If someone was actually 'thinking of the children' they'd teach them that when a person pulls a gun on them they should empty their own firearm into that person before the fool has a chance to hurt them.
Heck, that's what I'm going to teach my daughter. 'Better to be on the bad side of liberal whiners than dead'.
Jesus Christ, son, which CS program did you graduate from? Your professors obviously did a lousy job and need to be bitch-slapped into sensibility pronto.
Modularization is a desirable quality, more desirable the larger the program gets. It allows you to mess with pieces of the program without bringing the entire thing down or having to muck through all of the source code hunting for the bits that belong to that piece. As Win2000/XP reportedly has 50 million lines of code, it should be modular as hell - if the programmers in Redmond have any damned skill at all.
Of course, if it *isn't* modular it would explain the crashes, memory leaks, gaping security holes, and so on. But this would simply confirm that MS programmers are substandard idiots who should be turning their talents to something they're more suited for - something along the lines of a job where you're often heard to say "would you like fries with that?"
Fuck the telemarketing swine. They called my house; they're intruding on my time and my life without my permission. I don't give a rat's ass that there's a human being on the other end, nor do I need to. As far as I'm concerned, you trespass on my property (and that's what calling my house without permission is, the laws be damned) then you deserve whatever I decide to dish out.
We see that with a lot of open-source software - as the version numbers get higher, they change by less, never reaching 1.0. Go look at all the.99s on sourceforge for many laughs.
Yeah, it's almost as funny as commercial companies releasing software with version numbers like.95 and.98. Especially when said software is clearly much more along the lines of.50.
They can adopt any goddamned numbering scheme they like. There's no 'moral' question here, hence your claim "it is not right" is on it's face ludicrous.
There's nothing wrong with incremental rendering, it's just a matter of personal preference. For me it's annoying the have the page 'draw down'; I much prefer the Opera way of doing things.
And although Mozilla is much faster now than in early versions, it still isn't as fast as Opera. I did some timing on page draws earlier and although hardly scientific Opera consistently beat Mozilla time and again - sometimes displaying the page in approximately half the time that Mozilla took.
Do you think I care? If they go out of business this'll have no effect on me whatsoever. It might affect *you*, but you have no right to tell me that my usage habits need to be tracked in order to support your favorite web sites.
If you're so concerned pay for a fucking subscription. That charges the customer - you - and leaves me the hell alone.
Why don't you provide some actual, empirical evidence that this 'piracy' you speak of is actually harming the industry? Oh, wait - you can't, because no such evidence exists. My bad.
While you're at it, tell me again why laws should be passed to protect 20th century business practices in a 21st century world, in direct contravention to the free market?
Ooooh, wait, "we know better". At least Hendrick does, and in his infinite wisdom speaks for the vast majority of Slashdotters, and perhaps even for the majority of Americans.
Oh yeah, and maybe we could instead teach some horseshit about why abstinence works! And is a good alternative to sex!
Instead, why don't we simply offer free, confidential birth control to everyone 12 and older? I'm virtually certain this would reduce teen birth far more than any idiot campaign touting abstinence would.
But then, this is all completely off-topic, in response to a moron's post on condoms.
The harm is that I haven't given my permission for my habits to be tracked and sold. And as far as I'm concerned my permission is required.
In any event, I've *never* given a company permission to spam me with ads. So all such spam is an uninvited intrusion on *my* machine using *my* resources. This is trespass.
If, as the poster above suggests, there has "never been a socialist country in the history of the world" this just goes to show how totally impracticable socialism truly is.
There's never been a true capitalism either, or anything even close to it. Not at any time. This doesn't invalidate the idea that a true capitalism *might* work, but we don't know and can only speculate - much as is done with socialism.
There is no ministry of disinformation at Microsoft, and there is no over-reaching scheme to screw customers and lie to them until they beleive they arne't being screwed.
Oh yes! So right! And the GPL really is just like a virus! And open source is a tool of communism!
Feed that shit to the monkeys, borg-boy.
As for screwing the customers, there's the little matter of a CONVICTION in court over monopoly practices designed specifically to reduce choice to one vendor: Microsoft. That is 'screwing the customer' no matter what spin you'd like to put on it. And it isn't even up for dispute, unless you're enough of an idiot to claim that the conviction was the result of a conspiracy of lies.
