Considering that Transrapid technology is 20 years old, and also considering that Germany still hasn't got any commercial Transrapid line, I wouldn't say that the US is behind, really.
Speaking as a German, I think it is a shame that we build the fastest train our technology can produce somewhere in China rather than at home.:-(
Ever used the Eurostar from London through the tunnel to Paris or Bruxelles? Noticed that it goes very slowly in the UK and speeds up like hell once it reaches "the continent"? Since it is the same train for the whole journey, it can only be the tracks.
(This might have changed recently, they were talking about new tracks, I certainly hope so. It was a pain to use it 5 years ago.)
According to the American president George W. Bush and his croonies, the UN are obsolete anyway. So this treaty won't be worth the paper it is written on.
Why should China care about anything UN if the US ignore the UN and go to war?
I hope you American people get your act together and get rid of this Hitler before it is too late.
But of course this won't happen. It didn't happen in Germany...
It is simple, MySQL is a simple db system well suited to web-sites and application where it doesn't really fucking matter. Suppose if slashdot lost a couple of days worth of stories. Is the world going to end, NO, people will be, well whatever that feeling is when you loose data, but life will go on.
If I lost 5 minutes worth of production data, I'd probably have to find another job. People would not get their orders, we might loose a client. If I worked for the NASDAQ, it might mean real $ figures.
And you really believe this can't happen with MS SQL, Oracle or DB/2? There is only one difference: "Nobody will get fired for buying [insert your favorite major DB vendor here]."
Didn't we (actually our parents or even grandparents) hear exactly that before, when television arrived? "Great opportunity to bring more education to the masses." And what actually did happen? Where were these educational programs? Yes there were a few, some are still around, but over all TV was used for what is used today: Entertainment and commercials. We can count ourselves lucky if we still get some decent news casts! So why is all that going to change now when "all of a sudden some cheap medium is available" to broadcast education? Sadly I think it is not going to happen.
Just in case you have not seen it:
Another system which I personally like better, is MessagEase. They have got a free (as in beer) software version for PalmOS and a hardware version for mobiles.
I don't know whether there are actually any mobiles that use it, but that's just because I am one of the few backward people who don't have one.;-)
Here's what I've learned. Virtual PC is your best bet for running virual Windows based machines. It runs them very well. On the other hand, I can't get any distro of Linux to fully load under VPC
I have installed and successfully run SuSE Linux 7.0 on it including X. No problem at all, but is is slower than in VMWare, maybe because VMWare has its own X server?
Hopefully they mean on the votes. If you ran it on the candidate promises you'd have a 95% failure rate!
You obviously have not heard the sh*t these candidates we can chose between have been telling us. 95? no 99,9% of it is pure bull.
Last elections were bad, but at least we could hope that Gerhard Schroeder would do better than Helmut Kohl. He didn't. Now we have as the only alternative a grandpa from Bavaria who is ultra conservative and does not have any clue to solve the countries current problems.
Example: After this guy run amuck in Erfurt now both, the social democrats and the christian democrats, are proposing to make ego shooters illegal, ban "violence" from television and filter the internet on a "voluntary basis" (voluntary for ISPs that is, not for the actual users, and you can bet that there won't be anything voluntary for these ISPs either).
And after 4 years of a government with the Green party included I am not sure who to vote for next time. Maybe the communists (aka PDS)?
Maybe I should immigrate to the us, somthing like this won't never happen there, would it?;-|
Not really an abiword issue, but I just compiled it and got many warnings from the compiler. At work I would not accept code that creates warnings unless the developer can explain to me why he can not make them go away.
Despite the successful operations against Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, the emergence of asymmetric terrorist warfare - attacks such as September 11 where the enemy is unseen - has led the Pentagon to identify the need for a more sophisticated and deadly weapons system.
So where exactly does a laser equipped attack plane help angainst terrorist attacks like the one on 11 September?
The US ministry of defense still does not get it: They can not fight a war against terrorists the way they fight a war against a country. In Afghanistan they did not win against terrorism they won against the Taleban and it is still not certain that it did any good against the el Quaida and Bin Laden.
At I have to admit that least something good may come out of this: The people of Afghanistan might get a better life through this war, at least the ones who survived it, the winter and the ongoing fighting between the tribal leaders.
Since you actually looked a VB even though you should have known that it doesn't fit any of the categories mentioned, let me suggest Borland Delphi / Kylix.
It does have an easy but powerfull IDE with simple GUI design and events, is fully object oriented and with 'interfaces' it also does have some kind of multiple inheritance. Of course it supports abstract classes (which are called 'interfaces') It also supports function overloading but alas not operator overloading.
It does not have garbage collection (but I never understood why g.c. should be a feature?) and cross platform development is limited to Windows and Linux/i386.
