Insightful? Please name one browser, aside from possibly an IE upgrade, that would require Windows to reboot one (or more) times and would take an entire day to install. Methinks you should actually try using Windows before spouting off misinformation.
Honestly. I just wish Slashdotters knew what they were talking about when it comes to XML. Microsoft absolutely does not have to make some sort of incompatible XML format. It's not necessary to break the XML spec in order to make a proprietary XML format. Accept the fact that Microsoft can and will use standards-compliant XML for their proprietary formats. I guarantee that they will NOT break the XML spec in any way, shape, or form. They don't need to!
There's no need to "hide" the schema. Having a Word XML schema simply means you can validate whether or not something looks like a proper XML Word document. Having the schema DOES NOT mean you can actually do anything meaningful with the Word document. You can write 100% completely valid XML with Base64-encoded mysterious data in between some tags and no one will know what to do with it, schema or no schema. When will you guys learn, Microsoft doesn't need to "patent" an XML file format because having a "human readable" file format doesn't necessarily mean you can do anything with the file in the first place!
In other words, Microsoft can easily, and without patents, stick a proprietary file format in an "open format" XML document. Don't assume that they're always going to do some evil shit just because they're Microsoft. In the case of XML, they don't have to! Obfuscation is allowed by the standard!
These things can actually be good things for a programmer though.. Most of the best programmers I know, and we're talking real code wizards here, lack Comp Sci degrees, aren't very social, and have big egos amongst their type.. but they do the work and don't complain.
I disagree. That type of programmer is the kind who has a hard time doing things any other way than his way. If management says "this NEEDS to be done this way", he's the one saying "that's stupid because I wouldn't do it that way. Therefore, no one else would do it that way." You tend to see this attitude a lot on Slashdot, usually when someone points out something Linux can't do but Windows can. To which, the Linux zealot/anti-social programmer will reply: "so what? That's stupid. No one would want to do that anyway."
These people are not necessarily the best people to have on a team.
If a kernel maintainer can't find a programming job then the programming profession is pretty much destroyed already.
Yes, because we all know that anyone capable of maintaining an old Linux kernel must, by definition, be the world's most talented programmer.
Or perhaps there are other reasons why he doesn't have a job. Perhaps he lacks a degree from a four year institution. Perhaps he has the primadonna attitude many "superstar programmers" have. Maybe he has very poor social skills, which leads him to making a less than favorable impression during interviews. Who knows? Don't jump to conclusions.
They don't want you to play the old games you have lying around. They want you to buy new games.
This is what every other console manufacturer has done, with the exception of the Playstation 2 (and I'm sure some other obscure platforms only true geeks know about). Don't act like Microsoft is the only company doing this.
The other person who replied to the original message got the same results I did on MSN search -- about 14 million results for "linux" and about 20 million results for "microsoft". How on earth did this get modded up? Oh that's right, he's bashing Microsoft, so he's "insightful" or "interesting".
If you look here you'll notice that the Mozilla team has been sitting around trying to figure out how to fix various "dodgy URL" issues for two years now. Open source works better eh?
That's fine, since Apple's laptops are looking more appealing anyway, and still run Linux.
Why would you spend obscene amounts of money on an Apple laptop just so you can run Linux on it? For a group of people that complain so much about the "Microsoft Tax" and actually think that it raises the price of your computer by the retail cost of Windows, Slashdotters sure as hell don't have a problem paying hundreds more for an Apple laptop just so they can be spared the agony of seeing Windows boot up once. Baffling.
Don't most geeks have two (or more) computers? My setup is a Windows machine for the desktop and a FreeBSD machine for server duties and other things. With the price of building a computer being so low, it just kind of seems pointless to me to bother with things like dual booting or tricks like this program just so you can get Linux apps working on a Windows machine.
Even XML microsoft used WAS standard based. Everything they take from the standard and open architecture. The only problem is that they make a little (but significant) twist
How is this insightful? Microsoft has in no way changed XML, you're just flat out wrong there. I think what geeks tend to forget is that just because XML is "human readable" doesn't necessarily mean that anything written in XML is "open". For instance, it's trivial to write closed-format, binary data in a human-readable XML file like so:
And there you have it, completely valid XML. Microsoft has not and will never "change" XML and create XML that can't be parsed by other parsers just so they can hide their formats from other people. They don't have to -- those sort of capabilities are built into XML!
