Yes, I saw that even before posting, I know it is the same guy. Nevertheless I found the concept original (never saw it before). And above that it was damned funny.
Even if I reply to joke.... /dev/null does exist in NT, actually it existed in DOS before that. I use it all the time in NT login scripts and the like (cmd/bat). It simply is called NUL. Windows/DOS has a some special filenames like NUL, CON, PRN, LPT1, and probably more.
None of you ever created a textfile this way?
G:\TEMP> COPY CON TEST.TXT Just write a text here ^Z 1 file(s) copied.
G:\TEMP>
Oh, besides under NT you can use the 2?gt; redirection for the error streams too. Very useful.
Best laugh I had in ages on slashot, a genuine conversation between Batmann and Robinn...:-)
Oh, besides Batmann, you should preview your post because "Lunix" is a "Linux" for C64. You need to set the example for the youngsters watching your show.
Okay moderators...listen up: how can a post be "overrated" when it has not been moderated at all before! Besides, if I recall NetHack correclty (and the parent post was a reference to it), there is a "Tourist" choice as a charachter. Don't you see the parallells? Tssss.... no humour those bloody moderators.
Some moderator really loves the "Overrated" moderation, I get that one waaaaaaay too much. Pffff...you are a lamo! At least moderate me Flamebait or Troll. Overrated? What an humiliation. I never rate anyone overrated.
I know: I said that in my post... I said it was hosted on xs4all.nl:-) Never mind, I misread posts all the time.
And the other idiot AC with his Belgian waffles and French toast wasn't me. I don't post anonymously. On the other hand French Fries were invented in Belgium. Not that it matters to the discussion.
Now this kid was of course not very responsible, but what is worse: his parents aren't acting responsible either! I think he should have gotten grounded and forced to pay his own next car. (Let him suffer).
Look, I did my share of stupidities in my life (and probably aren't done) and I crashed my first car after 5 months. This was of course an old second hand car I bought myself. What I didn't tell you that is that I crashed because of alcohol. You'd think losing the car would be punishment enough? Forget it, I was grounded for 8 months and my parents said I wasn't allowed to buy a new car during that period. And you know, what? I respect my parents more because they stood firm!
No beatings? Between children? You can be sure they won't tell you... I went to a private school that is probably as snobistic as the one you work for (note: I did not fit in at all), and I sure can tell you there were beatings. Well, I was beaten up quite some times.
The three year old laptops are horribly outdated. Of course it could be that a laptop bought today will not be outdated in three years, but I fear that this will not be true. I'll just tell you my experience with 3 year old laptops: the company I work for has many 3 year old laptops and the consultants that have them complain all the time they are too slow, crash, and what I know. That are fine P-III machines with 64Meg RAM (some with 128Meg RAM). These guys don't run development stuff or heavy 3D but as you say: the latest Office, a browser, Lotus Notes and MP3 players. Yet thay complain. The problem is not that you and I can keep these babies running at peak performance: the problem is that a PC that has not been properly maintained (kids are normal users, remember?) does not function well anymore. Oh, that and of course that the users are exposed (at home for example) to better machines and expect the same from their own gear. Speed often just lies in perception. For the Macs, I cannot tell. I'm relatively new to the Mac world (I had my first one for about 6 month), but I think that 3 years ago iBooks were those horrible orange thingies. I don't know what CPU they had...could be a G3, but I don't think so. What I do know is that in the Mac world anything before G3 is considered obsolete. I suppose that within the 2 years, when the G5 comes out, that the G3 will be obsoleted and not supported by Mac OS XI. That of course will be the day I install Linux PPC.
I will believe your statements about taking responsibility. I only can say: they should. Is discipline so much to ask for nowadays?
I agree about cheap laptops. I never buy cheap laptops either, but this is for kids! You don't buy your kids a brand new Mercedes CLK when they just get their license, but you buy them a second hand Civic...to learn. (Actually you shouldn't buy a car for your kids, they should work and buy one themselves to get a grip on the value of money -- but I'm deviating)
The three year warranty thing is moot. Even if the laptops survive the torture of these kids, the laptops will be outdated within the two years that come. Besides, how will you manage the fact that the youngest ones always will have the best laptops, since they just got a new one and the kid three years higher has to do with his three-year old laptop, but undoubltly it is he who needs the best laptop. Smells really bad to me: older kids beating up the newcomers to get their laptops.
