Maybe "gotten worse" is uncalled for, but it isn't all peaches and cream there either
Correct. The country has problems, like all countries do. The biggest problems are poverty, Aids, and the high crime rate.
Be careful of extrapolating what you read in the media about a country, it will always give you a distorted perception of what things are like. Taking one article and trying to make generalisations from it is a bit like me reading about Rodney King and then thinking that in the USA all the white policemen regularly beat up black people, which is obviously nonsense. It does happen, but its not a common occurrence. Some immigrants may have gotten thrown off a train last year sometime, but every day in this country millions of people use the trains without incident. (Like the US, SA has a bit of a problem with illegal immigrants trying to get in, because we are relatively wealthier than surrounding countries, and many of the locals don't like the immigrants because they take away jobs, similar to the US).
Life for the average white person here is very cushy - generally, we live at least as good as people in developed countries, in many cases better, and yet white people here complain a lot about how bad things are. Our homes, our educations, our infrastructure, our cars, our lifestyles, our unemployment rate etc are all first-world (and in some cases better, e.g. its not as crowded as Europe and so we can afford big houses, also we can afford VERY cheap domestic assistants). See my reply to Zuidera; if you want to know just how much things have really improved, you do need to learn about how bad things really were. South Africa is essentially "two worlds within one place" - a white world, and a black world. Since the townships provide a lot of cheap labour, most whites still have maids cleaning their places, and yet many whites here don't even know what their maid's home language is. Its weird.
Most of the blacks live in rural areas or townships, which are very poor, but these are the areas that are primarily improving. These are also the areas that the whites don't really notice or care about that things are improving, so they conclude that things aren't. 20-40 years ago, your average township resident basically lived in continual fear of the police, there was a continual army presence, people were regularly beaten by the police, the police would hold raids in the townships, rounding up people whose pass books etc weren't in order, sending them off to jail. They used to round up thousands of people and send them off to live in the "independent" homelands, or grab people out of these "independent homelands" to live in male-only "hostels" in townships near the cities to provide cheap labour for the white infrastructure. None of these things happen anymore, and few whites here seem to be aware that these things even happened at all, because the apartheid government controlled the media and always had "all is well", "all is under control" messages. The "perpetual fear" in the townships from the government and police etc are gone, they don't do the police raids anymore, they don't shoot protesters etc. People can move about where they please, and families can feel free to live together without fear of being split up. People worry about becoming victims of crime, of course, but to compare this to the fear people lived under during apartheid is silly. The main worry now for the average black person is trying to find a job. Unemployment and poverty are common problems, but then, they were also before, so in that sense, things are not worse than they were.
The previous government didn't spend tax money on black areas, it was all spent on the white areas. But there is definite improvement now. Over 3 million phone lines have been installed in previously disadvantaged areas, over a million people now have access to running water etc. The government is building thousands of RDP homes. Schools are also being improved. Most South Africans do though still live in small corrugated iron huts.
Overall life is relatively "peaceful" here in that there really isn't all that much 'internationally newsworthy' going on - when immigrants get thrown from a train, its an exceptional incident, while under apartheid, incidents like that were the day-to-day norm - that is the difference. Spend a few minutes a day at a site like http://www.news24.com/ for a while and you'll probably find it a bit boring, in fact. A fair amount of crime-related stuff, some local politics and sport etc, but thats about it. No invasions, no terrorist bombings, no assassinations, no natural disasters, i.e. nothing CNN-worthy.
I wasn't trying to imply it was a wonderful place to live, just that life for your average (black) SAn is a LOT better than it used to be. But there is still a long way to go. There is a lot "country building" to be done. But most (black) people are positive. (Whites, you never hear the end of their complaining). Our government does a terrible job in general of advertising improvements, so we tend not to be aware that they've happened, unless you actively go look for the information.
You can find some info on what things are like here at:
http://www.case.org.za/htm/gauteng.htm
http://www.case.org.za/htm/sanita.htm
http://www.case.org.za/htm/informal.htm
There are many other worthwhile projects going on here in terms of teaching illiterate adults to read, building libraries etc.
You are correct that the laws have changed, obviously the government has too. But you should probably keep your mouth shut as you obviously do not live here.
I do live here. You should educate yourself about just how bad apartheid REALLY was. Your average white South African doesn't have a clue what apartheid was really like, we have a very watered down idea because we were shielded from this information by the NP governments propaganda during the apartheid years.
If you want some clue as to what was really happening in this country, try reading "Warfare by other means" (by Peter Stiff) or "Kaffir Boy" (Mark Mathabane) or "Country of my skull" (Antjie Krog). You will be quite surprised to learn just how bad apartheid really was, both down on the ground for the average township resident, all the way up to the top levels of government.
The terrorist bombings I'm referring to were both MK and the right-wing terrorists - these ARE gone from our lives. Remember Hillview high school, Verwordburgh post office, Krugersdorp post office, COSATU house in Pretoria, Bree street, Germiston, Jan Smuts etc? No, funny, we seem to have forgotten about over 100 bombings carried out by the AWB and other right-wing groups and by ANC MK also (remember Robert McBride?).
I wasn't talking about using bulldozers "to evict people". I was talking about the complete, wanton destruction of entire townships or entire sections of townships in one go, with no discrimination whatsoever. Crossroads? District Six? Alexandra?
Sharpville massacre? Soweto uprisings? Over 750 people were *known* to have been killed, over 10,000 (including *schoolchildren*) were detained in prisons, tortured, beaten, murdered. How many "mysteriously" died of natural causes while in custody?. All the people who mysteriously just disappeared? Schoolchildren beaten and shot in the back while running away?
What about the regular township police raids that had millions living in perpetual fear? It doesn't happen anymore. The fear of crime is nothing compared to the fear that the people of this country were living under.
What about the economic mismanagement of our country in the 80's? Inflation and interest rates running away, national debt on the rise. Mbeki's government is actually managing to reduce the national debt. Our previous government was at least as bad at running the country as the new one.
You would then be aware of some of the really bad things that happen now. eg in the past various groups had to use different train carriages, now no one can use trains on certain lines anymore because they throw people off trains now, this either results in death or loss of limbs. I agree that they no longer use bulldozers when they evict people, they employ people to use hammers and crowbars - put it down to job creation policies. Why do you think the bombings have stopped, there were a large number of them two years ago eg Planet Hollywood, New York Bagel spring to mind in particular due to the fact that they were the work of a Muslim group which is obviously now very important to Americans. The average citizen now fears not the laws and the enforcing of them but the lack of the rule of law. Feel free to provoke more examples from me.
Nobody said things aren't bad now. But to say that things are worse than they were under apartheid is complete fscking stupidity or ignorance. Things are MUCH better for the average black South African. Things are worse for the average white South African. That is why we tend to largely think that things are worse in the country in general, but they are not.
Yes Mandela is gone, I never thought that the sun shone out his backside, or that he was even a great president. He was however a decent president, a good leader, and a great unifier. It's true that you never realise how good you've got it until things change
Yeah yeah the sky is falling blah blah. White South Africans think the country is going to pieces. I'm sorry, but AFAICT, my cushy wealthy white SAn lifestyle has not deteriorated at all since 1994. I earn a high salary, live in a nice place, drive a nice car. The crime rate is a bit higher, but thats about the only problem we can really complain about. The unemployment rate for white people here is 5%. That is the same as the overall rate in the USA. It just doesn't get better than that. We still have all the good jobs. We still make much more money than the blacks. We still get better educations than the blacks. We still directly benefit from the system of large pools of cheap labour near to the cities. And yet all we whites seem to do is complain about how bad things are. If its so bad, why don't you emigrate?
Feel free to provoke more examples from me
I'll take you up on that. Give me more examples of just how awful things are now.
The biggest problems in this country are poverty, Aids and crime. All three appear to be linked.
I would much rather live in fear of crime than live in fear of my own government.
You're making the common mistake of extrapolating the white experience to the entire country. "Things are worse for whites, therefore they must be worse everywhere". Things had to get worse for whites. If you ask me, it could have been a lot worse. Even today, "white" neighbourhoods STILL get more money and services from the government than "previously disadvantage" communities. We can hardly be complaining.
South Africa has long been known for its obscene treatment of people, and it hasn't gotten any better since Mandella took over. If anything it has gotten worse.
