The only business that would go under if Slashdot stopped working would be Slashdot.
Actually, I bet that a lot of job-search sites would go bottoms-up if Slashdot stopped working - companies would find their employees were suddenly more productive, meaning that they had to do less hiring; and people would stop being fired for surfing Slashdot at work.
Come to think of it, Slashdot could be propping up the entire global economy right now. Maybe I should consider finally becoming a subscriber.
That's due to the culture surrounding the language rather than the language itself. I had an internship at a large Java-using company (not Sun) where we wrote navigation software for use in in-car computing. One of the pieces we needed was a server to provide the data (street segments, basically). We first used a package built by another team in the company that was huge (dozens of MB of Java code) and incredibly slow. We re-wrote it in about a week and it was orders of magnitude faster and smaller, with more features.
When looking for a web framework for my company, I ended up writing a framework from scratch rather than using anything else out there. Even the best software, such as the Apache projects, suffers from lots of bloat. This isn't the fault of the language - it's the mindset that many people are in.
It can be argued that the standard Java libraries are too large. That's a valid point, though the vast array of functionality provided sure does come in handy. In addition, it means that you likely will have to ship less libraries with your software - the user's JVM will have them all included.
The do-not-call list works because the POTS network has limited points of entry - the telcos know who is calling (or at least where they're calling from), and the callers have to pay phone charges as well. If someone is found to be violating the do-not-call list, the FCC can easily track down and fine/prosecute them.
With VOIP, the network is open. For the most part, this is good - we have the potential to completely do away with phone charges - but, like email, there's no way to identify the source of a call other than the IP address, which could easily be a zombie PC or controlled by an ISP, not under FCC jurisdiction, that doesn't give a damn as to what is originating from their network.
My company currently has allows all incoming SIP calls to our phone system so that customers/associates can make free calls to us. Unfortunately, this will probably have to change as soon as "spit" becomes widespread.
No, the point of a CAPTCHA is to have a test which a human can pass easily, but a computer can't. Most current CAPTCHAs are image-based, since that is simple to implement, but this is by no means a requirement.
Point taken. Revise my original post to say "... image-based CAPTCHAs..."
Of course, virtually all CAPTHCAs currently in use are image-based, so this is more of an academic distinction right now.
The blind are able to use braille displays and screen readers to access well-designed sites. The whole point of CAPTCHAs, however, is to have images that computers are unable to read. Accessible design and CAPTCHAs have exactly opposite goals.
The Internet is becoming much too important to leave a significant amount of the population (pardon the pun) in the dark. We have the technology to help the blind navigate web sites independently. Unfortunately, CAPTCHAs are hindering much of that progress.
I think they should just get all paypal users to assemble one day (may be in the Arizona desert) and then teach all of them what you suggested.
Send out a spam like this:
"I am the widow of a wealthy Arizonan entrepreneur. I am in need of assistance in transferring large sums ($153m) of money. Your help is appreciated. Meet me at the Tuscon desert state park at 8:00 in the evening on April the 19th to complete the transaction. I will give you 25% of the money as a reward for your assistance."
Also:
"Your PayPal account has been deactivated! To reactivate it, you must come to the Tuscon desert park at 8:00 PM on April 19. If you do not proceed, your account will be permanently closed!"
That should get all of the people in need of such education to show up.<g>
Have you ever tried to secure a Windows terminal? It's a nightmare - even if you set up a locked down account, there's a good chance that a necessary app will need an account with Administrator privileges. Yes, you can argue that those apps aren't Microsoft's fault; that kind of design, however, had been the standard for quite a while for Windows application development.
I've never seen a well-run Windows lab that didn't have Norton Ghost (or equivalent) installed to re-image the machines on a regular basis. While the newer versions of Windows are much better than the previous ones in this regard, it's much easier to secure a system that was designed from the ground-up for multi-user functionality. The NT code-base was designed that way, but a lot of bad habits migrated over from the DOS-based Windows's.
I prefer to have a platform with less features but a stable design at its base (*nix) than a platform with lots of features but an unstable and unsecure foundation (Win32).
