> The Pentagon is so sure that whomever controls space will control the Earth...
In other words -
"The house which collects the most space shall control Earth. There are no fixed territories and no rules of engagement. Your battle for Earth begins... NOW."
> What would you call all those missle attacks on US/UK planes patroling the no-fly zone? Christmas presents?
One might make a case for calling them "self-defence", given that the US/UK planes patrolling the no-fly zone spent half their time bombing Iraqi radar stations and SAM batteries. But that's rather a circular argument.
Re:Price of admission is a full disk compr[o]mise
on
CNet on WinFS
·
· Score: 1
> MS users do not require such complex systems...
WTF? Here I was thinking that Microsoft Windows was widely used in industry, government, and academia, for tasks for which such complex systems will be a great benefit indeed. (Whether said users might be better served by a Unix-like system is another question entirely; the relevant fact is that they use Windows.)
WinFS will also benefit home users of the sort whose standard method of locating a file on their hard disk is Start/Search, and who will not recognise it as a sophisticated system at all - all they will notice is that Longhorn lived up to the advertising claims that it would make searching for files faster and easier.
Re:NTFS + SQL + XML + buzzword compliance?
on
CNet on WinFS
·
· Score: 1
By the looks of it it was a PUN, i.e. a PLAY ON WORDS, whereby attention was drawn to the similarity of spelling between the unnecessarily capitalised "Decent", and the game "Descent", with humorous intent.
If you're so obsessed with correcting people's spelling that you can't spot a joke when you see one, I'd suggest you need to lighten up a little.
> Well it's easy to use until something goes wrong. But if the registry gets corrupted or some strange hardware problem crops up there is no way to fix it.
True. I believe Windows machines also have a very poor record on recovering from being hit by meteorites.
Windows' registry getting corrupted is an extremely rare event, indeed one I've never seen; on the whole Windows chugs along very nicely without you having to worry about the registry. Linux, on the other hand, has historically relied on editing configuration files to such an extent that it's been jolly difficult *not* to screw something up terminally if you're not an expert. My experience in the past of Mandrake has been that their configuration tools merely automate the screwing-up for you, but I admit I haven't tried any recent versions...
> I can get an Apple... with a consistent GUI and a command-line interface.
Consistent? This is the GUI that's half Aqua, half brushed steel, and half(?) Classic, right? Funny sort of consistency you Mac users have.
BTW, in case you didn't know, the command-line interface isn't another Apple innovation that provides an unheard-of advantage to Macs. Windows has had one for years.
> Funny then that this download is only for paying memembers. Like some others have pointed out, public Bittorent link please.
I suggest you read Stallman on the subject. If any of the paying members want to set up their own servers hosting it, they're Free to do so. If they don't, tough - Mandrake are well within their rights. Besides, as has been pointed out elsewhere, the distro is available for anyone to download - it's just the ISOs which are currently limited to Mandrake Club members.
> (just because you fixed the problem doesn't mean it didn't exist).
Unfortunately this is precisely the line SCO is taking against SGI right now. Maybe we in the free software community should demonstrate a better ability to compromise, lest they be able to point to our actions to support their lawsuits against us.
> If you want a productive tool for non-experts,... forget any compiled language. Non-experts will do much better with an interpreted language.
Um, what?
You're saying that if I implemented a native compiler for (say) Python, then suddenly Python would only be suitable for experts, and productivity would plummet?
I'm not sure what you're smoking.
By the way, Java is primarily an interpreted language.
A minor correction: for VM in your post write "automatic memory manager" throughout. There exist numerous native-code runtimes which do all these things.
> Are you saying that "_f_m_computedAreaOfCircle" is not a good name for the private member floating point variable that holds the computed area of the containing circle object? =)
Correct. The proper name for that variable would be "circ_a".
> f you asked the average user out there what could be done to make IE better, the answer would not be "Tabbed browsing!". Why? Because they've never heard of that!
Or, possibly, because it's not the killer feature its fans believe. Tabbed browsing might well be a killer feature for those whose preferred operating systems don't provide anything similar by default. But most Windows users probably don't really see the difference between having all their open pages listed in tabs within the Mozilla windows, or having all their open pages listed in buttons on the taskbar.