Man, but this is an amazingly clueless statement. You obviously do not have a CLUE what is happening in South Africa, so rather STFU about it. Do you honestly believe that SA citizens are being treated worse now than they were under apartheid? Man, get a clue. The separatism is gone. The torturings and beatings are gone. The assassinations are gone. The imprisoning of activists is gone. The violent army presence in the townships is gone. The cheap labour hostels system is gone. The forced splitting of families is gone. The bulldozing of townships is gone. The terrorist bombings are gone. The pass laws are gone. The group areas act is gone. The "state of emergency" is gone. The senseless shooting of schoolchildren is gone. Censorship is gone (there is less censorship than the USA). The people have freedom now. All citizens can vote. Millions of people now have running water. Millions now have electricity, access to telephones, access to healthcare, and access to levels of education that were denied them before. Hundreds of thousands now have homes. The apartheid government is gone. Geez, if you don't KNOW about something, rather just keep quiet than open your mouth and make a fool of yourself with such ludicrously ignorant comments. BTW, Mandela has not been in power anymore for a few years now.
South Africa has long been known for its obscene treatment of people
So has the USA. Remember slavery, Jim Crow, Martin Luther King, McCarthyism, Japanese concentration camps?
You're probably just a bit paranoid. Chinese people are really just people, as a country they have slowly begun to "open up", economically and socially, and totalitarianism in China has begun its decline. American slashdotters seem to automatically think that every single thing that the Chinese do must be an act or symptom of oppression, but this is a narrow view fuelled by ignorance and propaganda. I'm guessing that the motivations for developing the chip are primarily economic, and secondarily, national pride. In other words, the same motivations that fuel growth everywhere else in the world. Do you really think that "oppressing the people" provides enough motivation for thousands of people to invest so heavily in developing an obviously potentially EXTREMELY lucrative market? I doubt it; this is simply a group of people who have recognized a potentially huge market that would allow them to get fantastically rich. Which sounds precisely to me like the "ideals of the West". By and large, Chinese people are not idiots, and many of the newer, younger leaders coming into power recognize that liberalizing China is the only practical path to Chinese economic success this century. And what better way than pushing hard and fast into the semiconductor industry. Totalianarism has an (almost) inherent tendency to decline in human societies precisely because it is never the most practical system, and by and large people are ultimately pragmatic. On of the major reasons for the decline of Apartheid was that the newer, younger leaders in parliament increasingly were realising that the apartheid system was just not practical. The newer generations care a lot less about the zealoutry and ideologies that fuelled the oppression to begin with. The same sort of thing happened in Russia, and it is happening in China right now. I have much optimism for the future of China, socially and economically.
1984 was interesting to me because of the apparent self-perpetuating nature of the oppressive system described - an inescapable cycle, with no way out, and no way to topple it. Actual human history though has never seen anything like it (not that we know of); in practice it would seem that regarding the systems we create, nothing lasts forever. Oppressive systems obviously do manage to get created, but humans seem to inherently, over time, tend towards more practical systems of government.
It is irrelevant. If this issue had anything to do with quality of product, as Ballmer pretends it is, and as many Linux developers naively think it does, then lets face it, Microsoft would not even exist today. Their products suck, have always sucked, and will continue to suck for at least another 10 years. But still they are ridiculously successful, and growing rapidly. Why? Is it because of "good marketing"? Unlikely; there is so much negative press about MS and all their security and quality problems, and yet it still does not affect their sales. MS could stop marketing completely and still remain very successful for a long time. It definitely isn't quality of product, and its only marginally about marketing. So why are they so successful? Its all about strategy. Nobody can put a finger on MS when it comes to strategy. What makes the difference is the scummy tactics they use, such as buying fancy computer labs for Universities in exchange for the Universities dropping anything non-Microsoft out of their courses. The result is that hundreds of thousands of qualifying professionals entering industry every year already only know how to use MS products. I'm ashamed to say that my old Univ has done the same.. they have some very expensive new computer labs in the computer science department, but lo and behold - Linux has silently disappeared from all the undergraduate courses. This is going on all over the world. This is just one example of the many strategies they use. They make similar deals with governments of countries (the South African government was recently suckered into such a deal, for example) and with schools. Other strategies include their arrangements with OEMs that disallow OEMs from selling any PC without Windows. Its all about strategy. As long as the Linux community continues to naively think that its all about "building a better mousetrap", Linux is going to remain a niche market.
No, this is a clear misstatement of what's going on here. Clean Films, etc, are not removing anything from "the popular media". They're producing an alternative version of the popular media, for consumption by their customers.
I'm not sure what the law says, but my "gut feel" says that they should at least have to get the permission of the copyright owner. My reasoning is that, if I had, say, written a book, I would personally NOT want anyone to make changes to the text as they deemed fit and then re-sell it - even if they made it clear that they had changed it. If anyone asked me for permission, I would turn them down, just because I don't like the idea - my creation is my creation. Shouldn't the creator of something (i.e. the copyright owner) have the final say? Or do the creators simply have no rights over the integrity of their own creations?
Of course, this is just my personal opinion and feelings as an artist/writer. Others will obviously have different feelings about it, and some may even like the idea and encourage it (participatory artworks, as you hint it). But shouldn't the decision be up to the artist? Some artists WILL want to give permission, while others will not, and others may feel neutral. I for one just don't like the idea that every single aesthetic human creation should by default become some sort of publically modifiable entity. I would prefer a world that had a combination of free-to-modify and not-free-to-modify. By proposing the complete elimination of the "unalterable notion of the director as solitary creative genius", YOU are the one advocating an "extremely simplisitic" model, by *removing* options and stating that *everything* should be the way YOU think it should be. Why not have *both* options? A piece of artwork by an individual DOES inherently have aesthetic value derived purely from the fact that it is entirely the creation of that individual, it is his/her "artistic vision", an expression of his/her self; the moment someone else modifies it, it is inherently no longer a personal statement from the artist. How much "human" value would a Van Gogh self-portrait be to the viewer if someone else decides that the brushwork and colours need some "touching up"? It loses one of the very things that makes it valuable, an emotional connection between viewer and the artist himself. Would it really be such a good thing if a company called, say, SanitizedCheerfulArt, decided that Van Goghs portraits were too depressing and might upset kids, and started producing Photoshopped cheerful, happy, colourful versions for parents to hang in homes? What is left?
If I create an artwork, I have some specific idea in my mind, it is a statement of sorts from myself specifically. If Joe Beercan wants to make his own artistic statement, he is already quite free to do it without modifying and redistributing my artistic statement. I do not want Joe Beercan "re-interpretations" of my work floating around.
Am I impinging on Joe Beercan's freedom? No. Why? Because I have not *removed* any of his rights. Much the same as the GPL, when he gets a copy of my artwork, he doesn't lose anything that he had before he got my artwork. As I said, Joe Beercan still has the freedom to make any artistic statement that he wants to. If he is too lazy to create something from scratch, that doesn't mean he should inherently be allowed to just take my stuff to make up for it.
There may be some differences with the movie industry, and the creations may be "less personal", but the principles apply, and the creations ARE still creations of people, even though we might see the movie industry as some sort of giant machine / factory, there are people behind it. Removing Jar-Jar from SW or gratuitous sex scenes planted for purposes of hyping movie sales are one thing, but where do you draw the line? Should anyone be allowed to freely modify and re-sell movies that are "real" artworks, such as Waking Life or Requiem for a Dream? I think we should let the artists decide.
I don't get it. Does anyone but the people doing the writeups actually think MySQL is meant for large scale terabyte databases?
Its simple. A good/. writeup is a well-crafted troll post, i.e, its flamebait. The/. editors know that we will be irresistibly drawn to respond, in order to make the truth clear to the world. Like any good troll post, in fact. On the surface, the writeup looks benign enough, but in many submissions there will be just one semi-idiotic sentence that provides the bait that makes us "bite". Why would they do this? To generate 'lively discussion', to keep people hooked to/., to keep the forums filled. Why? For advertising revenue.
Once you see the pattern, its pretty obvious,/. have been following this formula for a long time now.
There is one important feature of MySQL that most people seem to be forgetting - it is completely free (both, but I'm referring to "as in beer"). Not only does it not cost a cent, but it also indirectly saves me money in other areas, for example, my commercial web site host can offer cheaper hosting by using MySQL. And most typical web site uses are for things like bulletin boards, which do not need "enterprise" databases anyway. My database needs are pretty light, so MySQL suits me perfectly, it would be stupid for me to fork out money for a commercial DB.