How else are you supposed to discover when someone steals your work?
Wait, I'm confused! According to Slashdot, it's impossible to steal movies or music, so how is it possible to steal source code? After all, it's not like the original author is deprived of his copy of the source!
Just because the source is available doesn't mean just anyone can understand it. If an open source project with a small team of developers who know the program inside and out leave, for all intents and purposes the project will die, just like a commercial product would, since it is unlikely that another group of individuals that understand the source as well as the previous group will pop up (after all, if they did, they would've been committing source in the first place!)
I think the problem here is that the geeks think "unlimited" means "without bounds" whereas the ISPs think "unlimited" means "the amount of bandwidth a reasonable person would consider unlimited." That is, when your average person is using their high speed access, they're not saturating the pipes both ways 24/7, 365 days a year. They're using their internet access a reasonable amount every day and even making big downloads here and there. To them, this is "unlimited" since they don't have to constantly worry about how many megabytes they're transferring and budgeting accordingly (that is, since they make reasonable, and not excessive, use of the internet access).
Now hardcore geeks on the other hand will tie up their connection constantly downloading who knows what and demanding that their ISP give them truly unlimited access for $50 a month. Not gonna happen. Just use some of that common sense. Do you really think the ISP means that their unlimited access is "unlimited" in the strictest sense of the word? Of course not. They'd go broke, fast. Are you guys the same kind of people that would demand that an "all you can eat" restaurant bring you more and more food and never close so long as you're still hungry?
What do you guys want? Do you want ISPs to stop offering access that, to 99% of their customer base, is "unlimited" just so you can avoid being burned because you lack the common sense to realize that no ISP can truly offer unlimited access? They're trying to appeal to a customer base that will view the ISPs service as, for all intents and purposes, unlimited. They're not going to change their advertising to state bandwidth limitations just to appease the hardcore nerds who insist on raping bandwidth, sorry.
No, you're missing the point. He could surely use them to say, gas the Kurds or whatever else he'd been doing for 12 years that the UN didn't really care about. Now about the US invading, his ENTIRE defense rest on the US backing down from criticism since it was widely believed by leftists all over the world that Saddam had no WMDs (despite documented evidence -- the question still remains: where did all the chemical weapons documented after the Gulf War go?). This was his big gamble and his only real saving grace. So if he were to use WMDs ONCE to win one battle out of many, he'd be up shit creek since the rest of the world would join behind the US in taking care of Saddam (because the proof of WMDs everyone wanted would be out in the open). Perhaps now you can see why strategically it would not be to his benefit to use WMDs -- it's a "win the battle, lose the war" situation.
Why would he use the WMDs that he denied having? Hussein knew he couldn't win a war against the US, so his only hope was to have the US cave in because of worldwide criticism of there not being WMDs in Iraq. He figured that even if the US invaded that he could get them to back down eventually. If he used the WMDs in combat, he would instantly blow away his last line of defense -- world criticism of the US -- because the rest of the world would find out that he does indeed have WMDs and the US was justified in invading! That would change things dramatically, don't you think?
Unfortunately for Saddam, we didn't care about the criticism. Ultimately, his gamble didn't pay off. Saddam is going to fold like Chinese laundry and the WMDs will be found.
When Redhat EOLs its products after a year, they're doing so to remain competitive in a changing marketplace, or something like that.
When Microsoft EOLs its products after 6 or 7 years, they're doing it to force customers into upgrades.
This is Slashdot, remember...
Re:Stuck with Windows?
on
PC Annoyances
·
· Score: 1
Being raised on Linux won't change some of the problems that Linux has. For instance, what about commercial programs that are compiled for a certain distro, meaning they are compiled against certain versions of libc, assume certain placement/structure of config files, etc.? Trying to install the software on one of the (uncountably many) distros may or may not work. I've seen this happen a number of times (*Java* didn't work because in my case because Redhat Enterprise shipped with a different, apparently incompatible version of libc than the one the Java executable was linked against).
