Yes, a new measurement, but not metric. In keeping with older and arguably more practical measuring systems, a Bug should contain 4 Seats, a Seat should contain 14 Parts, and there should be 923 Bugs in a Mile. Just because.
It was the same back when it was on U.S. soil. Remember 9-11? I used to go around with my best monster truck announcer voice saying "The Day of Deeaath" every time I saw something on TV about it. Yes, it's very annoying and no most of us don't have the slightest clue what war and death and destruction is about.
I try not to let the reality (however inaccurate my perception of reality might be) of war effect my opinion of its necessity though.
Re:Not necessarily the war yet
on
Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 0
i want to hear about soldiers over there refusing to fight.
Gee, what a wonderful military we'd have if the soldiers just stopped fighting because they had personal objection to the war. Real insightful, pal.
Ha! I can tell you it's a hell of a lot more than $3.25. I can go to the video store and rent one for much less, and then watch it as many times as I want and on my own schedule, including watching part now and part later. PPV is a flaming rip off. All the cable company has to do is flip a virtual switch (bool PlayMovie;) for you to be able to watch the movie, yet they think it's worth more than a hard copy rental? Some people deal with it by stealing, I deal with it by not ordering PPV movies, but I can tell you I have little moral objection to stealing it. The cable company is getting screwed a whole lot less than you and I are when we pay the unreasonable premium. All part of holding a government sanctioned monoply I guess.
On the other hand, it is funny that people get billed when the cable company finds out they stole the movie time.
Re:Who cares about decimal?
on
RMS Turns 50
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· Score: 1
But 50 has few interesting properties
Yeah but 50 is 0x32, which *looks* interesting in a signed sort of way, even though it isn't, which means it fits right in here.
Re:rootkit redundant.
on
Windows Rootkits
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· Score: 3, Informative
There's no need to run as Administrator. Pretty much any user account can mess up a Windows system pretty bad, even the Guest account.
But what you say is also true. I too run an account that's a member of Administrators because it's too much trouble to become all-powerful when needed.
It's kinda funny now that I'm thinking of it. You have to be an admin to install a printer, but any old account can delete the printer driver files. Nice.
"When did we start thinking about the future so much?"
Hmmm probably right about the time we started to feel the pressure of day-to-day life. We're pretty good at imagining the good parts of the future and pretty bad at imagining the complications. In other words, a long long long long time ago.
Certainly we were looking to the future long before the middle ages. Christianity, for example, is based on the hope for a better future; specifically on the hope that a saviour will change things for the better. Apparently there was a common belief that life could be better.
"When we think of the future, we almost always think of technology... so maybe the industrial revolution spurred this new way of thinking."
It isn't really a different way of thinking, it's just that technology has largely replaced magic and other nebulous things as the future improvent of choice. I think that shift to technology likely did happen during the industrial revolution because that is the time that technological advances started coming at a rate noticable to the common person.
I find it interesting that we continue to look to the future for improvement in our day to day lives, even though technological improvement has almost exclusively resulted in a more complicated life style, the oposite of what we hope for. It always lets us down at the most basic level.
Doesn't appear to support PERL out of the box. And no mention at all about Python. Looks like I get vbscript (*snicker*) or jscript (don't know it, probably not gonna bother). Otherwise it's an additional install for me and anyone who wants to use my code.
No parsing.rc/xml/ini/insert-random-format-here files...
Is ". myprog.conf" really that tough? I'd bet there isn't anything even close to that in any language accessing the registry.
more ofton than not, I end up using Cygwin (that is BASH) for scripting under windows
Which get's you right into the middle of my point. Cygwin means an extra install, both for you and for anyone who wants to use your code.
What falls under the falling-off-a-log category in *nix, falls under the probably-not-gonna-fly category under Windows.
I'd say that usually the difference is in which OS you're writing for.