I find this whole thread a little "off" in that regard. If McDonalds were giving away free big macs, would people take it seriously if an expensive upper-class restaurant started warning you that you must stay away, because big macs are not as good as their food? Of course, it is useful though to have a good, unbiased technical comparison between the various DBs, so that people can make informed decisions about which to go for. But these should be willing to openly acknowledge that MySQL is a very good choice for many low-end applications.
IMO MySQL is an excellent DB for small, everyday, non-mission-critical applications. If you need a "serious" robust DB, with advanced clustering, then buy a commercial one. Of course it would be nice if MySQL was as good as MS/IBM/Oracle etc, but reality is reality.
And it completely falls apart when you want to change the type or scope of a variable, for example, to enhance a program
Don't you think "completely falls apart" is a bit overly dramatic? It usually takes less than a minute to change the prefixes with a search and replace. Even if the programmer is too lazy or too rushed to change a name here and there, its hardly the catastrophe you imply it to be. Its still useful at least 100 times more often than it "falls apart". Especially if you spend any non-negligible amount of time in other people's code. Most people who have worked on any large project probably do.
I was someone who was introduced to it kicking and screaming, but eventually I came around
Most people I know who initially balked at Hungarian, liked it after actually learning it and using it for a while.
As you say, it is incredibly useful when working on large software projects. If you've only ever worked on very small projects (e.g. less than 30,000 lines and only one, maybe two developers) it probably isn't quite as useful, but as soon as projects get too large for one person to know and remember everything that is going on, and you have to spend time debugging other peoples' code, it becomes much harder to program without it.
Most people I know who hate Hungarian notation also don't actually know Hungarian notation, or understand the reason it is there. If you're going to hate something, at least take the time out to learn it, so that you can actually understand why you hate it. If you don't even know something, you probably don't know enough about it to know why it should (or should not) be hated. This applies to many things in life, actually. Don't say you dislike something unless you can back it up with a good reason.
A "typical web page on a news site"? OK, I'll bite. Here is a breakdown of cnn.com:
HTML+CSS+JS: 95.7 KB
IMAGES: 91.6 KB
The html alone: 47.41 KB
Sorry, but the size of the images are still overshadowed by the HTML+stylesheet and Javascript. There are fewer images than web page code. There are certainly NOT "orders of magnitude" more images than HTML.
And it gets *worse* if you click on the stories. The main story on cnn.com right now has 56 KB of images and 122 KB of web page code!
Go do the math, check out some web pages, and you will see that you are just plain wrong. You are basing your opinion on the conventional wisdom, "common sense", intuitive idea that the HTML is typically only a fraction of the images. Its wrong. And we don't even need to sit and argue about it, you can head straight to web sites like CNN.com and prove it for yourself.
And a non-negligible percentage of the slashdot html source of any/. page is still redundant whitespace.
Actually, I wasn't proposing trying to *quit* GIFs altogether. If you have animated GIFs, just stick with the GIF. There really is currently no other reasonable, open standard for animated images that is supported by the major browsers. But I wasn't talking about patent issues at all..
Let me emphasize this: I wasn't advocating PNG because of the patent issues. I was advocating PNG out of entirely pragmatic concerns: a bandwidth saving on images of typically between 10 and 50 percent. This must surely make sense even to all the people out there who neither know nor care about the patent issues.
I was specifically only talking about non-animated GIFs, and primarily also GIFs with no transparency (due to some of the slightly older IE versions struggling with it). This is a totally rough thumbsuck guess, but I'm guessing that this is probably more than 30 % of the GIFs out there.
I do have an opinion on the patent issue, but that is entirely beside the point - I am simply trying to be practical, so I kept that issue completely out of my post. Most people are far more likely to be swayed by solid, practical arguments (such as bandwidth saving, faster downloads etc) than by moral or economic/financial concerns (such as the GIF patent).
Everyone seems to always be trying to convince webpage developers to switch over from GIF "due to patent issues", and seem to often forget that PNGs tend to actually also be smaller (or its added as an afterthought). Its no wonder people aren't interested. Most people don't give a crap about the patent issue.
So I say (to webpage developers), forget about the patent issues: use PNG because it just plain makes sense to do so. Smaller files = more space available on your host and less bandwidth used. Less bandwidth and space used by your host = lower prices on average for you (because your hosts b/w costs will be lower on average, and web-hosting is a competitive market) and faster downloads for your users. The tools to make PNGs are easily available, free, and quick and easy to use. Everybody wins.
The average page uses at least an order of magnitude more data for its images than the html
You'd be surprised. This exact page itself (the slashdot page to the parent comment of your comment): The HTML is 26 KB, and the images on the page ADD UP TO 12.4 KB. Moreover, the images will be cached by the browser locally, or by a proxy, and thus will only be downloaded *once* for each comment I view. The HTML, on the other hand, must be downloaded fresh for *every single comment* I view on slashdot. So after an hour of browsing/., you've probably downloaded at *least* an order of magnitude more html than images.
And do a "view source".. these pages can be optimized quite a bit.
Most people just think of the HTML as being only a tiny fraction of the download size, and thats why most webpage developers don't even think to optimize their HTML.
Agreed, some pages have pretty horrifically unoptimal html. I've seen HTML files that are 40% or more just *redundant whitespace* (e.g. from heavy indentation, spaces, not tabs, that sort of thing).
I suspect a fair amount of bw could also be saved if webpage developers replaced all their non-animated GIFs with 8-bit PNGs. I replaced all the GIFs on my web page (probably about 50 or so) with PNGs, and it reduced the average size of the images by about 30-35%. In some cases files were almost 50% smaller. Not once was the PNG larger than the GIF.
Of the tools I've tried, the ImageMagick (which comes with RedHat and is available on Windows too) "convert" utility seems to consistently produce the smallest PNG files (Photoshop's are always slightly larger because they add "Adobe" and some other crap to the header comments).
Its easy to convert large numbers of files using tools like ImageMagick, so there really is no excuse for web page developers not to use it. Photoshop also has a batch-converter, AFAIK.
"Web browsers don't support" is not an excuse anymore, unless you have alpha (specifically multiple levels of transparency), which some of the older browsers didn't handle so well.
Many web pages have simple, no-transparency, no-animation GIFs. These could all be PNGs. The site http://www.worldofspectrum.org/, as an example, has an archive which includes screenshots of thousands of ZX spectrum loading screens etc.
No, because then just about anyone could get patents on all sorts of things that they've put no effort into. Generally, you don't really patent an *idea*, you patent a *technique* for *implementing* some idea. That technique must be new, and must be non-obvious *to someone skilled in the field* (at the time the invention was devised.. e.g. the internal combustion engine might be well understood by any mechanic today, but *at the time it was invented* it was not obvious to others 'skilled in the arts'). I haven't looked, but I'd guess that this patent isn't on the idea of an invisilibity cloak, but on some specific technique of implementing one. It sounds pretty dubious to me though.
Here is something that I believe more programmers (myself included:/) should do more: when asked to work ridiculous hours (due to poor project management and/or unrealistic promises to the client etc), JUST SAY NO. When you've done your 8 hours for the day, GO HOME.
Employer/employee relations are a lot like any other human relationship - people will get away with whatever they are ALLOWED to get away with, and will take advantage of you wherever they can. If you keep saying "yes" to your boss, and working 15-hour days, he will keep on doing this, simply because he will quickly learn that it *works*.
Don't let your boss steamroll all over you, because that is what he is doing. He is taking advantage of you.
If you keep telling him "no", he will soon learn that he can't keep doing this. When the project runs late (which it *will* the first few times you try this:), explain that it wasn't your fault, you did all you reasonably could. Explain to your boss why the project ran late (poor project management, ignoring estimates, promising ridiculous deadlines to the client etc etc). Explain it to him again and again, because he will not listen the first time you do so, but if you explain it often enough, he will start to learn. Also, don't wait until after the deadline to explain it. Start talking about it from the moment you realise you cannot make a project deadline, and keep discussing it again and again. Discuss the reasons why you aren't going to make the deadline. Eventually, your employer will start to learn.