No matter what bullshit PR MS in engaged in, only a complete idiot - certainly not a programmer worth his salt - would say that any significant effort on a code base of 50 million lines could be completed in a space of two months. These claims are complete tripe of the worst sort.
Perhaps in a year some inroads could be made. But in two months? No - fucking - way. And if a MS programmer will actually stand up and seriously say he or she believes such a thing is possible, this is only an indication of the relatively lack of skill of that programmer, nothing more.
Ayuh. Leave the bleeding edge stuff to the young who have spare time on their hands. These days I simply want things that work, and work well. I'll let others beta test for me so I can spend my time on pursuits like family, or reading, or sleeping.
There have never been any real-world examples of capitalism, socialism, or communism in history. The closest economic theory we've come to implementing in the real world is capitalism, and even this is a watered-down two-bit whore of a copy; socialism has never existed, and most people can't even properly define communism, much less conceive of how it might work.
No 'experiments' in any of these economic systems have been attempted. None. America isn't a truly capitalistic society and never has been. The USSR wasn't communist, it was a fascism that called itself communism for PR purposes.
I'm still amazed that people can be so clueless on these topics, especially when they claim to have a college education.
"Oppedahl added that the Patent Office has been unfairly criticized for issuing an unusually large number of bad Internet-age patents. While it may happen, he said, bad patents are no more of a problem now than they have ever been"
Pretty much says it all, doesn't it? And that alone should tell you that you have very little in common with 'mere engineers'.
Have any of you morons who spout invective at Rand at the drop of a hat actually read what she has to say? What Rand argues for, and what her idiot followers say (no doubt having done as little actual reading as you yourself have), are two entirely different things.
Rand was in favor of a strongly capitalist, very free market, with little government intervention (given the track record of government, I really don't see how this could be any worse than the system we have today). She said nothing about abolishing government altogether, nor did she engage in lsd-inspired fantasies of 'practical' anarchy. Rand was quite aware that anything close to anarchy was a crock and had already been tried hundreds of times in the past, all with the end result of the powerful stomping all over the weak.
Rand was vocal, committed, and entirely opposed to the fucking morons of the day - of which their were quite a few, the communists not the least among them. So what? Most of what she said turns out to be fairly accurate, and well ahead of her time - which peaked in the bloody 1950's! For her time she was practically visionary, especially compared to her contemporaries. Some of her ideas might be outdated by now, but the same bloody thing can be said of Adam Smith and you don't hear anyone talking shit about him.
That's funny: my cable company promised me 1.5M/128k service, 24/7. They never indicated there would be any other kind of cap, nor that using the system 24/7 - *as I contracted for it* - was a problem. If this *is* a problem, does the fault lie with me and the contract I signed, or with the cable company for refusing to live up to their end of the bargain?
Really, now, who has the rocks to say that *I'm* the problem when I'm using the service that I paid for? The problem isn't me, it's the cable company for promising something they couldn't deliver. *If they couldn't fucking deliver they shouldn't have offered*. In the real world we piss on these lying sons-of-bitches and move on to a competitor.
But wait! In the cable world there *are* no competitors? Silly me, I forgot that capitalism has no place in this market, and Congress - as it's done with so many other things - has guaranteed this with legislation.
(sigh) One tired citizen looking for a country with a bill of rights and a (mostly) capitalist economic system. Mine no longer makes the grade.
There has never been a socialist country in the history of the world. Only fascist dictatorships who've had the gall to call themselves 'socialist' purely for propaganda purposes.
Slashdot Mirror
If someone was actually 'thinking of the children' they'd teach them that when a person pulls a gun on them they should empty their own firearm into that person before the fool has a chance to hurt them.
Heck, that's what I'm going to teach my daughter. 'Better to be on the bad side of liberal whiners than dead'.
Max
I guess the name "win98lite", didn't give it away. Hint: it's not called "win2000lite".
Max
Jesus Christ, son, which CS program did you graduate from? Your professors obviously did a lousy job and need to be bitch-slapped into sensibility pronto.