Sure, being familiar with Linux might mean that you know how to work around these things, and maybe it's not even that difficult to work around them (I think that's why many Linux zealots tend to forget "regular" people, or even those that value their time, see problems like the one stated above as unacceptable). But still, knowing how to do the workaround doesn't change the fact that Linux, in that regard "doesn't just work" as well as Windows does. Be honest and think objectively about this -- Windows really doesn't have that issue (among many others). You can pretty much take any software off the shelf and pop it in and go on any of the Win9x/NT line. There are exceptions obviously. There is software that for whatever reason, known ahead of time, limits compatibility to either Win9x or NT only, but generally app compatibility within either line of Windows is a given. This is a good thing, and it's something that Linux just doesn't quite achieve as well as Windows does.
I understand the mentality of getting your money's worth with entertainment. Well, I do and I don't.
I mean, when you pay $10 to see a movie, it's kind of a gamble. You might like it, you might hate it. You might think it's brilliant, you might think it's crap. So what? Did anyone GUARANTEE that you will be entertained? Is it the movie studio's obligation to fully entertain every single person who pays $10 to see the movie? Christ. I can understanded wanting to be entertained and feel like you've gotten your money's worth, but at the same time I can understand that it's not always possible.
If you pay however much to go to a sporting event and feel disappointed with it, is that really someone's fault? No. You spent your money and unfortunately you in particular weren't entertained and satisfied. So what? It wasn't the team's responsibility to make sure "nick_davison" feels like he got his money's worth. You paid your money, but unfortunately you weren't entertained. You win some, you lose some.
You are correct though, some of a movie's gross is due to large first weekends. But the movie industry has always known that movies with big budgets, high first-weekend grosses and incredible drop-offs are not a viable long-term means of generating income. But then again, making movies that are guaranteed to be enjoyed by everyone who watches them isn't a very viable means either, given the way tastes vary. I mean, look at how hard it is to convince Slashdot geeks that ANY movie is worth their $10: it either has to be the most amazing movie ever produced, or it has to involve hacking or elves or something like that.
Moral of the story: you can't please everyone, so stop trying to feel like movie companies are OBLIGATED to MAKE you feel like you spent your money wisely. Learn to live with the fact that sometimes what you thought would be entertaining wasn't. This applies to more than movies and music, you know. Get over it.
I don't feel any more a criminal than guy using a VCR at home to tape HBO. I captured a few frames of a film for my own personal use. I payed to see the film. My recording was done in a way that didn't bother any of the other patrons (very important to me). This is fair and it should be legal.
I dunno about that. It seems to me that when you pay to see the movie you're paying for a one time viewing of the material. You make it sound as if the movie theater should be handing over a copy of the film because you payed them $10.
With the DVD copy, you're paying for the right to view the movie as many times as you wish (hence the higher price) and make copies of the movie for yourself (NOT for millions of strangers on the internet).
Don't pick some of the more obtuse and complicated mouse gestures and then say "Hey, this sucks!" Of course you wouldn't like them if they were all like that!
Well obviously mouse gestures are going to become more and more complicated and tedious as more and more gestures are added. There's only so many two and three movement gestures you can have.
I don't get the fascination with mouse gestures. Is it really that much more convenient than clicking a button or pressing a key? From the Mozilla gestures page:
View Source - Left-Down-Right-Down-Left (draw a squarish S)
Is right-clicking and choosing "view source" such a chore that you'd rather draw "S" shapes instead?
Reload (bypass cache) - Up-Down-Up
I dunno, pressing "F5" always seemed to work for me.
Personally I think the obsession with mouse gestures boils down to the typical geek fascination with things that, impractical and useless they may be, are just "exciting" for some reason.
Hey look, Slashdot implemented gestures.
Submit post - Left-Right-Up-Down-Down-Down-Up-Left-Down-Right-Up -Right. How did I ever live without these things?
but the story is interesting nonetheless and shows that if you're skilled and determined but have a flexible moral compass, there's a lot of job opportunities out there.
"Flexible moral compass"? Sounds like just about every Slashdot geek.
Slashdot Mirror
Insightful? Please name one browser, aside from possibly an IE upgrade, that would require Windows to reboot one (or more) times and would take an entire day to install. Methinks you should actually try using Windows before spouting off misinformation.