Just start saying "no". You don't need to be rude about it, just be calmly and reasonably assertive. You won't get fired (*). (Probably not, anyway, unless your boss is a real dick, in which case you should get another job anyway). Its often not as easy as it sounds, but I'm sure you'll find that you'll feel better afterwards than if you allowed yourself to be walked all over yet again.
I'm not saying that you should *never* work hard hours. I think there will always be "crunch times", where you have to put in a few extra hours a day. But thats what they should be and remain, "crunch times". If they become an almost-permanent part of the way your company operates, something is wrong.
(*) Disclaimer: if you do get fired, its your own responsibility, not mine:)
I am also skeptical of the AIDS figures that are coming out of poor nations. Even if the doc in the subject is wrong about lack of actual testing it does make you wonder about the methodology. If the country doesn't have enough money to buy drugs to fight the disease then how do they afford to test everyone at over $100 a pop?
Well, with statistics, you don't need to test everyone to get quite accurate numbers. If you know what you are doing (i.e. you understand and know how to choose good "representative samples" from the population), you can do it statistically and be fairly accurate. Statistically, you actually only really *need* to sample a small percentage of a population to be able to extrapolate the results reliably within a low error margin.
It is of course not so simple though. There is very wide variation of living conditions over small geographical distances all over S.A, and a sample from one area can be completely useless as a representative sample of another area just a few kilometers/miles away.
So, for this and other reasons, you are correct, the numbers are often "suspect". If you look at some of the different AIDS studies carried out in SA, you see quite different numbers - especially the numbers attempting to predict 5/10 years into the future. Generally though, even the most conservative numbers out there rate as quite a horrible disaster (numbers are always at least in the millions).
Might 3rd world countries inflate the figures in order to attract more international aid? Quite possibly. Probably, in fact. Keep in mind though that there are numerous studies, some of which are (supposedly) independent, and I doubt that any of these governments has the power to secretly taint ALL of them.
The international aid coming in for HIV/AIDS is very very low. Occasionally rich countries give "token" donations, making sure to generate a lot of PR hype, in order to look good, but the amounts they usually give are pocket change compare to what is estimated to be required to fight aids. And corrupt recipient governments still siphon off big chunks of the little money that does come in:(. If the first world really wanted to cure AIDS, we'd be a lot further by now, if not at a cure already, IMO. The US for example spends $300 billion a year on its military. Imagine if just one percent of that could be spent on the problem of AIDS. The first world (governments) don't *really* care. Now, I'm not saying they *should* care, since it is "our" problem, they don't have to give a single cent of their money if they don't want to. But it would be nice if we lived in a world where they did want to.
Although its not as if AIDS doesn't affect the US either, about 20000 people die each year in the US from AIDS, which is still a lot of people.
The people in South Africa have lived that way for thousands of years, and have NEVER had any sort of epidemic like this
Thats not true. Poverty/malnutrition only became a problem of statistically significant magnitude in indigenous African societies fairly long *after* the initial arrival of Europeans. Up until around the 1700's, African civilisations were both very successful as well as very rapidly growing (expanding southwards - the Bantu (i.e. not San) Africans only actually arrived in South Africa a few hundred years before the Europeans). They had a successful agricultural (farming) society, growing crops and raising domesticated animals. They used to store grain during better times, to tide them over during the dry season and during droughts. Occasionally times would get tough during severe droughts (only in the areas that tend to get these droughts of course, i.e. the SA highveld (Sotho people, Venda people etc), and not really the east coast (Nguni people, i.e. Zulu, Xhosa)), but in general they had no malnutrition/starvation problems.
The San and Khoi Khoi (Bushmen) were not part of the Bantu migrations, they have been living in SA for tens of thousands of years, and are divided into two groups - nomadic (hunter-gatherers that move around), and agricultural (stay in one place and farm). (These are not strictly divided groups; there is evidence to suggest that these groups often mixed and people from one group would move over to the other, etc). The Bushmen are not starving though either. In fact, studies have shown that the Bushmen, in spite of living in semi-desert, actually have to spend LESS time than modern Westerners on "basic survival" and have more time to devote to aesthetic pursuits, such as art/music etc. Granted, they do not have the benefits of technology that we do (e.g. modern medicine), but my point is that they are not starving.
and have NEVER had any sort of epidemic like this
Thats not strictly true either; Malaria in Africa has over the years wiped out far many more Africans than AIDS probably ever will.
I agree with you about the spread of AIDS in SA. These people are getting AIDS because, by and large, they screw around a lot and don't use protection. That is of course entirely their own fault. Even the poorest of poor here in SA must by now know about AIDS, that it kills, and how it spreads.
Haven't you noticed that "good" slashdot story blurbs often seem to end with a semi-dimwitted last sentence? The blurbs often sound quite mundane and sensible until you hit the last sentence, simmering with nonsensical ambiguities or confused or fanciful ramblings that -almost- seem *designed* to provoke. This last line is usually the "hook" that pushes readers to click on "Read More", eager to respond, or to view other responses to the last sentence. These/. stories are like high quality trolls. They aren't completely obvious like most of the "lesser" trolls you will find in the forums themselves. Once you notice the pattern, it becomes quite obvious/predictable. I am quite sure that the/. editors specifically choose this type of "almost-trollish" submission over others - to increase readership (much the same way as troll posts in any online forum, which typically have disproportionately large number of replies). Increased readership means increased advertising revenue. If you've ever wondered why your submission got rejected while someone else submitted the same story and got accepted, it may be because you didn't include a provocative, semi-idiotic-but-not-obviously-deliberately-idioti c last sentence.
10 megs is less than an hour to d/l on a 56k, on a clear day even 45 minutes. Sorry, but someone complaining that that is just too long to wait for a download, is just being nitpicky for the *sake* of being nitpicky.
10 megs is tiny. An IE download is about six times that size, if I remember correctly, and is only a browser.
These people have been busting their butts on the software for 4.5 years, I can't believe someone will complain "sorry an hour is too long to wait to download the thing". Mozilla is a huge project, over 200 MB of source and over 6000 source code files.
Additionally, although you'll never hear a company like MS or Adobe admit it, a certain amount of piracy is actually good for business.
One of the (numerous) reasons, for example, that Microsoft Windows remains so firmly entrenched, is precisely that kids can pirate it so easily - because they can pirate it, they install it, and subsequently learn how to use it. Fewer than 1% of people will ever bother to go through the effort of learning another system once they've learned some particular system, and because Windows is so easy to come by, and because everyone else is using it, they install that. And then when they get a bit older, and start working, the companies will get Windows because thats what the people know, and the companies will pay for it. Consider: how many schoolkids can really afford Windows? In my country at least, a copy of Windows will cost you more than the average monthly salary of an employed adult here. If schoolkids could not pirate Windows, they would simply use something else before paying for Windows, and Microsoft can definitely not afford to have 50% or more of schoolkids start learning (e.g.) Linux instead.
I strongly believe that if nobody had cracked Windows XP, Microsoft would have (anonymously) released a crack for it themselves. If they didn't, they would have lost many people to other OSs.
The same happens in more niche markets, like 3DS MAX. Kids who are interested in animation tend to end up learning the package that they could most easily get hold of pirated (how many can afford to cough up $3500 for a copy of MAX? virtually none). As it turns out, 3DS MAX is about the easiest 3D package to get a pirated copy of. Those same kids then end up doing animation for companies who are obliged to pay for the software, and the companies buy MAX *because* the animators know MAX. Every single person I know who is now doing MAX work on a legal company-owned version, learned the software on a pirated copy before they started working (i.e. while at school, university etc). Newer versions of MAX actually have poorer copy protectection than older versions.
It is for the same reasons that many companies provide legal, limited license "student versions" of their products - to get them entrenched in the market.
Usually when Microsoft does something that looks incredibly stupid on the surface, like this, they have some sort of scheme behind it where it makes sense, and it usually requires a fairly deep analysis to figure out what they're up to.
On a different note, the fact that this company can even say things like this in public without even having to worry that it might hurt their sales a bit should be very telling by itself. We seem to have reached a point where anyone can reveal any information about how terrible Microsoft products are, and Microsoft's sales are unaffected in the least.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe "gotten worse" is uncalled for, but it isn't all peaches and cream there either
Correct. The country has problems, like all countries do. The biggest problems are poverty, Aids, and the high crime rate.