Modularization is a desirable quality, more desirable the larger the program gets. It allows you to mess with pieces of the program without bringing the entire thing down or having to muck through all of the source code hunting for the bits that belong to that piece. As Win2000/XP reportedly has 50 million lines of code, it should be modular as hell - if the programmers in Redmond have any damned skill at all.
Of course, if it *isn't* modular it would explain the crashes, memory leaks, gaping security holes, and so on. But this would simply confirm that MS programmers are substandard idiots who should be turning their talents to something they're more suited for - something along the lines of a job where you're often heard to say "would you like fries with that?"
Max
Fuck the telemarketing swine. They called my house; they're intruding on my time and my life without my permission. I don't give a rat's ass that there's a human being on the other end, nor do I need to. As far as I'm concerned, you trespass on my property (and that's what calling my house without permission is, the laws be damned) then you deserve whatever I decide to dish out.
Hazards of the job, son. Deal with it.
Max
We see that with a lot of open-source software - as the version numbers get higher, they change by less, never reaching 1.0. Go look at all the .99s on sourceforge for many laughs.
.95 and .98. Especially when said software is clearly much more along the lines of .50.
Yeah, it's almost as funny as commercial companies releasing software with version numbers like
Max
They can adopt any goddamned numbering scheme they like. There's no 'moral' question here, hence your claim "it is not right" is on it's face ludicrous.
Max
There's nothing wrong with incremental rendering, it's just a matter of personal preference. For me it's annoying the have the page 'draw down'; I much prefer the Opera way of doing things.
And although Mozilla is much faster now than in early versions, it still isn't as fast as Opera. I did some timing on page draws earlier and although hardly scientific Opera consistently beat Mozilla time and again - sometimes displaying the page in approximately half the time that Mozilla took.
Max
Do you think I care? If they go out of business this'll have no effect on me whatsoever. It might affect *you*, but you have no right to tell me that my usage habits need to be tracked in order to support your favorite web sites.
If you're so concerned pay for a fucking subscription. That charges the customer - you - and leaves me the hell alone.
Max
Why don't you provide some actual, empirical evidence that this 'piracy' you speak of is actually harming the industry? Oh, wait - you can't, because no such evidence exists. My bad.
While you're at it, tell me again why laws should be passed to protect 20th century business practices in a 21st century world, in direct contravention to the free market?
Ooooh, wait, "we know better". At least Hendrick does, and in his infinite wisdom speaks for the vast majority of Slashdotters, and perhaps even for the majority of Americans.
Arrogant little prick.
Max
Oh yeah, and maybe we could instead teach some horseshit about why abstinence works! And is a good alternative to sex!
Instead, why don't we simply offer free, confidential birth control to everyone 12 and older? I'm virtually certain this would reduce teen birth far more than any idiot campaign touting abstinence would.
But then, this is all completely off-topic, in response to a moron's post on condoms.
Max
So fuck them. If their business model sucks and they want to change it by sending me spam they can just go out of business. Do I care? I think not.
Max
The harm is that I haven't given my permission for my habits to be tracked and sold. And as far as I'm concerned my permission is required.
In any event, I've *never* given a company permission to spam me with ads. So all such spam is an uninvited intrusion on *my* machine using *my* resources. This is trespass.
Max
If, as the poster above suggests, there has "never been a socialist country in the history of the world" this just goes to show how totally impracticable socialism truly is.
There's never been a true capitalism either, or anything even close to it. Not at any time. This doesn't invalidate the idea that a true capitalism *might* work, but we don't know and can only speculate - much as is done with socialism.
Max
There is no ministry of disinformation at Microsoft, and there is no over-reaching scheme to screw customers and lie to them until they beleive they arne't being screwed.
Oh yes! So right! And the GPL really is just like a virus! And open source is a tool of communism!
Feed that shit to the monkeys, borg-boy.
As for screwing the customers, there's the little matter of a CONVICTION in court over monopoly practices designed specifically to reduce choice to one vendor: Microsoft. That is 'screwing the customer' no matter what spin you'd like to put on it. And it isn't even up for dispute, unless you're enough of an idiot to claim that the conviction was the result of a conspiracy of lies.