If you're running a shop of "even just a couple dozen people", and you're savvy enough even to be considering alternatives to Windows PCs, you probably know enough about computers to fix most simple problems yourself. In other words, you can put those extra service calls back into the thin air you just pulled them out of.
So, according to your research, Dell and Apple are neck-and-neck. This is plausible.
The difference is that if I want a Windows PC, I can ditch the brandname and get something cheaper than a Dell. If I want a Mac, I *have* to buy an Apple.
But we've had four Monkey Island games already! Surely it's not too much to hope for another Maniac Mansion title first? (I learnt most of my American history from Day of the Tentacle...)
How on earth can you make a post comparing Sam & Max to Discworld - and object to the former being "too hard"?!
Discworld has to be one of the hardest graphic adventures ever, what with its creators completely abandoning any semblance of logic in the solution to half its puzzles. At least Sam & Max had some sort of logic to it... if a rather twisted one.
Really? I thought they were required to give them two months from when they told them what the violations WERE, not from when they claimed that violations EXISTED.
> What really opened my eyes to the possibilities of free software was emailing a bug report to the developer of a free software program, getting a reply that day and a fix the next. Proprietary vendors simply cannot touch this level of support, at least not for mere individuals like myself.
Your example is mistaken. I have personally experienced this level of support from commercial software companies, when I have contacted them in my ever-so-important capacity as... an unemployed student working on minor projects in my spare time. The companies in question were small one-or-two person outfits. In other words, the implication is that it is the size of the project, not its business model, which is significant.
My experience of reporting bugs to free software projects, by the way, is that the standard response is "this is free software, fix it yourself." Now that's what I call support.
Slashdot Mirror
> The Pentagon is so sure that whomever controls space will control the Earth...
In other words -
"The house which collects the most space shall control Earth. There are no fixed territories and no rules of engagement. Your battle for Earth begins... NOW."
> What would you call all those missle attacks on US/UK planes patroling the no-fly zone? Christmas presents?
One might make a case for calling them "self-defence", given that the US/UK planes patrolling the no-fly zone spent half their time bombing Iraqi radar stations and SAM batteries. But that's rather a circular argument.
> MS users do not require such complex systems...
WTF? Here I was thinking that Microsoft Windows was widely used in industry, government, and academia, for tasks for which such complex systems will be a great benefit indeed. (Whether said users might be better served by a Unix-like system is another question entirely; the relevant fact is that they use Windows.)
WinFS will also benefit home users of the sort whose standard method of locating a file on their hard disk is Start/Search, and who will not recognise it as a sophisticated system at all - all they will notice is that Longhorn lived up to the advertising claims that it would make searching for files faster and easier.
By the looks of it it was a PUN, i.e. a PLAY ON WORDS, whereby attention was drawn to the similarity of spelling between the unnecessarily capitalised "Decent", and the game "Descent", with humorous intent.
If you're so obsessed with correcting people's spelling that you can't spot a joke when you see one, I'd suggest you need to lighten up a little.
> already have hit the bits limit to 64-bits (128 bits will never be practical)...
Well, maybe - but don't you remember when they said that about memory?
> Well it's easy to use until something goes wrong. But if the registry gets corrupted or some strange hardware problem crops up there is no way to fix it.
True. I believe Windows machines also have a very poor record on recovering from being hit by meteorites.
Windows' registry getting corrupted is an extremely rare event, indeed one I've never seen; on the whole Windows chugs along very nicely without you having to worry about the registry. Linux, on the other hand, has historically relied on editing configuration files to such an extent that it's been jolly difficult *not* to screw something up terminally if you're not an expert. My experience in the past of Mandrake has been that their configuration tools merely automate the screwing-up for you, but I admit I haven't tried any recent versions...
> I can get an Apple ... with a consistent GUI and a command-line interface.
Consistent? This is the GUI that's half Aqua, half brushed steel, and half(?) Classic, right? Funny sort of consistency you Mac users have.