Be careful of extrapolating what you read in the media about a country, it will always give you a distorted perception of what things are like. Taking one article and trying to make generalisations from it is a bit like me reading about Rodney King and then thinking that in the USA all the white policemen regularly beat up black people, which is obviously nonsense. It does happen, but its not a common occurrence. Some immigrants may have gotten thrown off a train last year sometime, but every day in this country millions of people use the trains without incident. (Like the US, SA has a bit of a problem with illegal immigrants trying to get in, because we are relatively wealthier than surrounding countries, and many of the locals don't like the immigrants because they take away jobs, similar to the US).
Life for the average white person here is very cushy - generally, we live at least as good as people in developed countries, in many cases better, and yet white people here complain a lot about how bad things are. Our homes, our educations, our infrastructure, our cars, our lifestyles, our unemployment rate etc are all first-world (and in some cases better, e.g. its not as crowded as Europe and so we can afford big houses, also we can afford VERY cheap domestic assistants). See my reply to Zuidera; if you want to know just how much things have really improved, you do need to learn about how bad things really were. South Africa is essentially "two worlds within one place" - a white world, and a black world. Since the townships provide a lot of cheap labour, most whites still have maids cleaning their places, and yet many whites here don't even know what their maid's home language is. Its weird.
Most of the blacks live in rural areas or townships, which are very poor, but these are the areas that are primarily improving. These are also the areas that the whites don't really notice or care about that things are improving, so they conclude that things aren't. 20-40 years ago, your average township resident basically lived in continual fear of the police, there was a continual army presence, people were regularly beaten by the police, the police would hold raids in the townships, rounding up people whose pass books etc weren't in order, sending them off to jail. They used to round up thousands of people and send them off to live in the "independent" homelands, or grab people out of these "independent homelands" to live in male-only "hostels" in townships near the cities to provide cheap labour for the white infrastructure. None of these things happen anymore, and few whites here seem to be aware that these things even happened at all, because the apartheid government controlled the media and always had "all is well", "all is under control" messages. The "perpetual fear" in the townships from the government and police etc are gone, they don't do the police raids anymore, they don't shoot protesters etc. People can move about where they please, and families can feel free to live together without fear of being split up. People worry about becoming victims of crime, of course, but to compare this to the fear people lived under during apartheid is silly. The main worry now for the average black person is trying to find a job. Unemployment and poverty are common problems, but then, they were also before, so in that sense, things are not worse than they were.
The previous government didn't spend tax money on black areas, it was all spent on the white areas. But there is definite improvement now. Over 3 million phone lines have been installed in previously disadvantaged areas, over a million people now have access to running water etc. The government is building thousands of RDP homes. Schools are also being improved. Most South Africans do though still live in small corrugated iron huts.
Overall life is relatively "peaceful" here in that there really isn't all that much 'internationally newsworthy' going on - when immigrants get thrown from a train, its an exceptional incident, while under apartheid, incidents like that were the day-to-day norm - that is the difference. Spend a few minutes a day at a site like http://www.news24.com/ for a while and you'll probably find it a bit boring, in fact. A fair amount of crime-related stuff, some local politics and sport etc, but thats about it. No invasions, no terrorist bombings, no assassinations, no natural disasters, i.e. nothing CNN-worthy.
I wasn't trying to imply it was a wonderful place to live, just that life for your average (black) SAn is a LOT better than it used to be. But there is still a long way to go. There is a lot "country building" to be done. But most (black) people are positive. (Whites, you never hear the end of their complaining). Our government does a terrible job in general of advertising improvements, so we tend not to be aware that they've happened, unless you actively go look for the information.
You can find some info on what things are like here at:
http://www.case.org.za/htm/gauteng.htm
http://www.case.org.za/htm/sanita.htm
http://www.case.org.za/htm/informal.htm
There are many other worthwhile projects going on here in terms of teaching illiterate adults to read, building libraries etc.
You are correct that the laws have changed, obviously the government has too. But you should probably keep your mouth shut as you obviously do not live here.
I do live here. You should educate yourself about just how bad apartheid REALLY was. Your average white South African doesn't have a clue what apartheid was really like, we have a very watered down idea because we were shielded from this information by the NP governments propaganda during the apartheid years.
If you want some clue as to what was really happening in this country, try reading "Warfare by other means" (by Peter Stiff) or "Kaffir Boy" (Mark Mathabane) or "Country of my skull" (Antjie Krog). You will be quite surprised to learn just how bad apartheid really was, both down on the ground for the average township resident, all the way up to the top levels of government.
The terrorist bombings I'm referring to were both MK and the right-wing terrorists - these ARE gone from our lives. Remember Hillview high school, Verwordburgh post office, Krugersdorp post office, COSATU house in Pretoria, Bree street, Germiston, Jan Smuts etc? No, funny, we seem to have forgotten about over 100 bombings carried out by the AWB and other right-wing groups and by ANC MK also (remember Robert McBride?).
I wasn't talking about using bulldozers "to evict people". I was talking about the complete, wanton destruction of entire townships or entire sections of townships in one go, with no discrimination whatsoever. Crossroads? District Six? Alexandra?
Sharpville massacre? Soweto uprisings? Over 750 people were *known* to have been killed, over 10,000 (including *schoolchildren*) were detained in prisons, tortured, beaten, murdered. How many "mysteriously" died of natural causes while in custody?. All the people who mysteriously just disappeared? Schoolchildren beaten and shot in the back while running away?
What about the regular township police raids that had millions living in perpetual fear? It doesn't happen anymore. The fear of crime is nothing compared to the fear that the people of this country were living under.
What about the economic mismanagement of our country in the 80's? Inflation and interest rates running away, national debt on the rise. Mbeki's government is actually managing to reduce the national debt. Our previous government was at least as bad at running the country as the new one.
You would then be aware of some of the really bad things that happen now. eg in the past various groups had to use different train carriages, now no one can use trains on certain lines anymore because they throw people off trains now, this either results in death or loss of limbs. I agree that they no longer use bulldozers when they evict people, they employ people to use hammers and crowbars - put it down to job creation policies. Why do you think the bombings have stopped, there were a large number of them two years ago eg Planet Hollywood, New York Bagel spring to mind in particular due to the fact that they were the work of a Muslim group which is obviously now very important to Americans. The average citizen now fears not the laws and the enforcing of them but the lack of the rule of law. Feel free to provoke more examples from me.
Nobody said things aren't bad now. But to say that things are worse than they were under apartheid is complete fscking stupidity or ignorance. Things are MUCH better for the average black South African. Things are worse for the average white South African. That is why we tend to largely think that things are worse in the country in general, but they are not.
Yes Mandela is gone, I never thought that the sun shone out his backside, or that he was even a great president. He was however a decent president, a good leader, and a great unifier. It's true that you never realise how good you've got it until things change
Yeah yeah the sky is falling blah blah. White South Africans think the country is going to pieces. I'm sorry, but AFAICT, my cushy wealthy white SAn lifestyle has not deteriorated at all since 1994. I earn a high salary, live in a nice place, drive a nice car. The crime rate is a bit higher, but thats about the only problem we can really complain about. The unemployment rate for white people here is 5%. That is the same as the overall rate in the USA. It just doesn't get better than that. We still have all the good jobs. We still make much more money than the blacks. We still get better educations than the blacks. We still directly benefit from the system of large pools of cheap labour near to the cities. And yet all we whites seem to do is complain about how bad things are. If its so bad, why don't you emigrate?
Feel free to provoke more examples from me
I'll take you up on that. Give me more examples of just how awful things are now.
The biggest problems in this country are poverty, Aids and crime. All three appear to be linked.
I would much rather live in fear of crime than live in fear of my own government.
You're making the common mistake of extrapolating the white experience to the entire country. "Things are worse for whites, therefore they must be worse everywhere". Things had to get worse for whites. If you ask me, it could have been a lot worse. Even today, "white" neighbourhoods STILL get more money and services from the government than "previously disadvantage" communities. We can hardly be complaining.
South Africa has long been known for its obscene treatment of people, and it hasn't gotten any better since Mandella took over. If anything it has gotten worse.
