The Desktop Summit 2011 includes both Gnome and KDE developers. Is there some reason Slashdot has posted two stories from KDE talks but none from Gnome?
I'm not trying to start a G vs. K war here, I'd just like to see coverage of both.
You can buy a $99 tablet at Walgreens. Of course, it's a piece of shit compared to the iPad, but if you really want a cheap tablet, they are available.
"Free wifi all over town" was all the rage here in California for a few years. Google promised they'd blanket Mountain View in free wifi, San Francisco had a similar deal.
But in the end, the economics didn't work out so well. Google set up hotspots here and there but it was hardly "all over."
It's hard to complain about getting something for free, but don't believe the hype.
"The incompatibility I speak of is the hypothetical one switching from 1-byte fixed-length length encoding to variable-byte length encoding."
So you're comparing one thing that didn't happen to another thing that didn't happen, and calling that an incompatibility? Seems like a pointless exercise.
If we were to switch now, is that the compatibility you're referring to? Well sure.
But nobody's talking about switching now, the point of the topic is that C should have been designed differently. In those days there was very little backwards compatibility to worry about.
The downside to this approach however is it requires some extra steps when retrieving a string from a C-based API. And of course if the external C-based library has a string handling bug, you're back to square one.
"...it would have had the insane limit of 255-byte strings, with no compatible way to have a string any longer."
Compatible with what? Seems to me they could have just used continuation bit for the size field, much the way UTF-8 works to store non-ASCII characters.
The often-wonderful This American Life show covered this topic quite recently. They tried to find out what the deal was with Intellectual Ventures and their ilk, and made some surprising discoveries. (I don't want to give away any spoilers.)
(which, conveniently, is always 6 months from now.)
As someone who works in the open source world, I gotta say that's not only spot on, but applies to almost all open source software. You're trading ease of use for configurability and openness, at the cost of glitches and big, empty promises.
The entire thing reeks of a cover-up. First they bury the train because they don't want people "stealing" their "secrets." What secrets? Who would steal secrets from a failure?
And now they're blaming this on some technical glitch that they don't care to specify.
At this point, the backpedaling by Google once again demonstrates they don't have a clue how to run a social network. The worst part is they seem incapable of admitting they made a mistake.
Slashdot Mirror
How is something everyone who has ever used a computer for the past 30+ years thought of on their own patentable?
You must be a lot of fun at parties!
It's a lot more risque when you consider that this video was shown at a conference in Germany!
Maybe they could take whatever they're smoking and sell that instead. I'd pay good money for it!
The Desktop Summit 2011 includes both Gnome and KDE developers. Is there some reason Slashdot has posted two stories from KDE talks but none from Gnome?
I'm not trying to start a G vs. K war here, I'd just like to see coverage of both.
You can buy a $99 tablet at Walgreens. Of course, it's a piece of shit compared to the iPad, but if you really want a cheap tablet, they are available.
"I'll buy that for a dollar!"
"Free wifi all over town" was all the rage here in California for a few years. Google promised they'd blanket Mountain View in free wifi, San Francisco had a similar deal.
But in the end, the economics didn't work out so well. Google set up hotspots here and there but it was hardly "all over."
It's hard to complain about getting something for free, but don't believe the hype.
So you're comparing one thing that didn't happen to another thing that didn't happen, and calling that an incompatibility? Seems like a pointless exercise.
If we were to switch now, is that the compatibility you're referring to? Well sure.
But nobody's talking about switching now, the point of the topic is that C should have been designed differently. In those days there was very little backwards compatibility to worry about.
The wonderfully-named GString in GLib works the same way.
The downside to this approach however is it requires some extra steps when retrieving a string from a C-based API. And of course if the external C-based library has a string handling bug, you're back to square one.
Compatible with what? Seems to me they could have just used continuation bit for the size field, much the way UTF-8 works to store non-ASCII characters.
The often-wonderful This American Life show covered this topic quite recently. They tried to find out what the deal was with Intellectual Ventures and their ilk, and made some surprising discoveries. (I don't want to give away any spoilers.)
You can listen to a podcast of the show here:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack
And when you upgrade Ubuntu, expect random things to stop (or start) working. 'Tis the nature of desktop Linux.
As for what "shit" I'm using, I use Ubuntu. And some of the "shit" I write is included in Ubuntu, including the version you're using. So there's that.
You'll notice I never said this was true of all software. Firefox and Webkit are certainly exceptions to this.
As someone who works in the open source world, I gotta say that's not only spot on, but applies to almost all open source software. You're trading ease of use for configurability and openness, at the cost of glitches and big, empty promises.
The entire thing reeks of a cover-up. First they bury the train because they don't want people "stealing" their "secrets." What secrets? Who would steal secrets from a failure?
And now they're blaming this on some technical glitch that they don't care to specify.
The whole thing doesn't add up.
The last major version of Java came out in December 2006. If that's not enough of a delay, I don't know what is.
You don't make a good language by smashing a bunch of "projects" together. If you do that, you end up with C++.
Let's all celebrate... with a cigar!
They're working on it.
But are the content cartels really going to allow unlimited streaming for their most prized movies at any point in the near future?
Personally I don't mind "renting" a really good movie to stream it, as long as the price is in the $0-$2 range.
No, batteries behave like a bomb even under normal use. Remember the rash of exploding laptop batteries a few years ago?
Chances are any form of energy crammed into a tiny space that can be easily converted to electricity has some inherent danger to it.
The ghost of Osama Bin Laden is wetting his pants over this idea.
At this point, the backpedaling by Google once again demonstrates they don't have a clue how to run a social network. The worst part is they seem incapable of admitting they made a mistake.