Heh, for my father, it's not just the timing. He can't seem to just tap the mouse button, but presses real hard and and is slow to release. This requires such tremendous force that he can't hold the mouse still for the duration, but ends upp dragging the icon a short distance....twice. The icon crept to the edge of the screen over a period of days before I explained this to him. --
That depends on what you call a black hole. If you just count the stuff within the event horizon, as I think is customary (I'm not sure there is one true definition), then you're wrong. Nothing escapes from there. The radiation comes from just beyond it. Then again, maybe you knew that and just didn't expect anyone to nitpick (on Slashdot? What were you thinking?!:-) --
I think Lingo very close to the language you're talking about.
I've been working with Lingo a lot recently. It's Macromedia's scripting language, used in Director. I understand Applescript looks about the same.
Lingo is very wordy, using English word structure instead of more concise notation in many cases. For instance, what in many languages would be stated as "mySprite.visible=0" is stated in Lingo as "set the visible of mySprite to false". (There are shortcuts, though. The "set" may be omitted, the "to" may be replaced with "=", the "false" with "0", and in the most recent version of Director, the dot notation is recognised as well so "mySprite.visible=0" is valid lingo code now.)
Lingo is meant to be easy to pick up by people with little or no programming experience. I thought I'd hate it because of the wordiness, but I actually didn't. The large number of characters you need to type to express your intent is offset by the fact that they're mostly alphabetic and your typing isn't slowed much. I imagine a good typist (which I'm not) will actually type Lingo code much faster than the equivalent C or perl code, even if they're used to typing C or perl.
It would be interesting to know how the code-is-expression debate would have turned out if Lingo had been the reference language instead of C. --
The warning on entering a secure session surprised me too. I think it's just a product of how the browser designers expect https to be used: very rarely, when collecting obviously personal information as you say. Given those expectations, the warning does make sense. It trains users to never assume they're in a secure session. If they haven't seen the warning, they know they're communicating in plaintext. Without this warning, it would likely be a regular occurrence for users to happily submit their credit card info unencrypted believeing it would travel to the server encrypted because they forgot or didn't know to check the key icon or whatever. --
Maybe even the phone number as well, at least for ISDN connections. I think at least one local ISP even allows ISDN users to pick the phone numbers they can connect from. I think I remember hearing about that when my company was picking an ISP, but I may be mistaken and it may not be available to private customers. --
As I read your post I found myself thinking "What, is this guy new or something?" but apprently you're not:-)
Even Slashdot readers don't always evaluate a system (Slashdot, Gnome, whatever) based solely on its current quality as they perhaps should. They take into effect all the crap the system has given them in the past as well. I was doing that until I started thinking about your post and came to the conclusion that, yeah, Slashdot has been pretty stable lately. A little slow sometimes, as you say, but it's been a while since I've noticed any downtime. Also, people just seem to magnify problems in their heads. I've gotten a few bug reports like "Lots of problems with $feature, for instance $bug". I fix the bug and ask what other problems they were talking about. Usually there were none. --
I'm a long-time PC bigot and user of multibutton mice and I had no trouble adjusting to the ctrl-click method when I was forced to work on a desktop mac. If you've used a single button mac mouse more than a bit and still find it annoying, there's no arguing with that, but if you're just expecting it to be annoying, give it a try.
Now, those laptop keyboards on the other hand. Arrrgh! It would take me a long time to get used to one of those. Does anyone know if the Fn key on, say, a PowerBook, is xmodmappable or somehow "special"? --
When I saw the story, I immediately thought of this. It was probably featured on Slashdot a few months back. Still, I thought the 6 processor board I read about had been real, not just proposed. Was there another 6 StrongARM PCI card project? --
It's most likely neither conceit nor ignorance. They post to a newsgroup, someone reads it, someone submits to Slashdot, the site gets 100,000 hits as a result of the posting. There are steps in between, the posting and the 100,000 hits, but the hits are none the less a result of the posting. --
If only the US Navy had your attitude. The whole "Gunship dead in the water" episode could have been avoided with a simple "Well, don't enter a zero there!"
I know it must be hard to be a non-windows hater (that's non-"windows hater", not "non-windows" hater) and listen to the crap that's flung about around here, but you've reached an absurd level of defensiveness. You're defending software (an application AND an OS) that crashes (according to one report) when the user makes a simple mistake and placing the blame on the user. An application should not crash when given invalid input. It should notify the user. An OS should not go down when an application misbehaves. It should kill the app, perhaps generate a core file, and keep on chucking.
