Funnily enough I was just checking the stats for a client web site and for the first time both Mozilla (about 5%) and Linux (about 2%) got into my report to the client. The web site is for engineers and my prediction is that engineers are going to be the first significant user of linux on the desktop over the next couple of years.
What are Sun thinking? They want everyone to migrate off Sun boxes like people have been doing to SCO?
Stuff like this annoys techies and techies have quite a lot of influence over IT purchasing decisions in many businesses. Do Sun think that supporting SCO is going to win them more business than it will lose them? My understanding of business is that it is a very bad move to do stuff that your customers dislike...
Rather than ethics, I want AI personalities. It could be userful to have, for instance, an AI version of the Italian Tourism Minister. Then, when you get a call from a difficult client, you could just connect them through:
Client: So, are you are going to deliver this project on time?
A.I. Stefano Stefani You are just like all our other clients. Fat, lazy, and ugly. You are a waste of time.
I sent a Sony Vaio back for repair - it just wouldn't respond at all when I turned it on - absolutely nothing. I concluded from this that it must have been something fairly basic - a loose power connnection or faulty battery.
Before sending it to Sony I took the CD-ROM and can pluged it into another machine so I could continue using it. When I phoned them they said that they would only accept the machine for servicing if it had the hard disc in it. When I explained that the problem had nothing to do with the hard disc, they said that didn't matter - they would charge me for another one if I sent it back with no hard disc in it.
So I sent it for servicing and guess what, they said the hard disc was faulty, and they had to replace it! And they charged £350 to replace it. It was the companies money, so I wasn't that bothered, but I am sure the problem with the machine was trivial - a loose wire or something - so they decided to say the hard disc was faulty so they could charge to replace it. Has anyone else experienced this?
Gather round Ladies and Gentlemen to see three giants battle it out for dominance! They're huge, they're ugly, they are
Ta da da...
The Japanese fire-breathing dragon -- Godzilla!!!
Ta da da...
The American 600 pound gorilla -- King Kong!!!
And a new entrant Ta da da...
We've never met him but he says he's really really good, honestly -- The Phantom!!!
Place your bets Ladies and Gentlemen!
Interoperability with MS
on
Opengroupware
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I hate the fact that so much effort is going into interoperability with MS. That includes OpenOffice too.
I think this idea of having a "drop in" replacement for Exchange is just nuts. Do you think the Apache project would have gotten to where it is today if they decided what they had to do was a "drop in" replacement for IIS? (Yes, I know the chronology of metaphor is skewy, but you know what I'm trying to say).
What we should be concentrating on is making the best possible tool for the job, not making it compatible with existing close-source software. That's the only way to win in the long term.
So by working with a terrorist organization, you stop the current attacks but encourage terrorism in the future. Surely you'll have issues with others, and perhaps more terrorist attacks by the same organization, but you will have effectively discouraged further terrorist activities. Let me know your thoughts...
The disease is in the society that the terrorists come from. Although we might think of terrorists as being comic book villains, these people have mothers, fathers, bothers, sisters and friends, in other words, they are part of a community. It's true that you sometimes get solo nutcases like the Unibomber, but for there to be an organisation, like the IRA, ETA or Al Qaeda, you need the support of a community. Take the support of the community away, and the terrorism stops.
When the peace process in Northern Ireland was underway there was a terrorist bomb attack. It was condemed by practically everyone, even those that might have supported such an act before.
Terrorists are human beings. When everyone around them thinks that what they are doing is wrong, that makes them stop and think too.
Going off on a tangent, could you explain what Thatcher did in N. Ireland, and what Blair's approach was?
Of course any short summary of this is going to have it's critics. Thatcher was in power for a long time, and her style changed a lot during that time, just as Blairs has. But basically, Thatcher put a lot of emphasis on actually fighting the terrorists - the (unofficial, as far as I am aware) "shoot to kill" policy, and for instance, banning members of certain political groups from speaking on television.
Blair's approach has been to look at why people in Northern Ireland are not happy and to try to resolve that. For example, trying to make public bodies such as the police be less biased. And he also did some things that were very difficult, such as release terroists from jail.
