That's odd... I seem to recall a new version of VB being part of.NET, called something similar to VB.NET. I would hardly call that "killed".
VFP - the people who use it. They're a vociferous, dedicated and almost fanatical bunch
There has to be something wrong with them if they're still using that steaming pile of horse manure. VFP will give even a good programmer nightmares. Anybody in the mood for spaghetti?
They're on their 8th version now, going strong. VB only got to 6
Even if that was true (it's not), you've just advertised yourself as being a total poser by falling for the myth that version numbers of different products can be compared. Oops. What's Emacs up to now, version 42? With that version number it probably cures cancer.
uptime is a nice statistic that is irrelevant for people who buy computers to play games
I have to disagree. Having BSODs thrice a day back in my EverQuest-playing days was certainly not fun, and I'm definitely not the only one to echo that sentiment. One must admit that the game publisher's crappy code bears much of the responsibility, but I still fault the platform for making it possible in the first place for the game to go BSOD.
So while gamers may not care between 2-year uptime and 2-week uptime, give them 2-hour uptime and someone's getting yanked into the street and shot.
Spam is easy to stop. Forget using this filter crap and start requiring that unrecognized senders go through a confirmation step. For a good pre-canned solution, use tmda. Or, you can do what I did and write a custom confirmation system in procmail, which takes some skill but is enormously fun.
Note that for for this solution, you should have access to a real email server, whether your own or at a hosting company; the confirmation software has to run somewhere. For personal use, I recommend a hosting service, even if you do have a mail server at home. That puts the spam bandwidth somewhere other than your personal internet pipe. There's always fetchmail to pull mail off of your hosting service.
Bash is not part of FreeBSD. The default shell is tcsh, and a real sh is provided to run scripts. Bash is available as a port (i.e. third-party add-on ackage). It goes in/usr/local/bin/bash.
Um, I'd like to know which desktop OS has a noninteger number of apps working perfectly...
It depends on how you think of the unit "perfect app". From one viewpoint, subprojects, source files, individual lines of code, and characters in those lines are fractional apps. At least one such fraction is perfect in virtually all apps (e.g. "i++" or "x = 1"). With this viewpoint, virtually all apps have a noninteger perfectness, and the total thereof in a desktop OS has a good chance of being a noninteger.
On the other hand, one may think of an app being perfect only if the app in its entirety works perfectly. In this case, since virtually every nontrivial app has at least one bug, virtually no apps are perfect.
Of course, if my number line extends directly ahead of me, but I think your idea of perfectness is way out in left field, the number of perfect apps may very well be complex!
Nothing wakes up the apathetic masses quite like this ruling.
I think that would be more well said like this: "Like this ruling, nothing wakes up the apathetic masses.". The masses don't know or care about open standards. The masses don't know or care what JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, etc are. When they surf to CNN.com, they want to see a picture. That is the extent of their caring.
So I do encourage you to dream on. I do as well, but I dream of something other than an appeal from the apathetic masses.
Does this mean that they can exhibit unpredictable behavior like HAL, the supercomputer in '2001: A Space Odyssey'?
HAL's behavior in the movie 2001 was not unpredictable or random. It was a result of the conflicting orders HAL was given. HAL's basic programming instructed him to be as open and accurate as possible when reporting information. Some PHBs then gave him the order to not disclose some aspects of the mission to the humans on board the Discovery. HAL accomplished both objectives by removing the humans. Apparently, there was no directive in his base programming that told him killing people was bad.
So it is all completely logical, which is not a small feat for a Hollywood production...
I agree. The software and activities you mention are not really within the focus of FreeBSD but are well supported under Linux. What's great about Gentoo is that it seems to have incorporated several neat ideas from the BSDs. So we can have the best of both worlds.
The one thing I really miss about FreeBSD is the developer community, especially as manifested in its structure and unity. I like that better than the somewhat disorganized fragmentation of the various GNU/Linux projects. However, considering the other benefits, I can live with a little disorganization!
Just yesterday I was driving home from work and talking to my mother on a cell phone. The reception started getting worse, and I started to hear someone else talking, as in another conversation. I couldn't hear who the third person was talking to, but apparently some of the third person's data packets were mixing in with my incoming ones. Eventually, I was talking to the third person and not to my mother.
"Uh, hello?"
