Remember the Borland EULA? It was about a paragraph long and basically said that you had to use the software "like a book", i.e., you couldn't use it in two places at the same time. That was one of the most friendly corporate EULAs I've ever seen.
The C++ string mess in Windows makes me cry every time I have to deal with it. I'm sick to death of converting between BSTR, TCHAR, WCHAR, char, CComBSTR, TString, STL string, and several others every time I want to pass a few characters around.
Um, WTF? None of that has anything to do with C++. Most of that crap you just mentioned is Windows and/or COM/ATL specific, not C++ specific. C++ has exactly one string type - std::string (well, OK, that's a specialization of std::basic_string<>, but whatever.) There's char *, but it's deprecated. Anything else is non-standard, and can probably be blamed on Microsoft rather than AT&T or ISO.
I don't care about the price tag as much as I care about the philosophy. OSS is primarily about free as in speech, not free as in beer.
Now, now - wouldn't want to get RMS mad at you, now. "Open Source" is more about "gratis" - it's the "Free Software" folks who are more interested in "libre".
So if the kids are stuck in a power outage and need to leave a message for someone, how exactly do you propose they do it?
Um, "handwriting" does not necessarily equal "cursive" (i.e. "Palmer-style"). I'm sure that even in the future, kids will be able to write, but who needs all the dumb loops and curlicues they crammed down the throats of our generation?
Although I like the idea for the poll, I strongly doubt that it would give an indication of hacker politcs. I don't mean to offend anyone, but considering that the majority of Slashdot readers are wannabees, the votes of the real hackers would be lost in the noise.
*Warning - flamebait*: Perhaps we could impose a requirement that one must write a small but nontrivial program in some "real" language before participating in the poll...
I have never seen Ford charge their customer for a recall...Only in software.
If car thieves came up with a new way to break into cars, and Ford came up with a countermeasure, do you really think they'd retrofit that countermeasure to all Ford cars in the world, for free? (After all, cars are already supposed to be secure, right?)
Or if Ford developed a new kind of airbag? (After all, cars are already supposed to be safe, right?)
Or a way to reduce pollution by 50%? (After all, cars are already supposed to eco-friendly, right?)
Uh, I don't think so. And no one would blame them. The market and environment change constantly, and manufacturers (of software, or cars, or whatever) do their best to keep up.
China's annual natural gas production is around 500 billion cubic feet, according to the USGS with proven reserves of a further 3900 billion cubic feet. By way of comparison, the United States production is 17,800 billion cubic feet with a further 339,000 billion cubic feet in proven reserves.
Which in turn raises a new question - why aren't we burning natural gas in every car, house, and powerplant in the US??
This is simply not true. In the years since the Three Gorges project was begun any number of alternative technologies have appeared. Gas-fueled combined cycle plants and co-generators, for example, produce virtually no pollution or greenhouse gases, are smaller, safer, cheaper, more reliable, less sociologically or environmentally disruptive, and more adaptable -- meaning they can be constructed relatively quickly to meet demand and can be located near the need.
Gee, that's great. So where does the gas come from? If they had a large reserve of natural gas, don't you think they would've built gas-turbine plants instead of investing in this gigantic dam?
I think the OP meant "woken up" in the sense that maybe it would serve as a whack on the side of the head for the US, causing us to realize that just maybe we should have a couple of priorities in addition to killing every last terrorist on the planet.
For all the really slow people out there, I'm using something called S-A-R-C-A-S-M. When that nitwit "r0xah" claimed that Indians are trying to "break free of poverty" - possibly the stupidest thing I've heard all year - I used S-A-R-C-A-S-M to highlight the ignorant claim. You see, what I did was turn the stereotype around and claim that Americans are all redneck bigots just like r0xah.
How are we to know you're being sarcastic? I'm willing to bet that there are more than a few people out there who genuinely feel what you expressed sarcastically. Given that we Americans are constantly being lambasted for not being culturally sensitive enough, you'll forgive us if we get a bit irritated when others behave insensitively toward us.
Caffeine has an LD50 of 57-260 mg/kg, while plutonium has an LD50 similar to that of pantothenic acid which is up to 10 g/kg (if taken orally) or 820 mg/kg (if injected). Caffeine is clearly more toxic than plutonium according to this! I still don't quite believe this, so can someone come up with better numbers or a good reason why this isn't the case?
As you stated, this LD50 figure is ties to the likelihood of death within 30 days. If even a little of that Pu239 gets stuck in the body, it can cause cancer years after initial exposure.
That said, I'm still in favor of "nucular" plant development, whether as part of a "hydrogen economy" or simply for straight power generation for delivery to the grid. Either way would both reduce greenhouse emissions and reduce our entanglement with the Middle East.
Viruses are not written for Windows, this is an imprecise statement. Viruses are written for the default Windows MUA.
Gee, really? You mean the only Windows virii are email-based? Whew, what a relief!
Dude. Virii have been around on PCs since before there even was such a thing as Windows, never mind email on Windows. Does "INT 21H" ring any bells? Remember Norton Anti-Virus for DOS? (Actually, I preferred IBM Anti-Virus, but whatever.)
