If you think PS rips off Bash, then you haven't used one or the other. There are a bunch of things I *don't* like about PS (and actually I don't really use it, but I don't do sysadmin stuff either), but the object piping is awesome.
Actually I guess it would be more precise to say that I really don't want to run Windows, but it tends to piss me off a little less than Linux, BSD, etc. I actually hate both. (I can't speak to OS X; I haven't used it enough. Of course, Apple also refuses to either sell me a copy of OS X I can use on a non-Apple computer* or offer a mid-range, non-all-in-one desktop, so that's not going to change soon either.)
* Sure, I could set up a hackintosh. But I figure that if a company doesn't want me to give them money, I won't.
Of course the difference is that there are millenia of people practicing medicine, and a couple centuries of people doing it well. How much history is there of people predicting earthquakes with any accuracy in a reliable manner? None. There's almost no way that this could be interpreted as negligence.
A) I might have to take back what I said; I thought I remembered stories of jailbroken iPhones that got bricked by an Apple update, but apparently those were carrier unlocked phones (which are a different matter). I thought that there was a nontrivial risk with jailbreaking your phone (in terms of ending up with a dead phone), but it seems that's not the case.
B) Webapps are a really poor substitute for local ones, at least for the reason that they won't work if you don't have reception. (And yes, this IS definitely an issue.)
That's a really good question. One possible answer is this: closed gaming consoles (which is what I assume you're alluding to; it's about the only thing you can be) have been the norm for decades now. (Even the original NES had a lockout chip in an attempt to prevent unlicensed games.) By contrast, the iPhone brought forth a new level of control over the platform that didn't really exist before. You never needed any approval to run software on Palms or WinMo or Symbian, and you don't need an approval to run software on Android or Maemo. The iPhone is really in a class of its own, rather than continuing the norm.
So yes, as you say "locked in systems have been around for more than a decade", but not really in the same market as Apple's locked-in systems.
"It's always been like this so it's okay" is a pretty poor argument for not changing, but it does provide a little bit of an excuse. Paving the way into censorship is a much worse position than following into it.
Price to high on board video and 2gb ram + core 2 at that price??
Yeah. I mean, 75% of why I'd want a computer hooked up to the TV is so I could play video games on the TV. Why cripple it with a crappy video chipset?
Or maybe more to the point, why the hell doesn't Apple sell a mid-range desktop? Something that is (1) not all-in-one (so not the iMac), (2) has decent specs (so not the Mini), and yet (3) is affordable (so not the Mac Pro)?
I'm not saying I'd necessarily get one (I'd have to actually see the offering before deciding), but if they don't sell them I'm definitely not going to.
I whine and complain about 98% of the software I use, but Lightroom just works really smoothly. I have very few complaints about it. (I have about 35 GBs of Canon RAW images in my LR database for point of reference.)
This is true... but at the same time, saying ACE "competes" is a little bit strong of a statement. The other commitments of the people on the team means that they don't get nearly the practice time of any of the other teams, and it definitely shows. I mean, look at the rankings in the latest Proleague. Or the previous one. (Not sure why the stats aren't complete there.) Or the one before that. Or the one before that. The only team that reliably competes with ACE for bottom slot is eSTRO.
ACE exists, and it gives SC players in the military an avenue to play, which is a great thing. At the same time, the service still has a very detrimental effect on the players' skills. In addition to the unfortunately poor showings of ACE, I'm not really aware of any player who came out of ACE and was competitive at the highest levels, even if they were going into ACE. More commonly they come out and become coaches or commentators.
Blizzard is trying to integrate themselves much more into the Korean pro scene than they currently are (which is admittedly very little). They actually want a hand in running the tournaments and such, so it wouldn't even be the case that KESPA would have to go buy Blizzard's server, 'cause Blizzard would just bring it in.
Of course, while I'm no KESPA fan, IMO Blizzard is making unreasonable demands of KESPA, and the talks between the two have not gone well. From my perspective it really seems that both Blizzard and KESPA are trying their damnedest to kill the pro scene. (Blizzard definitely seems to be trying to kill the Brood War scene and KESPA, and I have my doubts that SC2 will be able to rise to the popularity that BW has.)
