...the course to a totalitarian dictatorship/oligarchy, that is. Control the media... eventually, just make it up... it's happened many times before. Even if it's done in an ridiculous manner, the fact that there are people in charge of FEMA who think it's OK should set alarm bells ringing.
Goofy cousin with ICBMs, indeed. Not just goofy, but aggressive, arrogant and loud-mouthed as well.
Fortunately, your fascism will be a capitalist one, so it's OK!
I find Opera Mini very usable and responsive on my Nokia 6234 - which is not even a smartphone really, though it has a good screen. Their server does a great job of trimming down the pages so most pages come in 5-10kB. It's good enough that I would pay (a small amount). It also loads very fast for what I assume is a Java applet... about 1-2 seconds.
I will warn, as someone kindly did to me before: Pixel is very buggy and suffers from feature creep; ie. the author keeps adding features and never stabilises it, and also insists on doing everything himself. I tried it briefly and immediately found big bugs (e.g. brushes did not show correctly on screen at any zoom other than 1:1). Yes, it looks a lot like PhotoShop, but its not really much use since it has never had a stable release. (you also get to pay for the privilege of Beta testing).
The problem with this idea is that it is really unlikely you actually have implemented everything that Microsoft did, albeit with bugs.
Does it resize? Does it work on every language and codepage supported by Windows? Does it support the full set of Unicode characters? Can you sort in all the optional ways? Can it view in a detail list as well as thumbnails? Does it support every different font size? All the possible icon formats? Does it monitor the file system for changes and refresh itself? Does it handle right-to-left text? Does it handle all the in-place explorer operations like open, delete, rename? Are the icons it displays matched to the COM objects explorer users so that special objects behave correctly? Does it support all the possible media? Does it handle special cases such a path names longer than the traditional 256char maximum? Does it support all the accessibility addons, key shortcuts, etc? Does it work on every version of Windows? Does it support screen-readers?
In my experience, people can do exceptionally great jobs of some ASPECT or aspects of what Windows does, but they won't implement 90% of the background features, mostly because they don't even know they are there. Microsoft have been building these features in for decades (of course, somewhat to their cost in maintenance) and it is a huge hurdle to match them all.
Sorry, number two mistake that new(ish) programmers make, behind not being modular enough, is getting excited and being TOO modular. They abstract everything away and create a huge edifice that bears no obvious relation to the original problem being solved. Sometimes this happens because it's their second project and they are determined not to make a mess like the first one, sometimes it happens because they're fresh out of school and want to apply all the wonderful principles.
Learning to strike a balance is, IMO, a very important part of a software developer's experience.
And adding a whole layer just for the convenience of releasing open source is certainly NOT such a balance, unless those "secret" parts are naturally isolated.
Interesting figure, but I don't think that can be true, simply because most ram runs without heatsinks. Anything over about 5 watts would need a heatsink, and 20 watts would be quite large. I'm aware there are RAM heatsinks out there, but mostly they are not *required*, only a flash add-on for those who O/C or whatever.
Hilarious! Joel wrote flippantly about this exact intellectual exercise here:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html
People who are Smart but don't Get Things Done often have PhDs and work in big companies where nobody listens to them because they are completely impractical. [...] For example, they will say, "Spreadsheets are really just a special case of programming language," and then go off for a week and write a thrilling, brilliant whitepaper about the theoretical computational linguistic attributes of a spreadsheet as a programming language. Smart, but not useful."
If someone is dangerously unstable, then are they always going to methodically setup a concealed device? It seems perfectly reasonable that someone who has gone off the deepend WOULD run in with an obvious bomb. Just because it is obvious, does not mean it isn't real! Not every dangerous person is a fanatic with a reasoned goal.
Good point about destructible environments. To me, the realism of a game is spoilt much more quickly by a thin wooden door showing no effect from a rocket strike, than from water looking a bit flat. Or surviving a nuclear explosion by standing behind a rock. An environment that really showed inreasing damage from the battles going on would be a lot of fun. A few games have tried it (and of course every game has crates) but obviously it's not catching on...
How the hell are they going to enforce all those warm fuzzy requirements? No endless loops, must have a mute, must clearly identify product... yeah right! Are they going to sit through every submitted ad and check all those things? I think not. You can tell this is just the "user experience" team desperately trying to tape the barn door shut after the marketing team enthusiastically threw it open.
What is this obsession with piping between applications? Does that have any meaning at all in graphical user interfaces? Piping allows you to build a bunch of text-processing apps into something more useful, but they are fundamentally not interactive tasks; whereas GUI apps are primarily about interaction.
Maybe the days when average user can use any random piece of software are coming to an end? THere's no practical way to get ALL users to know what is safe and what is not, and those who do the wrong thing are a big enough numbers to damage everyone's usage of the internet.
So yeah, that would mean any small developer who can't afford to do things professionally - including a personally checked certificate - can't sell/give software to Joe Bloggs, who simply isn't competent to know what to do.