"Oh, they killed more people than we did, we're not that bad, we killed less people, see we're good people, less dead people, see?"
Damn right. We have gone to great effort and invested trillions of dollars to develop technology to minimize human losses during military conflict, by attempting to perfect the capability to deliver tighly focused force where it is needed. IMO, the same cannot be said for most other countries.
The city provides a large infrastructure of rails, and a sophisticated switching system. Citizens pony up for their own (much smaller) 'cars'; they can do whatever they like with the interior of these cars, etc. You register your 'car' and have it installed in the rail system. Make a request and the car goes to the closest station that you're looking for. You give up the convenience of having the 'car' make 100% of the trip between points (i.e. you walk to and from whichever station) but you don't have to drive.
Um... where do you park when you get to your destination?
OR - you can pay (lets be optimistic) $500 for a relatively nice Dell computer nowadays that requires hours of setup time (just entering in personal information), most likely months to get as used to the original software, and the issue of having to update windows on a regular basis.
Bear in mind that $500 today is worth quite a bit less than the $400 that, say, a C-64 cost when they came out, and you're getting a lot more power and flexibility. I'll take the $500 Dell, thanks.
Perhaps the US government should outsource the management of their space programme to the Russians.
Perhaps, like the Russians, the US should let private enterprise play a larger role in the space program - better yet, let private enterprise play a larger role in the exploration of space, regardless of the US space program.
...was GLQuake. For a while I spent every non-working, non-sleeping moment playing that damned game. (And it cut pretty seriously into the sleeping bit, and a little into the working bit.) But when I did sleep, I'd actually have dreams, viewed from the usual FP viewpoint, of running around Quake levels, blowing stuff up, finding the keys, etc. The nice part was - I never died...
Linux is a kernel, Mach is a kernel, HURD is a kernel, win32 is a kernel
Well, not exactly. Win32 is not a kernel, but an API (originally one of four - Win32, WOW, OS/2 char-mode, and (crippled) POSIX). Win32 OSes have a kernel, of course - VMM in the case of 9x-bases OSes, HAL/NTOSKRNL in the case of NT-based OSes.
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Remember the Borland EULA? It was about a paragraph long and basically said that you had to use the software "like a book", i.e., you couldn't use it in two places at the same time. That was one of the most friendly corporate EULAs I've ever seen.
Heh. Remember Borland?
The C++ string mess in Windows makes me cry every time I have to deal with it. I'm sick to death of converting between BSTR, TCHAR, WCHAR, char, CComBSTR, TString, STL string, and several others every time I want to pass a few characters around.
Um, WTF? None of that has anything to do with C++. Most of that crap you just mentioned is Windows and/or COM/ATL specific, not C++ specific. C++ has exactly one string type - std::string (well, OK, that's a specialization of std::basic_string<>, but whatever.) There's char *, but it's deprecated. Anything else is non-standard, and can probably be blamed on Microsoft rather than AT&T or ISO.
I don't care about the price tag as much as I care about the philosophy. OSS is primarily about free as in speech, not free as in beer.
Now, now - wouldn't want to get RMS mad at you, now. "Open Source" is more about "gratis" - it's the "Free Software" folks who are more interested in "libre".
So if the kids are stuck in a power outage and need to leave a message for someone, how exactly do you propose they do it?
Um, "handwriting" does not necessarily equal "cursive" (i.e. "Palmer-style"). I'm sure that even in the future, kids will be able to write, but who needs all the dumb loops and curlicues they crammed down the throats of our generation?
Although I like the idea for the poll, I strongly doubt that it would give an indication of hacker politcs. I don't mean to offend anyone, but considering that the majority of Slashdot readers are wannabees, the votes of the real hackers would be lost in the noise.
*Warning - flamebait*: Perhaps we could impose a requirement that one must write a small but nontrivial program in some "real" language before participating in the poll...
I have never seen Ford charge their customer for a recall...Only in software.
If car thieves came up with a new way to break into cars, and Ford came up with a countermeasure, do you really think they'd retrofit that countermeasure to all Ford cars in the world, for free? (After all, cars are already supposed to be secure, right?)
Or if Ford developed a new kind of airbag? (After all, cars are already supposed to be safe, right?)
Or a way to reduce pollution by 50%? (After all, cars are already supposed to eco-friendly, right?)
Uh, I don't think so. And no one would blame them. The market and environment change constantly, and manufacturers (of software, or cars, or whatever) do their best to keep up.
China's annual natural gas production is around 500 billion cubic feet, according to the USGS with proven reserves of a further 3900 billion cubic feet. By way of comparison, the United States production is 17,800 billion cubic feet with a further 339,000 billion cubic feet in proven reserves.
Which in turn raises a new question - why aren't we burning natural gas in every car, house, and powerplant in the US??
This is simply not true. In the years since the Three Gorges project was begun any number of alternative technologies have appeared. Gas-fueled combined cycle plants and co-generators, for example, produce virtually no pollution or greenhouse gases, are smaller, safer, cheaper, more reliable, less sociologically or environmentally disruptive, and more adaptable -- meaning they can be constructed relatively quickly to meet demand and can be located near the need.
