I've tried them both and GNOME Shell is sooooo much better than Unity.
Back when I first ran RedHat in 1999, I could only stand Gnome for about 2 hours. I HAD to switch to KDE. Still to this day, GNOME has been my least favorite DE.
I want to see open source leapfrog ahead of Apple and Microsoft by being bold and trying something new. I thought Unity would have a better chance at delivering that than Gnome 3. Neither are shipping products yet. So far, Gnome 3 has proven to have a better workflow and does not have the stability issues that Unity is suffering from.
Now if GNOME would not put my laptop to sleep every time I shut the lid.
Yes, closing the lid on on a laptop without putting it to sleep.
Gnome has removed that feature and has made sure there is no way for an end user to modify it. Damm it, if you shut the f**king lid then you want it to sleep.
I go from the living room to my office with a download running all the time. I don't want it to go to sleep. I plug it into a monitor, keyboard and mouse. It is stupid that I have to have enough room to set the laptop up were the lid can be open just so it won't go to sleep.
Oh, thats right, it is not a problem for me. I run Fluxbox.
Remember, there CEO is a softie, and due to the nature of the laws over there, is not able to own any sizable amount of stock in the company. All of his stock is in Microsoft. I think it is reasonable to say if WM7 fails, Microsoft stock will take a hit. Right now all of is value and worth is in Microsoft stock. Plus he has drank the MS tainted kool-aid for years. Any technology not created in Redmond is NOT good technology....unless Microsoft can buy it.
As a good general rule of thumb. You should not have a CEO who will personally profit if another company success is far more important to them than the company they are running.
If "treating cancer", was a pill without any major side effects, cost like 10 cents a day to take, and would keep a cancer growth at its current size, or shrink it to some degree and prevent it from spreading, whereas actually curing it is either not possible or is like $100,000 or more. Most people would be happy with just treating cancer.
It is all a matter of defining your terms. Even a competent sysadmin with hundreds of machines to maintain who has been tasked with other priorities may end up just reimaging a production server because the first job they are being paid to do is to keep the business users that are paying for the system working. Some systems just can not be shut down, and if reimaging a vm is what keeps the 99.9999 uptime is what works you do it.
Yes, that Apple has moved into a market where complete "generations" of devices move in 6 to 12 month cycles. Without the proper vision you can own the market today, and be a has been in 2 to 3 years.
Steve Jobs has had the knack of being able to put the X on the spot for what people will want to pay money for next year. He has pretty much hit the nail on the head 10 times in 10 years. He is the face of Apple. He may not have stared in the "I am a Mac" commercials. But as far as investors are concerned, he is the star they are betting on. The man who can put an X on a calendar a year from now so the engineers and designers know what to make. The stock holders of Apple depend on this skill.
There is no one else at Apple that has the power or vision. Apple can find a dozen people who can ride the wave as a CEO for the next 3 or 4 years and maybe even a few who can flog a dead horse longer than that. The company is going to lose some value when Steve passes or it is clear he won't be coming back. Maybe Apple will find someone who can get the job done. But till that person has a track record the company is going to take a hit. If they can't find that person, they will really take a hit. So far, Apple without Jobs is a computer company that exists to serve one purpose and one purpose only. Prove to the DOJ that Microsoft is not a monopoly controlling the entire PC market.
Really. Roads are paid for by taxed gas. The more gas you use, the more you pay for road improvements. It would be logical if you had metered power for charing cars that was taxed for road repairs. However I hold the much lower view of what they will want to do is to place GPS units on the cars so they can tax them by actual mileage. This then opens the door for insurance companys to track you, to be billed and ticked for speeding and general government oversite into your life. Such as "that is 4 trips to McDoanlds this week, keep it up and we will charge more for health care." Then with the foot in the door, they will go after adding GPS to regular cars and trucks.
Beyond that the "greeness" of the cars are up for debate. Considering what it takes to make a battery, what to do with them when they go bad, and how much of a toxic trouble they are in an accident. Then we can talk cost. An electric car starts at $40,000 and will need $5,000 or more in new batteries every 5 or 6 years. Add in the fact that the "power" the car uses comes from a power plant that burns coal or crude. All you have done is moved where the carbon footprint takes place at.