Under Windows, the scripting language of choice is the cmd.exe language, whatever that is. It allows about as much expression as a.ini file. Moving beyond it requires installing extra programming tools, be it Perl or Python or c++ or whatever. Also, scripted programs under Windows are treated like second-class citizens by the OS. You don't get the equivalent of "#!/python" under Windows, you have to execute scripts by executing the interpreter and giving it the name of your script on the command line. Anything but native executables wind up looking cheesy because of this.
Under most other OS's (especially UNIX-like ones), you have real choice right out of the box. You can choose the best language for the job based on its merits and nothing else. With so many languages available, you rarely have install extra packages to get the work done, and even more rarely to allow a client to use your software. And since a script file appears the exact same as a native executable file (unless you look at it in a text editor), you can write serious software in any scripting language you choose and not have to worry about that cheesy look.
Also, under Windows there is a much higher chance that you'll run into something you just can't do with a scripting language, because of such things as hard-to-do access to devices (no/dev directory), and hard-to-do access to configuration data (hooray for the registry).
There are other problems under Windows too. So, if your target platform is Windows, by the time you add up all the little barriers, it almost never makes good sense to use a scripting language.
The parent post ranks up there with "640K of memory should be more than enough for anyone".
I'll go ahead and agree with the parent. Sortof. I'd rather have 20GB of fast data storage than 100GB of current-speed stuff. I don't have a lot of reliability problems with hard drives, but I sure do sit and wait for head seeks.
"...reliability is more critical than size....tell my girlfriend that."
And if she disagrees, dump her. Certainly don't ever marry her.
Doesn't anybody here ever use any Borland software? You'd start thinking Microsoft had a top notch QA department. Try just about anything from Borland, but I'd say Paradox (that goes back a few years now) was the very worst. Then there's C++ builder. Pick your version. We're talking about a level and inconsistency here that would make you beg for a daily BSOD. In fact they have a bug that has been on the known bug list for 3 or 4 YEARS now, and they claim they CAN'T fix it. Ha! That's just the one I know about.
But do we ever hear a word about it around here? No.
How about the horror stories about Apple's previous OS constantly locking and crashing? Do we hear about those? No.
But we sure do hear about the BSOD, even though Win2K is plenty solid enough for your average desktop computer user, myself included. The version known for frequent BSOD'S (and boy was it bad) is three years in the past folks!
But at least it's entertaining to watch people sit around and mindlessy bash MS. Bill's right I guess. Bitching about bugs really is cool.
OOoohhh I know. A big red blinking sign that says "You have clicked a link to an off-site.PDF file. Are you on crack?"
People who deep-link to those evil things should be physically./'d, and 90% of all.PDF creation should result in public flogging with a wet rope. Seriously, WTF is wrong with good old HTML?
That's kindof a cool idea. I might be interested in buying a CD if the concert was good. But I'm sorry, I'm not paying $15 for a piece of plastic and some digital signals that were recorded over a couple hours time, especially considering that I already paid to hear it. I'd be happy to pay the cost of the media, a fair bit of the equipment cost, and a fair bit of someones time to sit and watch the burners run, plus a hefty mark up. $5 seems more than generous.
I never said the mnemonics were intuitive. There are other, more intuitive ones tho, like ctrl+insert/shift+insert for copy/paste. Why those fell out of favor I'll never know, but it makes little difference in the long run. It was still too complicated for the average end user. You could put special keys on the keyboard labeled "copy" and "paste" and they would still sit unused. The problem isn't a lack of ability to remember the right key, it's a lack of ability to asign utility to a simple common function.
My two favorite common features are undo/redo and cut/copy/paste. In fact I believe that if either of them was to dissapear from the face of computing tommorrow, I'd commit suicide. Yet most of the end users I know don't use either. Ever. Is it really that complicated? Do people really enjoy typing so much that they'd rather not use these features? No, I doubt it. I think maybe we're right.
I also enjoy the way I can learn what an app does by poking at menu options. I figure if an app can do something but it isn't obvious from either the menu or some simple sub-dialog or something, then I don't care if it does it. I think maybe we're right.
I think there are two kinds of people in the world: those who see something and try it, and those who don't notice anything until they're told what it is, what it does, how to use it, why they should try it, and what to do if they have a question. I don't think the latter type understands the former, and I know for sure that I don't understand the former. But I think maybe we're right.
