Re:Blizz should've taken a page from id's book
on
Blizzcon Writeup
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· Score: 1
I once knew this ho, she give it away for free, man. Yeah, she good. But my new girl, she make me buy her all kinds of shit. I says to her, why can't you be like that other ho, the one who don't want nuthin'? She say, "I ain't her, asshole, now where's my coke, daddy-o?" I gots to admit, though, my new girl, she's stacked! So I took out $120 and ran on down to get my girl some blow.
Re:I haven't taken anything like this...
on
IT Literacy Test
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· Score: 1
Normally students applying to business schools take the GMAT, not the GRE.
Next thing you know, the government will be mandating that everyone on the road drive cars in good working condition.
1. What if the maintenance requirement introduces other problems? Maybe some mechanics will screw up the car rather than fix it.
2. What if a bored, nefarious mechanic were to modify the car to do something...nefarious?
3. What about the people riding motorcycles?
The government has every right to implement highway changes. But their jurisdiction STOPS at the hood of my car!
This is better analogy than the seatbelt analogy. The following questions will show why: 1) Is it desirable to stop people from driving unsafe cars on the highway? 2) Is it desirable to stop people from connecting "unsafe" computers to a network?
One more chance, Mr. Maximum Density: do you think this is satire, or do you think I actually advocate that people not wear seatbelts and not keep their cars in good working condition?
Did you notice certain similarities between the parent post and my post? Do you know what the word satire means? Do you suppose I might have chosen seat belt laws as an example because the public benefit of seat belt laws is so obvious?
Next thing you know, the government will be mandating that everyone on the road put on seatbelts.
1. What if the seatbelt introduces other problems? Maybe on a particular car, the seatbelt is too tight and cuts off the person's circulation, which then leads to an accident.
2. Cars are generally obtained from local car dealers or private parties. What if a bored, nefarious individual were to modify the seatbelts on the cars in his/her lot (or driveway, if a private party) to do something...nefarious?
3. What about the people riding motorcycles?
The government has every right to implement highway changes. But their jurisdiction STOPS at my car door!
A thought to consider: if we eliminate all of the lawyers, who is going to defend you when someone falsely accuses you of murder, embezzlement, patent violations, etc.? Perhaps you can adequately defend yourself. But what if you have a learning disability, don't speak English fluently, or have been denied educational opportunities due to financial hardship or racial prejudice? Or maybe you are too busy with your job to read up on the relevant laws, while your accuser is some unemployed guy who has lots of time on his hands for threatening people with lawsuits - in a brave new world without lawyers.
> If lawyers/agents started saying no to filing ridiculous patent lawsuits and representing clients in the pursuit of said lawsuits, it would send a message not only to the corporations, but to the law makers and decisions makers that this needs to be changed. As long as lawyers are gaining from these lawsuits and helping to facilitate them, they can not be considered innocent middle men.
I'd say that the second sentence explains why the predicate of the first sentence in unrealistic. If lawyers can gain from the lawsuits, why would they stop filing them? If there is a way to gain from these lawsuits, then if we killed all of the lawyers, we'd probably get non-lawyers (perhaps unemployed people) filing the lawsuits. Change the laws, not the lawyers. The lawyers are just there to argue the law. The action required here is political, not homicidal.
What if the public API does not provide the needed functionality - but a private method or a manipulation of a private variable does?
Options: 1) Request change to public API, then wait for the owner of the code to change it. 2) Add a new method to the public API yourself - then try to merge it in if you are not the owner of the code. 3) Access private method or variable (after changing some keywords).
I think a lot depends on the accessibility and responsiveness of the owner of the public API.
I've got a Linux machine at home running 24/7 doing boring server stuff all the time (no details, but no, it is not a web server). Since the computer is on all the time, I find it convenient for playing a quick game now and then, surfing the Internet, etc. These desktop activities are a drag on the performance of the computer's server tasks, but even if it did the server tasks 10 times slower, it wouldn't cause any problems - and this is a $500 computer. (Part of the story here is that the computer's load is fairly light most of the time - when the load is heavy, of course, I'm not going to run any games. Also, $500 can buy a lot of computing power on eBay right now.)
I would be willing to shell out $30 for a good Linux game. I would prefer, though, that the game not take up the full screen so that I can keep an eye on the load.
This is just my own experience. I'm not saying that there is a huge market for Linux games because there are lots of servers out there than can double as desktops. I'm just saying that at least one person - myself - is interested in using a server as a game machine when the server is not heavily loaded (which is most of the time).