I find it hard to get excited by something that seems to cost more, lowers my standard of living, is no better for the environment, and takes away freedoms that I currently enjoy. All in the name of trying to NOT change the temperature of the plant when there the one thing we know is the temperature is going to go up and down like a yo-yo over time no matter what.
Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
·
· Score: 1
It would not be just the fact that HAL would be a dependency that takes up extra room and resources. The larger issue is it is becoming outdated, and broke. What happens when HAL no longer compiles cleanly on a particular distro? Who will fix it? The HAL folks? The XFCE folks? The distro? The more nonstandard a package becomes the more of a risk it is to rely on it. Moving away from HAL can't be considered a bad thing.
Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
·
· Score: 1
Ubuntu is a Gnome distribution. Did you try
gnome-hammer, gnome-wrench, gnone-screwdriver or gnome-tweezers?
It could even be
ghammer, gwrench, gscredriver or gtweezers
However
khammer, kwrench, kscredriver and ktweezers will not work till you do a apt-get install kubuntu desktop
Fast forward to my first PC, a 486SX. I learned x86 assembly, but never felt the same kind of complete and utter control over the machine, probably because by that point in my life I didn't really have the time to dedicate to really immerse myself in it.
No it was not the level of immersion. A computer like the C64 had 20K of ROM, hence a kernel that never changed. Always had a 6510 and a VIC chip and 64K of RAM. You could learn every byte inside out. Because the platform did not change over time, there were many volumes of literature written about the internals of this machine.
Your 486 had a bios made by one of several different BIOS vendors, one of several revisions of that BIOS, for the particular chipset on your board. You had an audio card made by one company, a video card made be another company, an ATA controller made by yet another company.
Who else really had your setup? No one wrote a complete manual for what you had. By the time you could figure out the BIOS and figure out what it took to POST the hardware you have, it is time to buy a new computer.
Nowdays there are many levels of abstraction, the one thing it robs us of is the ability to understand exactly what our machines are doing.
They can probably be re-compiled into fat / "universal" binaries to run on both platforms.
Mac OS X was able to have binaries that run under both PowerPC and x86, and now that support both 32- and 64-bit binaries. I'm sure that MS has enough smart people to do the same thing.
That is great for any software that you want to run that was written after 2012 as a fat binary. But what if you don't want to spend $79.00 more for Quicken 2013? Why can't you run Quicken 2012? Oh that is right, it is not ARM compatible. Unless they have a wicked fast emulator or can recompile existing win32 binaries, you can kiss 30 years of compatibility good bye.
If they're smart they'll release a compiler at least a year or two ahead of time that does the cross-compiling so people will be able to release apps ahead of time.
Well with the time for Windows 8 being 18 to 24 months out, I would say it is already to late AND Microsoft is not smart.
Would you say the same about Pocket PC PDAs with ARM CPUs running Windows Mobile? If so, I'd disagree. It bears repeating: Windows CE is likely where Windows for ARM will get its initial supply of applications, just like 32-bit Windows can run Win16 apps, and 64-bit Windows can run Win32 apps.
No Way!!!!!!
WINCE apps have no concept of the "current directory", forget about relative directory references. They removed the mouse API in the 2.0 days and added in a new mouse interface in the 4.0 days, but it is NOT compatible with the win32 api. Almost everything written for WINCE 2.0 on is designed for a 320x240 display. The methods for loading graphics that are not stored as resources, tool tips, Status area in the lower portion of the window frame of the app, all WINCE specific. It may be more work to port an WINCE ARM app than to port an x86 app due to the dissimilarity of the API.
Imagine placing your mobile phone in the docking station on top of your TV and it instantly being transformed in a full-blown desktop-capable PC functionally similar to an average PC of today.
How is it going to be a full-blown desktop PC if the only app that runs on it is Microsoft Office? What happens when they can't take their favorite program they bought for their desktop and run it on there ARM system? What happens when there is no NetFlix player for it or any of their other favorite apps?