Okay, but how does the efficiency of an electric plant + transmission + battery losses compare with the efficiency of an internal combustion engine? I actually haven't seen the numbers, and could definitely see it coming out either way.
The other big benefits of shifting the production to power plants come from the fact that (1) replacing the plant with a low-pollution source (e.g. nuclear, solar, or wind) then removes the pollution (while you can't exactly put a nuclear reactor in everyone's car) and (2) even shifting the pollution to a heavy-pollution plant like coal means that it can be better controlled.
Since when did Microsoft start caring about backward compatibility?
Wait, what? When did Microsoft stop caring about backwards compatibility? Backwards compatibility was, for many years, the greatest asset that Windows had, and IMO is the biggest reason that it became as widespread as it is. It's also the source of many of their biggest security problems.
In fact, in the last few years (with the end of the 9x series kernel, the introduction of XP SP2, the introduction of UAC, and the removal of the 16-bit subsystems in the 64-bit versions of Windows), they have shown a willingness to break backwards compatibility that they had basically never shown a decade ago.
Forcing upgrades is a different matter, and is more concerned with forwards compatibility, which doesn't really have any bearing on this discussion.
Between Quicktime, iTunes, and Safari, IMO Apple has shown that using the software that it ports to Windows is about as fun as beating your head with a hammer.
You're in luck: there is something better than being a trolling twat making useless suggestions. It's called "sticking your head in a vise."
What you do is get a vise, you put your head in it, and you twist the handle until it contacts both sides of your head. At this point you'll really have to turn the handle hard, but keep going.
You can stick your head in a vise in most wood shops.
Depends on what you're reading. Many textbooks are formatted for paper that is not much smaller than 8 1/2 x 11. Grabbing a not atypically sized one (Dummit & Foote's Abstract Algebra) gives pages that are about 7.5x9.25 in, or about 12" in diagonal. Displaying that on a 10.1" screen gives almost a 15% reduction in magnification.
For a more extreme example, take a typical CS conference paper. Printed on 8.5x11 paper (13.9" diagonal) in 10 or 11 pt font, two column format, reducing that to the size of 10.1" gives a 27% reduction in size. That 11 point font is now barely 8 points; if it's 10pt, then it now acts like 7.2pt. At LCD resolutions, that's starting to really impact readability IMO.
Now sure, you can scroll and such, but this can be a huge PITA. It's a PITA if you're using a textbook with figures that you want to refer to; it's a PITA if you're reading something formatted in 2-column format because you have to scroll way more, etc.
Luckily, in many states, "Castle" laws have been passed, so that there is never a duty to retreat, anywhere.
Laws that expansive aren't really "castle" laws; those are called, e.g., stand-your-ground laws. The castle doctrine is an intermediate situation, where there are specific designated times when you're not required to retreat, such as at home or at work. In these states, if you're in such a situation you can respond immediately, even if it's safe to flee, but if you're walking down the street or whatever, then you can't. My understanding is most states are like this, but I'm not sure.
(Personally, I feel this compromise is the best position; I feel extending the castle doctrine to the streets is a bad idea, but it's also unreasonable to make people retreat in their homes.)
See Wikipedia which has a list of stand-your-ground states (14), castle states (21), "weak castle" states (6), and always-retreat states (6).
Slashdot Mirror
The python CLI on linux is the same as on Windows... (well you lack middle mouse pasting which sucks but that's basically it)
With the standard (terrible) Windows terminal window, you get right-click pasting instead. Just turn on quick edit mode.
If you think PS rips off Bash, then you haven't used one or the other. There are a bunch of things I *don't* like about PS (and actually I don't really use it, but I don't do sysadmin stuff either), but the object piping is awesome.
Count me in with the Windows crew.
Actually I guess it would be more precise to say that I really don't want to run Windows, but it tends to piss me off a little less than Linux, BSD, etc. I actually hate both. (I can't speak to OS X; I haven't used it enough. Of course, Apple also refuses to either sell me a copy of OS X I can use on a non-Apple computer* or offer a mid-range, non-all-in-one desktop, so that's not going to change soon either.)
* Sure, I could set up a hackintosh. But I figure that if a company doesn't want me to give them money, I won't.
