If I want to set up a desktop that's easy to use for those without engineering degrees, I'll probably recommend Windows.
Huh? Have you actually used KDE or GNOME in the past few years? The only reason Windows could be considered "easier to use" is because everyone is already familiar with Windows.
And if we're really shooting for ease of use, why not recommend Mac OS X? Windows is only necessary for games and certain applications with no alternative. Your average user who needs little more than web, email, and word processing will be perfectly content on KDE or OS X.
Indeed. And IIRC, there was little difference between IE5 and IE6. If you have the only browser around, there's little reason to improve. Between this and the anti-Linux ads, it shows that Microsoft is absolutely scared of F/OSS and sees Mozilla, Linux, etc. as serious competitors. As an F/OSS user and developer, it's really exciting:-)
If the chem guy is good enough, he will be able to describe exactly what it is the software needs to do, and then the SE is there to actually put it into code, to make the system do it.
Ah, no. There's a reason this hasn't been done already. Partly because these days, only scientists know Fortran (the best language for the job), but mostly because it would take at least a year of intense study to bring someone up from high school-level chemistry and physics to a basic understanding of physical chemistry. Experienced software engineers have probably forgotten most of the calculus they took in college too.
And people also need to realize that being good at CS is not good enough for software development - you sould be good at CS, *AND* good at whatever you're developing hte software for.
My thoughts exactly, which is why I'm doing a double major in Chemistry and CS. I'll probably go to grad school for chemistry. At the moment, most of the code I've seen seems to be done by the people who understand the science but are mediocre at programming. I've seen better design in many open-source projects.
For people who aren't crazy enough to take on the full load of two undergrad majors, there's also the option of getting a bachelor's degree in CS (with a minor in something else), then getting your master's/Ph.D. in another field, whether it's science, engineering, graphic design, economics, or whatever. Confining yourself to pure CS seems like a bad idea to me.
I think "What the fuck?" aptly summarizes the response of any sane person to this. What else is there to say about a group of people who have nothing better to do than blog about their virtual dogs?
Actually, 1 MB is 1,000,000 Bel. There's no universally accepted abbreviation for byte. Some people use B, some use b. If you want to avoid confusion, spell out the whole word.
I'll agree that there's no universal standard, but the convention is:
B = byte
b = bit
They're Opterons, which work in SMP systems (4 dual core CPUs = much goodness). AMD should have the "eXtReMe g4m3r" [Athlon 64 FX] editions soon enough, followed by the usual consumer CPUs [Athlon 64], which are much less expensive than the Opterons.
"So, mostly out of fear, Adobe buys its main competitor and now must shoehorn the company into its unfortunate not-invented-here corporate culture. (This aspect of Adobe is another story in itself.)"
Er, are you sure about that? Adobe bought CoolEdit from Syntrillium and sold it as "Adobe Audition", no problem.
You missed the "copy the new tarball to the distfiles mirrors", but yeah, that's the usual process.
Your first step is critical. Many devs, myself included, simply don't have the time to be checking for updates to all the packages we maintain. Please do file bug reports for new versions, and you can even assign them to the dev listed in the package's metadata.xml, which will bypass seemant and the other clumsy bug-wranglers;-)
The testing we (Gentoo devs) do on new packages ourselves is minimal. Unless it's an important, popular package, we usually make sure it compiles and runs on all the architectures we can test, then put it in the tree as unstable.
There aren't any hard rules for marking packages stable, but the custom is to do so if it's gone ~30 days with no outstanding bug reports.
XFree86, which stagnated for years and is now dead, confirmed by netcraft
Yeah, but I don't think they know it. The funny thing is, they released 4.5.0 (4.4.0 was the one that marked the controversial license change) just a month ago, and I never even heard about it. All the Linuxes and FreeBSD (not sure about NetBSD and OpenBSD) have ditched it in favor of X.org; I don't see why they bother.
Maybe I'm being paranoid, but can anyone else see lazy PHP coders relying on this, and forgetting to do proper server-side input checking?
No need to pick on the PHP coders -- you can just as easily write unchecked Perl, ASP, Python, etc -- but yes, some of the biggest website vulnerabilities are caused by relying too much on JavaScript to validate input.