Unless Microsoft has created a free compiler that can convert win32 binaries to ARM binaries Microsoft loses their one big advantage, 30 years of DOS/Windows 3.1/Windows XP/Windows Seven compatibility for legacy software titles.
Yes, but not much of a start. So the only reason to run WinARM is a familiar interface and Microsoft Office? What about Quicken, Quickbooks, PhotoShop, AutoCAD or any other big time application? You may laugh at the Gimp, GNUCash, or some Linux CAD program now. But when the choice is Linux on ARM with apps and Openoffice (and probably some way to run WinARM Office if you want), or WinARM with AutoDesk and Adobe having NO intention of porting their apps to the platform, Linux looks pretty good.
Or perhaps you are of the mindset that such a small device is not meant for running desktop apps? Well, then what advantage would running Windows have? Price? Better power consumption? A better touch interface? It will be a zombie. It runs Windows, but not your windows software, just Microsoft Office. What? People are just going to love that.
Lets not forget, this is still vaporware for at least 18 months. There is no guarantee that any product will ever hit the market. Where as Linux/Android on ARM is here today. Ubuntu should have a pretty slick Unity interface by that point and Wayland could be standard on such devices. With Microsofts track record with CE and smart phones, I don't think there is much to worry about. Somehow I don't think Microsoft will own the ARM market.
It is the same situation as MONO. You can write an app that will run on.NET in Windows and Mono in Linux. Write once and compile for each platform. The problem is it is all to easy to call stuff that wont port. The stark and bleak reality is any.NET app written for win32 or win64 will need major work to run on MONO or.NET-ARM.
As a stupid example. I had to take a Visual Basic programming course. I had to put some output into a multi-line textbox. If I had a choice I would have used a more advanced table control so I could break up the output into columns. Instead, I turned back to my old win32 api programming days and placed a few tab stops into the textbox. This is done with a win32api call, once that is done, the program is non-portable. Any nontrivial app will require some retooling unless it was written from the ground up to be portable.
Without a plethora of win32 apps, Win-ARM will have issues. Even then those apps are not designed for the iPad sized tablet or netbook. Dialog are to large, icons not sized for a touch display. If you Look at WM7 as well as all earlier WinCE stuff, this is not looking good for Microsoft.
For example http://www.slashdot.org/ and my master password of buba yields a right(md5sum("slashdot.org:buba"),8) yields fc56e979
They have a static web form, a bash script, and a greasemonkey script. I have also written a delphi app that runs in Linux, Windows, Mac that I keep on my memory stick. So all I have to do is remember one master password, for example "buba". And with that master password every site gets a unique password that is hard to crack. I decided about four years back that if anyone ever hacks one password of mine or can fool me into revealing a password to them, that is all they get one password.
The ironic thing is the only site that I use a regular password that I came up with, that is related to me, that can be broken by a dictionary attack, is the one for my slashdot account. Still the same password I came up with in 1999 or 2000. I assume no one else would want to hijack my opinions.
Hey 1) I upgraded my cable package so I would have SyFi so I could watch the 2nd season of SGU. I saw the first season on my NetFlix subscription.
2) I watched IRT so advertisers had every opportunity to "impress" me with their commercials.
Not much more I can do. My major problem here is not having Nielson box in my house. I will watch the next 10 episodes, and would probably like a 3rd season. It certainly has been better than the 2nd season of Heroes.
Maybe SyFy will get the picture when I drop back down to the lower package and the no longer get any money from me. I want Sci-Fi on my SyFy. Wrestling, Ghosts and Horror movies do not cut it for me. Neither does Blade Runner and a Star Trek marathon once a year.
Not much has changed? Programmers have forked OpenSolaris, programmers have forked OpenOffice, and now Apache is forking "Open" Java.
It reminds me of a joke where a Jewish guy is so impressed by visiting a Catholic church he becomes a Catholic. So he tries calling his wife, son and daughter to tell them the news. All three are to busy to listen and hang up on him. The punchline is essentially "I have only been a gentile for 10 minutes and I have already found 3 Jews I don't like."
Only this is sort of the opposite. Sun, since converting to Oracle has been so obnoxious that they have already alienated 3 of their open source communities in less than 1 year.
