With the emphasis on "distant", e.g. about the same time we get Star Trek replicator technology.
In my lifetime, I expect to continue to see some reasonable freely distributable games, but the vast majority of games that I want to play will be proprietary. It's clearly very difficult to get large free software movements going. They've typically coalesced around projects that are of great interest to software engineers. Good games require not just some programmers interested in a game, but a lot of people from different disciplines working closely together. It's not impossible, it certainly happens in the modding community, it's just not going to replace proprietary any time (soon).
Try being stopped at a red light in a small car with a truck behind you and having the truck start moving forward and pushing you towards the car in front of you while the light is still red. And try having the truck driver not even know he's hitting you, and his buddy having to tell him there's a problem.
So by your logic, I shouldn't type because I make typos, despite the fact that I "get away with" with typing properly most of the time?
Congratulations! By comparing not paying attention while driving to typing at your desk, you've won today's Slashdot "bad car analogy" prize.
I've got one image in my head, from years ago in downtown San Francisco, of a guy going thru a red light at at least 40 miles an hour, looking out his driver side window, trying to read a street sign. The light had been red for 5 seconds or more. Anyone crossing the street would have certainly been killed.
One of the comments in the blog is that the PC vendors they've been in contact with are NOT seeing increased levels of reports of battery failures. If Win 7 was killing batteries the vendors would have seen an uptick. The MS blog has a pretty clear and convincing explanation as to what they looked at, what the evidence is, and why this is just a case of MS getting crap for doing a better job than they used. Which is certainly the classic "no-win" situation.
Interestingly, no Mac user would ever say "I'm a Mac", but a fairly significant number of people -- including corporation heads -- will say "I'm a PC
So you have really have heard someone say "I'm a PC"? If it's a significant number of people, perhaps you can cite someone? Anyone? Because that "I'm a PC" line has always sounded incredibly stupid and I can't imagine anyone saying it.
As far as the worth of the IPad, it's a little early to tell yet. I tried a Windows Mobile device for about a year and finally gave up on the damn thing and switched to an ITouch, which is a far more satisfying and easy to use device. So I understand the "overall experience" argument. Whether the IPad has that "overall experience" is going to take some time to tell. It sure as hell looks like an ITouch that is too big to easily carry around, and it definitely isn't the fabled convergence device. Whether people want to lug it around in addition to everything else they have... we'll see.
Funny thing, the books, games, CDs, etc aren't free on the IPad. It's a bit like going to Amazon and finding out that I have to buy a book holder for $500, and THEN I get to actually buy books. Funny thing is, that doesn't appeal to me.
Always amazes me how many/.ers see something new and go "ooooo, shiny" without thinking it through.
Other posts in this thread have indicated that in the case of the Challenger, the private company management wanted to fly and overruled their own engineers and told NASA it was ok. It doesn't sound like that disaster advances the cause of private spaceflight.
You're assuming businesses act rationally. A private space company may need to launch to meet this quarter's goals so their execs get their bonuses. Or the company may be tight for funding and if they don't launch, they are going out of business anyway. Businesses do what appear to be crazy, irrational things ALL THE TIME, because there is no "business" or "corporation" as a thinking, breathing entity. They are all run by individuals who have their own motives, and those motives aren't necessarily good ones. They may be rational motives from the individual's point of view, but disasterous for the business.
You mean paying attention to the Republican efforts to monitor everyone and tuck US citizens away in secret prison around the world where there aren't inconvenient notions of freedom?
Having playing EQ for about 5 years and WoW for about 5, I'd say there isn't a whole lot of difference between the intellectual or social capabilities of the two players bases. Remember, the term "drood" came from EQ, not WoW.
So the buildup of troops and tanks, the saber rattling, the "let's drive the Jews into sea" talk, closing a major shipping port, all that was just for fun. No harm, no foul?
You conveniently forget that Israel launched a preemptive strike after Egypt expelled peacekeepers from the Sinai peninsula, closed the Straits of Tiran to ships traveling to Israel and built up an invasion force on the Israeli border. Israel had a choice between waiting for Nasser to decide the time was right to kill Jews, or striking first. And I would imagine most countries would consider having one of their ports closed an act of war. How would the US feel if Russia announced that it would sink any shipping that attempted to enter New York harbor?
I suppose Israel could have taken the moral high ground and waited for an attack. That would certainly make all the anti-Semites out there happy.
As I said, it's up to the courts to decide if his mental state means that he shouldn't be punished. As far as the treaty being unbalanced, as I said, that's a completely seperate issue.
So there are two issues here. You claim the extradition treaty between the US & UK is unbalanced. If true, the UK should press for it to be renogotiated. In the meantime, they need to honor it. Or drop out of it and take whatever consequences occur.