We think the way to write good software is to make it intuitive, consistant within itself, and consistant within a group of similar programs (use common keys for cut/copy/paste, for example), but I don't think it much matters. Alot of people would look at a program with one menu option that says "Click here to see a funny joke", get glossy-eyed, and ask "what does it do?" They don't even know how to find the online help. It might as well be hidden right in the middle of a menu labeled "Help". Could it be we're right?
They've had their ups and downs, but overall I'd say they do pretty well (I've been with them for 6 years or so now), until the past few weeks (which appear to be over now). I was on the verge of dumping them, not just because of the problems, but because of the lack of information on the main web site about the problems. For $25/month for DSL and a static IP though, it's hard to find a replacement.
I really miss the old days though, when they were still a small company. I could talk to the sys admin (I think there was only one on duty at a time) just by asking the tech support guy for him by name. Good tech support is when the admin looks in his route table while you're on the phone, and says "There's the problem, I made a typo". Good tech support is when the admin creates an account for you on his home machine (a FreeBSD box) so you can use it for network testing.
I'm not sure at all that it would be physically possible to build a tele that big with current technology... and if it was, where would the money come from? You'd have better luck getting funding for a new space shuttle that runs on cow farts and bread bag twisters.
I think a complete and usable space station needs to be the first major priority.
The first short-term priority should be a cheap efficient way to launch materials into space. If it costs a small fraction what it does now to get material into space, the space station will get built much faster and using far less expensive materials and designs. Humans can still ride the space shuttles or some similar thing, but materials can survive a much more violent (and one-way) trip to space. Perhaps the shell of the launch vehicles could double as space station modules.
Once the space station can support a fairly large crew, how about adding an assembly facility, so that long-range space craft can be sent into orbit in pieces, then launched from the space station. Additions to the station will also become easier to complete.
The basis of all exploration beyond Earth orbits seems to me to lie in a functional space station. Without it, space will continue to be wildly expensive and insanely dangerous.
Then, explore, baby!!! With the problem of re-entry gone for long range space vehicles, long range missions should be much cheaper and safer. So let's start by exploring the moon a bit more, some asteroids (and see if money can be made mining those suckers), and then Mars.
Long-term goal? Space station in Mars orbit and at least a minimal surface base.
Mono is a good thing precisely because it makes programming for Windows and for Linux so similar. Like Java, but better supported at the Windows end. Like Wine but... well... not so yucky.
MS just has too much clout in the industry right now. It took a court order to get MS to ship a Java VM with Windows, and it took Sun to get that order. With that much resistance from MS to anything it doesn't control, the Linux community is forced to play copy-cat for awhile.
I think things may get very interesting in a quick hurry as Mono matures and the number of shipping.Net apps reaches some sort of critical mass.
Slashdot Mirror
If they compared em to Pinto's, then the /. headline would be something like "Piece of Shit Splatters in Midwest".
And thanks alot for reminding us all of that little automotive blunder...
Yes, a new measurement, but not metric. In keeping with older and arguably more practical measuring systems, a Bug should contain 4 Seats, a Seat should contain 14 Parts, and there should be 923 Bugs in a Mile. Just because.
It was the same back when it was on U.S. soil. Remember 9-11? I used to go around with my best monster truck announcer voice saying "The Day of Deeaath" every time I saw something on TV about it. Yes, it's very annoying and no most of us don't have the slightest clue what war and death and destruction is about.
I try not to let the reality (however inaccurate my perception of reality might be) of war effect my opinion of its necessity though.
Gee, what a wonderful military we'd have if the soldiers just stopped fighting because they had personal objection to the war. Real insightful, pal.
On the other hand, it is funny that people get billed when the cable company finds out they stole the movie time.
There's no need to run as Administrator. Pretty much any user account can mess up a Windows system pretty bad, even the Guest account.
But what you say is also true. I too run an account that's a member of Administrators because it's too much trouble to become all-powerful when needed.