With claiming ownership over others codes by threatening any who would host code someplace else, and by begging 3 communities to fork their code. Oracle is doing some outstanding work here.
Usually when one buys a company, you sell off everything of value before you destroy what ever is left. They seem to think they can skip step 3 ???? and go stright for 4. profit.
I wish all new programmers could sit down and learn to code from a FORTH guru.
Having to work with BLOCKS of 16 lines of 64 chars each are great. When you learn from someone who writes well documented, easy to maintain code. In FORH you tend to factor definitions down to about 5 to 7 words (excluding noise words like DUP + . ). Good definition names are of utmost importance. Short definitions with a program designed around lexicons of words that do THINGS to build a custom language that describes the problem you are trying to solve. If what you are trying to do takes more than 16 lines of FORTH in a definition, 99% of the time it is natures way of saying "You are doing it wrong."
My functions in other languages tend to be a bit longer than that. But I still use good names and build a program by building groups of functions that work together as their own private lexicon. Anytime a function approaches a page of paper in size, I start to get the feeling that I am not solving the problem the right way. Something should probably be factored out, which often means a) I don't understand the problem as well as I should and b) the function I am working on is probably names wrong as well.
Time is one of the best teachers. Better than peer review, better than cleaning code. Write your own code then come back and look at it in 3 or 4 years. It becomes pretty obvious how clean the code is, how easy it is to follow or how well it is documented. If you go to college, in the last 3 months you should be required to review, document, and modify software you have written over the past 4 years. I am afraid at the pace crap is thrown at you in school, most would not have time to appreciate the lesson it would teach them.
It is not just forcing everyone on testing. It also changes the focus on debate. Now instead of users moaning for 6 months about not wanting their tabs moved from the right side to the left, They will get up one day, run update, and boom, the tabs will move. Then users can argue about not liking it, but it will have already been done.
Slashdot Mirror
I've tried them both and GNOME Shell is sooooo much better than Unity.
Back when I first ran RedHat in 1999, I could only stand Gnome for about 2 hours. I HAD to switch to KDE. Still to this day, GNOME has been my least favorite DE.
I want to see open source leapfrog ahead of Apple and Microsoft by being bold and trying something new. I thought Unity would have a better chance at delivering that than Gnome 3. Neither are shipping products yet. So far, Gnome 3 has proven to have a better workflow and does not have the stability issues that Unity is suffering from.
Now if GNOME would not put my laptop to sleep every time I shut the lid.
Yes, closing the lid on on a laptop without putting it to sleep.
Gnome has removed that feature and has made sure there is no way for an end user to modify it. Damm it, if you shut the f**king lid then you want it to sleep.
I go from the living room to my office with a download running all the time. I don't want it to go to sleep. I plug it into a monitor, keyboard and mouse. It is stupid that I have to have enough room to set the laptop up were the lid can be open just so it won't go to sleep.
Oh, thats right, it is not a problem for me. I run Fluxbox.
Remember, there CEO is a softie, and due to the nature of the laws over there, is not able to own any sizable amount of stock in the company. All of his stock is in Microsoft. I think it is reasonable to say if WM7 fails, Microsoft stock will take a hit. Right now all of is value and worth is in Microsoft stock. Plus he has drank the MS tainted kool-aid for years. Any technology not created in Redmond is NOT good technology....unless Microsoft can buy it.
As a good general rule of thumb. You should not have a CEO who will personally profit if another company success is far more important to them than the company they are running.
If "treating cancer", was a pill without any major side effects, cost like 10 cents a day to take, and would keep a cancer growth at its current size, or shrink it to some degree and prevent it from spreading, whereas actually curing it is either not possible or is like $100,000 or more. Most people would be happy with just treating cancer.
It is all a matter of defining your terms. Even a competent sysadmin with hundreds of machines to maintain who has been tasked with other priorities may end up just reimaging a production server because the first job they are being paid to do is to keep the business users that are paying for the system working. Some systems just can not be shut down, and if reimaging a vm is what keeps the 99.9999 uptime is what works you do it.
It is called pragmatism.
Eventually it is all numbers, nickels and noise....oh, and who gets credit.