So, I'm happy to see another game for the Linux market. Part of what needs to go into the Mac vs. Linux business decision is looking at how crowded the commercial Mac game market is vs. the commercial Linux game market. I don't have any figures, but I'm going to guess that the commercial Mac game market is much more crowded. I might be willing to pay for a sub-standard Linux game (not saying that Savage: The Battle for Newerth is sub-standard - it's probably very good) just because I don't have a lot of gaming alternatives on this platform.
I would say that it is more of a practical stance than a hypocritical stance.
hypocrisy (dictionary.com)
1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
2. An act or instance of such falseness.
Have lawmakers proclaimed that all imports should be taxed equally? My guess would be no. Variations in taxes and tariffs are the rule rather than the exception.
If U.S. software companies have to pay high tariffs in order to outsource work to India (and other sources of cheap, yet highly skilled labor), some of them may move to Canada in order to avoid the tariff. (Moving directly to India would also be an option, but I think U.S. executives would be more inclined to move their companies to Canada for language/cultural reasons. In other words, if the choice is between moving to India or moving to Canada and then outsourcing to India, I think most U.S. executives would prefer the latter.)
If this is implemented, then it will create a disadvantage for companies located in the U.S. relative to companies in other countries which are free to make use of cheap labor resources. For example, a company located in Canada that was free to contract out to Indian programmers without paying a tariff would have an advantage over a U.S. company that had to pay a tariff, all else being equal.
This would encourage U.S. companies to relocate their entire operations outside the U.S. They might not move to India, but moving to Canada, Ireland, etc. would not be far fetched in this scenario.
Look at the history of tariff-protected industries around the world. Tariffs are usually a crutch that props up weak companies.
The best example of the ills of propping up the weak is Japan's banking industry.
At the moment, the U.S. software industry is probably the strongest in the world. Let's not weaken it by adding barriers to doing business.
Sure IE on Windows is about the same as IE on the Mac. But have you noticed that some Windows apps don't work on the Macintosh (that is, some Windows apps were not written to be cross platform and do not have Macintosh counterparts) and vice-versa?
And Dell has a monopoly on the Dell market. HP has a monopoly on the HP market. A Dell laptop is significantly different than an HP laptop, right? I mean, I couldn't just replace one with the other, could I?
Re:Mysql does run under Windows...check Mysql.com
on
Fun With Wine
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· Score: 1
Yes, I know that MySQL runs under Windows using the Cygwin libraries. But it doesn't run under Cygwin.
The question I posed is "how about running MySQL under Cygwin?"
To see the difference (in case it isn't clear), try using MySQL with Cygwin Perl instead of ActiveState Perl. MySQL on Cygwin is MySQL in a (pretty much) UNIX environment. MySQL on Windows using the Cygwin libraries is MySQL in a Windows environment.
It's worth keeping in mind that Resin is Caucho's main product. I'm not claiming that Caucho distorted their benchmark in any way; I'm just pointing out that they have a vested interest in the outcome of their benchmark.
Similarly, Chamas is the originator of Apache::ASP. Again, I'm not claiming that Chamas distorted their benchmarks in any way, but it is always wise to be aware of potential conflicts of interest. Though in the case of Chamas, the potential conflict is respect to Apache::ASP vs. other technologies rather than Java vs. PHP.
Hmm, I use both Java (JBoss) and PHP. Maybe I should make my own benchmark.
I'd say that if you are primarily interested in failover, message queueing, and the other stuff addressed by J2EE, go with JSPs/servlets/EJBs. If you want to build and deploy something quickly, cheaply, and with low performance overhead, go with PHP.
looks like I need to address comments from two separate posters:
> This doesn't tell me anything about the quality of these products. I cant speak for the others, but have you ever looked at the source for PHPNuke? It is a horrendous mess. Not only that, but the thing is routinely riddled with secuirty holes and other bugs. I had the displeasure of running it on my site for awhile, what a mess.
> Wow, that's super link clicking. The only thing you left out is a proof that popular == better. I guess because a million monkeys want r4d BBs on their s1t3z (phpBB, PHPNuke) and don't know SQL (phpMyAdmin), everyone should believe that PHP is better suited to Yahoo's needs than perl.
I made no claims about quality and I didn't claim that popular == better (nor am I about to supply a proof that popular == better).