Man, but this is an amazingly clueless statement. You obviously do not have a CLUE what is happening in South Africa, so rather STFU about it. Do you honestly believe that SA citizens are being treated worse now than they were under apartheid? Man, get a clue. The separatism is gone. The torturings and beatings are gone. The assassinations are gone. The imprisoning of activists is gone. The violent army presence in the townships is gone. The cheap labour hostels system is gone. The forced splitting of families is gone. The bulldozing of townships is gone. The terrorist bombings are gone. The pass laws are gone. The group areas act is gone. The "state of emergency" is gone. The senseless shooting of schoolchildren is gone. Censorship is gone (there is less censorship than the USA). The people have freedom now. All citizens can vote. Millions of people now have running water. Millions now have electricity, access to telephones, access to healthcare, and access to levels of education that were denied them before. Hundreds of thousands now have homes. The apartheid government is gone. Geez, if you don't KNOW about something, rather just keep quiet than open your mouth and make a fool of yourself with such ludicrously ignorant comments. BTW, Mandela has not been in power anymore for a few years now.
South Africa has long been known for its obscene treatment of people
So has the USA. Remember slavery, Jim Crow, Martin Luther King, McCarthyism, Japanese concentration camps?
chances are that the last upgrade was just for the sake of it, not because we really needed a faster processor
I think chances are the last upgrade was to make Windows XP feel usable.
You're probably just a bit paranoid. Chinese people are really just people, as a country they have slowly begun to "open up", economically and socially, and totalitarianism in China has begun its decline. American slashdotters seem to automatically think that every single thing that the Chinese do must be an act or symptom of oppression, but this is a narrow view fuelled by ignorance and propaganda. I'm guessing that the motivations for developing the chip are primarily economic, and secondarily, national pride. In other words, the same motivations that fuel growth everywhere else in the world. Do you really think that "oppressing the people" provides enough motivation for thousands of people to invest so heavily in developing an obviously potentially EXTREMELY lucrative market? I doubt it; this is simply a group of people who have recognized a potentially huge market that would allow them to get fantastically rich. Which sounds precisely to me like the "ideals of the West". By and large, Chinese people are not idiots, and many of the newer, younger leaders coming into power recognize that liberalizing China is the only practical path to Chinese economic success this century. And what better way than pushing hard and fast into the semiconductor industry. Totalianarism has an (almost) inherent tendency to decline in human societies precisely because it is never the most practical system, and by and large people are ultimately pragmatic. On of the major reasons for the decline of Apartheid was that the newer, younger leaders in parliament increasingly were realising that the apartheid system was just not practical. The newer generations care a lot less about the zealoutry and ideologies that fuelled the oppression to begin with. The same sort of thing happened in Russia, and it is happening in China right now. I have much optimism for the future of China, socially and economically.
1984 was interesting to me because of the apparent self-perpetuating nature of the oppressive system described - an inescapable cycle, with no way out, and no way to topple it. Actual human history though has never seen anything like it (not that we know of); in practice it would seem that regarding the systems we create, nothing lasts forever. Oppressive systems obviously do manage to get created, but humans seem to inherently, over time, tend towards more practical systems of government.
Hmm, replied to wrong post :/
It is irrelevant. If this issue had anything to do with quality of product, as Ballmer pretends it is, and as many Linux developers naively think it does, then lets face it, Microsoft would not even exist today. Their products suck, have always sucked, and will continue to suck for at least another 10 years. But still they are ridiculously successful, and growing rapidly. Why? Is it because of "good marketing"? Unlikely; there is so much negative press about MS and all their security and quality problems, and yet it still does not affect their sales. MS could stop marketing completely and still remain very successful for a long time. It definitely isn't quality of product, and its only marginally about marketing. So why are they so successful? Its all about strategy. Nobody can put a finger on MS when it comes to strategy. What makes the difference is the scummy tactics they use, such as buying fancy computer labs for Universities in exchange for the Universities dropping anything non-Microsoft out of their courses. The result is that hundreds of thousands of qualifying professionals entering industry every year already only know how to use MS products. I'm ashamed to say that my old Univ has done the same .. they have some very expensive new computer labs in the computer science department, but lo and behold - Linux has silently disappeared from all the undergraduate courses. This is going on all over the world. This is just one example of the many strategies they use. They make similar deals with governments of countries (the South African government was recently suckered into such a deal, for example) and with schools. Other strategies include their arrangements with OEMs that disallow OEMs from selling any PC without Windows. Its all about strategy. As long as the Linux community continues to naively think that its all about "building a better mousetrap", Linux is going to remain a niche market.
No, this is a clear misstatement of what's going on here. Clean Films, etc, are not removing anything from "the popular media". They're producing an alternative version of the popular media, for consumption by their customers.
I'm not sure what the law says, but my "gut feel" says that they should at least have to get the permission of the copyright owner. My reasoning is that, if I had, say, written a book, I would personally NOT want anyone to make changes to the text as they deemed fit and then re-sell it - even if they made it clear that they had changed it. If anyone asked me for permission, I would turn them down, just because I don't like the idea - my creation is my creation. Shouldn't the creator of something (i.e. the copyright owner) have the final say? Or do the creators simply have no rights over the integrity of their own creations?
Of course, this is just my personal opinion and feelings as an artist/writer. Others will obviously have different feelings about it, and some may even like the idea and encourage it (participatory artworks, as you hint it). But shouldn't the decision be up to the artist? Some artists WILL want to give permission, while others will not, and others may feel neutral. I for one just don't like the idea that every single aesthetic human creation should by default become some sort of publically modifiable entity. I would prefer a world that had a combination of free-to-modify and not-free-to-modify. By proposing the complete elimination of the "unalterable notion of the director as solitary creative genius", YOU are the one advocating an "extremely simplisitic" model, by *removing* options and stating that *everything* should be the way YOU think it should be. Why not have *both* options? A piece of artwork by an individual DOES inherently have aesthetic value derived purely from the fact that it is entirely the creation of that individual, it is his/her "artistic vision", an expression of his/her self; the moment someone else modifies it, it is inherently no longer a personal statement from the artist. How much "human" value would a Van Gogh self-portrait be to the viewer if someone else decides that the brushwork and colours need some "touching up"? It loses one of the very things that makes it valuable, an emotional connection between viewer and the artist himself. Would it really be such a good thing if a company called, say, SanitizedCheerfulArt, decided that Van Goghs portraits were too depressing and might upset kids, and started producing Photoshopped cheerful, happy, colourful versions for parents to hang in homes? What is left?
If I create an artwork, I have some specific idea in my mind, it is a statement of sorts from myself specifically. If Joe Beercan wants to make his own artistic statement, he is already quite free to do it without modifying and redistributing my artistic statement. I do not want Joe Beercan "re-interpretations" of my work floating around.
Am I impinging on Joe Beercan's freedom? No. Why? Because I have not *removed* any of his rights. Much the same as the GPL, when he gets a copy of my artwork, he doesn't lose anything that he had before he got my artwork. As I said, Joe Beercan still has the freedom to make any artistic statement that he wants to. If he is too lazy to create something from scratch, that doesn't mean he should inherently be allowed to just take my stuff to make up for it.
There may be some differences with the movie industry, and the creations may be "less personal", but the principles apply, and the creations ARE still creations of people, even though we might see the movie industry as some sort of giant machine / factory, there are people behind it. Removing Jar-Jar from SW or gratuitous sex scenes planted for purposes of hyping movie sales are one thing, but where do you draw the line? Should anyone be allowed to freely modify and re-sell movies that are "real" artworks, such as Waking Life or Requiem for a Dream? I think we should let the artists decide.
I don't get it. Does anyone but the people doing the writeups actually think MySQL is meant for large scale terabyte databases?
Its simple. A good /. writeup is a well-crafted troll post, i.e, its flamebait. The /. editors know that we will be irresistibly drawn to respond, in order to make the truth clear to the world. Like any good troll post, in fact. On the surface, the writeup looks benign enough, but in many submissions there will be just one semi-idiotic sentence that provides the bait that makes us "bite". Why would they do this? To generate 'lively discussion', to keep people hooked to /., to keep the forums filled. Why? For advertising revenue.
Once you see the pattern, its pretty obvious, /. have been following this formula for a long time now.
There is one important feature of MySQL that most people seem to be forgetting - it is completely free (both, but I'm referring to "as in beer"). Not only does it not cost a cent, but it also indirectly saves me money in other areas, for example, my commercial web site host can offer cheaper hosting by using MySQL. And most typical web site uses are for things like bulletin boards, which do not need "enterprise" databases anyway. My database needs are pretty light, so MySQL suits me perfectly, it would be stupid for me to fork out money for a commercial DB.
