NASA has come up with many technologies, many of which are in fact profitable.
Yes, but a totalitarian insistance on 'profitability' as the sole criterion of the value of any technology, would not allow us to accept that space exploration (or in fact science in toto)is of itself a worthwhile pursuit.
XML solves the interchange problem... Applications of XML to programming lang design(XSL) and other domains are largely a waste of time and won't last.
Once you accept that XML solves a problem, any problem sufficient to guarantee its survival (and I think its survival is fairly well guaranteed!), you will have to accept that XML applications such as XSL are similarly necessary. Yes I hate XSL, no I would not want to use it to solve a non-XML problem, but I'm grudingly coming to realise (sic) that it, along with associated standards such as XPath, are uniquely suited to manipulation XML data.
profitability is ultimately the only viable test for any technology
Which is why space exploration technology is so unviable and why NASA should immediately be closed down and replaced with a company manufacturing a better PIM...
Why not distribute it in tar.gz format, so everyone can enjoy it?
Writing the spec file to generate a.rpm from a.tar.gz is not enjoyable. If you have an RPM based system you (should) avoid installing any 'raw' compiled S/W, since that means you lose the very benefit that package management bestows. So it's nice to let people have both tarballs and RPMs (and both source and binary RPMs). Some might even like DEBs as well.
Beyond that tarballs don't make much sense as a way to deliver binary only files. AFAIK Winamp isn't open source...
Im a student at the University of Paderborn I must say that great stuff is happening here...;)
'Bout time it happened too. I had the misfortune of trying to use some machines at that uni about four years ago and found the system to be the slowest I have ever encountered. Certainly connectivity back to.au was so poor as to be unusable. Perhaps this is what provided the motivation for research into high speed data transmission?
Does this mean that IF someone in another country finds articles on this on a Austrailian server, and the person takes offence at it. The offended party can sue the authors and the parties related to it?
From what I understood of this case, and I haven't read the judgement merely the media, it might not be necessary that the article reside on an Australian (actually Victorian, since the is state not federal law)server, it might be enought that it is read by a client running in Victoria (ie that might qualify as being 'published in Victoria' - counterintuitive though this may be).
Secondly, defamation is more than merely taking offence at something. You have to demonstrate actual injury (to your reputation), AFAIK, there is no remedy for hurt feelings in Australian Law.
as far as I can tell, it's not actually a LAW. It's a legal precedent
Wrong! It's common law as opposed to statute law, but its LAW. As far as I can remember there was some English law (case law) last century, about where contractual formation took place. Then there were some more recent cases about telephone and electronic forms of communication. My guess is that the determination of the place of publication rests on this law.
I doubt the US government (bastards, though they can be) would enforce such a ruling.
bzzzt! Wrong again. Check out the federal US uniform 'Foreign Money Order Act,' (from memory, perhaps some similar name) which has been enacted by more than a dozen states as well. If a foreign court awards an amount for damages, you can sue in US courts to have those damages paid (providing, like Australia, this is one of the countries where reciprocal agreements exist AFAIK). Don't feel too cozy in your appartment.
As far as having to be Australian to file suit, it does not so much depend on your citizenship as where the publication (or in some states NSW?) where the damage took place. It is within the realm of possibility that an American citizen living in Japan could sue in Australia for a publication made in the UK, it would be interesting too see.
Smalltalk has been shown to be the most productive language, and Ruby/Python/Perl all seem to me to have a BASIC odor to them;
Actually Ruby has a distinctive whiff of smalltalk to it. Also I think classifying Python as a non-academic (hacker) language is a little odd, for a language that grew out of a pure teaching language (ie ABC).
unfortunately this changes only the USER_AGENT string, and not how the browser respsonds to javascript queries such as navigator.appName (or the more pernicious navigator.platform. don't know who, but when you tell Konq to fake its identity it gets through that hoop as well....
The whole point of US anititrust laws is to encourage innovation and competition in the market.