Of course the difference is that there are millenia of people practicing medicine, and a couple centuries of people doing it well. How much history is there of people predicting earthquakes with any accuracy in a reliable manner? None. There's almost no way that this could be interpreted as negligence.
A) I might have to take back what I said; I thought I remembered stories of jailbroken iPhones that got bricked by an Apple update, but apparently those were carrier unlocked phones (which are a different matter). I thought that there was a nontrivial risk with jailbreaking your phone (in terms of ending up with a dead phone), but it seems that's not the case.
B) Webapps are a really poor substitute for local ones, at least for the reason that they won't work if you don't have reception. (And yes, this IS definitely an issue.)
Apple never was the only source, just the easiest.
I would say it's just the only reasonable one. I would not consider requiring jailbreaking your phone to be a reasonable action.
That's a really good question. One possible answer is this: closed gaming consoles (which is what I assume you're alluding to; it's about the only thing you can be) have been the norm for decades now. (Even the original NES had a lockout chip in an attempt to prevent unlicensed games.) By contrast, the iPhone brought forth a new level of control over the platform that didn't really exist before. You never needed any approval to run software on Palms or WinMo or Symbian, and you don't need an approval to run software on Android or Maemo. The iPhone is really in a class of its own, rather than continuing the norm.
So yes, as you say "locked in systems have been around for more than a decade", but not really in the same market as Apple's locked-in systems.
"It's always been like this so it's okay" is a pretty poor argument for not changing, but it does provide a little bit of an excuse. Paving the way into censorship is a much worse position than following into it.
Price to high on board video and 2gb ram + core 2 at that price??
Yeah. I mean, 75% of why I'd want a computer hooked up to the TV is so I could play video games on the TV. Why cripple it with a crappy video chipset?
Or maybe more to the point, why the hell doesn't Apple sell a mid-range desktop? Something that is (1) not all-in-one (so not the iMac), (2) has decent specs (so not the Mini), and yet (3) is affordable (so not the Mac Pro)?
I'm not saying I'd necessarily get one (I'd have to actually see the offering before deciding), but if they don't sell them I'm definitely not going to.
This is my insta-answer too.
I whine and complain about 98% of the software I use, but Lightroom just works really smoothly. I have very few complaints about it. (I have about 35 GBs of Canon RAW images in my LR database for point of reference.)
There is a reason why few people use Bing, Yahoo!, Live, Ask, etc.
Yes, it's because Google's search engine is better. I kind of like the background images; a lot of them are really nice.
Of course, I basically never even go to a search engine's front page anyway (searching from the address bar), so it doesn't matter so much.
This article is basically saying Flash is too big to fail.
Can we please retire this phrase? Pretty please with a cherry on top?
So I've been reading Slashdot for a couple of years now and I'm thoroughly confused about how we decide which stories deserve the community's notice.
What happens is kwadson looks at the story, and if it's anti-MS, he posts it. (This is not a complete description of the process.)
(And to be fair, this story is much less flamebait than some of the FUD that he's put on the front page.)
This is true... but at the same time, saying ACE "competes" is a little bit strong of a statement. The other commitments of the people on the team means that they don't get nearly the practice time of any of the other teams, and it definitely shows. I mean, look at the rankings in the latest Proleague. Or the previous one. (Not sure why the stats aren't complete there.) Or the one before that. Or the one before that. The only team that reliably competes with ACE for bottom slot is eSTRO.
ACE exists, and it gives SC players in the military an avenue to play, which is a great thing. At the same time, the service still has a very detrimental effect on the players' skills. In addition to the unfortunately poor showings of ACE, I'm not really aware of any player who came out of ACE and was competitive at the highest levels, even if they were going into ACE. More commonly they come out and become coaches or commentators.
Blizzard is trying to integrate themselves much more into the Korean pro scene than they currently are (which is admittedly very little). They actually want a hand in running the tournaments and such, so it wouldn't even be the case that KESPA would have to go buy Blizzard's server, 'cause Blizzard would just bring it in.