I doubt that you will find any language that has all the features on your list. If your boss insists on them, he either does not know what he is talking about or he has already made up his mind and only lets you do this search so he can say he covered the alternatives and they aren't any better.
I just thought I should mention it since apparently everybody else wants dead tree editions:
I prefer books in a searchable E-Book format, even better, if I can read them on my Palm Pilot, e.g. (Palm-)DOC or another compressed format.
This is especially true for reference books since this allows me to take it everywhere but still be able to use a search function on the text. Searching something in real books is just too difficult.
Of course, if a desktop computer is at hand, it is no mistake to have a version that can be used there, just to increase comfort.
Just out of curiousity, what are you writing documentation for? I myself would approach the problem according to what kind of software it was, and who the intended audience was.
It is lots of different documentation that is required for ISO 9000 certification. It ranges from specs to test documentation to manuals.
The software also covers quite a large range from bespoke software for specific customers to a standard package for the pharmazeutical industry.
Just in case anybody reads the translation and wonders what the 'southwestern German broadcasting corporation' is about. It is just a mis-translation of SWF which used to be short for 'Suedwestfunk' (it doesn't exist any more, merged with another radio station). Of course in this case it just means the file extension of flash.
Even if no applications can use it to speed up the processing of the application in the foreground, SMP is very nice to make the whole system more responsive. If one program hogs all of the power of one CPU there is still a second (third/fourth...) that will run the other programs on the machine.
I used to have an SMP machine with Windows NT for software development and then switched to one with a three times faster single processor. It didn't really feel faster due to my mouse moving and the windows scrolling less smooth.
And that is even true when playing games. I started off playing Total Annihilation under Win95 on a fast box and later, when DirectX on WinNT cought up, switched to a SMP box with WinNT4. The difference was noticable.
I stopped reading when the author started talking wbout integrating the telephone with a home computer. I know a number of people who tried this years ago, but all are now using standalone answering machines or telco answering services.
I don't use this myself, but there is a popular internet router project in Germany
called
(FlI4L)
that also provides an answering machine. As far as I can see from the mailing list, it is used quite often.
If large predators escape from this "park" you can kiss goodbye all of the rare and beautiful marsupial animals that inhabit his "home".
It doesn't need large predators or even predators at all. Any foreign animal that does not have natural enemies there will compete with the native animals for food and living space and eventually succeed. There are plenty of examples of this already:
Somebody mentioned the rabbits in Australia, but there are also the gray squirrels in Britain and the small birds from India (whose names I have forgotten) or the 'possums in New Zealand, just to name a few.
Yes, the people who came up with this don't know a thing about how the Internet works, but we saw this before. Governments trying to take control over the Internet. The only ones that kind of succeeded are the ones who implemented a filtering system at their "border", namely China an Saudi Arabia (I have been told).
France tried it and is still trying it with their court case against Nazi pages on Yahoo.
America tried it several times, remember obligatory filtering on public internet access points in libraries?
India tries it by having a camera at the access points and publishing pictures of "porn site offenders".
This is not going to get anywhere, and sooner or (more likely) later they will realize this.
Re:Segway is irrelevant to European Cities
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1
The segway is not in competition with the walker or the car, but the bike - a cheaper, faster, healthier, more flexible (try hauling a 60lb segway up stairs) and more environmentally responsible way of getting around.
exactly what I was thinking: A bicycle has all the good qualities of this thing but few of its drawbacks: It is cheaper, does not use any energy source but the rider, gives you some excercise. None of them protects you against rain or cold weather.
The pictures imply that you can ride the segway on the walkway, but I doubt that this will be allowed if this thing really kicks off and becomes a hazard for pedestrians.
The segway might have some uses for certain industries and age groups,
Industries maybe, but I can't imagine any age group that would have an advantage because of it. Young people would maybe use it for the fun of it, any other group would be better off with a bicycle or a car.
and it will probably go over better in Europe
This is definitely not true. Nobody will use it in a city where they don't dare to cycle (assuming usage on the walkway is not allowed as explained above). And where you can cycle (as in many small and middle sized German cities) without being afraid for your life, there the bicycle again has its advantages.
One more thing: You can park a (200 US$) bicycle basically everywhere without much fear of it being stolen, but a Segway for 3000 bucks?
I am not sure this is really funny. It could easily happen if Germany passes some more laws about supervision of Internet access.
"Mein Kampf" is forbidden literature in Germany so it is against the law to own or publish it. Somebody who tries to access it over the internet would be a criminal.
I probably made myself suspect by searching for the "Mescalero" letter on some official political party's website a few months back when it was talked about (and quoted wrongly) all over the press. This letter not banned but regarded as subversive by the right wing parties in Germany (and even by the social democrats), even though in my opinion most of the people who were ranting against it, didn't actually read it (save understand it).