Go back and look at the debates (and especially those surrounding the passing of the Sherman Act). I think you'll find the whole point of US anti-trust law was to foster a kind of capitalist democracy of more or less equal players, a democracy which would be threatened if any of the players got so big that could control the market. This necessarily involves competition, but innovation comes somewhat lower on the scale of priorities. Arguably XP is innovative, but if you have looked at it and it associated paraphenalia (eg the MSN browser), you quickly realise its radically anti-competitive potential. As far as Microsoft allowing the kind of democratic marketplace where numerous, relatively small programming firms can compete freely, well...
Quite the opposite. 'Optimize' is the websterised (sic) version of the older 'optimise' (and so on with the whole lot of 'organise,' 'antagonise' etc etc).
The use of 'z' in place of the 's' has traditionally been indicative of an American author. AFAIK, the latest edition of the OED lists 'organize' as the primary spelling and 'organise' as the variant, meaning that all right spelling Englishmen, should now write 'optimize.' Though the more sophisticated (and those who won't allow the editorial boards of dictionaries to dictate their spelling to them) will continue with 'optimise,' if only to demonstrate their sophistication. The Macquarie, on the other hand prefers 'organise,' meaning that any Australian who writes 'optimise' (unless for US publication) will appear, in the eyes of more erudite compatriots, to be educationally challenged.
This, BTW, is the why it is a really stupid idea to automagically spell check submissions. There's more than one way to spell 'colour'.
>... history teaches...
Here in the U.S... private ownership of these critical infrastructure components has not been an overall bad thing.
Remeber my statment was made as a concession in the context of arguing against the notion that all privitisation of public utilities was undesirable. It is true, my statement is probably guilty of being somewhat sweeping.
I can't speak specifically for the US, but I am sure that there must be examples of privately owned utilities delivering good service given even a lack of competition. Undoubtedly too there are examples of horrendously mismanaged publically owned utilities. Moreover, the very dichotomy between public and privately owned is probably a gross oversimplification of the various shades of gray that exist in the form of complex regulatory schemes, mixed ownership, contracting out &tc...
However, as a poster below pointed out, government onwed instrumentalities, where there is a failure of the democratic process (through corruption, vote buying, dictatorship etc), as well as privately owned facilities where there is a failure of competition have a tendency to under-perform.
Perhaps too, the fact that private ownership of utilites seems to be much more traditional in the US, as opposed to the swift ideologically driven privatisations in the UK, Australia etc accounts for the apparent difference of experience. There may be a psychological propensity to put more into a company you (or your ancestors) have built up from scratch, rather than one you buy to siphon off as much cash as quickly as you can. Also a longer time allows for greater (and more honed) regulatory control to be established.
Moreover, the recent spate of privitisation suffered by us must be seen in the context of an overall social program which has resulted in a decline of living standards for most people and much social anger. Given that the US was always more geared to private ownership of public goods, it might not be the easiest place to observe the effects caused by such a shift in social policy.
I think you'll find that Python 2.x has string objects that know about string methods
Oops, about time to upgrade from 1.5.2 then:} That addresses one of the major complaints I had about Python then, do the various numbers etc also have their own methods now (as they do in Ruby)?
If any infrastructure of national importance is outsourced to a private entity you're fucked! The moment this happens profits are more important then the public...
Perhaps the any is too strong. Certainly history teaches that privatised railroads, electricity and water utilities are a bad idea. Consider however, the case of Telcos, which almost without exception seem to providing better service than when the were run as GBEs. Perhaps a more appropriate yardstick would be whether there is any real chance of competition at the retail end (this doesn't exist with rail etc...)
Even where competition is possible, it is of course possible to argue in favour of the 'Australian System' (which Austrlia has largely given up on), of having one GBE in the market place with various commercial operators (eg. TV stations, banks, etc...)
As it happens I was living in the UK, not long after the rail privatisations. First thing the new rail companies did was to give all the execs massive pay rises and lay off drivers and raise fares to pay for it. There were an awesome number of cancelations, and many angry commuters, but they didn't really have the choice to use another line. Thought, to be fair one line got a fine of around 3mill pounds because of this stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never met anyone who said it was.
