I saw the movie only once and my memory is, well, what was the word?:) Anyway, thanks for quoting.
And yes, AntiTrust came to my mind, too. My parents did also like it though I feared that they could not enjoy it the way I do. I always thought the only way to make a movie about programmers that is actually interesting for normal people was with exaggerations and stuff like in "Hackers" or "Password Swordfish".;)
The difference is that I really like Hackers because of the feeling it gives to me, while I always have to shuckle when this guy in Swordfish tells about his 1024bit code, a firewall that noone can hack (at least that's what he says in the German version). Goddammit.
But what about an ordinary software engineer who happens to experience some really weird stuff? Of course the movie would be about this weird stuff, not about the software engineer, but this is a way to portray a normal software engineer without making a boring movie. Like, say, Terminator II. I think this was not so far away from at least some software engineers (though he was a hardware engineer and dealed with some futuristic parts, but the way he did is comparable). Of course the movie was not really about him, but about a cool machine from the future protecting some guy who should be killed by another cool machine from the future. Anything but boring, if you ask me. But for example normal mothers can be seen very often in movies. The point was that this is not the case with software developers.
is it a good thing to force the bundling of the Sun's JRE in Windows?
Yes - if you include Perl (with tons of modules), Python, at best even MySQL and PHP with a pre-installed IIS (Apache is highly unlikely to ever ship with Windows, right?).
Why? All these things are platforms for application development and why should Java be the only "other" platform to be shipped with Windows - just because there's a company behind it?
Shipping the JRE with Windows would make many Windows computers Java-ready within quite a short timeframe. Since I do not program in Java, but make web applications oder do some stuff with Perl/Tk, I would like to see those there too.
You would not want your user to deal with the hassle of downloading the JRE or ActivePerl and so on, so it would just be fair.
After all, most users just don't know anything about "that Java thing".
Once you have control over the OS you can run almost any software you want on it. You could turn it into a complete organizer, not just a portable audio player and storage device.
The reason why PHP for Apache 2 is still called "experimental" are some extensions for PHP that are not thread safe. PHP itself and the main extensions obviously are. This was not a problem under Apache 1 since it did use multiple processes, not threads. Apache 2 uses both AFAIK.
Which is incredibly more convinient if you do not use a German keyboard, where z and y are switched. *sigh* I never saw this mentioned in the usability reports I read.
Possibly there is a Dvorak-style keyboard layout for German? (With the most frequently-used letters in German in all the right places.)
According to the list of keyboard layouts that XP provides, there is no such thing. English Dvorak, Dvorak for left-hands, Dvorak for right-hands - that's all.
Yet I startet to use the layout switcher. It will take some time until I am really fast with the US layout, but it might pay out. After all, I just need to press Alt+Shift to switch. And the layout is switched per-application, not globally. This is good, because I can answer my eMails in German and continue coding in English simply by Alt+Tabbing to my editor. Cool.
AFAIK Dvorak ist optimized for the english language. I also wanted to learn Dvorak, but it's kind of useless for me without the german special characters. German is still my "main" language.:)
Thank you:)
I did not do a strict comparison of both, but the main reasons for using the German layout are, of course, german characters: äöüÄÖÜß. The only difference regarding normal characters are z and y being switched (QWERTZ instead of QWERTY), which makes sense, because z is used more often than y in German. But I bet that the layout is still far from optimized...
The numpad has , instead of., which is normally good, but sucks for entering IP addresses...
I should really try the keyboard layout switcher. And once I'm grown up, I will build better keyboards:)
I don't really think that these things would help me. You know, I *am* able to type those characters, it's just not very convenient. I guess having to use a different device is even worse. It definitely has it's uses, but not as a keyboard extension for typing.
I will probably play around with XP's keyboard layout switcher. You can assign hotkeys to switch between layouts. It is even enabled by default AFAIK, but sometimes the layout is switched though you did not intend to do so... I'm not sure why, I just disabled the feature. I'll see...
I don't know all of the Perl "special variables", but I'm pretty sure that "$," is one of them.:) If the German keyboard is not conducive to special characters, then you must really hate coding in Perl!
The most bad characters, [], {}, \ are very often used in other languages, too. Array indices, block delimiters, escape sequences, you have that in PHP as often as in Perl. $ is Shift+4, that's okay. It's not like I use the special variables in Perl more often than those characters, far from it. And most of them are even okay (especially "$,", since I do not even need shift for the,). Okay, the @ for arrays is not that good, but what really sucks are constructs like @{$var} - in these areas Perl is especially uncomfortable. Perhaps I'll find a nice way to use the American layout for coding and the German layout for the rest of my tasks... though this is not ideal, too, since the printed characters on the keyboard are German layout forever.