BTW, in case you didn't know, the command-line interface isn't another Apple innovation that provides an unheard-of advantage to Macs. Windows has had one for years.
> Funny then that this download is only for paying memembers. Like some others have pointed out, public Bittorent link please.
I suggest you read Stallman on the subject. If any of the paying members want to set up their own servers hosting it, they're Free to do so. If they don't, tough - Mandrake are well within their rights. Besides, as has been pointed out elsewhere, the distro is available for anyone to download - it's just the ISOs which are currently limited to Mandrake Club members.
> (just because you fixed the problem doesn't mean it didn't exist).
Unfortunately this is precisely the line SCO is taking against SGI right now. Maybe we in the free software community should demonstrate a better ability to compromise, lest they be able to point to our actions to support their lawsuits against us.
> If you want a productive tool for non-experts, ... forget any compiled language. Non-experts will do much better with an interpreted language.
Um, what?
You're saying that if I implemented a native compiler for (say) Python, then suddenly Python would only be suitable for experts, and productivity would plummet?
I'm not sure what you're smoking.
By the way, Java is primarily an interpreted language.
> (HTML comes to ming).
I completely agree, particularly the IE extensions. But XML can smell even worse if you don't wash it regularly.
A minor correction: for VM in your post write "automatic memory manager" throughout. There exist numerous native-code runtimes which do all these things.
> Are you saying that "_f_m_computedAreaOfCircle" is not a good name for the private member floating point variable that holds the computed area of the containing circle object? =)
Correct. The proper name for that variable would be "circ_a".
> New kernel. New KDE. New Mozilla. New OpenOffice.
I suppose you could make a case for KDE being part of the OS, but Mozilla? OpenOffice?
> f you asked the average user out there what could be done to make IE better, the answer would not be "Tabbed browsing!". Why? Because they've never heard of that!
Or, possibly, because it's not the killer feature its fans believe. Tabbed browsing might well be a killer feature for those whose preferred operating systems don't provide anything similar by default. But most Windows users probably don't really see the difference between having all their open pages listed in tabs within the Mozilla windows, or having all their open pages listed in buttons on the taskbar.
If you're running a shop of "even just a couple dozen people", and you're savvy enough even to be considering alternatives to Windows PCs, you probably know enough about computers to fix most simple problems yourself. In other words, you can put those extra service calls back into the thin air you just pulled them out of.
So, according to your research, Dell and Apple are neck-and-neck. This is plausible.
The difference is that if I want a Windows PC, I can ditch the brandname and get something cheaper than a Dell. If I want a Mac, I *have* to buy an Apple.
But we've had four Monkey Island games already! Surely it's not too much to hope for another Maniac Mansion title first? (I learnt most of my American history from Day of the Tentacle...)
How on earth can you make a post comparing Sam & Max to Discworld - and object to the former being "too hard"?!
Discworld has to be one of the hardest graphic adventures ever, what with its creators completely abandoning any semblance of logic in the solution to half its puzzles. At least Sam & Max had some sort of logic to it... if a rather twisted one.
> Source is documentation, how much more do you need?
In the case of some source code, quite a lot.
Revoke the Sun? Please do! There are too many tabloids around anyway.
> SCO gave them that time.
Really? I thought they were required to give them two months from when they told them what the violations WERE, not from when they claimed that violations EXISTED.
> What really opened my eyes to the possibilities of free software was emailing a bug report to the developer of a free software program, getting a reply that day and a fix the next. Proprietary vendors simply cannot touch this level of support, at least not for mere individuals like myself.
Your example is mistaken. I have personally experienced this level of support from commercial software companies, when I have contacted them in my ever-so-important capacity as... an unemployed student working on minor projects in my spare time. The companies in question were small one-or-two person outfits. In other words, the implication is that it is the size of the project, not its business model, which is significant.
My experience of reporting bugs to free software projects, by the way, is that the standard response is "this is free software, fix it yourself." Now that's what I call support.
> In my experience, Quicktime under Windows sucks eggs.
Does this require special hardware?
> Remove SCO from all future distributions. :^)
Unfortunately that would require putting SCO in first, which might give their case merit. I'm not sure we can afford that.