I guess if I were to apply this to the current situation, Thatcher would probably have reacted in a similar way to Bush. Blair (the old Blair, and if he had any choice in the matter) would have made sure that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay received a fair trial and those that were innocent were quickly released, and would have made a major effort to solve the Israel/Palistine situation, and would have withdrawn troops from those countries where they are not welcome and do whatever possible to make the lives of people in those countries better. Thatcher would have seen this as "giving in to terrorists", but it is, I believe, the only long term cure.
The problem is that terrorism is all about using simple means to get effective results. It is practically impossible to prevent all possible types of terrorist attacks.
If you've got an imagination, try thinking about what you would do if you were a terrorist. If you really wanted to create havoc, you wouldn't necessarily do it by stuff like cutting communications cables. What you would want to do is make the man on the street afraid to do basic everyday things. I've thought about it a bit (let me emphasise - just as an entertaining mental exercise!) and I think there are things that a single person or small group could do that would cause chaos in a big city. And they are things that don't require access to any particular technology. Relatively simple things. But I'm not going to post those types of ideas on a public forum like this.
If there is one thing that September 11th should have taught us it is that terrorists don't need access to fancy technology. People are maybe going to slam me down for this, but I beleive one of the main abilities of an effective terrorist is a good imagination and - to use a cliche - the ability to think "outside the box".
So what's my point? My point is that passing laws and banning things (and invading countries and dropping bombs) isn't the best way to combat terrorism.
Terrorism is a symptom of a disease. You can try to combat the symptom, but it will never be cured if the disease is not cured. I always thought that they way Tony Blair and the rest of them tackled the Northern Ireland situation was very sensible. They did not take the easy route - the easy route is to say "we will not be influenced by terrorists", and "shoot to kill" - that was Thatchers approach. It didn't work. More recently, the actual disease has been tackled rather than the symptoms, and although there isn't peace in N.Ireland yet, things are much better now than they were a decade or so ago.
I'm afraid that Bush is taking the "hard man" approach to terrorism like Thatcher did. I'm afraid that the war on terrorism is going to be a very long one.
From that perspective, ASP.NET just totally rocks my world. I can debug more easily. Performance is better. It encourages good architectural practices. And my productivity has gone through the roof - I haven't done any formal tests but based on personal experience I'd say I can develop at *least* 30% faster with ASP.NET compared to any other platform, possibly more.
I absolutely agree. Since discovering.NET my life has changed! I can concentrate for longer, I'm more confident with girls and my armpits have a wonderful spring morning freshness..NET, because you're worth it!
When television first starting being broadcast in the UK, there was no transmission perhaps an hour in the evening so that parents could put there children to bed.
What the hell gives you the right to translate a book (for which the local editor has paid a pretty high price) and distributing it without caring for royalties and profit loss for all parties involved?
You are right. But should it be wrong for someone who has brought a copy of the book but wants to read it in their native language to have access to that? Note that the book isn't coming out in other languages for months yet. I am sure the hardcore fans that download the translated version will also buy it once it is released.
Is anyone by any chance prohibiting these fine Czech and German people from buying the book in English and reading it at their leisure?
Oh, let me guess! English is your first (only?) language, isn't it? Not everyone speaks English. Even if they do, it is often much easier to read a book translated into your first language than it is to read one in your second. For most people reading is a time to relax and forget - it's easier to do that when you dominate the language you are reading.
This is presented as though it is original thought, but it really isn't. There is lots of research into education and video games over the years, and in the UK I know of several current government funded programs explore the use of video games in schools.
The reason that we haven't seen more educational video games is not because nobody has thought of it, but because it is so expensive to produce them. In the early days of personal computing - when most software was written by individuals - there were loads of educational computer games, many of them very well designed and fun. But these days you need a budget of millions to create a game, so unfortunately there aren't so many educational titles around.
Even here you struggle to convince yourself guns are evil because their only (in your mind) use it to kill and maim.
Damn it no! My confusion was over DeCSS, not guns!
I live in Europe. In many countries in Europe guns are banned and/or are extremely difficult to get hold of. That is a good thing. I have never seen anyone carrying a gun that wasn't a police officer, nor do I know anyone that owns a gun. And before you start saying, yes but the criminals have guns, no they don't. Gun crime is extremely rare here.