Yes, that Apple has moved into a market where complete "generations" of devices move in 6 to 12 month cycles. Without the proper vision you can own the market today, and be a has been in 2 to 3 years.
Steve Jobs has had the knack of being able to put the X on the spot for what people will want to pay money for next year. He has pretty much hit the nail on the head 10 times in 10 years. He is the face of Apple. He may not have stared in the "I am a Mac" commercials. But as far as investors are concerned, he is the star they are betting on. The man who can put an X on a calendar a year from now so the engineers and designers know what to make. The stock holders of Apple depend on this skill.
There is no one else at Apple that has the power or vision. Apple can find a dozen people who can ride the wave as a CEO for the next 3 or 4 years and maybe even a few who can flog a dead horse longer than that. The company is going to lose some value when Steve passes or it is clear he won't be coming back. Maybe Apple will find someone who can get the job done. But till that person has a track record the company is going to take a hit. If they can't find that person, they will really take a hit. So far, Apple without Jobs is a computer company that exists to serve one purpose and one purpose only. Prove to the DOJ that Microsoft is not a monopoly controlling the entire PC market.
Really. Roads are paid for by taxed gas. The more gas you use, the more you pay for road improvements. It would be logical if you had metered power for charing cars that was taxed for road repairs. However I hold the much lower view of what they will want to do is to place GPS units on the cars so they can tax them by actual mileage. This then opens the door for insurance companys to track you, to be billed and ticked for speeding and general government oversite into your life. Such as "that is 4 trips to McDoanlds this week, keep it up and we will charge more for health care." Then with the foot in the door, they will go after adding GPS to regular cars and trucks.
Beyond that the "greeness" of the cars are up for debate. Considering what it takes to make a battery, what to do with them when they go bad, and how much of a toxic trouble they are in an accident. Then we can talk cost. An electric car starts at $40,000 and will need $5,000 or more in new batteries every 5 or 6 years. Add in the fact that the "power" the car uses comes from a power plant that burns coal or crude. All you have done is moved where the carbon footprint takes place at.
I find it hard to get excited by something that seems to cost more, lowers my standard of living, is no better for the environment, and takes away freedoms that I currently enjoy. All in the name of trying to NOT change the temperature of the plant when there the one thing we know is the temperature is going to go up and down like a yo-yo over time no matter what.
Or maybe character matters?
It would not be just the fact that HAL would be a dependency that takes up extra room and resources. The larger issue is it is becoming outdated, and broke. What happens when HAL no longer compiles cleanly on a particular distro? Who will fix it? The HAL folks? The XFCE folks? The distro? The more nonstandard a package becomes the more of a risk it is to rely on it. Moving away from HAL can't be considered a bad thing.
Ubuntu is a Gnome distribution. Did you try
gnome-hammer, gnome-wrench, gnone-screwdriver or gnome-tweezers?
It could even be
ghammer, gwrench, gscredriver or gtweezers
However
khammer, kwrench, kscredriver and ktweezers will not work till you do a apt-get install kubuntu desktop
I can sell you some "ether" to help you make millions. I have bottle of it riiiiight here...
Fast forward to my first PC, a 486SX. I learned x86 assembly, but never felt the same kind of complete and utter control over the machine, probably because by that point in my life I didn't really have the time to dedicate to really immerse myself in it.
No it was not the level of immersion. A computer like the C64 had 20K of ROM, hence a kernel that never changed. Always had a 6510 and a VIC chip and 64K of RAM. You could learn every byte inside out. Because the platform did not change over time, there were many volumes of literature written about the internals of this machine.
Your 486 had a bios made by one of several different BIOS vendors, one of several revisions of that BIOS, for the particular chipset on your board. You had an audio card made by one company, a video card made be another company, an ATA controller made by yet another company.
Who else really had your setup? No one wrote a complete manual for what you had. By the time you could figure out the BIOS and figure out what it took to POST the hardware you have, it is time to buy a new computer.
Nowdays there are many levels of abstraction, the one thing it robs us of is the ability to understand exactly what our machines are doing.
They can probably be re-compiled into fat / "universal" binaries to run on both platforms.