NASA has come up with many technologies, many of which are in fact profitable.Yes, but a totalitarian insistance on 'profitability' as the sole criterion of the value of any technology, would not allow us to accept that space exploration (or in fact science in toto)is of itself a worthwhile pursuit.
Once you accept that XML solves a problem, any problem sufficient to guarantee its survival (and I think its survival is fairly well guaranteed!), you will have to accept that XML applications such as XSL are similarly necessary. Yes I hate XSL, no I would not want to use it to solve a non-XML problem, but I'm grudingly coming to realise (sic) that it, along with associated standards such as XPath, are uniquely suited to manipulation XML data.
Which is why space exploration technology is so unviable and why NASA should immediately be closed down and replaced with a company manufacturing a better PIM ...
Hmm, maybe because the item ends with the sentence it will be interesting to see just what "free" means here
Writing the spec file to generate a .rpm from a .tar.gz is not enjoyable. If you have an RPM based system you (should) avoid installing any 'raw' compiled S/W, since that means you lose the very benefit that package management bestows. So it's nice to let people have both tarballs and RPMs (and both source and binary RPMs). Some might even like DEBs as well.
Beyond that tarballs don't make much sense as a way to deliver binary only files. AFAIK Winamp isn't open source ...
'Bout time it happened too. I had the misfortune of trying to use some machines at that uni about four years ago and found the system to be the slowest I have ever encountered. Certainly connectivity back to .au was so poor as to be unusable. Perhaps this is what provided the motivation for research into high speed data transmission?
Funny that! Seeing how RTF is a Microfoft's proprietary document exchange format and all.
From what I understood of this case, and I haven't read the judgement merely the media, it might not be necessary that the article reside on an Australian (actually Victorian, since the is state not federal law)server, it might be enought that it is read by a client running in Victoria (ie that might qualify as being 'published in Victoria' - counterintuitive though this may be).
Secondly, defamation is more than merely taking offence at something. You have to demonstrate actual injury (to your reputation), AFAIK, there is no remedy for hurt feelings in Australian Law.
there was some English law (case law) last century, about where contractual formation took place when telegraph communications were involved.
Wrong! It's common law as opposed to statute law, but its LAW. As far as I can remember there was some English law (case law) last century, about where contractual formation took place. Then there were some more recent cases about telephone and electronic forms of communication. My guess is that the determination of the place of publication rests on this law.
I doubt the US government (bastards, though they can be) would enforce such a ruling.
bzzzt! Wrong again. Check out the federal US uniform 'Foreign Money Order Act,' (from memory, perhaps some similar name) which has been enacted by more than a dozen states as well. If a foreign court awards an amount for damages, you can sue in US courts to have those damages paid (providing, like Australia, this is one of the countries where reciprocal agreements exist AFAIK). Don't feel too cozy in your appartment.
As far as having to be Australian to file suit, it does not so much depend on your citizenship as where the publication (or in some states NSW?) where the damage took place. It is within the realm of possibility that an American citizen living in Japan could sue in Australia for a publication made in the UK, it would be interesting too see.
The AC is not an Australian Expat. How obvious does a TROLL have to be?
Good places to start, get some general info about the OS and learn the shell.
Actually Ruby has a distinctive whiff of smalltalk to it. Also I think classifying Python as a non-academic (hacker) language is a little odd, for a language that grew out of a pure teaching language (ie ABC).
If you learn Python, you are well on your way to understanding Ruby. The more of these languages you learn, the easier it gets to learn more ... :/
unfortunately this changes only the USER_AGENT string, and not how the browser respsonds to javascript queries such as navigator.appName (or the more pernicious navigator.platform. don't know who, but when you tell Konq to fake its identity it gets through that hoop as well ....
THANK YOU!!!