"Bill? You sound different."
"This isn't Bill."
"Would you put Bill back on, please?"
"OK, just a second." CLICK
I hate my stupid Ericsson R128d. It's the worst phone I've ever had. The battery lasts maybe 30 minutes of talk time, and the thing locks up frequently. Yes, my cell phone locks up. I'll never get another Ericsson phone again.
Integrated Source Tree == Rules
on
FreeBSD From Scratch
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Of course, FreeBSD from Scratch is brought to you by the integrated source tree and build system that FreeBSD has. It really is a powerful thing. When I was working in the embedded industry a couple of years ago, I chose FreeBSD for most of my projects because it was so straightforward to build a flash disk image containing a custom "from scratch" distro. In fact, I learned how to do it in less than one day! Automating the process meant writing a couple hundred lines of sh script and a few config files. Simply beautiful.
I have since switched to Gentoo Linux for my personal workstations. IMHO, Gentoo beats FreeBSD at its own game, in three ways:
The Gentoo base system is even more streamlined and minimal than FreeBSD's. For instance, the FreeBSD base includes sendmail, tcsh, a real sh, uucp, and inetd (among others). These are optional in Gentoo, and I prefer that, since I don't need those packages.
The Gentoo Portage system is like FreeBSD's/usr/ports, only better. They feel very similar, but Portage is simply more featureful. I like Portage's USE flags, though I wish they weren't limited to on/off boolean values. The way Portage integrates packages with the base OS is also rather clean, though I am also a big fan of the FreeBSD "ports go in/usr/local" method as well.
Gentoo is somewhat more cutting-edge than FreeBSD. If I want to use bash instead of sh, metalog instead of syslog, vcron instead of cron, postfix instead of sendmail, cups instead of lpd, etc., I can, and without munging up the base system. And a pet peeve: FreeBSD only recently moved from more(1) to less(1).
I have seen Linux panic thrice (way back in 1997). I've only seen FreeBSD panic once. They are both wonderful OSes. If only I had the time to run them both. Right now Gentoo gets my time.
perhaps he'd like to remake Planet Of The Apes. At least in that case the second version sucked so much the third version would have to be an improvement, although it would be hard to imaging a remake that could improve on the original in any area besides special-effects
...or Heston's acting, or the blatant sexism
BTW, I also love the original. It does have it's faults, though.
Ok, you know you're a nerd when you can't sleep because of your power supply fan
Wrong, wrong, WRONG! You could not be any further from the truth. A real nerd would have several redundant power supplies, and each would most likely be quite loud. They would have been selected not to minimize noise but to maximize airflow; nerds know that more airflow means more cooling means better performance and less component failure. Moreover, what is this strange revulsion toward machine noise? Real nerds love that sound more than their own mother. They put it on a $media and play it when no machines are around.
Of course, this whole discussion is moot. A real nerd has as VAX 11/780 in his dorm.
I used TurboTax.com two years in a row, and it worked well both times. My tax situation is uncomplicated, so all I've ever used was the 1040EZ form. TurboTax.com this year took me about 30 minutes to file my fed and state taxes, which included paying them a fee. The service was smart enough to ask me questions about a special tax credit available on my state return. My state refund was automatically deposited in after 2 days. The fed refund took longer, about 7 days IIRC. For my records, I got PDF files of all the documents, with all the information filled in as needed and a big "DO NOT FILE" watermark to make things blindingly obvious.
I was impressed with the service and will contine to use it.
... how the music business in general operates. They manipulate the artists' work as well as take huge cuts of musicians' profits.
That is so very true. My listening habits have evolved to the point where I listen only to artists who I respect as musicians. I don't want to listen to groups with any of the following qualities:
Created in a boardroom by suits
Sex symbolism more important than musicianship
Underdog in engineered, artificial controversy
Willing to change fundamental values to increase profit
Cannot write their own music
Inane, cliché-filled lyrics
No innovation
What is bad for the music industry is that this makes my purchasing activities as limited as my listening activities. Because so many of today's alleged artists can answer "yes" to one or more of the above points, I simply don't buy very much music. I know many people who feel the same way. Certainly, we are outnumbered by consumers of the "fickle sheep" variety, but I do wonder how much money the industry loses because it refuses to address my wishes as a listener.