Well, I learned JavaScript, then Perl, then PHP (and Pascal in between, but that's a different story). I don't really have a problem with the $ as well. There are other characters that I dislike more, mainly because they are just not easy to type on German keyboards (like {}[]\|~@ - you have to use Alt Gr for them). The $ makes it more obvious that it is a variable you are dealing with (like you said), and it even makes sense as a sign for "value" (yes, just a thought). Really bad is -> for objects. I hate that. I love using object.element instead of object->element and I'm very glad that Perl 6 will do so, too. Though _ is not the best string concatenation character, because, well, it's Shift+- on German keyboards, while . is just.
If you want to design a language that has as few special characters as possible (like Python), you should have a look at $, too, but since we're talking about PHP here, it does not really make sense. $variable is cool. variable is not.
Now scan through the text and try to find all variable names:)
The boot manager still needs to pass in a real device name, even if your fstab has labels, AFAIK.
Excerpt of/boot/grub/grub.conf:
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-14) root (hd1,1) kernel/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi initrd/initrd-2.4.18-14.img
And it boots:)
I don't think that Grub parses the root option and replaces LABEL=/ with the real device name, but I don't know. Otherwise my first self compiled kernel should have booted instead of getting panic because it can't find the root drive...
Though I still don't know why it didn't find it...
But thanks for the man hint, I guess I have not searched there because I saw the fstab entry quite some time after I got the kernel to work. At first I thought it was a Grub thing. Well, cool those labels are. Though two Red Hat 8 installs might become confused, right?
Hey, could you give me some links so that I can understand this label stuff? Red Hat 8 has this, too - and it was the reason why my first kernel recompiles on RH8 didn't work - I think. The kernels could not boot because of an "invalid root option" or something. The boot manager is set up to pass "root=LABEL=/" to the kernel and the/etc/fstab reflects this. There is something in the kernel that has to be activated so that it works (it was either "BSD labels" or something with the ramdisk... I'm not sure, because I changed multiple things at once to get it working). Anyway, can somebody explain that to me? Or give me links?
I'm kind of a Linux newbie, installed Red Hat 8 a few weeks ago and after reading this OSNews article I am using apt-get, too. I think this confirms the opinion of the guy asking for differences among distros.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw the movie only once and my memory is, well, what was the word? :) Anyway, thanks for quoting.
;)
;)
And yes, AntiTrust came to my mind, too. My parents did also like it though I feared that they could not enjoy it the way I do. I always thought the only way to make a movie about programmers that is actually interesting for normal people was with exaggerations and stuff like in "Hackers" or "Password Swordfish".
The difference is that I really like Hackers because of the feeling it gives to me, while I always have to shuckle when this guy in Swordfish tells about his 1024bit code, a firewall that noone can hack (at least that's what he says in the German version). Goddammit.
Hack the planet!
I was not talking about Sarah Conner :)
But reminder John Connor's stepmother? Normal is relative, but it was at least realistic.
But what about an ordinary software engineer who happens to experience some really weird stuff? Of course the movie would be about this weird stuff, not about the software engineer, but this is a way to portray a normal software engineer without making a boring movie. Like, say, Terminator II. I think this was not so far away from at least some software engineers (though he was a hardware engineer and dealed with some futuristic parts, but the way he did is comparable). Of course the movie was not really about him, but about a cool machine from the future protecting some guy who should be killed by another cool machine from the future. Anything but boring, if you ask me.
But for example normal mothers can be seen very often in movies. The point was that this is not the case with software developers.
Why? All these things are platforms for application development and why should Java be the only "other" platform to be shipped with Windows - just because there's a company behind it?
Shipping the JRE with Windows would make many Windows computers Java-ready within quite a short timeframe. Since I do not program in Java, but make web applications oder do some stuff with Perl/Tk, I would like to see those there too. You would not want your user to deal with the hassle of downloading the JRE or ActivePerl and so on, so it would just be fair.
After all, most users just don't know anything about "that Java thing".
Once you have control over the OS you can run almost any software you want on it. You could turn it into a complete organizer, not just a portable audio player and storage device.
The reason why PHP for Apache 2 is still called "experimental" are some extensions for PHP that are not thread safe. PHP itself and the main extensions obviously are. This was not a problem under Apache 1 since it did use multiple processes, not threads. Apache 2 uses both AFAIK.
This would wo Ctrl+W... that'll be better :)
To what language does AZERTY belong?
Which is incredibly more convinient if you do not use a German keyboard, where z and y are switched. *sigh*
I never saw this mentioned in the usability reports I read.