Now, Linux and other UNIXes are not without their own problems in this regard, but at least the people responsible don't respond with "don't do that" when told about it. Neither does Oracle, I bet, but you do. You and Microsoft. --
There are tricks that involve copying the must-be-writeable stuff from the read only media to a ram disk and mounting that over the initial read-only filesystem. This is a bit of a hassle, though (the boot process becomes a little complicated and nonstandard), which is why you don't see any popular linux-on-a-cd distros.
I don't think there's any fundamental reason why you can't easily run most operating systems off read-only media. It just wasn't planned for. --
I assume if you've got a propulsion powerful enough to push that much water out of the way, lift is the least of your worries. Just angle the jet downward a bit. I imagine you could do that by modifying the shape or attitude of the tip of the craft. Still, the article mentioned wings (only the tips of which would be touching water) as a method of steering so they could use that for lift as well. I guess this is simpler than steering with the tip because of the enormous preassure on it. --
BTW, Americans who try to repel an attack or a robbery using a gun are more likely to wind up dead than those who don't. This is a fact. Check your own government's statistics if you don't believe it.
I thought I recalled reading stats that say the opposite, so I went looking. I found this (search for "50.6"), which doesn't say exactly what I recalled (it talks about injuries, not deaths) but nonetheless casts some doubt on what you say. It would be nice if you could find the source for the statistics you cite. --
I've been in and out of record stores without buying anything for the same reason. One thing record stores could do even without going near the big, scary, dangerous Internet is to have listening stations where you can listen to all the CD's instead of a small selection. This is what I think of every time I'm in a record store. Why can't I sit down in a reclining chair, put on headphones, and hear the music they want to sell me? --
I read a very in-depth article on the VHS/Betamax thing recently. I learned something surprising: Sony's licensing policy didn't just affect price. They wanted to, I guess, protect the good name of Betamax and to that end engaged in censorship. They denied porn manufacturers the right to publish porn on Betamax tapes. I guess that would qualify as a contributor to Betamax's demise. (Well, not really demise, but relegation to the professional market) --
I'm at work and don't have time to locate my source, but I just want to quickly inject one point.
On lkml I once read a thread started by some one distributing a binary-only kernel module. The binary guy was experiencing some problems and some kernel hackers were assisting him in tracking down the source of the problem. What kernel version? UP or SMP? What compiler?
...What? Modules compiled with one compiler may not work with a kernel compiled with another compiler? "Is it that bad?" asked the binary guy.
So, binary-only modules are pretty much guaranteed to be big hassle right now. Bigger than some people trying to distribute them realised in advance.
...and if I totally misunderstood that thread or am otherwise talking gibberish, please say so nicely. --
As you must know, CPU performance is not the only thing that decides overall system performance. I don't know much about E6000's or other expensive servers, but I do know that one reason people use them is their superior I/O performance. If your test ignores I/O and the task you intend to run is I/O bound, then your test is meaningless. --
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, for my father, it's not just the timing. He can't seem to just tap the mouse button, but presses real hard and and is slow to release. This requires such tremendous force that he can't hold the mouse still for the duration, but ends upp dragging the icon a short distance. ...twice. The icon crept to the edge of the screen over a period of days before I explained this to him.
--
That depends on what you call a black hole. If you just count the stuff within the event horizon, as I think is customary (I'm not sure there is one true definition), then you're wrong. Nothing escapes from there. The radiation comes from just beyond it. Then again, maybe you knew that and just didn't expect anyone to nitpick (on Slashdot? What were you thinking?! :-)
--
I've been working with Lingo a lot recently. It's Macromedia's scripting language, used in Director. I understand Applescript looks about the same.
Lingo is very wordy, using English word structure instead of more concise notation in many cases. For instance, what in many languages would be stated as "mySprite.visible=0" is stated in Lingo as "set the visible of mySprite to false". (There are shortcuts, though. The "set" may be omitted, the "to" may be replaced with "=", the "false" with "0", and in the most recent version of Director, the dot notation is recognised as well so "mySprite.visible=0" is valid lingo code now.)
Lingo is meant to be easy to pick up by people with little or no programming experience. I thought I'd hate it because of the wordiness, but I actually didn't. The large number of characters you need to type to express your intent is offset by the fact that they're mostly alphabetic and your typing isn't slowed much. I imagine a good typist (which I'm not) will actually type Lingo code much faster than the equivalent C or perl code, even if they're used to typing C or perl.
It would be interesting to know how the code-is-expression debate would have turned out if Lingo had been the reference language instead of C.
--
The warning on entering a secure session surprised me too. I think it's just a product of how the browser designers expect https to be used: very rarely, when collecting obviously personal information as you say. Given those expectations, the warning does make sense. It trains users to never assume they're in a secure session. If they haven't seen the warning, they know they're communicating in plaintext. Without this warning, it would likely be a regular occurrence for users to happily submit their credit card info unencrypted believeing it would travel to the server encrypted because they forgot or didn't know to check the key icon or whatever.