Personally I like to have the option to pay for no ads. As I do on slashdot (mind you the slashdot cost is very low).
Although these days there is less point paying for a single publication/site. NYTimes seems good, but as a non-citizen it was never enough to pay for...
I agrew we can't rely on people to remember, but I think there's an easy solution: have a cellphone-band scanner at the front door of the hospital, which sounds a nasty alarm if you walk in with your phone on. Some planes have them already (minus the loud alarm).
Most spammers are very stupid, looking for "big profits" with little or no efforts.
Unfortunately over time they have hired some reasonably smart programmers and those guys have built up techniques that are now hard to beat. Also, a lot of the small fry spammers have been closed down by filters and controls (the main problem they now generate is funding the hard core spamemrs by buying their spamming services and software). So spamming has evolved by survival of the fittest.
Maybe if you did more than the mods you're allowed, slashdot could randomly select the 5 to apply. Then you could just go around modding as many as you like, and some unbiased selection would go through.
OK, the font looks normal to me, lowercase much smaller than mouse pointer (and I have a minimum font size set in Seamonkey). It looks about the same as the fonts on absent to me.
Hm, nice look on Absent, but I find the bright red on brownish background difficult to read myself. I would dull it to about half that. Just my 2c.
Oh, right. Obviously I didn't read your post well enough:) But I think you're splitting hairs a bit - nearby elements being transmuted to radioactive isotopes is close enough to the concept of radiation "infecting" other things to be a fair analogy. Though its not a very strong affect I suppose, unlike an infection which is as strong as the original... OK maybe not a good analogy:)
Doesn't seem so terrible to me, except for the very cluttered image in the front. They seem to be going for a retro look, which is interesting. Font size doesn't seem any different to anywhere else...
Perhaps you're just reacting to a website that dares to use serif fonts?
Things that are initially inert only become radioactive either by contamination or by transmutation; they are not 'infected' by radioactivity.
Surely something highly radioactive can cause radioactivity in nearby substances by neutron irradiation, making radioactive isotopes of the substance? Not a very big affect though, IIRC...
Yes, and it also sounds very Soviet, making up vague unsubstantiated claims for marketing purposes; just like Lysenko. Putin really wants to turn back that clock, eh?
Slashdot Mirror
...the course to a totalitarian dictatorship/oligarchy, that is. Control the media... eventually, just make it up... it's happened many times before. Even if it's done in an ridiculous manner, the fact that there are people in charge of FEMA who think it's OK should set alarm bells ringing.
Goofy cousin with ICBMs, indeed. Not just goofy, but aggressive, arrogant and loud-mouthed as well.
Fortunately, your fascism will be a capitalist one, so it's OK!
And does that work when the application uses custom or older hardware for which there are no drivers for newer versions of Windows?
I figured that was a joke. Appropriately ironic.
But it didn't help me figure out their bizarre "web site".
I find Opera Mini very usable and responsive on my Nokia 6234 - which is not even a smartphone really, though it has a good screen. Their server does a great job of trimming down the pages so most pages come in 5-10kB. It's good enough that I would pay (a small amount). It also loads very fast for what I assume is a Java applet ... about 1-2 seconds.
Yep, from the Dare website - admittedly they had some problems with delivery but it was decent MP3s, no DRM.
I will warn, as someone kindly did to me before: Pixel is very buggy and suffers from feature creep; ie. the author keeps adding features and never stabilises it, and also insists on doing everything himself. I tried it briefly and immediately found big bugs (e.g. brushes did not show correctly on screen at any zoom other than 1:1). Yes, it looks a lot like PhotoShop, but its not really much use since it has never had a stable release. (you also get to pay for the privilege of Beta testing).
The problem with this idea is that it is really unlikely you actually have implemented everything that Microsoft did, albeit with bugs.
Does it resize? Does it work on every language and codepage supported by Windows? Does it support the full set of Unicode characters? Can you sort in all the optional ways? Can it view in a detail list as well as thumbnails? Does it support every different font size? All the possible icon formats? Does it monitor the file system for changes and refresh itself? Does it handle right-to-left text? Does it handle all the in-place explorer operations like open, delete, rename? Are the icons it displays matched to the COM objects explorer users so that special objects behave correctly? Does it support all the possible media? Does it handle special cases such a path names longer than the traditional 256char maximum? Does it support all the accessibility addons, key shortcuts, etc? Does it work on every version of Windows? Does it support screen-readers?
In my experience, people can do exceptionally great jobs of some ASPECT or aspects of what Windows does, but they won't implement 90% of the background features, mostly because they don't even know they are there. Microsoft have been building these features in for decades (of course, somewhat to their cost in maintenance) and it is a huge hurdle to match them all.
Sorry, number two mistake that new(ish) programmers make, behind not being modular enough, is getting excited and being TOO modular. They abstract everything away and create a huge edifice that bears no obvious relation to the original problem being solved. Sometimes this happens because it's their second project and they are determined not to make a mess like the first one, sometimes it happens because they're fresh out of school and want to apply all the wonderful principles.