Honestly. I just wish Slashdotters knew what they were talking about when it comes to XML. Microsoft absolutely does not have to make some sort of incompatible XML format. It's not necessary to break the XML spec in order to make a proprietary XML format. Accept the fact that Microsoft can and will use standards-compliant XML for their proprietary formats. I guarantee that they will NOT break the XML spec in any way, shape, or form. They don't need to!
There's no need to "hide" the schema. Having a Word XML schema simply means you can validate whether or not something looks like a proper XML Word document. Having the schema DOES NOT mean you can actually do anything meaningful with the Word document. You can write 100% completely valid XML with Base64-encoded mysterious data in between some tags and no one will know what to do with it, schema or no schema. When will you guys learn, Microsoft doesn't need to "patent" an XML file format because having a "human readable" file format doesn't necessarily mean you can do anything with the file in the first place!
In other words, Microsoft can easily, and without patents, stick a proprietary file format in an "open format" XML document. Don't assume that they're always going to do some evil shit just because they're Microsoft. In the case of XML, they don't have to! Obfuscation is allowed by the standard!
These things can actually be good things for a programmer though.. Most of the best programmers I know, and we're talking real code wizards here, lack Comp Sci degrees, aren't very social, and have big egos amongst their type.. but they do the work and don't complain.
I disagree. That type of programmer is the kind who has a hard time doing things any other way than his way. If management says "this NEEDS to be done this way", he's the one saying "that's stupid because I wouldn't do it that way. Therefore, no one else would do it that way." You tend to see this attitude a lot on Slashdot, usually when someone points out something Linux can't do but Windows can. To which, the Linux zealot/anti-social programmer will reply: "so what? That's stupid. No one would want to do that anyway."
These people are not necessarily the best people to have on a team.
If a kernel maintainer can't find a programming job then the programming profession is pretty much destroyed already.
Yes, because we all know that anyone capable of maintaining an old Linux kernel must, by definition, be the world's most talented programmer.
Or perhaps there are other reasons why he doesn't have a job. Perhaps he lacks a degree from a four year institution. Perhaps he has the primadonna attitude many "superstar programmers" have. Maybe he has very poor social skills, which leads him to making a less than favorable impression during interviews. Who knows? Don't jump to conclusions.
They don't want you to play the old games you have lying around. They want you to buy new games.
This is what every other console manufacturer has done, with the exception of the Playstation 2 (and I'm sure some other obscure platforms only true geeks know about). Don't act like Microsoft is the only company doing this.
The other person who replied to the original message got the same results I did on MSN search -- about 14 million results for "linux" and about 20 million results for "microsoft". How on earth did this get modded up? Oh that's right, he's bashing Microsoft, so he's "insightful" or "interesting".
If you look here you'll notice that the Mozilla team has been sitting around trying to figure out how to fix various "dodgy URL" issues for two years now. Open source works better eh?
That's fine, since Apple's laptops are looking more appealing anyway, and still run Linux.
Why would you spend obscene amounts of money on an Apple laptop just so you can run Linux on it? For a group of people that complain so much about the "Microsoft Tax" and actually think that it raises the price of your computer by the retail cost of Windows, Slashdotters sure as hell don't have a problem paying hundreds more for an Apple laptop just so they can be spared the agony of seeing Windows boot up once. Baffling.
Don't most geeks have two (or more) computers? My setup is a Windows machine for the desktop and a FreeBSD machine for server duties and other things. With the price of building a computer being so low, it just kind of seems pointless to me to bother with things like dual booting or tricks like this program just so you can get Linux apps working on a Windows machine.
Even XML microsoft used WAS standard based. Everything they take from the standard and open architecture. The only problem is that they make a little (but significant) twist
.
.
.
How is this insightful? Microsoft has in no way changed XML, you're just flat out wrong there. I think what geeks tend to forget is that just because XML is "human readable" doesn't necessarily mean that anything written in XML is "open". For instance, it's trivial to write closed-format, binary data in a human-readable XML file like so:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8">
<word-document>
<contents>
<![CDATA[
AdEFj13MZ((0_AAMBfjdEmlD;
]]>
</contents>
</word-document>
And there you have it, completely valid XML. Microsoft has not and will never "change" XML and create XML that can't be parsed by other parsers just so they can hide their formats from other people. They don't have to -- those sort of capabilities are built into XML!