Gee, that's great. So where does the gas come from? If they had a large reserve of natural gas, don't you think they would've built gas-turbine plants instead of investing in this gigantic dam?
You want them to be more woken up? Not me.
I think the OP meant "woken up" in the sense that maybe it would serve as a whack on the side of the head for the US, causing us to realize that just maybe we should have a couple of priorities in addition to killing every last terrorist on the planet.
For all the really slow people out there, I'm using something called S-A-R-C-A-S-M. When that nitwit "r0xah" claimed that Indians are trying to "break free of poverty" - possibly the stupidest thing I've heard all year - I used S-A-R-C-A-S-M to highlight the ignorant claim. You see, what I did was turn the stereotype around and claim that Americans are all redneck bigots just like r0xah.
How are we to know you're being sarcastic? I'm willing to bet that there are more than a few people out there who genuinely feel what you expressed sarcastically. Given that we Americans are constantly being lambasted for not being culturally sensitive enough, you'll forgive us if we get a bit irritated when others behave insensitively toward us.
Caffeine has an LD50 of 57-260 mg/kg, while plutonium has an LD50 similar to that of pantothenic acid which is up to 10 g/kg (if taken orally) or 820 mg/kg (if injected). Caffeine is clearly more toxic than plutonium according to this! I still don't quite believe this, so can someone come up with better numbers or a good reason why this isn't the case?
As you stated, this LD50 figure is ties to the likelihood of death within 30 days. If even a little of that Pu239 gets stuck in the body, it can cause cancer years after initial exposure.
That said, I'm still in favor of "nucular" plant development, whether as part of a "hydrogen economy" or simply for straight power generation for delivery to the grid. Either way would both reduce greenhouse emissions and reduce our entanglement with the Middle East.
Can I have some of whatever your smoking please?
Dude, 6000 telephones in a nation of 2 million people? That's one telephone per 300 people. That rounds off to "without any telephones" in my book.
Viruses are not written for Windows, this is an imprecise statement. Viruses are written for the default Windows MUA.
Gee, really? You mean the only Windows virii are email-based? Whew, what a relief!
Dude. Virii have been around on PCs since before there even was such a thing as Windows, never mind email on Windows. Does "INT 21H" ring any bells? Remember Norton Anti-Virus for DOS? (Actually, I preferred IBM Anti-Virus, but whatever.)
"Oh, they killed more people than we did, we're not that bad, we killed less people, see we're good people, less dead people, see?"
Damn right. We have gone to great effort and invested trillions of dollars to develop technology to minimize human losses during military conflict, by attempting to perfect the capability to deliver tighly focused force where it is needed. IMO, the same cannot be said for most other countries.
Why is fournicating in cars so popular in the US?
Are you kidding? The American love affair with cars is so prevalent and deep-seated, it's a wonder we don't have sex with our cars.
The city provides a large infrastructure of rails, and a sophisticated switching system. Citizens pony up for their own (much smaller) 'cars'; they can do whatever they like with the interior of these cars, etc. You register your 'car' and have it installed in the rail system. Make a request and the car goes to the closest station that you're looking for. You give up the convenience of having the 'car' make 100% of the trip between points (i.e. you walk to and from whichever station) but you don't have to drive.
Um... where do you park when you get to your destination?
OR - you can pay (lets be optimistic) $500 for a relatively nice Dell computer nowadays that requires hours of setup time (just entering in personal information), most likely months to get as used to the original software, and the issue of having to update windows on a regular basis.
Bear in mind that $500 today is worth quite a bit less than the $400 that, say, a C-64 cost when they came out, and you're getting a lot more power and flexibility. I'll take the $500 Dell, thanks.
No automobile company would get away with selling products as defective as most commercial software.
But Ford doesn't make you sign a EULA before buying the car. Maybe if people actually started reading those things...
You'd think that in such operations, where you only ever get one chance, they would have the most error free systems possible.
Given the track record of the Soyuz vehicles, I'd say they're pretty damned error-free, all things considered.
You can't - they *force* you stay on the upgrade treadmill.
Yes, by holding Microsoft Gun to your head.
Perhaps the US government should outsource the management of their space programme to the Russians.
Perhaps, like the Russians, the US should let private enterprise play a larger role in the space program - better yet, let private enterprise play a larger role in the exploration of space, regardless of the US space program.
...was GLQuake. For a while I spent every non-working, non-sleeping moment playing that damned game. (And it cut pretty seriously into the sleeping bit, and a little into the working bit.) But when I did sleep, I'd actually have dreams, viewed from the usual FP viewpoint, of running around Quake levels, blowing stuff up, finding the keys, etc. The nice part was - I never died...
...that's appropriate for ideas like this. "That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard!"
Linux is a kernel, Mach is a kernel, HURD is a kernel, win32 is a kernel
Well, not exactly. Win32 is not a kernel, but an API (originally one of four - Win32, WOW, OS/2 char-mode, and (crippled) POSIX). Win32 OSes have a kernel, of course - VMM in the case of 9x-bases OSes, HAL/NTOSKRNL in the case of NT-based OSes.
...to the "blogging" phenomenon.