Of course, while I'm no KESPA fan, IMO Blizzard is making unreasonable demands of KESPA, and the talks between the two have not gone well. From my perspective it really seems that both Blizzard and KESPA are trying their damnedest to kill the pro scene. (Blizzard definitely seems to be trying to kill the Brood War scene and KESPA, and I have my doubts that SC2 will be able to rise to the popularity that BW has.)
Okay, but how does the efficiency of an electric plant + transmission + battery losses compare with the efficiency of an internal combustion engine? I actually haven't seen the numbers, and could definitely see it coming out either way.
The other big benefits of shifting the production to power plants come from the fact that (1) replacing the plant with a low-pollution source (e.g. nuclear, solar, or wind) then removes the pollution (while you can't exactly put a nuclear reactor in everyone's car) and (2) even shifting the pollution to a heavy-pollution plant like coal means that it can be better controlled.
Since when did Microsoft start caring about backward compatibility?
Wait, what? When did Microsoft stop caring about backwards compatibility? Backwards compatibility was, for many years, the greatest asset that Windows had, and IMO is the biggest reason that it became as widespread as it is. It's also the source of many of their biggest security problems.
In fact, in the last few years (with the end of the 9x series kernel, the introduction of XP SP2, the introduction of UAC, and the removal of the 16-bit subsystems in the 64-bit versions of Windows), they have shown a willingness to break backwards compatibility that they had basically never shown a decade ago.
Forcing upgrades is a different matter, and is more concerned with forwards compatibility, which doesn't really have any bearing on this discussion.
Between Quicktime, iTunes, and Safari, IMO Apple has shown that using the software that it ports to Windows is about as fun as beating your head with a hammer.
For one thing, [ and ] are unsupported NTFS filename characters.
What? Says who, 'cause that's news to me.
It's also news to Wikipedia and to Windows itself, which has no problem creating a file with [ or ] in the name (and not through the Posix subsystem).
The moderators are having a field day with this one.
For that matter, there are now versions of Microsoft Windows that they will no longer run on.
Like what?
There is no 16 bit DOS subsystem in 64 bit Windows to run said BAT files.
Which would be a real problem if Windows didn't run .bat files in the 32-bit cmd.exe anyway.
You can use bash on most Linux implementations
You're in luck: there is something better than being a trolling twat making useless suggestions. It's called "sticking your head in a vise."
What you do is get a vise, you put your head in it, and you twist the handle until it contacts both sides of your head. At this point you'll really have to turn the handle hard, but keep going.
You can stick your head in a vise in most wood shops.
Yeah, because who needs type safety when you can reparse text a bunch of times.
Depends on what you're reading. Many textbooks are formatted for paper that is not much smaller than 8 1/2 x 11. Grabbing a not atypically sized one (Dummit & Foote's Abstract Algebra) gives pages that are about 7.5x9.25 in, or about 12" in diagonal. Displaying that on a 10.1" screen gives almost a 15% reduction in magnification.
For a more extreme example, take a typical CS conference paper. Printed on 8.5x11 paper (13.9" diagonal) in 10 or 11 pt font, two column format, reducing that to the size of 10.1" gives a 27% reduction in size. That 11 point font is now barely 8 points; if it's 10pt, then it now acts like 7.2pt. At LCD resolutions, that's starting to really impact readability IMO.
Now sure, you can scroll and such, but this can be a huge PITA. It's a PITA if you're using a textbook with figures that you want to refer to; it's a PITA if you're reading something formatted in 2-column format because you have to scroll way more, etc.
Luckily, in many states, "Castle" laws have been passed, so that there is never a duty to retreat, anywhere.
Laws that expansive aren't really "castle" laws; those are called, e.g., stand-your-ground laws. The castle doctrine is an intermediate situation, where there are specific designated times when you're not required to retreat, such as at home or at work. In these states, if you're in such a situation you can respond immediately, even if it's safe to flee, but if you're walking down the street or whatever, then you can't. My understanding is most states are like this, but I'm not sure.
(Personally, I feel this compromise is the best position; I feel extending the castle doctrine to the streets is a bad idea, but it's also unreasonable to make people retreat in their homes.)
See Wikipedia which has a list of stand-your-ground states (14), castle states (21), "weak castle" states (6), and always-retreat states (6).