To use a real-world analogy (I've been involved in a lot of construction stuff recently): adding new trim, or even remodeling a room, is much easier than replacing the foundation.
From the Damn Interesting article:...and some of these lines remained in operation until 1953. Ultimately, however, trucks proved more efficient at information-moving than the series of tubes.
Ha! How wrong they were! Everyone knows that series of tubes are much more efficient than big trucks.
(No matter how many copies I make of Vista Ultimate, it still sells for $400)
Perhaps that's true in the short term, but it's not in the long term. Assuming you've made the copies legally (i.e. copyright law doesn't exist), the value of Vista will go down due to supply and demand. If people can get Windows for free, no one (except the ignorant and those needing support contracts) would pay for it.
There needs to be a way for people to be compensated for the content they create. They may not be creating a tangible good, but you can't deny that they've put a lot of time into their creations. I'm a big fan of open source projects; many of them have been successful at earning their creators decent livings while they give away their code for free. Not every piece of intellectual property can work this way, however - you're not going to sell a support contract on a work of art or a musical composition, for example.
Let's face it - copyrights are necessary if we want the arts to continue to be a career option. While there are certainly many ways that the law is flawed, the underlying concept is not.
He could've made this even greener by incorporating a small bird or monkey whose job it was to crank this to the top. This way, the people of the world are motivated to preserve wildlife so that they can read novels at night.
You think that people will be motivated by the desire to read? Make a TV powered by this concept, however...
I agree with you. However I would like to point out two things. One is that you need an automatic transmission or a CVT to be able to drive with one hand safely and it has to be your left hand so you can use the turn signal. When I drive while on my cell I always still use the turn signal.
The problem is that the situation might arise when you need both hands to make an emergency maneuver. If you're holding a phone (or anything else) in one hand, that maneuver will be much more difficult, and you'll probably execute it too late. This doesn't apply to normal, everyday driving, but often the difference between life and death is a fraction of a second.
The second point is that talking on a cell phone is no more distracting then carrying on a conversation with somebody in the car. So people need to either learn to be able to talk and drive or just learn that they can't carry on a conversation while driving and refrain from doing it.
There is a key difference: a person in the car with you will be aware of the road conditions. A passenger will know when you need to concentrate to negotiate traffic, poor weather conditions, etc., while a person on the other end of a phone call will have no such knowledge, perhaps even being unaware that you're driving at all. Also, a passenger can actually help make you a safer driver by pointing out something (pedestrian wearing dark clothes at night, etc.) that you didn't see. While the driver still maintains the responsibility for looking out for hazards, an extra set of eyes never hurts.
Looking at the mailing list message linked from the article clears up things. Kubuntu 8.04 will not be "unsupported" - it will simply not be an LTS (long-term support) release. This means that it will "only" be supported for 18 months on the desktop instead of three years.
Also, the concern is not whether features will still be being added to 3.5, but whether bugs fill be fixed upstream. From TFM: "Will a bug in KDE 3.5 receive upstream attention in March 2011?"
The amount of misinformation that has been spewed here astounds me. Get the facts:
CFLs do contain mercury, but it is only a problem if the bulbs are broken or disposed of improperly. The amount of mercury in an average CFL is about 1/100 the amount contained in one of those old mercury thermometers. Also, the largest man-made source of mercury pollution is coal-fired power plants, which CFL usage will reduce. In addition, newer CFLs are being released that contain much less mercury than current ones (source [pdf]).
It is true that some CFLs don't live up to their rated life. All Energy Star compliant bulbs are required to include at least a two-year manufacturer warranty (source).
CFLs are available in a wide range of color temperatures, from 2700K ("warm" incandescent) to 5100K ("daylight"). Many CFLs are indistinguishable from their incandescent equivalents (that is, until you touch them and don't get burned).
Dimmable CFLs, which work on standard dimmer switches, exist. While they do not have exactly the same dimming behaviors as incandescents, I've found them to be more than adequate.
While most CFLs do not tolerate colder temperatures, there are many that do, all the way down below 0 degrees F
While older CFLs didn't come on instantly, newer ones, with electric ballasts, do. They do not start at full brightness, but are plenty bright to see when entering a room, and reach full brightness quickly, often in under a minute.