So no, I have no moral and/or logical struggle when it comes to the fact that guns should be banned. And you will be really hard pressed to find anyone in most of Europe that wants guns to be legalised.
discussing whether it's "legal [and moral] to create and use Freenet"
Of course it should be legal to use freenet.
There must be a distinction made between making acts illegal because they are bad and making things illegal because they can be used to do bad acts.
Driving very fast is dangerous and can kill. That does not mean we should make cars illegal. That would be ridiculous because cars are useful and can also be used for good/useful acts. It also does not mean that cars should be technically capped so that they can't go fast. The existance of laws against the act of fast/dangerous driving should be enough.
We get onto more morally interesting ground with this argument with guns. According to my argument, surely guns should not be banned because the existance of laws against shooting people should be enough? My argument to that would be simple - guns can't really do anything useful other than kill and main, so in the case of guns it is reasonable to ban the technology. Does that mean that it is reasonable to ban DeCSS, as that can only really usefully be used for illegal purposes?
Damn, now I've confused myself. I'm just going to lie down for a few minutes...
"Fixing" requires understanding the code's intent.
You've hit the nail on the head. Personally I think spotting errors also requires understanding the code's intent. That's why I was being sarcastic about them having "magic" error spotting software.
There are errors and there are errors. There are error that don't matter a jot, and there are errors that are show-stoppers.
I've worked on banking software containing code that was written in assembly for PD11s and developed over decades. The most horrible spaggetti code you could ever imagine. Why did the banks keep using it? Because for any particular input it always gave the correct output.
Years of bug fixing had made the code horrible and probably full of errors if you were looking at it from a purely theoretical/software engineering viewpoint. But from an input/output point of view, it was faultless.
Sorry, people are rather interested in themselves, not in charity.
Speak for yourself.
In the USA over the last few decades a rather sad mindset has developed amongst certain people. That is that selfishness is normal, natural even. People use this to justify their selfish behavour, or that of the organisations they work for. It is very sad.
Cancer can act as a metaphor for this type of thinking. Our human bodies are made up of millions of individual cells co-operating and working together. A cancer occurs when a cell becomes defective and no longer lives in harmony with the others.
Now, it would of course be great if this actually worked, but I have to say I am very sceptical.
I find it difficult to believe that the system it uses will actually produce accurate results. The human body surely has lots of tissues in different structures and densities, and also of course there are lots of different types of cancer. Most importantly, you want to get cancers when they are small - tiny even. I find it hard to believe that this scanner could do that. If you've ever seen a small cancerous mole, for instance, you will understand.
When we're dealing with stuff like cancer, 95% (say) accuracy isn't enough. False positives result in a lot of stress for people until they have proper tests. False negatives of course have even worse consequences.
Complex problems don't have easy solutions. Cancer is complex.
It'll just deflate the value of the dollar so much that developing countries will go bankrupt because their exports to industrialized nations will no longer be competitive since the dollar is so deflated that buying from the USA is cheaper than buying from developing nations?
The US still has a lot of bargaining power to act like a bully, so much more so that even if all its allies banded together and imposed sanctions on the USA, all they would end up accomplishing is destroying themselves economically as well.
I think that you, like the current administration, still overestimate the power of the USA.
Much of the USAs exports these days are in intellectual property (films, music, software etc) rather than physical goods. What if the rest of the world decides to no longer respect USA intellectual property? You think that would harm them more than the USA? Think about it. And it has historic president - the USA did this in the 19th.
Of course, I am talking in extremes here. But stuff like denying other nations access to space is extreme, and such actions could provoke an extreme response.
And although a weak dollar helps American exports, foreign nations getting rid of all their dollar reserves would be an extremely bad thing for America.
As someone else said in this thread, "In a global economy, we all need each other."
Slashdot Mirror
Funnily enough I was just checking the stats for a client web site and for the first time both Mozilla (about 5%) and Linux (about 2%) got into my report to the client. The web site is for engineers and my prediction is that engineers are going to be the first significant user of linux on the desktop over the next couple of years.
What are Sun thinking? They want everyone to migrate off Sun boxes like people have been doing to SCO?