The other issue is a guy who admits to hacking into US computer systems. He may well have a mental defect defense. That's something for the courts to decide.
He may well be bewildered and likeable. Despite what you see on TV, a lot of defendents are bewildered and likeable. Again, something for the court to decide as far as how much (if any) punishment to apply.
It's true, New Hampshire doesn't have a sales tax. It DOES have a sky high property tax that can end up forcing people out of their own homes. Be careful what you wish for.
Well, I'll take no indenting over random indenting. I once had to work through some Perl code that was so ugly that I felt dirty just being in the same directory with the code. Lots of copies of the same code, commenting used as source control, random indenting... at some point I felt like no one could have written such stuff by accident, it had to be malign intent. I think I decided that when I realized that the code was deliberately taking the log output and rewriting the log out of order, which explained why the impossible sequence of events I was seeing in the log.
I forgot to mention my long time friend who grew up in Hong Kong, married a woman from mainland China, and recently came back from a couple of month vacation in China. Lots of interesting stories about visiting relatives, seeing tourist attractions, the economic boom. Other stuff, like how it was way easier for him as an American to get from mainland into Hong Kong than for his wife, a Chinese citizen. So yeah, I'm pretty well informed.
Yeah, I've travelled fairly extensively. Talked to people who lived in East Germany before and after reunification, and they had some interesting points about how in some ways life got worse after the wall came down. So I understand that there's more than what's on Fox News. I'd still prefer to live in a country where I don't have to worry that expressing my political views is going to get me an indeterminate jail sentence.
And I love how I reply to a post that compared the USA and China and get modded as a Troll... nice job.
So WHY were the users of the system entering the hotel without the phone number? Did anyone actually talk to them? If the users are going to be calling the hotel to make reservations, they would certainly be motivated to put the number in... so seems like something beyond "users are idiots" is going on.
Just out of curiosity... did you ever try to find out WHY people were making entries with invalid phone numbers? Is it at all possible that instead of your users being idiots, they HAD to make an entry, but the phone number was one piece of data that simply wasn't available?
If I've learned anything over a lot of years of programming, it's that when your users absolutely insist on doing something contrary to what your program wants them to do, it's time to sit down and listen.
Slashdot Mirror
With the emphasis on "distant", e.g. about the same time we get Star Trek replicator technology.
In my lifetime, I expect to continue to see some reasonable freely distributable games, but the vast majority of games that I want to play will be proprietary. It's clearly very difficult to get large free software movements going. They've typically coalesced around projects that are of great interest to software engineers. Good games require not just some programmers interested in a game, but a lot of people from different disciplines working closely together. It's not impossible, it certainly happens in the modding community, it's just not going to replace proprietary any time (soon).
Try being stopped at a red light in a small car with a truck behind you and having the truck start moving forward and pushing you towards the car in front of you while the light is still red. And try having the truck driver not even know he's hitting you, and his buddy having to tell him there's a problem.
So by your logic, I shouldn't type because I make typos, despite the fact that I "get away with" with typing properly most of the time?
Congratulations! By comparing not paying attention while driving to typing at your desk, you've won today's Slashdot "bad car analogy" prize.
I've got one image in my head, from years ago in downtown San Francisco, of a guy going thru a red light at at least 40 miles an hour, looking out his driver side window, trying to read a street sign. The light had been red for 5 seconds or more. Anyone crossing the street would have certainly been killed.
Huh? That's like saying the data on Linux system is hosed because your kernel image got zapped. All the data is there, you just re-install the O/S.
One of the comments in the blog is that the PC vendors they've been in contact with are NOT seeing increased levels of reports of battery failures. If Win 7 was killing batteries the vendors would have seen an uptick. The MS blog has a pretty clear and convincing explanation as to what they looked at, what the evidence is, and why this is just a case of MS getting crap for doing a better job than they used. Which is certainly the classic "no-win" situation.
You mean my civil right to blow up planes? I'm trying to remember what part of the Constitution that falls under.
Interestingly, no Mac user would ever say "I'm a Mac", but a fairly significant number of people -- including corporation heads -- will say "I'm a PC
So you have really have heard someone say "I'm a PC"? If it's a significant number of people, perhaps you can cite someone? Anyone? Because that "I'm a PC" line has always sounded incredibly stupid and I can't imagine anyone saying it.
As far as the worth of the IPad, it's a little early to tell yet. I tried a Windows Mobile device for about a year and finally gave up on the damn thing and switched to an ITouch, which is a far more satisfying and easy to use device. So I understand the "overall experience" argument. Whether the IPad has that "overall experience" is going to take some time to tell. It sure as hell looks like an ITouch that is too big to easily carry around, and it definitely isn't the fabled convergence device. Whether people want to lug it around in addition to everything else they have... we'll see.