Max
And if the article's correct, it just reinforces my belief that working for Microsoft is sort of like being in a cult
And after talking to some MS 'programmers' - or god forbid, some of MS middle management - that suspicion will ony be thoroughly confirmed.
Max
No matter what bullshit PR MS in engaged in, only a complete idiot - certainly not a programmer worth his salt - would say that any significant effort on a code base of 50 million lines could be completed in a space of two months. These claims are complete tripe of the worst sort.
Perhaps in a year some inroads could be made. But in two months? No - fucking - way. And if a MS programmer will actually stand up and seriously say he or she believes such a thing is possible, this is only an indication of the relatively lack of skill of that programmer, nothing more.
Max
IE4 didn't destroy Netscape. Bundling IE4 with their OS destroyed Netscape.
Max
Ayuh. Leave the bleeding edge stuff to the young who have spare time on their hands. These days I simply want things that work, and work well. I'll let others beta test for me so I can spend my time on pursuits like family, or reading, or sleeping.
Max
There have never been any real-world examples of capitalism, socialism, or communism in history. The closest economic theory we've come to implementing in the real world is capitalism, and even this is a watered-down two-bit whore of a copy; socialism has never existed, and most people can't even properly define communism, much less conceive of how it might work.
No 'experiments' in any of these economic systems have been attempted. None. America isn't a truly capitalistic society and never has been. The USSR wasn't communist, it was a fascism that called itself communism for PR purposes.
I'm still amazed that people can be so clueless on these topics, especially when they claim to have a college education.
Max
"Oppedahl added that the Patent Office has been unfairly criticized for issuing an unusually large number of bad Internet-age patents. While it may happen, he said, bad patents are no more of a problem now than they have ever been"
Pretty much says it all, doesn't it? And that alone should tell you that you have very little in common with 'mere engineers'.
Max
Have any of you morons who spout invective at Rand at the drop of a hat actually read what she has to say? What Rand argues for, and what her idiot followers say (no doubt having done as little actual reading as you yourself have), are two entirely different things.
Rand was in favor of a strongly capitalist, very free market, with little government intervention (given the track record of government, I really don't see how this could be any worse than the system we have today). She said nothing about abolishing government altogether, nor did she engage in lsd-inspired fantasies of 'practical' anarchy. Rand was quite aware that anything close to anarchy was a crock and had already been tried hundreds of times in the past, all with the end result of the powerful stomping all over the weak.
Rand was vocal, committed, and entirely opposed to the fucking morons of the day - of which their were quite a few, the communists not the least among them. So what? Most of what she said turns out to be fairly accurate, and well ahead of her time - which peaked in the bloody 1950's! For her time she was practically visionary, especially compared to her contemporaries. Some of her ideas might be outdated by now, but the same bloody thing can be said of Adam Smith and you don't hear anyone talking shit about him.
Max
In case you haven't noticed, the current monopoly situation is *directly due to government interference*. This monopoly didn't arise at all naturally.
And you want to have this same government 'fix' the problem they created???
Max
That's funny: my cable company promised me 1.5M/128k service, 24/7. They never indicated there would be any other kind of cap, nor that using the system 24/7 - *as I contracted for it* - was a problem. If this *is* a problem, does the fault lie with me and the contract I signed, or with the cable company for refusing to live up to their end of the bargain?
Really, now, who has the rocks to say that *I'm* the problem when I'm using the service that I paid for? The problem isn't me, it's the cable company for promising something they couldn't deliver. *If they couldn't fucking deliver they shouldn't have offered*. In the real world we piss on these lying sons-of-bitches and move on to a competitor.
But wait! In the cable world there *are* no competitors? Silly me, I forgot that capitalism has no place in this market, and Congress - as it's done with so many other things - has guaranteed this with legislation.
(sigh) One tired citizen looking for a country with a bill of rights and a (mostly) capitalist economic system. Mine no longer makes the grade.
Max
There has never been a socialist country in the history of the world. Only fascist dictatorships who've had the gall to call themselves 'socialist' purely for propaganda purposes.
Max
We are paying for it. It's called a 'monthly fee'. If I'm not, why am I getting bills for the service from AT&T?
Max