Stuff like this annoys techies and techies have quite a lot of influence over IT purchasing decisions in many businesses. Do Sun think that supporting SCO is going to win them more business than it will lose them? My understanding of business is that it is a very bad move to do stuff that your customers dislike...
Rather than ethics, I want AI personalities. It could be userful to have, for instance, an AI version of the Italian Tourism Minister. Then, when you get a call from a difficult client, you could just connect them through:
Client: So, are you are going to deliver this project on time?
A.I. Stefano Stefani You are just like all our other clients. Fat, lazy, and ugly. You are a waste of time.
Client hangs up
No more problem clients!
I sent a Sony Vaio back for repair - it just wouldn't respond at all when I turned it on - absolutely nothing. I concluded from this that it must have been something fairly basic - a loose power connnection or faulty battery.
Before sending it to Sony I took the CD-ROM and can pluged it into another machine so I could continue using it. When I phoned them they said that they would only accept the machine for servicing if it had the hard disc in it. When I explained that the problem had nothing to do with the hard disc, they said that didn't matter - they would charge me for another one if I sent it back with no hard disc in it.
So I sent it for servicing and guess what, they said the hard disc was faulty, and they had to replace it! And they charged £350 to replace it. It was the companies money, so I wasn't that bothered, but I am sure the problem with the machine was trivial - a loose wire or something - so they decided to say the hard disc was faulty so they could charge to replace it. Has anyone else experienced this?
Gather round Ladies and Gentlemen to see three giants battle it out for dominance! They're huge, they're ugly, they are
Ta da da...
The Japanese fire-breathing dragon -- Godzilla!!!
Ta da da...
The American 600 pound gorilla -- King Kong!!!
And a new entrant Ta da da...
We've never met him but he says he's really really good, honestly -- The Phantom!!!
Place your bets Ladies and Gentlemen!
I hate the fact that so much effort is going into interoperability with MS. That includes OpenOffice too.
I think this idea of having a "drop in" replacement for Exchange is just nuts. Do you think the Apache project would have gotten to where it is today if they decided what they had to do was a "drop in" replacement for IIS? (Yes, I know the chronology of metaphor is skewy, but you know what I'm trying to say).
What we should be concentrating on is making the best possible tool for the job, not making it compatible with existing close-source software. That's the only way to win in the long term.
So by working with a terrorist organization, you stop the current attacks but encourage terrorism in the future. Surely you'll have issues with others, and perhaps more terrorist attacks by the same organization, but you will have effectively discouraged further terrorist activities. Let me know your thoughts...
The disease is in the society that the terrorists come from. Although we might think of terrorists as being comic book villains, these people have mothers, fathers, bothers, sisters and friends, in other words, they are part of a community. It's true that you sometimes get solo nutcases like the Unibomber, but for there to be an organisation, like the IRA, ETA or Al Qaeda, you need the support of a community. Take the support of the community away, and the terrorism stops.
When the peace process in Northern Ireland was underway there was a terrorist bomb attack. It was condemed by practically everyone, even those that might have supported such an act before.
Terrorists are human beings. When everyone around them thinks that what they are doing is wrong, that makes them stop and think too.
Going off on a tangent, could you explain what Thatcher did in N. Ireland, and what Blair's approach was?
Of course any short summary of this is going to have it's critics. Thatcher was in power for a long time, and her style changed a lot during that time, just as Blairs has. But basically, Thatcher put a lot of emphasis on actually fighting the terrorists - the (unofficial, as far as I am aware) "shoot to kill" policy, and for instance, banning members of certain political groups from speaking on television.
Blair's approach has been to look at why people in Northern Ireland are not happy and to try to resolve that. For example, trying to make public bodies such as the police be less biased. And he also did some things that were very difficult, such as release terroists from jail.
I guess if I were to apply this to the current situation, Thatcher would probably have reacted in a similar way to Bush. Blair (the old Blair, and if he had any choice in the matter) would have made sure that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay received a fair trial and those that were innocent were quickly released, and would have made a major effort to solve the Israel/Palistine situation, and would have withdrawn troops from those countries where they are not welcome and do whatever possible to make the lives of people in those countries better. Thatcher would have seen this as "giving in to terrorists", but it is, I believe, the only long term cure.