Funny thing, the books, games, CDs, etc aren't free on the IPad. It's a bit like going to Amazon and finding out that I have to buy a book holder for $500, and THEN I get to actually buy books. Funny thing is, that doesn't appeal to me.
Always amazes me how many /.ers see something new and go "ooooo, shiny" without thinking it through.
Other posts in this thread have indicated that in the case of the Challenger, the private company management wanted to fly and overruled their own engineers and told NASA it was ok. It doesn't sound like that disaster advances the cause of private spaceflight.
You're assuming businesses act rationally. A private space company may need to launch to meet this quarter's goals so their execs get their bonuses. Or the company may be tight for funding and if they don't launch, they are going out of business anyway. Businesses do what appear to be crazy, irrational things ALL THE TIME, because there is no "business" or "corporation" as a thinking, breathing entity. They are all run by individuals who have their own motives, and those motives aren't necessarily good ones. They may be rational motives from the individual's point of view, but disasterous for the business.
You mean paying attention to the Republican efforts to monitor everyone and tuck US citizens away in secret prison around the world where there aren't inconvenient notions of freedom?
Having playing EQ for about 5 years and WoW for about 5, I'd say there isn't a whole lot of difference between the intellectual or social capabilities of the two players bases. Remember, the term "drood" came from EQ, not WoW.
So the buildup of troops and tanks, the saber rattling, the "let's drive the Jews into sea" talk, closing a major shipping port, all that was just for fun. No harm, no foul?
You conveniently forget that Israel launched a preemptive strike after Egypt expelled peacekeepers from the Sinai peninsula, closed the Straits of Tiran to ships traveling to Israel and built up an invasion force on the Israeli border. Israel had a choice between waiting for Nasser to decide the time was right to kill Jews, or striking first. And I would imagine most countries would consider having one of their ports closed an act of war. How would the US feel if Russia announced that it would sink any shipping that attempted to enter New York harbor?
I suppose Israel could have taken the moral high ground and waited for an attack. That would certainly make all the anti-Semites out there happy.
As I said, it's up to the courts to decide if his mental state means that he shouldn't be punished. As far as the treaty being unbalanced, as I said, that's a completely seperate issue.
So there are two issues here. You claim the extradition treaty between the US & UK is unbalanced. If true, the UK should press for it to be renogotiated. In the meantime, they need to honor it. Or drop out of it and take whatever consequences occur.
The other issue is a guy who admits to hacking into US computer systems. He may well have a mental defect defense. That's something for the courts to decide.
He may well be bewildered and likeable. Despite what you see on TV, a lot of defendents are bewildered and likeable. Again, something for the court to decide as far as how much (if any) punishment to apply.
Because he admits to hacking into computer systems in the USA. So why shouldn't he be extradited?
It's true, New Hampshire doesn't have a sales tax. It DOES have a sky high property tax that can end up forcing people out of their own homes. Be careful what you wish for.
Well, I'll take no indenting over random indenting. I once had to work through some Perl code that was so ugly that I felt dirty just being in the same directory with the code. Lots of copies of the same code, commenting used as source control, random indenting... at some point I felt like no one could have written such stuff by accident, it had to be malign intent. I think I decided that when I realized that the code was deliberately taking the log output and rewriting the log out of order, which explained why the impossible sequence of events I was seeing in the log.
I forgot to mention my long time friend who grew up in Hong Kong, married a woman from mainland China, and recently came back from a couple of month vacation in China. Lots of interesting stories about visiting relatives, seeing tourist attractions, the economic boom. Other stuff, like how it was way easier for him as an American to get from mainland into Hong Kong than for his wife, a Chinese citizen. So yeah, I'm pretty well informed.
Yeah, I've travelled fairly extensively. Talked to people who lived in East Germany before and after reunification, and they had some interesting points about how in some ways life got worse after the wall came down. So I understand that there's more than what's on Fox News. I'd still prefer to live in a country where I don't have to worry that expressing my political views is going to get me an indeterminate jail sentence.
And I love how I reply to a post that compared the USA and China and get modded as a Troll... nice job.
And yet, somehow, I'd still rather live in the United States... odd.
Yeah, although if you read the comments with the article, it's not clear whether the GPL version didn't start off life from MSDN sample code.
So WHY were the users of the system entering the hotel without the phone number? Did anyone actually talk to them? If the users are going to be calling the hotel to make reservations, they would certainly be motivated to put the number in... so seems like something beyond "users are idiots" is going on.
Just out of curiosity... did you ever try to find out WHY people were making entries with invalid phone numbers? Is it at all possible that instead of your users being idiots, they HAD to make an entry, but the phone number was one piece of data that simply wasn't available?
If I've learned anything over a lot of years of programming, it's that when your users absolutely insist on doing something contrary to what your program wants them to do, it's time to sit down and listen.