It's kinda funny now that I'm thinking of it. You have to be an admin to install a printer, but any old account can delete the printer driver files. Nice.
Certainly we were looking to the future long before the middle ages. Christianity, for example, is based on the hope for a better future; specifically on the hope that a saviour will change things for the better. Apparently there was a common belief that life could be better.
It isn't really a different way of thinking, it's just that technology has largely replaced magic and other nebulous things as the future improvent of choice. I think that shift to technology likely did happen during the industrial revolution because that is the time that technological advances started coming at a rate noticable to the common person.I find it interesting that we continue to look to the future for improvement in our day to day lives, even though technological improvement has almost exclusively resulted in a more complicated life style, the oposite of what we hope for. It always lets us down at the most basic level.
Antibiotic Resistant Staph Antibiotic Resistant Staph Discovered!
And so it begins.
Is ". myprog.conf" really that tough? I'd bet there isn't anything even close to that in any language accessing the registry.
Which get's you right into the middle of my point. Cygwin means an extra install, both for you and for anyone who wants to use your code.What falls under the falling-off-a-log category in *nix, falls under the probably-not-gonna-fly category under Windows.
I'd say that usually the difference is in which OS you're writing for.
.ini file. Moving beyond it requires installing extra programming tools, be it Perl or Python or c++ or whatever. Also, scripted programs under Windows are treated like second-class citizens by the OS. You don't get the equivalent of "#!/python" under Windows, you have to execute scripts by executing the interpreter and giving it the name of your script on the command line. Anything but native executables wind up looking cheesy because of this.
/dev directory), and hard-to-do access to configuration data (hooray for the registry).
Under Windows, the scripting language of choice is the cmd.exe language, whatever that is. It allows about as much expression as a
Under most other OS's (especially UNIX-like ones), you have real choice right out of the box. You can choose the best language for the job based on its merits and nothing else. With so many languages available, you rarely have install extra packages to get the work done, and even more rarely to allow a client to use your software. And since a script file appears the exact same as a native executable file (unless you look at it in a text editor), you can write serious software in any scripting language you choose and not have to worry about that cheesy look.
Also, under Windows there is a much higher chance that you'll run into something you just can't do with a scripting language, because of such things as hard-to-do access to devices (no
There are other problems under Windows too. So, if your target platform is Windows, by the time you add up all the little barriers, it almost never makes good sense to use a scripting language.
I'll go ahead and agree with the parent. Sortof. I'd rather have 20GB of fast data storage than 100GB of current-speed stuff. I don't have a lot of reliability problems with hard drives, but I sure do sit and wait for head seeks.
And if she disagrees, dump her. Certainly don't ever marry her.
Here goes the Karma...
Doesn't anybody here ever use any Borland software? You'd start thinking Microsoft had a top notch QA department. Try just about anything from Borland, but I'd say Paradox (that goes back a few years now) was the very worst. Then there's C++ builder. Pick your version. We're talking about a level and inconsistency here that would make you beg for a daily BSOD. In fact they have a bug that has been on the known bug list for 3 or 4 YEARS now, and they claim they CAN'T fix it. Ha! That's just the one I know about.
But do we ever hear a word about it around here? No.
How about the horror stories about Apple's previous OS constantly locking and crashing? Do we hear about those? No.
But we sure do hear about the BSOD, even though Win2K is plenty solid enough for your average desktop computer user, myself included. The version known for frequent BSOD'S (and boy was it bad) is three years in the past folks!
But at least it's entertaining to watch people sit around and mindlessy bash MS. Bill's right I guess. Bitching about bugs really is cool.
OOoohhh I know. A big red blinking sign that says "You have clicked a link to an off-site .PDF file. Are you on crack?"
./'d, and 90% of all .PDF creation should result in public flogging with a wet rope. Seriously, WTF is wrong with good old HTML?