I disagree about that kids aren't held responsible in public schools. I for a fact *know* they are held responsible for their acts, but then I'm European which would be *the* main difference. The United States has a culture of avoiding responsibility, judging from the many silly lawsuits.
Yup, indeed: I oversaw "The Dutch webzine Radikal". That is indeed a mistake of the slashdot guys. (And I was to fast critisinging you) However, the articles of Radikal were published on a.nl server (xs4all.nl) and to my knowlegde not on any.de server.
Not that I mind too much, from all the other postings it seems that half of the posters don't even know where.nl is and that it's called "The Netherlands" (not "Holland") and that they talk "Dutch" there. Germany seems to be easier to locate for the slashdotter though.
Sorry, if you actually had bothered to *read* the article you'd know that the website is Dutch and that the Judge who made the decision is Dutch too. All this stuff happens in The Netherlands. It is just that the Deutsche Bahn (German) filed suit againt Indymedia (a Dutch company) in a Dutch court.
German is not Dutch indeed (and it is a common mistake), but the annoucement was 100% correct.
Too bad it didn't help. Oh, well, I have seen similar things happen: parents who buy a expensive system for their kids in order that their kids "learn computers". The only thing their kids ever did on the machine was play games (it's a long time ago, the internet wasn't "there" yet) What a waste of money.
I just hope the parents of the kids attending the school where you work are wealthy, because neither Thinkpads nor iBooks and certainly not the G4 Powerbooks are cheap in my eyes. Actually the best thing to do would be to settle for the iBook (everyone the same! we don't want jealousy) and have a contract with Apple in order to get them cheaper. I'm pretty sure that Apple would love such contracts. And an iBook is a sweet little machine, typing on one right now.
It doesn't change my point of view that laptops don't belong in the hands of schoolgoing teenagers. (And according to your other posts, you seem to agree).
Didn't you try to talk reason to the people who decided this? I know I would have tried.
Back when I was at school we didn't have computers at school and it was perfectly reasonable to return your assignment written by hand. Of course, I didn't do that for I had a computer... but that were the good old days when Macs, Amiga's and DOS-based PC's roamed the world.
I just laughed out loud and the whole office thinks I now completely lost my mind. Oh, well they thought this before anyway. The description just fits me accurately.
Now, I'll be going back to my underground smelling GNU/Linux life.
I hardly think those cute girls want to see me naked: I however want to see them naked;-) Besides, I heard people use webcams to chat naked. Anyone knows how to intercept those streams *grin*?
(I was the Anonymous poster - accidentally clicked "Post Anonymously" *sigh*)
(to the AC) If what you say is even remotely true you should report this school. Well, a European would report this school to the authorities....a American would do it the American way: Just sue...provided of course that you could prove your assertions.
Schooling is about merit and good work, not about skin-colour.
Same here....I was on a project (much less complicated than yours) that "needed" to replace an Electronic Document Management system out of fear for the Y2K bug. Well the existing applicationg using diskless XT stations as clients and a small Novell server for storage was working perfectly. You know those text-based clients with lots of shortcuts, ideal for the users (secretaries).
Now enter the Y2K bug and "someone" decides the system is obsolete and wants it replaced. Replaced by Windows NT Server running Oracle, clients running Windows NT workstation with a custom Delphi application and of course the documents should be stored in the Word format in the database (Yuk!). That's not the only problem: the nice secretaries wanted *exact* the same shortcuts as the old application, yet it had to be a full-blown windows application. You imagine the mess... It works quite well, but I'm still ashamed of some of the bugs and kludges they have to live with. Yes, occasionaly I have to do maintenance on it because I still work for the company that made the product. (Back in 1998/1999)
Note that the more I think of it, we should have chosen a Unix platform with Oracle, a simplified markup language for the documents and lots of X-Terminals for the secretaries. But of course, back then fresh out of school I didn't dare to tell what I thought to my superiors.