Mac OS X was able to have binaries that run under both PowerPC and x86, and now that support both 32- and 64-bit binaries. I'm sure that MS has enough smart people to do the same thing.
That is great for any software that you want to run that was written after 2012 as a fat binary. But what if you don't want to spend $79.00 more for Quicken 2013? Why can't you run Quicken 2012? Oh that is right, it is not ARM compatible. Unless they have a wicked fast emulator or can recompile existing win32 binaries, you can kiss 30 years of compatibility good bye.
If they're smart they'll release a compiler at least a year or two ahead of time that does the cross-compiling so people will be able to release apps ahead of time.
Well with the time for Windows 8 being 18 to 24 months out, I would say it is already to late AND Microsoft is not smart.
Would you say the same about Pocket PC PDAs with ARM CPUs running Windows Mobile? If so, I'd disagree. It bears repeating: Windows CE is likely where Windows for ARM will get its initial supply of applications, just like 32-bit Windows can run Win16 apps, and 64-bit Windows can run Win32 apps.
No Way!!!!!!
WINCE apps have no concept of the "current directory", forget about relative directory references. They removed the mouse API in the 2.0 days and added in a new mouse interface in the 4.0 days, but it is NOT compatible with the win32 api. Almost everything written for WINCE 2.0 on is designed for a 320x240 display. The methods for loading graphics that are not stored as resources, tool tips, Status area in the lower portion of the window frame of the app, all WINCE specific. It may be more work to port an WINCE ARM app than to port an x86 app due to the dissimilarity of the API.
Imagine placing your mobile phone in the docking station on top of your TV and it instantly being transformed in a full-blown desktop-capable PC functionally similar to an average PC of today.
How is it going to be a full-blown desktop PC if the only app that runs on it is Microsoft Office? What happens when they can't take their favorite program they bought for their desktop and run it on there ARM system? What happens when there is no NetFlix player for it or any of their other favorite apps?
Unless Microsoft has created a free compiler that can convert win32 binaries to ARM binaries Microsoft loses their one big advantage, 30 years of DOS/Windows 3.1/Windows XP/Windows Seven compatibility for legacy software titles.
Office is getting ported. That's a start.
Yes, but not much of a start. So the only reason to run WinARM is a familiar interface and Microsoft Office? What about Quicken, Quickbooks, PhotoShop, AutoCAD or any other big time application? You may laugh at the Gimp, GNUCash, or some Linux CAD program now. But when the choice is Linux on ARM with apps and Openoffice (and probably some way to run WinARM Office if you want), or WinARM with AutoDesk and Adobe having NO intention of porting their apps to the platform, Linux looks pretty good.
Or perhaps you are of the mindset that such a small device is not meant for running desktop apps? Well, then what advantage would running Windows have? Price? Better power consumption? A better touch interface? It will be a zombie. It runs Windows, but not your windows software, just Microsoft Office. What? People are just going to love that.
Lets not forget, this is still vaporware for at least 18 months. There is no guarantee that any product will ever hit the market. Where as Linux/Android on ARM is here today. Ubuntu should have a pretty slick Unity interface by that point and Wayland could be standard on such devices. With Microsofts track record with CE and smart phones, I don't think there is much to worry about. Somehow I don't think Microsoft will own the ARM market.
It is the same situation as MONO. You can write an app that will run on .NET in Windows and Mono in Linux. Write once and compile for each platform. The problem is it is all to easy to call stuff that wont port. The stark and bleak reality is any .NET app written for win32 or win64 will need major work to run on MONO or .NET-ARM.
As a stupid example. I had to take a Visual Basic programming course. I had to put some output into a multi-line textbox. If I had a choice I would have used a more advanced table control so I could break up the output into columns. Instead, I turned back to my old win32 api programming days and placed a few tab stops into the textbox. This is done with a win32api call, once that is done, the program is non-portable. Any nontrivial app will require some retooling unless it was written from the ground up to be portable.
Without a plethora of win32 apps, Win-ARM will have issues. Even then those apps are not designed for the iPad sized tablet or netbook. Dialog are to large, icons not sized for a touch display. If you Look at WM7 as well as all earlier WinCE stuff, this is not looking good for Microsoft.