CFLs with electric ballasts don't "hum" like the old ones did.
The main thing to do when purchasing CFLs is to avoid the junk that's sold at Wal-Mart, Meijer, Home Depot, etc. Also, try to look for bulbs with the Energy Star label, which guarantees that they have electric ballasts (instant-on, no hum), lifespan ratings of at least 6000 hours, and at least a two-year warranty.
I order all of my bulbs online from 1000bulbs.com. While I've had a few issues with bulbs prematurely burning out, but replacements are always quickly sent, free of charge, without requiring me to ship the defective bulbs back.
I haven't bought an incandescent bulb in over two years, and have helped friends and family switch as well. Since I buy bulbs online I can get them in any variant needed - including dimmable, "warm," flame-shaped bulbs for the light fixture in the dining room at my mom's house; PAR-30 shaped bulbs for the cans in my in-law's house (they are far from being environmentalists, but were sick of incandescents burning out, and have been very pleased in the six months they've had the CFLs so far); and 5100K "daylight" bulbs for some areas in my house.
Politics aside, please actually do some research before spouting off FUD.
The one where people trying to use their website don't see some weird error message just because there was a '>' in the wrong spot.
With a non-strict language, that misplaced bracket will behave differently in different browsers. In a strict language, that would never be deployed by any competent admin, who would be running everything through a validator before deployment. For the same reason that I prefer strongly-typed programming languages, I prefer strict semantic languages - bugs are discovered much sooner and handled more uniformly.
My point being that they may just buy the computer and not even know that they are using Linux or that it even matters. This doesn't really show that Linux is ready for all the masses, just the ones that buy it in $200 bargain computers for word processing and internet, which is a small representation of Linux on the desktop.
Really? I would guess that over 50% of the average computer-using population (Wal-Mart customers or not) use their computers exclusively for web browsing, email, and word processing.
Judging by your signature, I'm assuming that you're an Ayn Rand fan. I've read Atlas Shrugged. It was a good book, up until the part where libertarianism fixed everything (well, actually, the unlimited resources and complete lack of ill-will fixed everything, but Rand did a good job of distracting us from that fact). It appears that you've swallowed her kool-aid hook, line, and sinker.
The world simply doesn't work that way. Without proper government controls, there will always be people trying to take advantage of those that are in weaker positions, whether their position is caused by disability, lack of education, or simply less intelligence (though the latter is not the cause of the vast majority of poverty). From your attitude, I'm guessing that you happen to have been born into a position that allowed you to succeed financially; whether that's from parental assistance, a good eduction, hard work, or luck, I don't know. Regardless, it's luck/fate/providence that put you there. You and I are no better than the lowest, poorest homeless person in the country. We happen to have been dealt a better hand in life.
I base a lot of my philosophy on my Christian beliefs. Jesus said that, after loving the Lord, loving your neighbor as you love yourself is the most important commandment (interestingly, he never said anything about homosexuals). Regardless of your faith, however, wouldn't you rather devote your life to improving the lives of others, rather than on getting the latest toys to try to prop up your ego?
If you're in an emergency area, please minimize your voice use, and try to use text messages instead as they are much more lightweight on the cell networks. And pass the message on to those around you.
Unfortunately, with the bass-ackwards cell phone rate plans available in this country, voice minutes are included, while text messages cost extra.
I've been a NetBank customer for the past few years, and have had decent service from them (though the interest rates on their checking and money market accounts really tanked in the last couple of years). My dad's company had a business account there, however, that turned out to be a nightmare.
When my dad passed away unexpectedly in February, I had to get access to the company's bank accounts. Unfortunately, he was the only signer on the account. It took six months for them to give me access to the money (by closing the account and sending a check), and they still wouldn't give me access to the statements for the account, which I needed to reconcile with our records for tax purposes. I asked them how they were going to send me a 1099-INT (report of interest earned) at the end of the year, and their response was that they would send it to the business address on file. They "couldn't," however, send statements to the address on file. They never could explain the inconsistency. Mind you, this communication happened after I had already proved to them that I was the Personal Representative of the estate, which had 100% ownership of the business. They would take weeks to return phone calls, and never responded to lawyers' inquiries sent via certified mail.