The problem is that terrorism is all about using simple means to get effective results. It is practically impossible to prevent all possible types of terrorist attacks.
If you've got an imagination, try thinking about what you would do if you were a terrorist. If you really wanted to create havoc, you wouldn't necessarily do it by stuff like cutting communications cables. What you would want to do is make the man on the street afraid to do basic everyday things. I've thought about it a bit (let me emphasise - just as an entertaining mental exercise!) and I think there are things that a single person or small group could do that would cause chaos in a big city. And they are things that don't require access to any particular technology. Relatively simple things. But I'm not going to post those types of ideas on a public forum like this.
If there is one thing that September 11th should have taught us it is that terrorists don't need access to fancy technology. People are maybe going to slam me down for this, but I beleive one of the main abilities of an effective terrorist is a good imagination and - to use a cliche - the ability to think "outside the box".
So what's my point? My point is that passing laws and banning things (and invading countries and dropping bombs) isn't the best way to combat terrorism.
Terrorism is a symptom of a disease. You can try to combat the symptom, but it will never be cured if the disease is not cured. I always thought that they way Tony Blair and the rest of them tackled the Northern Ireland situation was very sensible. They did not take the easy route - the easy route is to say "we will not be influenced by terrorists", and "shoot to kill" - that was Thatchers approach. It didn't work. More recently, the actual disease has been tackled rather than the symptoms, and although there isn't peace in N.Ireland yet, things are much better now than they were a decade or so ago.
I'm afraid that Bush is taking the "hard man" approach to terrorism like Thatcher did. I'm afraid that the war on terrorism is going to be a very long one.
Newsflash: Not all users of pornography are losers who can't get girlfriends!
Not that I look at porn. I'm not suggesting that. Oh no.
Even some girls like porn. A girl told me. Well, a friend who knows a girl told me.
From that perspective, ASP.NET just totally rocks my world. I can debug more easily. Performance is better. It encourages good architectural practices. And my productivity has gone through the roof - I haven't done any formal tests but based on personal experience I'd say I can develop at *least* 30% faster with ASP.NET compared to any other platform, possibly more.
.NET my life has changed! I can concentrate for longer, I'm more confident with girls and my armpits have a wonderful spring morning freshness. .NET, because you're worth it!
I absolutely agree. Since discovering
Has anybody worked out what it is yet?
When television first starting being broadcast in the UK, there was no transmission perhaps an hour in the evening so that parents could put there children to bed.
What the hell gives you the right to translate a book (for which the local editor has paid a pretty high price) and distributing it without caring for royalties and profit loss for all parties involved?
You are right. But should it be wrong for someone who has brought a copy of the book but wants to read it in their native language to have access to that? Note that the book isn't coming out in other languages for months yet. I am sure the hardcore fans that download the translated version will also buy it once it is released.
Is anyone by any chance prohibiting these fine Czech and German people from buying the book in English and reading it at their leisure?
Oh, let me guess! English is your first (only?) language, isn't it? Not everyone speaks English. Even if they do, it is often much easier to read a book translated into your first language than it is to read one in your second. For most people reading is a time to relax and forget - it's easier to do that when you dominate the language you are reading.
Frankly, this is the most important pedagogical development in that last 100 years, if not longer. It will have import far into the future.
It is not an original idea. It has been said many times before, since the 70's. But unfortunately, nothing will come of it.
This is presented as though it is original thought, but it really isn't. There is lots of research into education and video games over the years, and in the UK I know of several current government funded programs explore the use of video games in schools.
The reason that we haven't seen more educational video games is not because nobody has thought of it, but because it is so expensive to produce them. In the early days of personal computing - when most software was written by individuals - there were loads of educational computer games, many of them very well designed and fun. But these days you need a budget of millions to create a game, so unfortunately there aren't so many educational titles around.
Ah finally seeing the light?
Even here you struggle to convince yourself guns are evil because their only (in your mind) use it to kill and maim.
Damn it no! My confusion was over DeCSS, not guns!
