get a good indicator that someone thinks this post is funny, without the Vocal Minority Who Get Offended At Everything(tm) demoting a message just because they take a different stand on the KDE Vs. GNOME issue, or whatever.
I realize that the artice was a joke, but I've actually seen something similar. I decided to learn how to type on a Dvorak keyboard a few years ago, and almost totally immersed myself in it for a few months. At first, I could switch back to QWERTY without any problem, but once Dvorak felt "natural", it was suddenly a lot harder. I would sit at a QWERTY keyboard and know what I wanted to type, but my hands refused to move for a couple seconds while my brain "switched keymaps".
Oddly enough, once I started typing a sentance (just a couple of letters in, even), it would come back to me effortlessly, but as soon as I stopped for a few seconds, I'd have that hesisation again!
Oh, and for those who think that Dvorak is overhyped-- you're right. My objective with learning Dvorak wasn't speed. I was in a dorm room where *everybody* wants to check email on any computer they can beg their way onto. Changing the keymaps was a pretty effective deterrant.
Humorous aside: Dvorak may be "optimized" for typing in English, but UNIX commands (and programming symbols like ";") are clearly optimized for typing in QWERTY! To type "ls\n" on a Dvorak keyboard, you hit the QWERTY keys "p;\n" -- three consecutive little finger keystrokes. Ick! And if you mess up while learning and accidently type in a QWERTY "ls", a dvorak keyboard will show "no". It's quite odd to be at a bash prompt, tell your computer a simple command like "ls" and have "no" appear on the screen. I thought my computer was rebelling against me the first time I did it!
Slashdot Mirror
MWB's president was heard to say, "The big breakthrough came when we realized that it wasn't in the box, but rather in the band..."
Yes, and open source software sucks because if Linus et al had real jobs, they wouldn't have time to futz around in their spare time...
apt-get install apt-listchanges
UPS screws a lot of stuff up. Even in the US, about 10% of their packages are late. Not meaning to blow my own horn here, but since it *is* on topic, but I work for a company that is involved in getting refunds from UPS, so you might want to put a link up to it on your page you're making. The site is www.ontimeaudit.com . Don't let them screw you over! They guarantee delivery, fight back!
This sounds very much like Sun's argument that HotSpot could potentially be faster than native code because the code isn't constrained to being kept static, but the common cases could be optimized by profiling the execution paths. Does anybody more knowledgable than myself know if the similarities extend beyond the superficial? I thought Sun's line had always been that such dynamic optimizations weren't really possible outside of Java because the pointer arithemetic screws everything up. Perhaps such cases might simply not be optimized.
--Jared in WA
PS. pnagel: Any relation to the Platinum Puma?
The difference is that I can't complain to NBC that the picture I receive from them is worse than the picture out my window. However, I CAN publically question why my PBS station is able to provide a picture an order of magnitude better than they are, and without commercials to boot.
I read the article and thought it was great, but I think it was overlooking a key player-- Public TV. Since public TV doesn't have the same motivations for wussing out on HDTV, they ARE likely to take full advantage of their HDTV spectrum. When consumers see a fantastically better picture on PBS than on MSNBC, they'll want to know why. Look for the big networks to try and smear public TV Real Soon Now.
It would appear that there's an unfortunate line break in his .sig. Fix up the printf formatting and it prints many digits of pi.
On the bright side, he's a lot less likely to be fired for going out with 13 year old girls.
I doubt Linus would ever admit to it, but my guess is that there is at least some motivation for him to get 2.4 out before W2K. I'm sure that M$ will do a big ad campaign when W2K launches, and I think Linus wants all the SMP, scheduler, khttpd, etc., speedups put into 2.3 to be in the standard kernel to curb off some of the benchmarketing that's bound to happen. My guess is he'll want to time the release to be as close to W2K as possible, to steal some of its media thunder, and possibly increase press coverage comparing the two new releases of the heavyweight OSes in their brand new iterations.
I know most of you think that Linus is oblivious to these sorts of things (or would like to believe that anyway), but I frankly doubt it.
Does anyone know if it's possible to tweak the Mozilla ActiveX control to pretend its IE? Could this then be dropped into place on WINE? Seems like it could potentially solve a bunch of problems like this.
--Jared in Redmond, WA
I work at a Computer Store in Redmond, and we're seeing the first effects of M$'s plan right now. Starting Friday, M$ is going to give us $400 for every computer we sell, *if* we also sign up the customer for 3 years of MSN with the sale. Our cheapest computer is currently $499, with a $400 system being worked on. This means, within a few weeks, we'll be offering completely free computers-- WITHOUT 24/7 advertisements-- just standard MSN. We're expecting sales to go up dramatically as a result of this promotion.
Needless to say, I've already given them my two weeks notice...
I thought Ender's Game was an incredible book, where I thought Speaker for the Dead seemed like a lame excuse to write another Ender novel.
This is actually a pretty common (and understandable) complaint about Speaker. The ironic thing is that in some ways, Speaker predates Ender (in novel form).
OSC started writing Speaker first, then decided he needed a stronger main character, so he went back to one of his short stories, and expanded it into a novel. Ender was really designed to be a prequel for the Speaker series-- OSC himself thought that Speaker was where the real story was. Ender was supposed to just be foundational.
I think they're both excellent, though they vary dramatically in tone and content. Certainly the least chaper of EG sets up the rest of the series, but apart from that, I never would have thought that the two books needed the same character.
Not simply "deeply religious", he's deeply homophobic. I've read his pieces for the Mormon magazine (Somerset? something like that) where he flat out claims that gays should not be considered human and should not be tolerated in society. Period.
I would be very intersted in seeing this piece. He has had gay characters in his book (Zdorab from the Homecoming series comes to mind), and I didn't see anything that would suggest this attitude. Have you read Ships of Earth?
Concern was brought up mentioning humor points since it is something that is particularily subjective. Perhaps a solution would be to allow points to be added, but not taken away? That way we can get a good indicator that someone thinks this post is funny, without the Vocal Minority Who Get Offended At Everything(tm) demoting a message just because they take a different stand on the KDE Vs. GNOME issue, or whatever.
I realize that the artice was a joke, but I've actually seen something similar. I decided to learn how to type on a Dvorak keyboard a few years ago, and almost totally immersed myself in it for a few months. At first, I could switch back to QWERTY without any problem, but once Dvorak felt "natural", it was suddenly a lot harder. I would sit at a QWERTY keyboard and know what I wanted to type, but my hands refused to move for a couple seconds while my brain "switched keymaps".
Oddly enough, once I started typing a sentance (just a couple of letters in, even), it would come back to me effortlessly, but as soon as I stopped for a few seconds, I'd have that hesisation again!
Oh, and for those who think that Dvorak is overhyped-- you're right. My objective with learning Dvorak wasn't speed. I was in a dorm room where *everybody* wants to check email on any computer they can beg their way onto. Changing the keymaps was a pretty effective deterrant.
Humorous aside: Dvorak may be "optimized" for typing in English, but UNIX commands (and programming symbols like ";") are clearly optimized for typing in QWERTY! To type "ls\n" on a Dvorak keyboard, you hit the QWERTY keys "p;\n" -- three consecutive little finger keystrokes. Ick! And if you mess up while learning and accidently type in a QWERTY "ls", a dvorak keyboard will show "no". It's quite odd to be at a bash prompt, tell your computer a simple command like "ls" and have "no" appear on the screen. I thought my computer was rebelling against me the first time I did it!