One of my favorite quotes addresses this subject. It is from the Rush's "The Spirit of Radio" (words by Neal Peart (the drummer)).
One likes to believe in the freedom of music,
But glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity
I also like what Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" has to say about the music industry.
Slashdot Mirror
That's odd... I seem to recall a new version of VB being part of .NET, called something similar to VB.NET. I would hardly call that "killed".
VFP - the people who use it. They're a vociferous, dedicated and almost fanatical bunch
There has to be something wrong with them if they're still using that steaming pile of horse manure. VFP will give even a good programmer nightmares. Anybody in the mood for spaghetti?
They're on their 8th version now, going strong. VB only got to 6
Even if that was true (it's not), you've just advertised yourself as being a total poser by falling for the myth that version numbers of different products can be compared. Oops. What's Emacs up to now, version 42? With that version number it probably cures cancer.
Guess who's laughing now.
Me. At you.
So while gamers may not care between 2-year uptime and 2-week uptime, give them 2-hour uptime and someone's getting yanked into the street and shot.
If not that, then intrusions happen. Get the point?
...at least we don't have to worry about them wanting to eat us!
The score is now marketing 7, you 0.
Spam is easy to stop. Forget using this filter crap and start requiring that unrecognized senders go through a confirmation step. For a good pre-canned solution, use tmda. Or, you can do what I did and write a custom confirmation system in procmail, which takes some skill but is enormously fun.
Note that for for this solution, you should have access to a real email server, whether your own or at a hosting company; the confirmation software has to run somewhere. For personal use, I recommend a hosting service, even if you do have a mail server at home. That puts the spam bandwidth somewhere other than your personal internet pipe. There's always fetchmail to pull mail off of your hosting service.
Gee, thanks. Now I have to clean all this Diet Dr. Pepper off of my monitor.
On the other hand, one may think of an app being perfect only if the app in its entirety works perfectly. In this case, since virtually every nontrivial app has at least one bug, virtually no apps are perfect.
Of course, if my number line extends directly ahead of me, but I think your idea of perfectness is way out in left field, the number of perfect apps may very well be complex!
I hope that helps.
none working perfectly
Right... I would like to know in which desktop OS the article writer thinks any positive integer number of apps work perfectly.
So I do encourage you to dream on. I do as well, but I dream of something other than an appeal from the apathetic masses.
So it is all completely logical, which is not a small feat for a Hollywood production...
The one thing I really miss about FreeBSD is the developer community, especially as manifested in its structure and unity. I like that better than the somewhat disorganized fragmentation of the various GNU/Linux projects. However, considering the other benefits, I can live with a little disorganization!
"Uh, hello?"
"Bill? You sound different."
"This isn't Bill."
"Would you put Bill back on, please?"
"OK, just a second." CLICK
I hate my stupid Ericsson R128d. It's the worst phone I've ever had. The battery lasts maybe 30 minutes of talk time, and the thing locks up frequently. Yes, my cell phone locks up. I'll never get another Ericsson phone again.
I have since switched to Gentoo Linux for my personal workstations. IMHO, Gentoo beats FreeBSD at its own game, in three ways:
I have seen Linux panic thrice (way back in 1997). I've only seen FreeBSD panic once. They are both wonderful OSes. If only I had the time to run them both. Right now Gentoo gets my time.
BTW, I also love the original. It does have it's faults, though.
Of course, this whole discussion is moot. A real nerd has as VAX 11/780 in his dorm.
The things people will do to get karma...
I was impressed with the service and will contine to use it.
- Created in a boardroom by suits
- Sex symbolism more important than musicianship
- Underdog in engineered, artificial controversy
- Willing to change fundamental values to increase profit
- Cannot write their own music
- Inane, cliché-filled lyrics
- No innovation
What is bad for the music industry is that this makes my purchasing activities as limited as my listening activities. Because so many of today's alleged artists can answer "yes" to one or more of the above points, I simply don't buy very much music. I know many people who feel the same way. Certainly, we are outnumbered by consumers of the "fickle sheep" variety, but I do wonder how much money the industry loses because it refuses to address my wishes as a listener.One of my favorite quotes addresses this subject. It is from the Rush's "The Spirit of Radio" (words by Neal Peart (the drummer)).
I also like what Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" has to say about the music industry.Hasn't Russia been a democracy since, oh, 1986 or so?