I'll repeat what I said:
--START-- Take a look at the top downloads at SourceForge [sourceforge.net]. What is the most downloaded server-side web application?
For those of you too lazy to click the link, the answer (at the moment) is phpBB. #2 is Webmin (Perl), #3 is phpMyAdmin, and #4 is PHP-Nuke. (I'm not counting JBoss as #4 because JBoss is the server itself rather than a web app designed to run on a server).
So, we have 1) PHP 2) Perl 3) PHP 4) PHP
BTW You can get #1 and #4 bundled together as LiquidNuke. --END--
As you can see, I didn't make much in the way of claims at all, except that certain software packages happen to be popular and that they use certain programming languages.
As for "I guess because a million monkeys want r4d BBs on their s1t3z (phpBB, PHPNuke) and don't know SQL (phpMyAdmin), everyone should believe that PHP is better suited to Yahoo's needs than perl."
Well, you said it, not me. I didn't make any such claim. If you're making this claim, well, I'm sure someone here will argue against you. And if you're not making this claim, why state it?
But now I pose a question (again, not a claim). Why do we see PHP (as opposed to other languages) used in 3 out of 4 of the most popular (as far as we can measure by using SourceForge's statistics - of course, many popular programs are not made available through SourceForge) server-side web applications? Again, I'm not claiming that it is more popular because it is better (though others may make this claim). I'm not ascribing any reason to its popularity. I'm merely pointing out that PHP is popular, wondering why, and trying to keep an open mind about the possible explanations for its popularity rather than jumping to conclusions.
For those of you too lazy to click the link, the answer (at the moment) is phpBB. #2 is Webmin (Perl), #3 is phpMyAdmin, and #4 is PHP-Nuke. (I'm not counting JBoss as #4 because JBoss is the server itself rather than a web app designed to run on a server).
So, we have
1) PHP
2) Perl
3) PHP
4) PHP
BTW You can get #1 and #4 bundled together as LiquidNuke.
Slashdot Mirror
I once knew this ho, she give it away for free, man. Yeah, she good. But my new girl, she make me buy her all kinds of shit. I says to her, why can't you be like that other ho, the one who don't want nuthin'? She say, "I ain't her, asshole, now where's my coke, daddy-o?" I gots to admit, though, my new girl, she's stacked! So I took out $120 and ran on down to get my girl some blow.
Normally students applying to business schools take the GMAT, not the GRE.
Here, I'll give you another chance to "get it."
Next thing you know, the government will be mandating that everyone on the road drive cars in good working condition.
1. What if the maintenance requirement introduces other problems? Maybe some mechanics will screw up the car rather than fix it.
2. What if a bored, nefarious mechanic were to modify the car to do something...nefarious?
3. What about the people riding motorcycles?
The government has every right to implement highway changes. But their jurisdiction STOPS at the hood of my car!
This is better analogy than the seatbelt analogy. The following questions will show why: 1) Is it desirable to stop people from driving unsafe cars on the highway? 2) Is it desirable to stop people from connecting "unsafe" computers to a network?
One more chance, Mr. Maximum Density: do you think this is satire, or do you think I actually advocate that people not wear seatbelts and not keep their cars in good working condition?
Did you notice certain similarities between the parent post and my post? Do you know what the word satire means? Do you suppose I might have chosen seat belt laws as an example because the public benefit of seat belt laws is so obvious?
Next thing you know, the government will be mandating that everyone on the road put on seatbelts.
1. What if the seatbelt introduces other problems? Maybe on a particular car, the seatbelt is too tight and cuts off the person's circulation, which then leads to an accident.
2. Cars are generally obtained from local car dealers or private parties. What if a bored, nefarious individual were to modify the seatbelts on the cars in his/her lot (or driveway, if a private party) to do something...nefarious?
3. What about the people riding motorcycles?
The government has every right to implement highway changes. But their jurisdiction STOPS at my car door!
A thought to consider: if we eliminate all of the lawyers, who is going to defend you when someone falsely accuses you of murder, embezzlement, patent violations, etc.? Perhaps you can adequately defend yourself. But what if you have a learning disability, don't speak English fluently, or have been denied educational opportunities due to financial hardship or racial prejudice? Or maybe you are too busy with your job to read up on the relevant laws, while your accuser is some unemployed guy who has lots of time on his hands for threatening people with lawsuits - in a brave new world without lawyers.