Just to prove that not only right wing stuff is dangerous...
this is a quote from the German "Grundgesetz" (constitution) (see below for translation):
"Artikel 5
(1) Jeder hat das Recht, seine Meinung in Wort, Schrift und Bild frei zu äußern und zu verbreiten und sich aus allgemein zugänglichen Quellen ungehindert zu unterrichten. Die Pressefreiheit und die Freiheit der Berichterstattung durch Rundfunk und Film werden gewährleistet. Eine Zensur findet nicht statt.
(2) Diese Rechte finden ihre Schranken in den Vorschriften der allgemeinen Gesetze, den gesetzlichen Bestimmungen zum Schutze der Jugend und in dem Recht der persönlichen Ehre."
And this is my (unofficial, of course) translation:
"Paragraph 5
(1) Everybody has got the right to voice his opinion freely in the form of voice, writing and pictures and to access any freely accessible sources to educate himself.
Freedom of press and freedom of reporting(?) on radio and TV are granted. No censorship is done.
(2) Those rights are limited by the general law, the law for protection of minors and the right of personal honour."
So if I understand the 1st amendment of the US constitution correctly, the precedence is turned around. In Germany the common law overrides any freedom of speech.
So, yes, your 1st amendment might be unique, even though I seem to recall that the British have something similar.
Great achievement, my Commodore C64 could do that so many years ago that I don't even remember when it was. SAM, the speech synthesizer which could even "sing".
There is no dark side of the moon. Every area (apart from the poles) gets his share of daylight and night. At the equator that is around 14 earth days each.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering that Transrapid technology is 20 years old, and also considering that Germany still hasn't got any commercial Transrapid line, I wouldn't say that the US is behind, really.
:-(
Speaking as a German, I think it is a shame that we build the fastest train our technology can produce somewhere in China rather than at home.
Ever used the Eurostar from London through the tunnel to Paris or Bruxelles? Noticed that it goes very slowly in the UK and speeds up like hell once it reaches "the continent"? Since it is the same train for the whole journey, it can only be the tracks.
(This might have changed recently, they were talking about new tracks, I certainly hope so. It was a pain to use it 5 years ago.)
The sound quality of today's FM radio is fairly good, but the quality of the actual content is not. And it seems to be getting worse by the day.
The same goes for television. Who needs digital high resolution television if there isn't anything you want to watch?
... my download of the iso image is only running at half speed. All those bloody /.ers are downloading it....
According to the American president George W. Bush and his croonies, the UN are obsolete anyway. So this treaty won't be worth the paper it is written on.
Why should China care about anything UN if the US ignore the UN and go to war?
I hope you American people get your act together and get rid of this Hitler before it is too late.
But of course this won't happen. It didn't happen in Germany...
Didn't we (actually our parents or even grandparents) hear exactly that before, when television arrived? "Great opportunity to bring more education to the masses." And what actually did happen? Where were these educational programs? Yes there were a few, some are still around, but over all TV was used for what is used today: Entertainment and commercials. We can count ourselves lucky if we still get some decent news casts! So why is all that going to change now when "all of a sudden some cheap medium is available" to broadcast education? Sadly I think it is not going to happen.
I don't know whether there are actually any mobiles that use it, but that's just because I am one of the few backward people who don't have one. ;-)
See EXideas' website for details.
Last elections were bad, but at least we could hope that Gerhard Schroeder would do better than Helmut Kohl. He didn't. Now we have as the only alternative a grandpa from Bavaria who is ultra conservative and does not have any clue to solve the countries current problems.
Example: After this guy run amuck in Erfurt now both, the social democrats and the christian democrats, are proposing to make ego shooters illegal, ban "violence" from television and filter the internet on a "voluntary basis" (voluntary for ISPs that is, not for the actual users, and you can bet that there won't be anything voluntary for these ISPs either).
And after 4 years of a government with the Green party included I am not sure who to vote for next time. Maybe the communists (aka PDS)?
Maybe I should immigrate to the us, somthing like this won't never happen there, would it? ;-|
Not really an abiword issue, but I just compiled it and got many warnings from the compiler. At work I would not accept code that creates warnings unless the developer can explain to me why he can not make them go away.
Since you actually looked a VB even though you should have known that it doesn't fit any of the categories mentioned, let me suggest Borland Delphi / Kylix.
It does have an easy but powerfull IDE with simple GUI design and events, is fully object oriented and with 'interfaces' it also does have some kind of multiple inheritance. Of course it supports abstract classes (which are called 'interfaces') It also supports function overloading but alas not operator overloading.
It does not have garbage collection (but I never understood why g.c. should be a feature?) and cross platform development is limited to Windows and Linux/i386.
I doubt that you will find any language that has all the features on your list. If your boss insists on them, he either does not know what he is talking about or he has already made up his mind and only lets you do this search so he can say he covered the alternatives and they aren't any better.