People who deep-link to those evil things should be physically
That's kindof a cool idea. I might be interested in buying a CD if the concert was good. But I'm sorry, I'm not paying $15 for a piece of plastic and some digital signals that were recorded over a couple hours time, especially considering that I already paid to hear it. I'd be happy to pay the cost of the media, a fair bit of the equipment cost, and a fair bit of someones time to sit and watch the burners run, plus a hefty mark up. $5 seems more than generous.
I never said the mnemonics were intuitive. There are other, more intuitive ones tho, like ctrl+insert/shift+insert for copy/paste. Why those fell out of favor I'll never know, but it makes little difference in the long run. It was still too complicated for the average end user. You could put special keys on the keyboard labeled "copy" and "paste" and they would still sit unused. The problem isn't a lack of ability to remember the right key, it's a lack of ability to asign utility to a simple common function.
My two favorite common features are undo/redo and cut/copy/paste. In fact I believe that if either of them was to dissapear from the face of computing tommorrow, I'd commit suicide. Yet most of the end users I know don't use either. Ever. Is it really that complicated? Do people really enjoy typing so much that they'd rather not use these features? No, I doubt it. I think maybe we're right.
I also enjoy the way I can learn what an app does by poking at menu options. I figure if an app can do something but it isn't obvious from either the menu or some simple sub-dialog or something, then I don't care if it does it. I think maybe we're right.
I think there are two kinds of people in the world: those who see something and try it, and those who don't notice anything until they're told what it is, what it does, how to use it, why they should try it, and what to do if they have a question. I don't think the latter type understands the former, and I know for sure that I don't understand the former. But I think maybe we're right.
We think the way to write good software is to make it intuitive, consistant within itself, and consistant within a group of similar programs (use common keys for cut/copy/paste, for example), but I don't think it much matters. Alot of people would look at a program with one menu option that says "Click here to see a funny joke", get glossy-eyed, and ask "what does it do?" They don't even know how to find the online help. It might as well be hidden right in the middle of a menu labeled "Help". Could it be we're right?
Maybe end users really are dimmer than bozo.
I really miss the old days though, when they were still a small company. I could talk to the sys admin (I think there was only one on duty at a time) just by asking the tech support guy for him by name. Good tech support is when the admin looks in his route table while you're on the phone, and says "There's the problem, I made a typo". Good tech support is when the admin creates an account for you on his home machine (a FreeBSD box) so you can use it for network testing.
For $1600.00 I damn well better get a phone that doesn't pin me within 5 feet of it just to make a normal phone call. Ha!!!
I'm not sure at all that it would be physically possible to build a tele that big with current technology... and if it was, where would the money come from? You'd have better luck getting funding for a new space shuttle that runs on cow farts and bread bag twisters.
I think a complete and usable space station needs to be the first major priority.
The first short-term priority should be a cheap efficient way to launch materials into space. If it costs a small fraction what it does now to get material into space, the space station will get built much faster and using far less expensive materials and designs. Humans can still ride the space shuttles or some similar thing, but materials can survive a much more violent (and one-way) trip to space. Perhaps the shell of the launch vehicles could double as space station modules.
Once the space station can support a fairly large crew, how about adding an assembly facility, so that long-range space craft can be sent into orbit in pieces, then launched from the space station. Additions to the station will also become easier to complete.
The basis of all exploration beyond Earth orbits seems to me to lie in a functional space station. Without it, space will continue to be wildly expensive and insanely dangerous.
Then, explore, baby!!! With the problem of re-entry gone for long range space vehicles, long range missions should be much cheaper and safer. So let's start by exploring the moon a bit more, some asteroids (and see if money can be made mining those suckers), and then Mars.
Long-term goal? Space station in Mars orbit and at least a minimal surface base.
Mono is a good thing precisely because it makes programming for Windows and for Linux so similar. Like Java, but better supported at the Windows end. Like Wine but... well... not so yucky.
MS just has too much clout in the industry right now. It took a court order to get MS to ship a Java VM with Windows, and it took Sun to get that order. With that much resistance from MS to anything it doesn't control, the Linux community is forced to play copy-cat for awhile.
I think things may get very interesting in a quick hurry as Mono matures and the number of shipping .Net apps reaches some sort of critical mass.