Go back and look at the debates (and especially those surrounding the passing of the Sherman Act). I think you'll find the whole point of US anti-trust law was to foster a kind of capitalist democracy of more or less equal players, a democracy which would be threatened if any of the players got so big that could control the market. This necessarily involves competition, but innovation comes somewhat lower on the scale of priorities. Arguably XP is innovative, but if you have looked at it and it associated paraphenalia (eg the MSN browser), you quickly realise its radically anti-competitive potential. As far as Microsoft allowing the kind of democratic marketplace where numerous, relatively small programming firms can compete freely, well ...
Oops, My bad! Yes Australians (who accept the authority of the Macquarie) would use the 's', not the 'z' for this kind of word.
Quite the opposite. 'Optimize' is the websterised (sic) version of the older 'optimise' (and so on with the whole lot of 'organise,' 'antagonise' etc etc).
The use of 'z' in place of the 's' has traditionally been indicative of an American author. AFAIK, the latest edition of the OED lists 'organize' as the primary spelling and 'organise' as the variant, meaning that all right spelling Englishmen, should now write 'optimize.' Though the more sophisticated (and those who won't allow the editorial boards of dictionaries to dictate their spelling to them) will continue with 'optimise,' if only to demonstrate their sophistication. The Macquarie, on the other hand prefers 'organise,' meaning that any Australian who writes 'optimise' (unless for US publication) will appear, in the eyes of more erudite compatriots, to be educationally challenged.
This, BTW, is the why it is a really stupid idea to automagically spell check submissions. There's more than one way to spell 'colour'.
Ah but was it a spelling mistake or a very subtle pun?
Here in the U.S
Remeber my statment was made as a concession in the context of arguing against the notion that all privitisation of public utilities was undesirable. It is true, my statement is probably guilty of being somewhat sweeping.
I can't speak specifically for the US, but I am sure that there must be examples of privately owned utilities delivering good service given even a lack of competition. Undoubtedly too there are examples of horrendously mismanaged publically owned utilities. Moreover, the very dichotomy between public and privately owned is probably a gross oversimplification of the various shades of gray that exist in the form of complex regulatory schemes, mixed ownership, contracting out &tc...
However, as a poster below pointed out, government onwed instrumentalities, where there is a failure of the democratic process (through corruption, vote buying, dictatorship etc), as well as privately owned facilities where there is a failure of competition have a tendency to under-perform.
Perhaps too, the fact that private ownership of utilites seems to be much more traditional in the US, as opposed to the swift ideologically driven privatisations in the UK, Australia etc accounts for the apparent difference of experience. There may be a psychological propensity to put more into a company you (or your ancestors) have built up from scratch, rather than one you buy to siphon off as much cash as quickly as you can. Also a longer time allows for greater (and more honed) regulatory control to be established.
Moreover, the recent spate of privitisation suffered by us must be seen in the context of an overall social program which has resulted in a decline of living standards for most people and much social anger. Given that the US was always more geared to private ownership of public goods, it might not be the easiest place to observe the effects caused by such a shift in social policy.
Oops, about time to upgrade from 1.5.2 then :} That addresses one of the major complaints I had about Python then, do the various numbers etc also have their own methods now (as they do in Ruby)?
Perhaps the any is too strong. Certainly history teaches that privatised railroads, electricity and water utilities are a bad idea. Consider however, the case of Telcos, which almost without exception seem to providing better service than when the were run as GBEs. Perhaps a more appropriate yardstick would be whether there is any real chance of competition at the retail end (this doesn't exist with rail etc ...)
Even where competition is possible, it is of course possible to argue in favour of the 'Australian System' (which Austrlia has largely given up on), of having one GBE in the market place with various commercial operators (eg. TV stations, banks, etc ...)
As it happens I was living in the UK, not long after the rail privatisations. First thing the new rail companies did was to give all the execs massive pay rises and lay off drivers and raise fares to pay for it. There were an awesome number of cancelations, and many angry commuters, but they didn't really have the choice to use another line. Thought, to be fair one line got a fine of around 3mill pounds because of this stuff.
errrr ... I meant to write:
bar = foo.swapcase()for the Ruby example ... of course!
It is available for Win32, and MacOSX. AFAIK, it does not run on ealier MacOSen, but if I'm wrong I will surely be corrected.