I just thought I should mention it since apparently everybody else wants dead tree editions:
I prefer books in a searchable E-Book format, even better, if I can read them on my Palm Pilot, e.g. (Palm-)DOC or another compressed format.
This is especially true for reference books since this allows me to take it everywhere but still be able to use a search function on the text. Searching something in real books is just too difficult.
Of course, if a desktop computer is at hand, it is no mistake to have a version that can be used there, just to increase comfort.
The software also covers quite a large range from bespoke software for specific customers to a standard package for the pharmazeutical industry.
Just in case anybody reads the translation and wonders what the 'southwestern German broadcasting corporation' is about. It is just a mis-translation of SWF which used to be short for 'Suedwestfunk' (it doesn't exist any more, merged with another radio station). Of course in this case it just means the file extension of flash.
Just one comment on SMP:
Even if no applications can use it to speed up the processing of the application in the foreground, SMP is very nice to make the whole system more responsive. If one program hogs all of the power of one CPU there is still a second (third/fourth...) that will run the other programs on the machine.
I used to have an SMP machine with Windows NT for software development and then switched to one with a three times faster single processor. It didn't really feel faster due to my mouse moving and the windows scrolling less smooth.
And that is even true when playing games. I started off playing Total Annihilation under Win95 on a fast box and later, when DirectX on WinNT cought up, switched to a SMP box with WinNT4. The difference was noticable.
Yes, the people who came up with this don't know a thing about how the Internet works, but we saw this before. Governments trying to take control over the Internet. The only ones that kind of succeeded are the ones who implemented a filtering system at their "border", namely China an Saudi Arabia (I have been told).
France tried it and is still trying it with their court case against Nazi pages on Yahoo.
America tried it several times, remember obligatory filtering on public internet access points in libraries?
India tries it by having a camera at the access points and publishing pictures of "porn site offenders".
This is not going to get anywhere, and sooner or (more likely) later they will realize this.
The pictures imply that you can ride the segway on the walkway, but I doubt that this will be allowed if this thing really kicks off and becomes a hazard for pedestrians. Industries maybe, but I can't imagine any age group that would have an advantage because of it. Young people would maybe use it for the fun of it, any other group would be better off with a bicycle or a car. This is definitely not true. Nobody will use it in a city where they don't dare to cycle (assuming usage on the walkway is not allowed as explained above). And where you can cycle (as in many small and middle sized German cities) without being afraid for your life, there the bicycle again has its advantages.
One more thing: You can park a (200 US$) bicycle basically everywhere without much fear of it being stolen, but a Segway for 3000 bucks?
twm
I am not sure this is really funny. It could easily happen if Germany passes some more laws about supervision of Internet access.
"Mein Kampf" is forbidden literature in Germany so it is against the law to own or publish it. Somebody who tries to access it over the internet would be a criminal.
I probably made myself suspect by searching for the "Mescalero" letter on some official political party's website a few months back when it was talked about (and quoted wrongly) all over the press. This letter not banned but regarded as subversive by the right wing parties in Germany (and even by the social democrats), even though in my opinion most of the people who were ranting against it, didn't actually read it (save understand it).
Just to prove that not only right wing stuff is dangerous...
twm
Hi,
this is a quote from the German "Grundgesetz" (constitution) (see below for translation):
"Artikel 5
(1) Jeder hat das Recht, seine Meinung in Wort, Schrift und Bild frei zu äußern und zu verbreiten und sich aus allgemein zugänglichen Quellen ungehindert zu unterrichten. Die Pressefreiheit und die Freiheit der Berichterstattung durch Rundfunk und Film werden gewährleistet. Eine Zensur findet nicht statt.
(2) Diese Rechte finden ihre Schranken in den Vorschriften der allgemeinen Gesetze, den gesetzlichen Bestimmungen zum Schutze der Jugend und in dem Recht der persönlichen Ehre."
And this is my (unofficial, of course) translation:
"Paragraph 5
(1) Everybody has got the right to voice his opinion freely in the form of voice, writing and pictures and to access any freely accessible sources to educate himself.
Freedom of press and freedom of reporting(?) on radio and TV are granted. No censorship is done.
(2) Those rights are limited by the general law, the law for protection of minors and the right of personal honour."
So if I understand the 1st amendment of the US constitution correctly, the precedence is turned around. In Germany the common law overrides any freedom of speech.
So, yes, your 1st amendment might be unique, even though I seem to recall that the British have something similar.
twm
Great achievement, my Commodore C64 could do that so many years ago that I don't even remember when it was. SAM, the speech synthesizer which could even "sing".
;-)
Has anything new happened lately?
There is no dark side of the moon. Every area (apart from the poles) gets his share of daylight and night. At the equator that is around 14 earth days each.