--
Maybe even the phone number as well, at least for ISDN connections. I think at least one local ISP even allows ISDN users to pick the phone numbers they can connect from. I think I remember hearing about that when my company was picking an ISP, but I may be mistaken and it may not be available to private customers.
--
Even Slashdot readers don't always evaluate a system (Slashdot, Gnome, whatever) based solely on its current quality as they perhaps should. They take into effect all the crap the system has given them in the past as well. I was doing that until I started thinking about your post and came to the conclusion that, yeah, Slashdot has been pretty stable lately. A little slow sometimes, as you say, but it's been a while since I've noticed any downtime. Also, people just seem to magnify problems in their heads. I've gotten a few bug reports like "Lots of problems with $feature, for instance $bug". I fix the bug and ask what other problems they were talking about. Usually there were none.
--
Now, those laptop keyboards on the other hand. Arrrgh! It would take me a long time to get used to one of those. Does anyone know if the Fn key on, say, a PowerBook, is xmodmappable or somehow "special"?
--
OK, I'm getting tired of correcting myself.
--
When I saw the story, I immediately thought of this. It was probably featured on Slashdot a few months back. Still, I thought the 6 processor board I read about had been real, not just proposed. Was there another 6 StrongARM PCI card project?
--
Pardon the stray comma after "between".
--
It's most likely neither conceit nor ignorance. They post to a newsgroup, someone reads it, someone submits to Slashdot, the site gets 100,000 hits as a result of the posting. There are steps in between, the posting and the 100,000 hits, but the hits are none the less a result of the posting.
--
Then there's swap, of course, but I guess we're just talking about filesystems.
--
I know it must be hard to be a non-windows hater (that's non-"windows hater", not "non-windows" hater) and listen to the crap that's flung about around here, but you've reached an absurd level of defensiveness. You're defending software (an application AND an OS) that crashes (according to one report) when the user makes a simple mistake and placing the blame on the user. An application should not crash when given invalid input. It should notify the user. An OS should not go down when an application misbehaves. It should kill the app, perhaps generate a core file, and keep on chucking.
Now, Linux and other UNIXes are not without their own problems in this regard, but at least the people responsible don't respond with "don't do that" when told about it. Neither does Oracle, I bet, but you do. You and Microsoft.
--
I don't think there's any fundamental reason why you can't easily run most operating systems off read-only media. It just wasn't planned for.
--
Where have you been? Kylix is Delphi/C++ Builder on Linux. It's just around the corner. Neither libre nor gratis, but ported.
--
No, not "Computer Graphic Imagery", "Computer Generated Imagery". See? Not redundant at all! The confusion is all in your head.
--
Have you not heard of package management? You know, dependency resolution, etc.?
--
Really? It's that cut and dried? I thought there were some highly paid legal minds working to determine that.
--
I assume if you've got a propulsion powerful enough to push that much water out of the way, lift is the least of your worries. Just angle the jet downward a bit. I imagine you could do that by modifying the shape or attitude of the tip of the craft. Still, the article mentioned wings (only the tips of which would be touching water) as a method of steering so they could use that for lift as well. I guess this is simpler than steering with the tip because of the enormous preassure on it.
--
--
...using the binaries from this demo and the data from the Windows retail version?
--
I've been in and out of record stores without buying anything for the same reason. One thing record stores could do even without going near the big, scary, dangerous Internet is to have listening stations where you can listen to all the CD's instead of a small selection. This is what I think of every time I'm in a record store. Why can't I sit down in a reclining chair, put on headphones, and hear the music they want to sell me?
--
I read a very in-depth article on the VHS/Betamax thing recently. I learned something surprising: Sony's licensing policy didn't just affect price. They wanted to, I guess, protect the good name of Betamax and to that end engaged in censorship. They denied porn manufacturers the right to publish porn on Betamax tapes. I guess that would qualify as a contributor to Betamax's demise. (Well, not really demise, but relegation to the professional market)
--
On lkml I once read a thread started by some one distributing a binary-only kernel module. The binary guy was experiencing some problems and some kernel hackers were assisting him in tracking down the source of the problem. What kernel version? UP or SMP? What compiler?
So, binary-only modules are pretty much guaranteed to be big hassle right now. Bigger than some people trying to distribute them realised in advance.
--
As you must know, CPU performance is not the only thing that decides overall system performance. I don't know much about E6000's or other expensive servers, but I do know that one reason people use them is their superior I/O performance. If your test ignores I/O and the task you intend to run is I/O bound, then your test is meaningless.
--