Slashdot Mirror
The only business that would go under if Slashdot stopped working would be Slashdot.
Actually, I bet that a lot of job-search sites would go bottoms-up if Slashdot stopped working - companies would find their employees were suddenly more productive, meaning that they had to do less hiring; and people would stop being fired for surfing Slashdot at work.
Come to think of it, Slashdot could be propping up the entire global economy right now. Maybe I should consider finally becoming a subscriber.
That's due to the culture surrounding the language rather than the language itself. I had an internship at a large Java-using company (not Sun) where we wrote navigation software for use in in-car computing. One of the pieces we needed was a server to provide the data (street segments, basically). We first used a package built by another team in the company that was huge (dozens of MB of Java code) and incredibly slow. We re-wrote it in about a week and it was orders of magnitude faster and smaller, with more features.
When looking for a web framework for my company, I ended up writing a framework from scratch rather than using anything else out there. Even the best software, such as the Apache projects, suffers from lots of bloat. This isn't the fault of the language - it's the mindset that many people are in.
It can be argued that the standard Java libraries are too large. That's a valid point, though the vast array of functionality provided sure does come in handy. In addition, it means that you likely will have to ship less libraries with your software - the user's JVM will have them all included.
On Wikipedia, the truth is what the Admins says is the truth.
And that's different than a commercial information source how?
The do-not-call list works because the POTS network has limited points of entry - the telcos know who is calling (or at least where they're calling from), and the callers have to pay phone charges as well. If someone is found to be violating the do-not-call list, the FCC can easily track down and fine/prosecute them.
With VOIP, the network is open. For the most part, this is good - we have the potential to completely do away with phone charges - but, like email, there's no way to identify the source of a call other than the IP address, which could easily be a zombie PC or controlled by an ISP, not under FCC jurisdiction, that doesn't give a damn as to what is originating from their network.
My company currently has allows all incoming SIP calls to our phone system so that customers/associates can make free calls to us. Unfortunately, this will probably have to change as soon as "spit" becomes widespread.
No, the point of a CAPTCHA is to have a test which a human can pass easily, but a computer can't. Most current CAPTCHAs are image-based, since that is simple to implement, but this is by no means a requirement.
Point taken. Revise my original post to say "... image-based CAPTCHAs..."Of course, virtually all CAPTHCAs currently in use are image-based, so this is more of an academic distinction right now.
A failed core goes from being a sign of bad engineering, to a sign from God.
Even better - engrave an image of the Virgin Mary onto the defective core. That way you can appeal to the catholics as well as the baptists.
The blind are able to use braille displays and screen readers to access well-designed sites. The whole point of CAPTCHAs, however, is to have images that computers are unable to read. Accessible design and CAPTCHAs have exactly opposite goals.
The Internet is becoming much too important to leave a significant amount of the population (pardon the pun) in the dark. We have the technology to help the blind navigate web sites independently. Unfortunately, CAPTCHAs are hindering much of that progress.
I think they should just get all paypal users to assemble one day (may be in the Arizona
desert) and then teach all of them what you suggested.
Send out a spam like this:
"I am the widow of a wealthy Arizonan entrepreneur. I am in need of assistance in transferring large sums ($153m) of money. Your help is appreciated. Meet me at the Tuscon desert state park at 8:00 in the evening on April the 19th to complete the transaction. I will give you 25% of the money as a reward for your assistance."
Also:
"Your PayPal account has been deactivated! To reactivate it, you must come to the Tuscon desert park at 8:00 PM on April 19. If you do not proceed, your account will be permanently closed!"
That should get all of the people in need of such education to show up.<g>
Have you ever tried to secure a Windows terminal? It's a nightmare - even if you set up a locked down account, there's a good chance that a necessary app will need an account with Administrator privileges. Yes, you can argue that those apps aren't Microsoft's fault; that kind of design, however, had been the standard for quite a while for Windows application development.