Oh, and I bet that the XT/Novell application would still work despite the 1900 date representation: they make reports and on the old reports they just printed the last two numbers anyway...so 2000 would have displayed as 00. Nobody would have noticed.;-)
The terms you are looking for are Syntax Error versus Semantic Error . I just point it out because you can have a syntax error in a non-compiled language (Basic, anyone recall?), and you can have a Semantic Error without that your program crashes during the dreaded Runtime error. This was indeed one of the first things taught at University: syntax error - easy to fix/find and easy to avoid (yet I still forget the occasional semicolon), and semantic error - hard to fix/find and easy to avoid (provided you thought about your design).
Any school not teaching these idea's, isn't doing any good to it's students.
Of course not....They just will have to play on the current buzzwords! They should sell a MP3/P2P package (okay, make that WMA/P2P). Put in CD, rip to internal harddisk, load Kazaa-like software and share over the Microsoft Network. I bet that would be popular...
Has there ever been a slashdot article about females??? I missed that one out.;-P
To stay halfway on topic: why don't you guy use integer constants and a switch...so much easier...
The only EA games I ever played were the Need For Speed Series...now that in network mode is just screaming. Does that qualify as "sports games", I never understood how it could be fun to play soccer/basketball/skateboard on a computer. Especially team-sports are obscure to me: how can you control 11 players at the same time?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I saw that even before posting, I know it is the same guy. Nevertheless I found the concept original (never saw it before). And above that it was damned funny.
None of you ever created a textfile this way?
Oh, besides under NT you can use the 2?gt; redirection for the error streams too. Very useful.
Oh, besides Batmann, you should preview your post because "Lunix" is a "Linux" for C64. You need to set the example for the youngsters watching your show.
Okay moderators...listen up: how can a post be "overrated" when it has not been moderated at all before!
Besides, if I recall NetHack correclty (and the parent post was a reference to it), there is a "Tourist" choice as a charachter. Don't you see the parallells? Tssss.... no humour those bloody moderators.
...did they find the Amulet of Yendor?
Some moderator really loves the "Overrated" moderation, I get that one waaaaaaay too much. Pffff...you are a lamo! At least moderate me Flamebait or Troll. Overrated? What an humiliation. I never rate anyone overrated.
I know: I said that in my post... I said it was hosted on xs4all.nl :-) Never mind, I misread posts all the time.
And the other idiot AC with his Belgian waffles and French toast wasn't me. I don't post anonymously. On the other hand French Fries were invented in Belgium. Not that it matters to the discussion.
Now this kid was of course not very responsible, but what is worse: his parents aren't acting responsible either! I think he should have gotten grounded and forced to pay his own next car. (Let him suffer).
Look, I did my share of stupidities in my life (and probably aren't done) and I crashed my first car after 5 months. This was of course an old second hand car I bought myself. What I didn't tell you that is that I crashed because of alcohol. You'd think losing the car would be punishment enough? Forget it, I was grounded for 8 months and my parents said I wasn't allowed to buy a new car during that period.
And you know, what? I respect my parents more because they stood firm!
The three year old laptops are horribly outdated. Of course it could be that a laptop bought today will not be outdated in three years, but I fear that this will not be true. I'll just tell you my experience with 3 year old laptops: the company I work for has many 3 year old laptops and the consultants that have them complain all the time they are too slow, crash, and what I know. That are fine P-III machines with 64Meg RAM (some with 128Meg RAM). These guys don't run development stuff or heavy 3D but as you say: the latest Office, a browser, Lotus Notes and MP3 players. Yet thay complain. The problem is not that you and I can keep these babies running at peak performance: the problem is that a PC that has not been properly maintained (kids are normal users, remember?) does not function well anymore. Oh, that and of course that the users are exposed (at home for example) to better machines and expect the same from their own gear. Speed often just lies in perception.
For the Macs, I cannot tell. I'm relatively new to the Mac world (I had my first one for about 6 month), but I think that 3 years ago iBooks were those horrible orange thingies. I don't know what CPU they had...could be a G3, but I don't think so. What I do know is that in the Mac world anything before G3 is considered obsolete. I suppose that within the 2 years, when the G5 comes out, that the G3 will be obsoleted and not supported by Mac OS XI. That of course will be the day I install Linux PPC.
I will believe your statements about taking responsibility. I only can say: they should. Is discipline so much to ask for nowadays?