I live in Europe. In many countries in Europe guns are banned and/or are extremely difficult to get hold of. That is a good thing. I have never seen anyone carrying a gun that wasn't a police officer, nor do I know anyone that owns a gun. And before you start saying, yes but the criminals have guns, no they don't. Gun crime is extremely rare here.
So no, I have no moral and/or logical struggle when it comes to the fact that guns should be banned. And you will be really hard pressed to find anyone in most of Europe that wants guns to be legalised.
Rant over.
discussing whether it's "legal [and moral] to create and use Freenet"
Of course it should be legal to use freenet.
There must be a distinction made between making acts illegal because they are bad and making things illegal because they can be used to do bad acts.
Driving very fast is dangerous and can kill. That does not mean we should make cars illegal. That would be ridiculous because cars are useful and can also be used for good/useful acts. It also does not mean that cars should be technically capped so that they can't go fast. The existance of laws against the act of fast/dangerous driving should be enough.
We get onto more morally interesting ground with this argument with guns. According to my argument, surely guns should not be banned because the existance of laws against shooting people should be enough? My argument to that would be simple - guns can't really do anything useful other than kill and main, so in the case of guns it is reasonable to ban the technology. Does that mean that it is reasonable to ban DeCSS, as that can only really usefully be used for illegal purposes?
Damn, now I've confused myself. I'm just going to lie down for a few minutes...
If you like this stuff, read this recent news story:
Giant sea specimen baffles scientists
How are you going to "automatically" fix that?
I was being sarcastic in the original post.
"Fixing" requires understanding the code's intent.
You've hit the nail on the head. Personally I think spotting errors also requires understanding the code's intent. That's why I was being sarcastic about them having "magic" error spotting software.
So if they can write software to automatically spot coding errors, then it must be possible for them to automatically fix them, no?
So?
There are errors and there are errors. There are error that don't matter a jot, and there are errors that are show-stoppers.
I've worked on banking software containing code that was written in assembly for PD11s and developed over decades. The most horrible spaggetti code you could ever imagine. Why did the banks keep using it? Because for any particular input it always gave the correct output.
Years of bug fixing had made the code horrible and probably full of errors if you were looking at it from a purely theoretical/software engineering viewpoint. But from an input/output point of view, it was faultless.
Sorry, people are rather interested in themselves, not in charity.
Speak for yourself.
In the USA over the last few decades a rather sad mindset has developed amongst certain people. That is that selfishness is normal, natural even. People use this to justify their selfish behavour, or that of the organisations they work for. It is very sad.
Cancer can act as a metaphor for this type of thinking. Our human bodies are made up of millions of individual cells co-operating and working together. A cancer occurs when a cell becomes defective and no longer lives in harmony with the others.
Now, it would of course be great if this actually worked, but I have to say I am very sceptical.
I find it difficult to believe that the system it uses will actually produce accurate results. The human body surely has lots of tissues in different structures and densities, and also of course there are lots of different types of cancer. Most importantly, you want to get cancers when they are small - tiny even. I find it hard to believe that this scanner could do that. If you've ever seen a small cancerous mole, for instance, you will understand.
When we're dealing with stuff like cancer, 95% (say) accuracy isn't enough. False positives result in a lot of stress for people until they have proper tests. False negatives of course have even worse consequences.
Complex problems don't have easy solutions. Cancer is complex.
It'll just deflate the value of the dollar so much that developing countries will go bankrupt because their exports to industrialized nations will no longer be competitive since the dollar is so deflated that buying from the USA is cheaper than buying from developing nations?
The US still has a lot of bargaining power to act like a bully, so much more so that even if all its allies banded together and imposed sanctions on the USA, all they would end up accomplishing is destroying themselves economically as well.
I think that you, like the current administration, still overestimate the power of the USA.
Much of the USAs exports these days are in intellectual property (films, music, software etc) rather than physical goods. What if the rest of the world decides to no longer respect USA intellectual property? You think that would harm them more than the USA? Think about it. And it has historic president - the USA did this in the 19th.
Of course, I am talking in extremes here. But stuff like denying other nations access to space is extreme, and such actions could provoke an extreme response.
And although a weak dollar helps American exports, foreign nations getting rid of all their dollar reserves would be an extremely bad thing for America.
As someone else said in this thread, "In a global economy, we all need each other."