I've never seen a well-run Windows lab that didn't have Norton Ghost (or equivalent) installed to re-image the machines on a regular basis. While the newer versions of Windows are much better than the previous ones in this regard, it's much easier to secure a system that was designed from the ground-up for multi-user functionality. The NT code-base was designed that way, but a lot of bad habits migrated over from the DOS-based Windows's.
I prefer to have a platform with less features but a stable design at its base (*nix) than a platform with lots of features but an unstable and unsecure foundation (Win32).
To use a real-world analogy (I've been involved in a lot of construction stuff recently): adding new trim, or even remodeling a room, is much easier than replacing the foundation.
Man, 366 day years, no wonder you're having problems.
I heard that he even had a February 29 this year. It must be part of some government energy savings plan.
Additionally, if it really generated that much heat, it couldn't possibly be as efficient as even the worst incandescents.
Sounds a lot like the GPL...
Very true - which is why it is a stupid idea to use the GPL for a file format.
From the Damn Interesting article: ...and some of these lines remained in operation until 1953. Ultimately, however, trucks proved more efficient at information-moving than the series of tubes.
Ha! How wrong they were! Everyone knows that series of tubes are much more efficient than big trucks.
I did once, but Lowe's security stopped me.
You managed to find an actual Lowes employee at Lowes? You have my admiration.
(No matter how many copies I make of Vista Ultimate, it still sells for $400)
Perhaps that's true in the short term, but it's not in the long term. Assuming you've made the copies legally (i.e. copyright law doesn't exist), the value of Vista will go down due to supply and demand. If people can get Windows for free, no one (except the ignorant and those needing support contracts) would pay for it.
There needs to be a way for people to be compensated for the content they create. They may not be creating a tangible good, but you can't deny that they've put a lot of time into their creations. I'm a big fan of open source projects; many of them have been successful at earning their creators decent livings while they give away their code for free. Not every piece of intellectual property can work this way, however - you're not going to sell a support contract on a work of art or a musical composition, for example.
Let's face it - copyrights are necessary if we want the arts to continue to be a career option. While there are certainly many ways that the law is flawed, the underlying concept is not.
He could've made this even greener by incorporating a small bird or monkey whose job it was to crank this to the top. This way, the people of the world are motivated to preserve wildlife so that they can read novels at night.
You think that people will be motivated by the desire to read? Make a TV powered by this concept, however...
I agree with you. However I would like to point out two things. One is that you need an automatic transmission or a CVT to be able to drive with one hand safely and it has to be your left hand so you can use the turn signal. When I drive while on my cell I always still use the turn signal.
The problem is that the situation might arise when you need both hands to make an emergency maneuver. If you're holding a phone (or anything else) in one hand, that maneuver will be much more difficult, and you'll probably execute it too late. This doesn't apply to normal, everyday driving, but often the difference between life and death is a fraction of a second.
The second point is that talking on a cell phone is no more distracting then carrying on a conversation with somebody in the car. So people need to either learn to be able to talk and drive or just learn that they can't carry on a conversation while driving and refrain from doing it.
There is a key difference: a person in the car with you will be aware of the road conditions. A passenger will know when you need to concentrate to negotiate traffic, poor weather conditions, etc., while a person on the other end of a phone call will have no such knowledge, perhaps even being unaware that you're driving at all. Also, a passenger can actually help make you a safer driver by pointing out something (pedestrian wearing dark clothes at night, etc.) that you didn't see. While the driver still maintains the responsibility for looking out for hazards, an extra set of eyes never hurts.
Nope, still around 6500. Try adding quotes to your search query.
Looking at the mailing list message linked from the article clears up things. Kubuntu 8.04 will not be "unsupported" - it will simply not be an LTS (long-term support) release. This means that it will "only" be supported for 18 months on the desktop instead of three years.
Also, the concern is not whether features will still be being added to 3.5, but whether bugs fill be fixed upstream. From TFM: "Will a bug in KDE 3.5 receive upstream attention in March 2011?"