The three year warranty thing is moot. Even if the laptops survive the torture of these kids, the laptops will be outdated within the two years that come. Besides, how will you manage the fact that the youngest ones always will have the best laptops, since they just got a new one and the kid three years higher has to do with his three-year old laptop, but undoubltly it is he who needs the best laptop. Smells really bad to me: older kids beating up the newcomers to get their laptops.
I disagree about that kids aren't held responsible in public schools. I for a fact *know* they are held responsible for their acts, but then I'm European which would be *the* main difference. The United States has a culture of avoiding responsibility, judging from the many silly lawsuits.
Not that I mind too much, from all the other postings it seems that half of the posters don't even know where .nl is and that it's called "The Netherlands" (not "Holland") and that they talk "Dutch" there. Germany seems to be easier to locate for the slashdotter though.
Once upon a time there was a dragon, whenever you chopped of it's head two new one popped out...well, that is how the internet works."
German is not Dutch indeed (and it is a common mistake), but the annoucement was 100% correct.
What a waste of money.
I just hope the parents of the kids attending the school where you work are wealthy, because neither Thinkpads nor iBooks and certainly not the G4 Powerbooks are cheap in my eyes. Actually the best thing to do would be to settle for the iBook (everyone the same! we don't want jealousy) and have a contract with Apple in order to get them cheaper. I'm pretty sure that Apple would love such contracts. And an iBook is a sweet little machine, typing on one right now.
It doesn't change my point of view that laptops don't belong in the hands of schoolgoing teenagers. (And according to your other posts, you seem to agree).
Sickening....
Didn't you try to talk reason to the people who decided this? I know I would have tried.
Back when I was at school we didn't have computers at school and it was perfectly reasonable to return your assignment written by hand. Of course, I didn't do that for I had a computer... but that were the good old days when Macs, Amiga's and DOS-based PC's roamed the world.
Perhaps they could try to build their own breeder reactor . You know, you just need some duct tape and a some smoke-detectors. ;-)
I just laughed out loud and the whole office thinks I now completely lost my mind. Oh, well they thought this before anyway. The description just fits me accurately.
Now, I'll be going back to my underground smelling GNU/Linux life.
Besides, I heard people use webcams to chat naked. Anyone knows how to intercept those streams *grin*?
(I was the Anonymous poster - accidentally clicked "Post Anonymously" *sigh*)
Schooling is about merit and good work, not about skin-colour.
Now enter the Y2K bug and "someone" decides the system is obsolete and wants it replaced. Replaced by Windows NT Server running Oracle, clients running Windows NT workstation with a custom Delphi application and of course the documents should be stored in the Word format in the database (Yuk!). That's not the only problem: the nice secretaries wanted *exact* the same shortcuts as the old application, yet it had to be a full-blown windows application. You imagine the mess...
It works quite well, but I'm still ashamed of some of the bugs and kludges they have to live with. Yes, occasionaly I have to do maintenance on it because I still work for the company that made the product. (Back in 1998/1999)
Note that the more I think of it, we should have chosen a Unix platform with Oracle, a simplified markup language for the documents and lots of X-Terminals for the secretaries. But of course, back then fresh out of school I didn't dare to tell what I thought to my superiors.
Oh, and I bet that the XT/Novell application would still work despite the 1900 date representation: they make reports and on the old reports they just printed the last two numbers anyway...so 2000 would have displayed as 00. Nobody would have noticed. ;-)
This was indeed one of the first things taught at University: syntax error - easy to fix/find and easy to avoid (yet I still forget the occasional semicolon), and semantic error - hard to fix/find and easy to avoid (provided you thought about your design).
Any school not teaching these idea's, isn't doing any good to it's students.
Well, it would step on some toes though ;-)
Oh, the only thing I'm interested in is getting into "Her Box"(TM)....For the rest I don't care :-)
Has there ever been a slashdot article about females??? I missed that one out. ;-P
To stay halfway on topic: why don't you guy use integer constants and a switch...so much easier...
The only EA games I ever played were the Need For Speed Series...now that in network mode is just screaming. Does that qualify as "sports games", I never understood how it could be fun to play soccer/basketball/skateboard on a computer. Especially team-sports are obscure to me: how can you control 11 players at the same time?
Of course it is.... But they could have picked a prettier girl. (Yes, I know: the police uniform and the spreading makes 100% of the joke)