Password Composer http://www.xs4all.nl/~jlpoutre/BoT/Javascript/PasswordComposer/ is what I use.
For example http://www.slashdot.org/ and my master password of buba yields a right(md5sum("slashdot.org:buba"),8) yields fc56e979
They have a static web form, a bash script, and a greasemonkey script. I have also written a delphi app that runs in Linux, Windows, Mac that I keep on my memory stick. So all I have to do is remember one master password, for example "buba". And with that master password every site gets a unique password that is hard to crack. I decided about four years back that if anyone ever hacks one password of mine or can fool me into revealing a password to them, that is all they get one password.
The ironic thing is the only site that I use a regular password that I came up with, that is related to me, that can be broken by a dictionary attack, is the one for my slashdot account. Still the same password I came up with in 1999 or 2000. I assume no one else would want to hijack my opinions.
Did you forget the Microsoft Internal document that said they would prefer people would pirate their products over them using something else?
Hey
1) I upgraded my cable package so I would have SyFi so I could watch the 2nd season of SGU. I saw the first season on my NetFlix subscription.
2) I watched IRT so advertisers had every opportunity to "impress" me with their commercials.
Not much more I can do. My major problem here is not having Nielson box in my house. I will watch the next 10 episodes, and would probably like a 3rd season. It certainly has been better than the 2nd season of Heroes.
Maybe SyFy will get the picture when I drop back down to the lower package and the no longer get any money from me. I want Sci-Fi on my SyFy. Wrestling, Ghosts and Horror movies do not cut it for me. Neither does Blade Runner and a Star Trek marathon once a year.
Not much has changed? Programmers have forked OpenSolaris, programmers have forked OpenOffice, and now Apache is forking "Open" Java.
It reminds me of a joke where a Jewish guy is so impressed by visiting a Catholic church he becomes a Catholic. So he tries calling his wife, son and daughter to tell them the news. All three are to busy to listen and hang up on him. The punchline is essentially "I have only been a gentile for 10 minutes and I have already found 3 Jews I don't like."
Only this is sort of the opposite. Sun, since converting to Oracle has been so obnoxious that they have already alienated 3 of their open source communities in less than 1 year.
With claiming ownership over others codes by threatening any who would host code someplace else, and by begging 3 communities to fork their code. Oracle is doing some outstanding work here.
Usually when one buys a company, you sell off everything of value before you destroy what ever is left. They seem to think they can skip step 3 ???? and go stright for 4. profit.
I wish all new programmers could sit down and learn to code from a FORTH guru.
Having to work with BLOCKS of 16 lines of 64 chars each are great. When you learn from someone who writes well documented, easy to maintain code. In FORH you tend to factor definitions down to about 5 to 7 words (excluding noise words like DUP + . ). Good definition names are of utmost importance. Short definitions with a program designed around lexicons of words that do THINGS to build a custom language that describes the problem you are trying to solve. If what you are trying to do takes more than 16 lines of FORTH in a definition, 99% of the time it is natures way of saying "You are doing it wrong."
My functions in other languages tend to be a bit longer than that. But I still use good names and build a program by building groups of functions that work together as their own private lexicon. Anytime a function approaches a page of paper in size, I start to get the feeling that I am not solving the problem the right way. Something should probably be factored out, which often means a) I don't understand the problem as well as I should and b) the function I am working on is probably names wrong as well.
Time is one of the best teachers. Better than peer review, better than cleaning code. Write your own code then come back and look at it in 3 or 4 years. It becomes pretty obvious how clean the code is, how easy it is to follow or how well it is documented. If you go to college, in the last 3 months you should be required to review, document, and modify software you have written over the past 4 years. I am afraid at the pace crap is thrown at you in school, most would not have time to appreciate the lesson it would teach them.
It is not just forcing everyone on testing. It also changes the focus on debate. Now instead of users moaning for 6 months about not wanting their tabs moved from the right side to the left, They will get up one day, run update, and boom, the tabs will move. Then users can argue about not liking it, but it will have already been done.
Obligatory xkcd reference "Cautionary": http://xkcd.com/456/