Looking at these two sentences:
> If lawyers/agents started saying no to filing ridiculous patent lawsuits and representing clients in the pursuit of said lawsuits, it would send a message not only to the corporations, but to the law makers and decisions makers that this needs to be changed. As long as lawyers are gaining from these lawsuits and helping to facilitate them, they can not be considered innocent middle men.
I'd say that the second sentence explains why the predicate of the first sentence in unrealistic. If lawyers can gain from the lawsuits, why would they stop filing them? If there is a way to gain from these lawsuits, then if we killed all of the lawyers, we'd probably get non-lawyers (perhaps unemployed people) filing the lawsuits. Change the laws, not the lawyers. The lawyers are just there to argue the law. The action required here is political, not homicidal.
What if the public API does not provide the needed functionality - but a private method or a manipulation of a private variable does?
Options:
1) Request change to public API, then wait for the owner of the code to change it.
2) Add a new method to the public API yourself - then try to merge it in if you are not the owner of the code.
3) Access private method or variable (after changing some keywords).
I think a lot depends on the accessibility and responsiveness of the owner of the public API.
I've got a Linux machine at home running 24/7 doing boring server stuff all the time (no details, but no, it is not a web server). Since the computer is on all the time, I find it convenient for playing a quick game now and then, surfing the Internet, etc. These desktop activities are a drag on the performance of the computer's server tasks, but even if it did the server tasks 10 times slower, it wouldn't cause any problems - and this is a $500 computer. (Part of the story here is that the computer's load is fairly light most of the time - when the load is heavy, of course, I'm not going to run any games. Also, $500 can buy a lot of computing power on eBay right now.) I would be willing to shell out $30 for a good Linux game. I would prefer, though, that the game not take up the full screen so that I can keep an eye on the load.
This is just my own experience. I'm not saying that there is a huge market for Linux games because there are lots of servers out there than can double as desktops. I'm just saying that at least one person - myself - is interested in using a server as a game machine when the server is not heavily loaded (which is most of the time).
So, I'm happy to see another game for the Linux market. Part of what needs to go into the Mac vs. Linux business decision is looking at how crowded the commercial Mac game market is vs. the commercial Linux game market. I don't have any figures, but I'm going to guess that the commercial Mac game market is much more crowded. I might be willing to pay for a sub-standard Linux game (not saying that Savage: The Battle for Newerth is sub-standard - it's probably very good) just because I don't have a lot of gaming alternatives on this platform.
I would say that it is more of a practical stance than a hypocritical stance.
hypocrisy (dictionary.com)
1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
2. An act or instance of such falseness.
Have lawmakers proclaimed that all imports should be taxed equally? My guess would be no. Variations in taxes and tariffs are the rule rather than the exception.
Here are more details about the sugar/candy issue: http://www.libertysearch.com/articles/2002/000034. html
If U.S. software companies have to pay high tariffs in order to outsource work to India (and other sources of cheap, yet highly skilled labor), some of them may move to Canada in order to avoid the tariff. (Moving directly to India would also be an option, but I think U.S. executives would be more inclined to move their companies to Canada for language/cultural reasons. In other words, if the choice is between moving to India or moving to Canada and then outsourcing to India, I think most U.S. executives would prefer the latter.)
If this is implemented, then it will create a disadvantage for companies located in the U.S. relative to companies in other countries which are free to make use of cheap labor resources. For example, a company located in Canada that was free to contract out to Indian programmers without paying a tariff would have an advantage over a U.S. company that had to pay a tariff, all else being equal.
This would encourage U.S. companies to relocate their entire operations outside the U.S. They might not move to India, but moving to Canada, Ireland, etc. would not be far fetched in this scenario.
Look at the history of tariff-protected industries around the world. Tariffs are usually a crutch that props up weak companies.
The best example of the ills of propping up the weak is Japan's banking industry.
At the moment, the U.S. software industry is probably the strongest in the world. Let's not weaken it by adding barriers to doing business.
LOL! I'd be interested in hearing about what your thesis work is about, if you've reached that stage.
Sure IE on Windows is about the same as IE on the Mac. But have you noticed that some Windows apps don't work on the Macintosh (that is, some Windows apps were not written to be cross platform and do not have Macintosh counterparts) and vice-versa?
And Dell has a monopoly on the Dell market. HP has a monopoly on the HP market. A Dell laptop is significantly different than an HP laptop, right? I mean, I couldn't just replace one with the other, could I?