I mean, essentially you're just having to check everything twice... what was wrong with returning a page informing the user of his or her mistakes, exactly?
It's a little faster for the user (instant feedback on any mistakes), and it saves a tiny bit of server resources. And it should replace all the JavaScript hacks with one standard interface.
... but a SQL server? Yikes. I think I'll hold off for the final release
Indeed. I don't think that even Gentooers (myself included) are crazy enough to run a beta-quality database server of all things, especially when perfectly stable alternatives are available. You're just asking for a corrupted DB.
The problem is the mouse is simple and effective enough for the task at hand.
Only because current interfaces are designed for the mouse. If nothing else, there's the problem of carpal tunnel syndrome to consider.
It will be replaced eventually, and hopefully it will be direct input live touchscreens by default, but for now they are still outside most peoples range.
There are many problems with touchscreens, including arm strain and smudging your screen. No, I'm thinking more along the lines of the brain->computer interfaces that are being worked on for folks with serious disabilities.
I can't really testify myself, but a couple of friends of mine swear that having two CPUs on a Windows machine (that supports it, of course) makes a night/day difference for the GUI.
Not to troll, but you could just use a decent kernel (FreeBSD, Linux) that can do proper desktop multitasking on a single CPU. Now, if you're running some CPU-intensive stuff all the time and still want to be able to do other things at full speed, THEN you need a hardware upgrade.
I think the real solutions are to deal with societal issues that leads to so many people being in jail. Nip the problem in the bud so to speak. If you don't have inmates you don't have a problem dealing with inmates.
No offense, but that's a bit naive. Humans are not perfect, and you will get some violent criminals in any society. Certainly, things could be improved here in the US, but prisons will always be necessary. Barring a Gattaca-style society where everyone can be genetically engineered to be good citizens, anyway.
There's a lot of dumb crap going on in the consumer audio industry, but how exactly does spending $90 on a good pair of closed-back headphones make one an "idiot"? Do you really think that the $10 ones that don't even fit your ears properly are just as good? Now, $1,000 (with replacement cables that cost $200) is pushing it...
$90 is peanuts compared to what people will spend on crappy 5.1 computer speakers, and I get better audio quality. If you really can't tell the difference, put on a CD of "Dark Side of the Moon" and crank it up.
128kbps MP3s? Ouch. I guess you just don't have decent audio equipment? A ~$90 pair of Sennheiser headphones is more than enough to tell the difference between 128 and 192 if you appreciate the music at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? Have you actually used KDE or GNOME in the past few years? The only reason Windows could be considered "easier to use" is because everyone is already familiar with Windows.
And if we're really shooting for ease of use, why not recommend Mac OS X? Windows is only necessary for games and certain applications with no alternative. Your average user who needs little more than web, email, and word processing will be perfectly content on KDE or OS X.
Indeed. And IIRC, there was little difference between IE5 and IE6. If you have the only browser around, there's little reason to improve. Between this and the anti-Linux ads, it shows that Microsoft is absolutely scared of F/OSS and sees Mozilla, Linux, etc. as serious competitors. As an F/OSS user and developer, it's really exciting :-)
Ah, no. There's a reason this hasn't been done already. Partly because these days, only scientists know Fortran (the best language for the job), but mostly because it would take at least a year of intense study to bring someone up from high school-level chemistry and physics to a basic understanding of physical chemistry. Experienced software engineers have probably forgotten most of the calculus they took in college too.
In short, it's a huge waste of time.
My thoughts exactly, which is why I'm doing a double major in Chemistry and CS. I'll probably go to grad school for chemistry. At the moment, most of the code I've seen seems to be done by the people who understand the science but are mediocre at programming. I've seen better design in many open-source projects.
For people who aren't crazy enough to take on the full load of two undergrad majors, there's also the option of getting a bachelor's degree in CS (with a minor in something else), then getting your master's/Ph.D. in another field, whether it's science, engineering, graphic design, economics, or whatever. Confining yourself to pure CS seems like a bad idea to me.
Oh wait, I'm posting to Slashdot. Hm.