The main thing to do when purchasing CFLs is to avoid the junk that's sold at Wal-Mart, Meijer, Home Depot, etc. Also, try to look for bulbs with the Energy Star label, which guarantees that they have electric ballasts (instant-on, no hum), lifespan ratings of at least 6000 hours, and at least a two-year warranty.
I order all of my bulbs online from 1000bulbs.com. While I've had a few issues with bulbs prematurely burning out, but replacements are always quickly sent, free of charge, without requiring me to ship the defective bulbs back.
I haven't bought an incandescent bulb in over two years, and have helped friends and family switch as well. Since I buy bulbs online I can get them in any variant needed - including dimmable, "warm," flame-shaped bulbs for the light fixture in the dining room at my mom's house; PAR-30 shaped bulbs for the cans in my in-law's house (they are far from being environmentalists, but were sick of incandescents burning out, and have been very pleased in the six months they've had the CFLs so far); and 5100K "daylight" bulbs for some areas in my house.
Politics aside, please actually do some research before spouting off FUD.
The one where people trying to use their website don't see some weird error message just because there was a '>' in the wrong spot.
With a non-strict language, that misplaced bracket will behave differently in different browsers. In a strict language, that would never be deployed by any competent admin, who would be running everything through a validator before deployment. For the same reason that I prefer strongly-typed programming languages, I prefer strict semantic languages - bugs are discovered much sooner and handled more uniformly.
My point being that they may just buy the computer and not even know that they are using Linux or that it even matters. This doesn't really show that Linux is ready for all the masses, just the ones that buy it in $200 bargain computers for word processing and internet, which is a small representation of Linux on the desktop.
Really? I would guess that over 50% of the average computer-using population (Wal-Mart customers or not) use their computers exclusively for web browsing, email, and word processing.
Judging by your signature, I'm assuming that you're an Ayn Rand fan. I've read Atlas Shrugged. It was a good book, up until the part where libertarianism fixed everything (well, actually, the unlimited resources and complete lack of ill-will fixed everything, but Rand did a good job of distracting us from that fact). It appears that you've swallowed her kool-aid hook, line, and sinker.
The world simply doesn't work that way. Without proper government controls, there will always be people trying to take advantage of those that are in weaker positions, whether their position is caused by disability, lack of education, or simply less intelligence (though the latter is not the cause of the vast majority of poverty). From your attitude, I'm guessing that you happen to have been born into a position that allowed you to succeed financially; whether that's from parental assistance, a good eduction, hard work, or luck, I don't know. Regardless, it's luck/fate/providence that put you there. You and I are no better than the lowest, poorest homeless person in the country. We happen to have been dealt a better hand in life.
I base a lot of my philosophy on my Christian beliefs. Jesus said that, after loving the Lord, loving your neighbor as you love yourself is the most important commandment (interestingly, he never said anything about homosexuals). Regardless of your faith, however, wouldn't you rather devote your life to improving the lives of others, rather than on getting the latest toys to try to prop up your ego?
If you're in an emergency area, please minimize your voice use, and try to use text messages instead as they are much more lightweight on the cell networks. And pass the message on to those around you.
Unfortunately, with the bass-ackwards cell phone rate plans available in this country, voice minutes are included, while text messages cost extra.
I've been a NetBank customer for the past few years, and have had decent service from them (though the interest rates on their checking and money market accounts really tanked in the last couple of years). My dad's company had a business account there, however, that turned out to be a nightmare.
When my dad passed away unexpectedly in February, I had to get access to the company's bank accounts. Unfortunately, he was the only signer on the account. It took six months for them to give me access to the money (by closing the account and sending a check), and they still wouldn't give me access to the statements for the account, which I needed to reconcile with our records for tax purposes. I asked them how they were going to send me a 1099-INT (report of interest earned) at the end of the year, and their response was that they would send it to the business address on file. They "couldn't," however, send statements to the address on file. They never could explain the inconsistency. Mind you, this communication happened after I had already proved to them that I was the Personal Representative of the estate, which had 100% ownership of the business. They would take weeks to return phone calls, and never responded to lawyers' inquiries sent via certified mail.
Good riddance, NetBank.