I find this whole thread a little "off" in that regard. If McDonalds were giving away free big macs, would people take it seriously if an expensive upper-class restaurant started warning you that you must stay away, because big macs are not as good as their food? Of course, it is useful though to have a good, unbiased technical comparison between the various DBs, so that people can make informed decisions about which to go for. But these should be willing to openly acknowledge that MySQL is a very good choice for many low-end applications.
IMO MySQL is an excellent DB for small, everyday, non-mission-critical applications. If you need a "serious" robust DB, with advanced clustering, then buy a commercial one. Of course it would be nice if MySQL was as good as MS/IBM/Oracle etc, but reality is reality.
And it completely falls apart when you want to change the type or scope of a variable, for example, to enhance a program
Don't you think "completely falls apart" is a bit overly dramatic? It usually takes less than a minute to change the prefixes with a search and replace. Even if the programmer is too lazy or too rushed to change a name here and there, its hardly the catastrophe you imply it to be. Its still useful at least 100 times more often than it "falls apart". Especially if you spend any non-negligible amount of time in other people's code. Most people who have worked on any large project probably do.
I was someone who was introduced to it kicking and screaming, but eventually I came around
Most people I know who initially balked at Hungarian, liked it after actually learning it and using it for a while.
As you say, it is incredibly useful when working on large software projects. If you've only ever worked on very small projects (e.g. less than 30,000 lines and only one, maybe two developers) it probably isn't quite as useful, but as soon as projects get too large for one person to know and remember everything that is going on, and you have to spend time debugging other peoples' code, it becomes much harder to program without it.
Most people I know who hate Hungarian notation also don't actually know Hungarian notation, or understand the reason it is there. If you're going to hate something, at least take the time out to learn it, so that you can actually understand why you hate it. If you don't even know something, you probably don't know enough about it to know why it should (or should not) be hated. This applies to many things in life, actually. Don't say you dislike something unless you can back it up with a good reason.
A "typical web page on a news site"? OK, I'll bite. Here is a breakdown of cnn.com:
HTML+CSS+JS: 95.7 KB
IMAGES: 91.6 KB
The html alone: 47.41 KB
Sorry, but the size of the images are still overshadowed by the HTML+stylesheet and Javascript. There are fewer images than web page code. There are certainly NOT "orders of magnitude" more images than HTML.
And it gets *worse* if you click on the stories. The main story on cnn.com right now has 56 KB of images and 122 KB of web page code!
Go do the math, check out some web pages, and you will see that you are just plain wrong. You are basing your opinion on the conventional wisdom, "common sense", intuitive idea that the HTML is typically only a fraction of the images. Its wrong. And we don't even need to sit and argue about it, you can head straight to web sites like CNN.com and prove it for yourself.
And a non-negligible percentage of the slashdot html source of any /. page is still redundant whitespace.
Actually, I wasn't proposing trying to *quit* GIFs altogether. If you have animated GIFs, just stick with the GIF. There really is currently no other reasonable, open standard for animated images that is supported by the major browsers. But I wasn't talking about patent issues at all..
Let me emphasize this: I wasn't advocating PNG because of the patent issues. I was advocating PNG out of entirely pragmatic concerns: a bandwidth saving on images of typically between 10 and 50 percent. This must surely make sense even to all the people out there who neither know nor care about the patent issues.
I was specifically only talking about non-animated GIFs, and primarily also GIFs with no transparency (due to some of the slightly older IE versions struggling with it). This is a totally rough thumbsuck guess, but I'm guessing that this is probably more than 30 % of the GIFs out there.
I do have an opinion on the patent issue, but that is entirely beside the point - I am simply trying to be practical, so I kept that issue completely out of my post. Most people are far more likely to be swayed by solid, practical arguments (such as bandwidth saving, faster downloads etc) than by moral or economic/financial concerns (such as the GIF patent).
Everyone seems to always be trying to convince webpage developers to switch over from GIF "due to patent issues", and seem to often forget that PNGs tend to actually also be smaller (or its added as an afterthought). Its no wonder people aren't interested. Most people don't give a crap about the patent issue.
So I say (to webpage developers), forget about the patent issues: use PNG because it just plain makes sense to do so. Smaller files = more space available on your host and less bandwidth used. Less bandwidth and space used by your host = lower prices on average for you (because your hosts b/w costs will be lower on average, and web-hosting is a competitive market) and faster downloads for your users. The tools to make PNGs are easily available, free, and quick and easy to use. Everybody wins.
Out of interest, related to this: SecuritySpace does web surveys that include what percentage of sites use which image formats etc: http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.200 208/techpen.html.
PNG is steadily growing, but very slowly.
The average page uses at least an order of magnitude more data for its images than the html
You'd be surprised. This exact page itself (the slashdot page to the parent comment of your comment): The HTML is 26 KB, and the images on the page ADD UP TO 12.4 KB. Moreover, the images will be cached by the browser locally, or by a proxy, and thus will only be downloaded *once* for each comment I view. The HTML, on the other hand, must be downloaded fresh for *every single comment* I view on slashdot. So after an hour of browsing /., you've probably downloaded at *least* an order of magnitude more html than images.
And do a "view source" .. these pages can be optimized quite a bit.
Most people just think of the HTML as being only a tiny fraction of the download size, and thats why most webpage developers don't even think to optimize their HTML.
Agreed, some pages have pretty horrifically unoptimal html. I've seen HTML files that are 40% or more just *redundant whitespace* (e.g. from heavy indentation, spaces, not tabs, that sort of thing).
I suspect a fair amount of bw could also be saved if webpage developers replaced all their non-animated GIFs with 8-bit PNGs. I replaced all the GIFs on my web page (probably about 50 or so) with PNGs, and it reduced the average size of the images by about 30-35%. In some cases files were almost 50% smaller. Not once was the PNG larger than the GIF.
Of the tools I've tried, the ImageMagick (which comes with RedHat and is available on Windows too) "convert" utility seems to consistently produce the smallest PNG files (Photoshop's are always slightly larger because they add "Adobe" and some other crap to the header comments).
Its easy to convert large numbers of files using tools like ImageMagick, so there really is no excuse for web page developers not to use it. Photoshop also has a batch-converter, AFAIK.
"Web browsers don't support" is not an excuse anymore, unless you have alpha (specifically multiple levels of transparency), which some of the older browsers didn't handle so well.
Many web pages have simple, no-transparency, no-animation GIFs. These could all be PNGs. The site http://www.worldofspectrum.org/, as an example, has an archive which includes screenshots of thousands of ZX spectrum loading screens etc.
No, because then just about anyone could get patents on all sorts of things that they've put no effort into. Generally, you don't really patent an *idea*, you patent a *technique* for *implementing* some idea. That technique must be new, and must be non-obvious *to someone skilled in the field* (at the time the invention was devised .. e.g. the internal combustion engine might be well understood by any mechanic today, but *at the time it was invented* it was not obvious to others 'skilled in the arts'). I haven't looked, but I'd guess that this patent isn't on the idea of an invisilibity cloak, but on some specific technique of implementing one. It sounds pretty dubious to me though.
Here is something that I believe more programmers (myself included :/) should do more: when asked to work ridiculous hours (due to poor project management and/or unrealistic promises to the client etc), JUST SAY NO. When you've done your 8 hours for the day, GO HOME.
Employer/employee relations are a lot like any other human relationship - people will get away with whatever they are ALLOWED to get away with, and will take advantage of you wherever they can. If you keep saying "yes" to your boss, and working 15-hour days, he will keep on doing this, simply because he will quickly learn that it *works*.
Don't let your boss steamroll all over you, because that is what he is doing. He is taking advantage of you.
If you keep telling him "no", he will soon learn that he can't keep doing this. When the project runs late (which it *will* the first few times you try this :), explain that it wasn't your fault, you did all you reasonably could. Explain to your boss why the project ran late (poor project management, ignoring estimates, promising ridiculous deadlines to the client etc etc). Explain it to him again and again, because he will not listen the first time you do so, but if you explain it often enough, he will start to learn. Also, don't wait until after the deadline to explain it. Start talking about it from the moment you realise you cannot make a project deadline, and keep discussing it again and again. Discuss the reasons why you aren't going to make the deadline. Eventually, your employer will start to learn.