Yes, I know that MySQL runs under Windows using the Cygwin libraries. But it doesn't run under Cygwin. The question I posed is "how about running MySQL under Cygwin?" To see the difference (in case it isn't clear), try using MySQL with Cygwin Perl instead of ActiveState Perl. MySQL on Cygwin is MySQL in a (pretty much) UNIX environment. MySQL on Windows using the Cygwin libraries is MySQL in a Windows environment.
The subject line seems to be the prevailing Slashdot attitude. And if this actually happened, what then? More lawyers and fewer programmers?
I'd really like to see this.
Go ahead and post your proof. Or is your proof "it's obvious?"
If you're going to look at benchmarks, I'd suggest looking at both the Caucho and Chamas benchmarks:
Caucho benchmark
Chamas
It's worth keeping in mind that Resin is Caucho's main product. I'm not claiming that Caucho distorted their benchmark in any way; I'm just pointing out that they have a vested interest in the outcome of their benchmark.
Similarly, Chamas is the originator of Apache::ASP. Again, I'm not claiming that Chamas distorted their benchmarks in any way, but it is always wise to be aware of potential conflicts of interest. Though in the case of Chamas, the potential conflict is respect to Apache::ASP vs. other technologies rather than Java vs. PHP.
Hmm, I use both Java (JBoss) and PHP. Maybe I should make my own benchmark.
I'd say that if you are primarily interested in failover, message queueing, and the other stuff addressed by J2EE, go with JSPs/servlets/EJBs. If you want to build and deploy something quickly, cheaply, and with low performance overhead, go with PHP.
looks like I need to address comments from two separate posters:
> This doesn't tell me anything about the quality of these products. I cant speak for the others, but have you ever looked at the source for PHPNuke? It is a horrendous mess. Not only that, but the thing is routinely riddled with secuirty holes and other bugs. I had the displeasure of running it on my site for awhile, what a mess.
> Wow, that's super link clicking. The only thing you left out is a proof that popular == better. I guess because a million monkeys want r4d BBs on their s1t3z (phpBB, PHPNuke) and don't know SQL (phpMyAdmin), everyone should believe that PHP is better suited to Yahoo's needs than perl.
I made no claims about quality and I didn't claim that popular == better (nor am I about to supply a proof that popular == better).
I'll repeat what I said:
--START--
Take a look at the top downloads at SourceForge [sourceforge.net]. What is the most downloaded server-side web application?
For those of you too lazy to click the link, the answer (at the moment) is phpBB. #2 is Webmin (Perl), #3 is phpMyAdmin, and #4 is PHP-Nuke. (I'm not counting JBoss as #4 because JBoss is the server itself rather than a web app designed to run on a server).
So, we have
1) PHP
2) Perl
3) PHP
4) PHP
BTW You can get #1 and #4 bundled together as LiquidNuke.
--END--
As you can see, I didn't make much in the way of claims at all, except that certain software packages happen to be popular and that they use certain programming languages.
As for "I guess because a million monkeys want r4d BBs on their s1t3z (phpBB, PHPNuke) and don't know SQL (phpMyAdmin), everyone should believe that PHP is better suited to Yahoo's needs than perl."
Well, you said it, not me. I didn't make any such claim. If you're making this claim, well, I'm sure someone here will argue against you. And if you're not making this claim, why state it?
But now I pose a question (again, not a claim). Why do we see PHP (as opposed to other languages) used in 3 out of 4 of the most popular (as far as we can measure by using SourceForge's statistics - of course, many popular programs are not made available through SourceForge) server-side web applications? Again, I'm not claiming that it is more popular because it is better (though others may make this claim). I'm not ascribing any reason to its popularity. I'm merely pointing out that PHP is popular, wondering why, and trying to keep an open mind about the possible explanations for its popularity rather than jumping to conclusions.
Take a look at the top downloads at SourceForge. What is the most downloaded server-side web application?
For those of you too lazy to click the link, the answer (at the moment) is phpBB. #2 is Webmin (Perl), #3 is phpMyAdmin, and #4 is PHP-Nuke. (I'm not counting JBoss as #4 because JBoss is the server itself rather than a web app designed to run on a server).
So, we have
1) PHP
2) Perl
3) PHP
4) PHP
BTW You can get #1 and #4 bundled together as LiquidNuke.
This PHP website seems to be handling the load pretty well. Good to see, since PHP's scalability is often questioned.
If you'd like to see a real-life example of distributed computing with PHP, take a look at the LiquidClassifieds/LiquidClassifiedsXML web service.