How else are you supposed to discover when someone steals your work?
Wait, I'm confused! According to Slashdot, it's impossible to steal movies or music, so how is it possible to steal source code? After all, it's not like the original author is deprived of his copy of the source!
Ah, the hypocrisy of Slashdot...
Just because the source is available doesn't mean just anyone can understand it. If an open source project with a small team of developers who know the program inside and out leave, for all intents and purposes the project will die, just like a commercial product would, since it is unlikely that another group of individuals that understand the source as well as the previous group will pop up (after all, if they did, they would've been committing source in the first place!)
I think the problem here is that the geeks think "unlimited" means "without bounds" whereas the ISPs think "unlimited" means "the amount of bandwidth a reasonable person would consider unlimited." That is, when your average person is using their high speed access, they're not saturating the pipes both ways 24/7, 365 days a year. They're using their internet access a reasonable amount every day and even making big downloads here and there. To them, this is "unlimited" since they don't have to constantly worry about how many megabytes they're transferring and budgeting accordingly (that is, since they make reasonable, and not excessive, use of the internet access).
Now hardcore geeks on the other hand will tie up their connection constantly downloading who knows what and demanding that their ISP give them truly unlimited access for $50 a month. Not gonna happen. Just use some of that common sense. Do you really think the ISP means that their unlimited access is "unlimited" in the strictest sense of the word? Of course not. They'd go broke, fast. Are you guys the same kind of people that would demand that an "all you can eat" restaurant bring you more and more food and never close so long as you're still hungry?
What do you guys want? Do you want ISPs to stop offering access that, to 99% of their customer base, is "unlimited" just so you can avoid being burned because you lack the common sense to realize that no ISP can truly offer unlimited access? They're trying to appeal to a customer base that will view the ISPs service as, for all intents and purposes, unlimited. They're not going to change their advertising to state bandwidth limitations just to appease the hardcore nerds who insist on raping bandwidth, sorry.
No, you're missing the point. He could surely use them to say, gas the Kurds or whatever else he'd been doing for 12 years that the UN didn't really care about. Now about the US invading, his ENTIRE defense rest on the US backing down from criticism since it was widely believed by leftists all over the world that Saddam had no WMDs (despite documented evidence -- the question still remains: where did all the chemical weapons documented after the Gulf War go?). This was his big gamble and his only real saving grace. So if he were to use WMDs ONCE to win one battle out of many, he'd be up shit creek since the rest of the world would join behind the US in taking care of Saddam (because the proof of WMDs everyone wanted would be out in the open). Perhaps now you can see why strategically it would not be to his benefit to use WMDs -- it's a "win the battle, lose the war" situation.
Why would he use the WMDs that he denied having? Hussein knew he couldn't win a war against the US, so his only hope was to have the US cave in because of worldwide criticism of there not being WMDs in Iraq. He figured that even if the US invaded that he could get them to back down eventually. If he used the WMDs in combat, he would instantly blow away his last line of defense -- world criticism of the US -- because the rest of the world would find out that he does indeed have WMDs and the US was justified in invading! That would change things dramatically, don't you think?
Unfortunately for Saddam, we didn't care about the criticism. Ultimately, his gamble didn't pay off. Saddam is going to fold like Chinese laundry and the WMDs will be found.
Perhaps you missed the sarcasm. I was writing my post in the same manner that the typical Slashdot Linux zealot would.
It's because they're not Microsoft.
When Redhat EOLs its products after a year, they're doing so to remain competitive in a changing marketplace, or something like that.
When Microsoft EOLs its products after 6 or 7 years, they're doing it to force customers into upgrades.
This is Slashdot, remember...
Being raised on Linux won't change some of the problems that Linux has. For instance, what about commercial programs that are compiled for a certain distro, meaning they are compiled against certain versions of libc, assume certain placement/structure of config files, etc.? Trying to install the software on one of the (uncountably many) distros may or may not work. I've seen this happen a number of times (*Java* didn't work because in my case because Redhat Enterprise shipped with a different, apparently incompatible version of libc than the one the Java executable was linked against).