Yet I startet to use the layout switcher. It will take some time until I am really fast with the US layout, but it might pay out. After all, I just need to press Alt+Shift to switch. And the layout is switched per-application, not globally. This is good, because I can answer my eMails in German and continue coding in English simply by Alt+Tabbing to my editor. Cool.
AFAIK Dvorak ist optimized for the english language. I also wanted to learn Dvorak, but it's kind of useless for me without the german special characters. German is still my "main" language. :)
Thank you :) ., which is normally good, but sucks for entering IP addresses...
I should really try the keyboard layout switcher. And once I'm grown up, I will build better keyboards :)
I did not do a strict comparison of both, but the main reasons for using the German layout are, of course, german characters: äöüÄÖÜß. The only difference regarding normal characters are z and y being switched (QWERTZ instead of QWERTY), which makes sense, because z is used more often than y in German. But I bet that the layout is still far from optimized...
The numpad has , instead of
> It must be more convenient for typing in German.
I'm sorry - what do you want to say with that?
I don't really think that these things would help me. You know, I *am* able to type those characters, it's just not very convenient. I guess having to use a different device is even worse. It definitely has it's uses, but not as a keyboard extension for typing.
I will probably play around with XP's keyboard layout switcher. You can assign hotkeys to switch between layouts. It is even enabled by default AFAIK, but sometimes the layout is switched though you did not intend to do so... I'm not sure why, I just disabled the feature. I'll see...
To get a better idea of the German keyboard layout, here are some pictures in normal, shift and in alt gr mode.
The most bad characters, [], {}, \ are very often used in other languages, too. Array indices, block delimiters, escape sequences, you have that in PHP as often as in Perl. $ is Shift+4, that's okay. It's not like I use the special variables in Perl more often than those characters, far from it. And most of them are even okay (especially "$,", since I do not even need shift for the
Perhaps I'll find a nice way to use the American layout for coding and the German layout for the rest of my tasks... though this is not ideal, too, since the printed characters on the keyboard are German layout forever.
Well, I learned JavaScript, then Perl, then PHP (and Pascal in between, but that's a different story). I don't really have a problem with the $ as well. There are other characters that I dislike more, mainly because they are just not easy to type on German keyboards (like {}[]\|~@ - you have to use Alt Gr for them). .
:)
The $ makes it more obvious that it is a variable you are dealing with (like you said), and it even makes sense as a sign for "value" (yes, just a thought).
Really bad is -> for objects. I hate that. I love using object.element instead of object->element and I'm very glad that Perl 6 will do so, too. Though _ is not the best string concatenation character, because, well, it's Shift+- on German keyboards, while . is just
If you want to design a language that has as few special characters as possible (like Python), you should have a look at $, too, but since we're talking about PHP here, it does not really make sense. $variable is cool. variable is not.
Now scan through the text and try to find all variable names
Combines variables that are easier to write with embeddable variables. Or is this too inconsistent?
However, I do see another reason against it. At the moment you can do this:
With "$func" being written as "func" the parser would no longer be able to recognize func as a variable rather than the name of the function "func()".Of course you can always use eval(), but I like the $func() or even $$var [sic] thing very much...
I know how you feel, though I had a bit more luck with RH 8. But, in the end, I gave up as well. See my Journal for details.
Yes, it must have been something simple like this one. But it was not *exactly* this one :)
Though you have to do line breaks in HTML as well, then. So it's more than just learning how to link. But line breaking is of course easy as well:Don't get me wrong, I know you know this, buy why not just tell the poor non-HTML-guy howto do so?
Nevertheless
Right? Right?
And it boots :)
I don't think that Grub parses the root option and replaces LABEL=/ with the real device name, but I don't know. Otherwise my first self compiled kernel should have booted instead of getting panic because it can't find the root drive...
Though I still don't know why it didn't find it...
But thanks for the man hint, I guess I have not searched there because I saw the fstab entry quite some time after I got the kernel to work. At first I thought it was a Grub thing. Well, cool those labels are. Though two Red Hat 8 installs might become confused, right?
Hey, could you give me some links so that I can understand this label stuff? Red Hat 8 has this, too - and it was the reason why my first kernel recompiles on RH8 didn't work - I think. The kernels could not boot because of an "invalid root option" or something. The boot manager is set up to pass "root=LABEL=/" to the kernel and the /etc/fstab reflects this. There is something in the kernel that has to be activated so that it works (it was either "BSD labels" or something with the ramdisk... I'm not sure, because I changed multiple things at once to get it working). Anyway, can somebody explain that to me? Or give me links?
I'm kind of a Linux newbie, installed Red Hat 8 a few weeks ago and after reading this OSNews article I am using apt-get, too. I think this confirms the opinion of the guy asking for differences among distros.