Learning to strike a balance is, IMO, a very important part of a software developer's experience.
And adding a whole layer just for the convenience of releasing open source is certainly NOT such a balance, unless those "secret" parts are naturally isolated.
Interesting figure, but I don't think that can be true, simply because most ram runs without heatsinks. Anything over about 5 watts would need a heatsink, and 20 watts would be quite large.
I'm aware there are RAM heatsinks out there, but mostly they are not *required*, only a flash add-on for those who O/C or whatever.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html People who are Smart but don't Get Things Done often have PhDs and work in big companies where nobody listens to them because they are completely impractical. [...] For example, they will say, "Spreadsheets are really just a special case of programming language," and then go off for a week and write a thrilling, brilliant whitepaper about the theoretical computational linguistic attributes of a spreadsheet as a programming language. Smart, but not useful."
If someone is dangerously unstable, then are they always going to methodically setup a concealed device? It seems perfectly reasonable that someone who has gone off the deepend WOULD run in with an obvious bomb. Just because it is obvious, does not mean it isn't real! Not every dangerous person is a fanatic with a reasoned goal.
Good point about destructible environments. To me, the realism of a game is spoilt much more quickly by a thin wooden door showing no effect from a rocket strike, than from water looking a bit flat. Or surviving a nuclear explosion by standing behind a rock.
An environment that really showed inreasing damage from the battles going on would be a lot of fun.
A few games have tried it (and of course every game has crates) but obviously it's not catching on...
How the hell are they going to enforce all those warm fuzzy requirements? No endless loops, must have a mute, must clearly identify product... yeah right! Are they going to sit through every submitted ad and check all those things? I think not.
You can tell this is just the "user experience" team desperately trying to tape the barn door shut after the marketing team enthusiastically threw it open.
What is this obsession with piping between applications? Does that have any meaning at all in graphical user interfaces? Piping allows you to build a bunch of text-processing apps into something more useful, but they are fundamentally not interactive tasks; whereas GUI apps are primarily about interaction.
Maybe the days when average user can use any random piece of software are coming to an end? THere's no practical way to get ALL users to know what is safe and what is not, and those who do the wrong thing are a big enough numbers to damage everyone's usage of the internet.
So yeah, that would mean any small developer who can't afford to do things professionally - including a personally checked certificate - can't sell/give software to Joe Bloggs, who simply isn't competent to know what to do.
Personally I like to have the option to pay for no ads. As I do on slashdot (mind you the slashdot cost is very low).
Although these days there is less point paying for a single publication/site. NYTimes seems good, but as a non-citizen it was never enough to pay for...
I agrew we can't rely on people to remember, but I think there's an easy solution: have a cellphone-band scanner at the front door of the hospital, which sounds a nasty alarm if you walk in with your phone on. Some planes have them already (minus the loud alarm).
Most spammers are very stupid, looking for "big profits" with little or no efforts.
Unfortunately over time they have hired some reasonably smart programmers and those guys have built up techniques that are now hard to beat. Also, a lot of the small fry spammers have been closed down by filters and controls (the main problem they now generate is funding the hard core spamemrs by buying their spamming services and software). So spamming has evolved by survival of the fittest.
Maybe if you did more than the mods you're allowed, slashdot could randomly select the 5 to apply.
Then you could just go around modding as many as you like, and some unbiased selection would go through.
OK, the font looks normal to me, lowercase much smaller than mouse pointer (and I have a minimum font size set in Seamonkey). It looks about the same as the fonts on absent to me.
Hm, nice look on Absent, but I find the bright red on brownish background difficult to read myself. I would dull it to about half that. Just my 2c.
Oh, right. Obviously I didn't read your post well enough :) :)
But I think you're splitting hairs a bit - nearby elements being transmuted to radioactive isotopes is close enough to the concept of radiation "infecting" other things to be a fair analogy. Though its not a very strong affect I suppose, unlike an infection which is as strong as the original... OK maybe not a good analogy
Doesn't seem so terrible to me, except for the very cluttered image in the front.
They seem to be going for a retro look, which is interesting.
Font size doesn't seem any different to anywhere else...
Perhaps you're just reacting to a website that dares to use serif fonts?
Things that are initially inert only become radioactive either by contamination or by transmutation; they are not 'infected' by radioactivity.
Surely something highly radioactive can cause radioactivity in nearby substances by neutron irradiation, making radioactive isotopes of the substance? Not a very big affect though, IIRC...
Yes, and it also sounds very Soviet, making up vague unsubstantiated claims for marketing purposes; just like Lysenko. Putin really wants to turn back that clock, eh?
Indeed. Aside from ambitious Ajax applications doing client side calculation, does the speed of Javascript matter much?
In addition to that - something I just thought of - I would much rather that the Javascript engine be VERY secure and reliable, rather than fast.