Sure, being familiar with Linux might mean that you know how to work around these things, and maybe it's not even that difficult to work around them (I think that's why many Linux zealots tend to forget "regular" people, or even those that value their time, see problems like the one stated above as unacceptable). But still, knowing how to do the workaround doesn't change the fact that Linux, in that regard "doesn't just work" as well as Windows does. Be honest and think objectively about this -- Windows really doesn't have that issue (among many others). You can pretty much take any software off the shelf and pop it in and go on any of the Win9x/NT line. There are exceptions obviously. There is software that for whatever reason, known ahead of time, limits compatibility to either Win9x or NT only, but generally app compatibility within either line of Windows is a given. This is a good thing, and it's something that Linux just doesn't quite achieve as well as Windows does.
I understand the mentality of getting your money's worth with entertainment. Well, I do and I don't.
I mean, when you pay $10 to see a movie, it's kind of a gamble. You might like it, you might hate it. You might think it's brilliant, you might think it's crap. So what? Did anyone GUARANTEE that you will be entertained? Is it the movie studio's obligation to fully entertain every single person who pays $10 to see the movie? Christ. I can understanded wanting to be entertained and feel like you've gotten your money's worth, but at the same time I can understand that it's not always possible.
If you pay however much to go to a sporting event and feel disappointed with it, is that really someone's fault? No. You spent your money and unfortunately you in particular weren't entertained and satisfied. So what? It wasn't the team's responsibility to make sure "nick_davison" feels like he got his money's worth. You paid your money, but unfortunately you weren't entertained. You win some, you lose some.
You are correct though, some of a movie's gross is due to large first weekends. But the movie industry has always known that movies with big budgets, high first-weekend grosses and incredible drop-offs are not a viable long-term means of generating income. But then again, making movies that are guaranteed to be enjoyed by everyone who watches them isn't a very viable means either, given the way tastes vary. I mean, look at how hard it is to convince Slashdot geeks that ANY movie is worth their $10: it either has to be the most amazing movie ever produced, or it has to involve hacking or elves or something like that.
Moral of the story: you can't please everyone, so stop trying to feel like movie companies are OBLIGATED to MAKE you feel like you spent your money wisely. Learn to live with the fact that sometimes what you thought would be entertaining wasn't. This applies to more than movies and music, you know. Get over it.
I don't feel any more a criminal than guy using a VCR at home to tape HBO. I captured a few frames of a film for my own personal use. I payed to see the film. My recording was done in a way that didn't bother any of the other patrons (very important to me). This is fair and it should be legal.
I dunno about that. It seems to me that when you pay to see the movie you're paying for a one time viewing of the material. You make it sound as if the movie theater should be handing over a copy of the film because you payed them $10.
With the DVD copy, you're paying for the right to view the movie as many times as you wish (hence the higher price) and make copies of the movie for yourself (NOT for millions of strangers on the internet).
Don't pick some of the more obtuse and complicated mouse gestures and then say "Hey, this sucks!" Of course you wouldn't like them if they were all like that!
Well obviously mouse gestures are going to become more and more complicated and tedious as more and more gestures are added. There's only so many two and three movement gestures you can have.
F5: Remove your hand from mouse, reach to F5, press it, get back to the mouse.
I have two hands... one stays on the mouse and the other can be used for the keyboard. What are you doing with your free hand?
(unless you're visiting pages that allow using both hands)
Another baffling comment. I wasn't aware that there were pages that didn't allow you to use both of your hands.
I don't get the fascination with mouse gestures. Is it really that much more convenient than clicking a button or pressing a key? From the Mozilla gestures page:
p -Right. How did I ever live without these things?
View Source - Left-Down-Right-Down-Left (draw a squarish S)
Is right-clicking and choosing "view source" such a chore that you'd rather draw "S" shapes instead?
Reload (bypass cache) - Up-Down-Up
I dunno, pressing "F5" always seemed to work for me.
Personally I think the obsession with mouse gestures boils down to the typical geek fascination with things that, impractical and useless they may be, are just "exciting" for some reason.
Hey look, Slashdot implemented gestures.
Submit post - Left-Right-Up-Down-Down-Down-Up-Left-Down-Right-U
but the story is interesting nonetheless and shows that if you're skilled and determined but have a flexible moral compass, there's a lot of job opportunities out there.
"Flexible moral compass"? Sounds like just about every Slashdot geek.