I'll agree that there's no universal standard, but the convention is:
B = byte
b = bit
They're Opterons, which work in SMP systems (4 dual core CPUs = much goodness). AMD should have the "eXtReMe g4m3r" [Athlon 64 FX] editions soon enough, followed by the usual consumer CPUs [Athlon 64], which are much less expensive than the Opterons.
Er, are you sure about that? Adobe bought CoolEdit from Syntrillium and sold it as "Adobe Audition", no problem.
Better yet, the whole thing needs a good dose of refactor mercilessly, similar to what X.org has been doing.
Your first step is critical. Many devs, myself included, simply don't have the time to be checking for updates to all the packages we maintain. Please do file bug reports for new versions, and you can even assign them to the dev listed in the package's metadata.xml, which will bypass seemant and the other clumsy bug-wranglers ;-)
There aren't any hard rules for marking packages stable, but the custom is to do so if it's gone ~30 days with no outstanding bug reports.
Yeah, but I don't think they know it. The funny thing is, they released 4.5.0 (4.4.0 was the one that marked the controversial license change) just a month ago, and I never even heard about it. All the Linuxes and FreeBSD (not sure about NetBSD and OpenBSD) have ditched it in favor of X.org; I don't see why they bother.
No need to pick on the PHP coders -- you can just as easily write unchecked Perl, ASP, Python, etc -- but yes, some of the biggest website vulnerabilities are caused by relying too much on JavaScript to validate input.
I mean, essentially you're just having to check everything twice... what was wrong with returning a page informing the user of his or her mistakes, exactly?
It's a little faster for the user (instant feedback on any mistakes), and it saves a tiny bit of server resources. And it should replace all the JavaScript hacks with one standard interface.
That's what Linux or BSD and friends are for.
Indeed. I don't think that even Gentooers (myself included) are crazy enough to run a beta-quality database server of all things, especially when perfectly stable alternatives are available. You're just asking for a corrupted DB.
If you want the LiveDVD. Looks like everyone will have to wait for the traditional network installation CDs, though.
Only because current interfaces are designed for the mouse. If nothing else, there's the problem of carpal tunnel syndrome to consider.
It will be replaced eventually, and hopefully it will be direct input live touchscreens by default, but for now they are still outside most peoples range.
There are many problems with touchscreens, including arm strain and smudging your screen. No, I'm thinking more along the lines of the brain->computer interfaces that are being worked on for folks with serious disabilities.
Not to troll, but you could just use a decent kernel (FreeBSD, Linux) that can do proper desktop multitasking on a single CPU. Now, if you're running some CPU-intensive stuff all the time and still want to be able to do other things at full speed, THEN you need a hardware upgrade.
Also note that most spyware and virus scanning is bound by I/O, not CPU speed. You'll just have to wait for dual-head hard drives ;-)
No offense, but that's a bit naive. Humans are not perfect, and you will get some violent criminals in any society. Certainly, things could be improved here in the US, but prisons will always be necessary. Barring a Gattaca-style society where everyone can be genetically engineered to be good citizens, anyway.
The Final Fantasy games are considered RPGs? Oh right, they're "console RPGs".
It has the best story, greatest variety of characters.
OK.
tons of different music
So? If the music is really exceptional, it might be worth noting, but quantity is different from quality.
and added many secret areas
So?
It was the first game to truly to define a real experience of an RPG to the player.
Hilarious. So prior to FF6 (released in 1999?), there were no "real RPG experiences"? What does that even mean?
And how old are these people? I'm only 19, but I'd go with Ultima VII as the genre-defining RPG.
$90 is peanuts compared to what people will spend on crappy 5.1 computer speakers, and I get better audio quality. If you really can't tell the difference, put on a CD of "Dark Side of the Moon" and crank it up.
128kbps MP3s? Ouch. I guess you just don't have decent audio equipment? A ~$90 pair of Sennheiser headphones is more than enough to tell the difference between 128 and 192 if you appreciate the music at all.
Ah, of course. The ancient art of voodoo chicken coding.
Blah people. I2 is just another backbone, except it's semi-private. Why is this simple fact so difficult to understand?