Just start saying "no". You don't need to be rude about it, just be calmly and reasonably assertive. You won't get fired (*). (Probably not, anyway, unless your boss is a real dick, in which case you should get another job anyway). Its often not as easy as it sounds, but I'm sure you'll find that you'll feel better afterwards than if you allowed yourself to be walked all over yet again.
I'm not saying that you should *never* work hard hours. I think there will always be "crunch times", where you have to put in a few extra hours a day. But thats what they should be and remain, "crunch times". If they become an almost-permanent part of the way your company operates, something is wrong.
(*) Disclaimer: if you do get fired, its your own responsibility, not mine :)
I am also skeptical of the AIDS figures that are coming out of poor nations. Even if the doc in the subject is wrong about lack of actual testing it does make you wonder about the methodology. If the country doesn't have enough money to buy drugs to fight the disease then how do they afford to test everyone at over $100 a pop?
Well, with statistics, you don't need to test everyone to get quite accurate numbers. If you know what you are doing (i.e. you understand and know how to choose good "representative samples" from the population), you can do it statistically and be fairly accurate. Statistically, you actually only really *need* to sample a small percentage of a population to be able to extrapolate the results reliably within a low error margin.
It is of course not so simple though. There is very wide variation of living conditions over small geographical distances all over S.A, and a sample from one area can be completely useless as a representative sample of another area just a few kilometers/miles away.
So, for this and other reasons, you are correct, the numbers are often "suspect". If you look at some of the different AIDS studies carried out in SA, you see quite different numbers - especially the numbers attempting to predict 5/10 years into the future. Generally though, even the most conservative numbers out there rate as quite a horrible disaster (numbers are always at least in the millions).
Might 3rd world countries inflate the figures in order to attract more international aid? Quite possibly. Probably, in fact. Keep in mind though that there are numerous studies, some of which are (supposedly) independent, and I doubt that any of these governments has the power to secretly taint ALL of them.
The international aid coming in for HIV/AIDS is very very low. Occasionally rich countries give "token" donations, making sure to generate a lot of PR hype, in order to look good, but the amounts they usually give are pocket change compare to what is estimated to be required to fight aids. And corrupt recipient governments still siphon off big chunks of the little money that does come in :(. If the first world really wanted to cure AIDS, we'd be a lot further by now, if not at a cure already, IMO. The US for example spends $300 billion a year on its military. Imagine if just one percent of that could be spent on the problem of AIDS. The first world (governments) don't *really* care. Now, I'm not saying they *should* care, since it is "our" problem, they don't have to give a single cent of their money if they don't want to. But it would be nice if we lived in a world where they did want to.
Although its not as if AIDS doesn't affect the US either, about 20000 people die each year in the US from AIDS, which is still a lot of people.
The people in South Africa have lived that way for thousands of years, and have NEVER had any sort of epidemic like this
Thats not true. Poverty/malnutrition only became a problem of statistically significant magnitude in indigenous African societies fairly long *after* the initial arrival of Europeans. Up until around the 1700's, African civilisations were both very successful as well as very rapidly growing (expanding southwards - the Bantu (i.e. not San) Africans only actually arrived in South Africa a few hundred years before the Europeans). They had a successful agricultural (farming) society, growing crops and raising domesticated animals. They used to store grain during better times, to tide them over during the dry season and during droughts. Occasionally times would get tough during severe droughts (only in the areas that tend to get these droughts of course, i.e. the SA highveld (Sotho people, Venda people etc), and not really the east coast (Nguni people, i.e. Zulu, Xhosa)), but in general they had no malnutrition/starvation problems.
The San and Khoi Khoi (Bushmen) were not part of the Bantu migrations, they have been living in SA for tens of thousands of years, and are divided into two groups - nomadic (hunter-gatherers that move around), and agricultural (stay in one place and farm). (These are not strictly divided groups; there is evidence to suggest that these groups often mixed and people from one group would move over to the other, etc). The Bushmen are not starving though either. In fact, studies have shown that the Bushmen, in spite of living in semi-desert, actually have to spend LESS time than modern Westerners on "basic survival" and have more time to devote to aesthetic pursuits, such as art/music etc. Granted, they do not have the benefits of technology that we do (e.g. modern medicine), but my point is that they are not starving.
and have NEVER had any sort of epidemic like this
Thats not strictly true either; Malaria in Africa has over the years wiped out far many more Africans than AIDS probably ever will.
I agree with you about the spread of AIDS in SA. These people are getting AIDS because, by and large, they screw around a lot and don't use protection. That is of course entirely their own fault. Even the poorest of poor here in SA must by now know about AIDS, that it kills, and how it spreads.
Haven't you noticed that "good" slashdot story blurbs often seem to end with a semi-dimwitted last sentence? The blurbs often sound quite mundane and sensible until you hit the last sentence, simmering with nonsensical ambiguities or confused or fanciful ramblings that -almost- seem *designed* to provoke. This last line is usually the "hook" that pushes readers to click on "Read More", eager to respond, or to view other responses to the last sentence. These /. stories are like high quality trolls. They aren't completely obvious like most of the "lesser" trolls you will find in the forums themselves. Once you notice the pattern, it becomes quite obvious/predictable. I am quite sure that the /. editors specifically choose this type of "almost-trollish" submission over others - to increase readership (much the same way as troll posts in any online forum, which typically have disproportionately large number of replies). Increased readership means increased advertising revenue. If you've ever wondered why your submission got rejected while someone else submitted the same story and got accepted, it may be because you didn't include a provocative, semi-idiotic-but-not-obviously-deliberately-idioti c last sentence.
what are the odds that a determined phsycopathic Anthrax killer just got bored ?
Or, perhaps, that a determined psychopathic Anthrax killer caught Anthrax :)
10 megs is less than an hour to d/l on a 56k, on a clear day even 45 minutes. Sorry, but someone complaining that that is just too long to wait for a download, is just being nitpicky for the *sake* of being nitpicky.
10 megs is tiny. An IE download is about six times that size, if I remember correctly, and is only a browser.
These people have been busting their butts on the software for 4.5 years, I can't believe someone will complain "sorry an hour is too long to wait to download the thing". Mozilla is a huge project, over 200 MB of source and over 6000 source code files.
Additionally, although you'll never hear a company like MS or Adobe admit it, a certain amount of piracy is actually good for business.
One of the (numerous) reasons, for example, that Microsoft Windows remains so firmly entrenched, is precisely that kids can pirate it so easily - because they can pirate it, they install it, and subsequently learn how to use it. Fewer than 1% of people will ever bother to go through the effort of learning another system once they've learned some particular system, and because Windows is so easy to come by, and because everyone else is using it, they install that. And then when they get a bit older, and start working, the companies will get Windows because thats what the people know, and the companies will pay for it. Consider: how many schoolkids can really afford Windows? In my country at least, a copy of Windows will cost you more than the average monthly salary of an employed adult here. If schoolkids could not pirate Windows, they would simply use something else before paying for Windows, and Microsoft can definitely not afford to have 50% or more of schoolkids start learning (e.g.) Linux instead.
I strongly believe that if nobody had cracked Windows XP, Microsoft would have (anonymously) released a crack for it themselves. If they didn't, they would have lost many people to other OSs.
The same happens in more niche markets, like 3DS MAX. Kids who are interested in animation tend to end up learning the package that they could most easily get hold of pirated (how many can afford to cough up $3500 for a copy of MAX? virtually none). As it turns out, 3DS MAX is about the easiest 3D package to get a pirated copy of. Those same kids then end up doing animation for companies who are obliged to pay for the software, and the companies buy MAX *because* the animators know MAX. Every single person I know who is now doing MAX work on a legal company-owned version, learned the software on a pirated copy before they started working (i.e. while at school, university etc). Newer versions of MAX actually have poorer copy protectection than older versions.
It is for the same reasons that many companies provide legal, limited license "student versions" of their products - to get them entrenched in the market.
Usually when Microsoft does something that looks incredibly stupid on the surface, like this, they have some sort of scheme behind it where it makes sense, and it usually requires a fairly deep analysis to figure out what they're up to.
On a different note, the fact that this company can even say things like this in public without even having to worry that it might hurt their sales a bit should be very telling by itself. We seem to have reached a point where anyone can reveal any information about how terrible Microsoft products are, and Microsoft's sales are unaffected in the least.