The company I work for has 4 domains. Having been there for long enough I can tell you the history of it.
Domain 1 was bought because although it did not directly relate to the company name, it was thought to be a neat domain name. Domain 2 was bought because the company wanted a domain that was closer to the company name. Last year the company changed its name, and bought domains 3 and 4 (.com and.com.au) to reflect the name change. As some people still access our services by the older domain names, we keep them alive. Even if we didn't we offer services to Australia and the world. It is important to reflect that in our domain names.
I agree with Paul Graham's leading paragraphs to some extent.
One of the things I hear a lot on slashdot is that somehow software patents are different, that with software there is only one way to do things and that the patent blocks that (eg the LZW algorithm). What is more this is described as unique in software, ie this did not occur before they allowed software patents.
The thing is, its not. I was chatting to a biologist friend regarding patents, and there are similar issues in biology. He was describing one particular process for extracting DNA which is the so much better than earlier methods that it is, in effect, almost the only one used. The process (and the enzyme) is patented, so everyone who works in this area licenses the patent or buys the enzymes from a licensee.
Or take the medical field. If you patent a drug, and there are no other comparable drugs then if people want to use that drug, they must license from you.
Or take the area I was trained in, Engineering. Suppose someone patented FEA (Finite Element Analysis).
The point is Paul Graham is largely correct. The issues we are having with software have occurred earlier with patents. They are not completely new.
And here. But then I am married geek, so maybe I'm just an atypical geek.
Anyway, my personal experience is that when I exercise, I need less sleep. It actually saves time to exercise. Not that I follow my own advice.
I had to run back to my flat this morning to pick something up for my wife and was horrified to discover how unfit I was. Bugger sleep, I'm getting up half an hour earlier tomorrow to go for a run.
This is a move specifically calculated to appeal to Windows users, and to increase Mac OS X marketshare and usage (and thus Mac OS X software development), period.
And it is working. Money permitting, I'll be buying a Macbook pro early next year. I'm only really waiting to see what happens WRT Vista.
This will be my work machine. I code windows software for a living.
It has worked and it continues to work well despite all the short comings mentioned in the article
I'd argue that it doesn't work well now, largely due to spam. I'm not talking about spam cluttering our inboxes.
The issue is that now you cannot be sure that someone has actually recieved an email. 3-5 years ago if you sent an email and it didn't hit the destination (mailbox full, doesn't exist) you got a bounce message. However one of the side effects of spam is that it is quite possible that your address has been used as the sender for a heap of spam ("joe job"). And given that a lot of spam doesn't hit an actual mailbox, you get a lot of bounces. The end result is that either you train a spam filter to catch all the bounces (legitimate or otherwise), or you wade through them.
Just to add to that, the Christian position is that God answers your prayers but not necessarily in the way you expect. There is an old joke: I prayed for patience and God gave me people who needed patience. Or if you want an actual reference:
7To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Paul asks for God to remove the thorn (probably some physical issue), and God answers his prayer by teaching Paul to depend on him. God does not remove the thorn.
These studies are a waste of time from a Christian perspective.
The problem with direct proportional representation is that you can end up with a very fragmented parliment, making it harder to for a coalition or pass laws.
Australia has a slighly different system.
The House of Representatives (which is where you get the Prime Minister, cabinet etc) is elected by regions. But the senate is proportionally elected. For laws to be passed, they must pass both the house of representatives and the senate.
Honestly, I didn't start using XP until after SP2 came out. I probably won't buy Vista until I get a 64-bit chip. Just because it doesn't run on every existing system the day it hits the shelves doesn't mean a whole lot; certainly two years after it's released people will have had time to upgrade.
I'm with you. I moved to XP largely because I bought a laptop that came with XP. I can only think of 3 features that are improvements in XP over 2000: 1. You can lock the start bar so you don't accidentally drag it somewhere. 2. kind of tab completion on the command line 3. the automatic photo viewer thing for pictures, letting you scroll through them.
The number of things that XP has introduced that are worse than 2000 (which fortunately you can turn off with the right regsitry hacks): 1. GUI 2. search dog 3. autoplay
Call me old and crotechety, but I don't see Aero as an enchancement. I see it as something that makes my machine run slower. I'd prefer it if they spent their development time working on making the OS smaller and tighter.
Here is a better solution. Buy a domain name. Then you have an infinite number of email addresses that are not depandant on some company. Don't like the service someone provides, switch hosts. Or roll your own mail server (which actually isn't as hard as it may sound).
And in Autralia, I recall voting in a recent election where there were some 300 names on the ballot. This was for our senate, which has proportional representation (ie if you get 5% of the votes contry wide, you get 5% of the seats). You could vote for the fishing party.
While the ballot paper might have been jokingly called the tablecloth, it worked *country wide*. The population of Australia is 18-19 million. Surely that is larger than many US states.
They just don't carry it s far back as Windows. Moreover, when Apple releases an OS upgrade, your old machine gets faster, not slower.
Actually, from anecdotal experience Windows 2003 server was faster than Windows 2000 server, on the same hardware. AFAIK, that is the first time that has happened with a Microsoft OS release. Looking at the direction they are taking with Vista, it also looks like it will be the last time.
What windows needs is a *really* cut down version where you can choose what you install. When you install windows, even on a server, you get the whole echilada. Can someone tell me why I need a mail client/media player/paint on a server? For that matter, why do I need a browser or even a GUI?
Why can't I run a really cut down version? The rest is just increases the number of attack vectors.
Ah, but convection doesn't work, so you increase the possibility of any fluxes not properly floating to the top. You also have to wory about the flux evaporating and causing the solder to be propelled away from the workpiece. Also, some soldering and welding processes are designed to work inside the atmosphere, others are designed to work outside of the atmosphere.
What about MIG welding. AFAIK, this would not require flux floating the surface.
The early Christians would show up at other temples and scream at the people there about their worshiping slighting the "one true God" and they would suffer eternal damnation.....
therefore... the early Christians were fed to the lions because they were fanatical assholes who deserved it.
According to you, that is grounds to be fed to lions? I'm just asking so that I can to clarify your position.
Heh, and here I was thinking that only a communist (in the "commune" sense) would disagree with that (ie but people can just live in one happy, open community with a flat organisational structure).
The only proper reason a teacher should be made such a "leader" is for the benefit of the students
I'd agree with that. Incidentally it is also the Christian model of leadership.
I guess I'm not convinced that he necessarily exercised his authority just to prove he had it. Maybe I am just being too charitable towards him.
He is paid to impart knowledge. He cannot impart knowledge in an unruly environment. There must be order. So part of his job is to ensure order. That includes kicking out a student if necessary.
I wasn't aware there was supposed to be a "leader" in every classroom, at least outside of elementary school.
A classroom needs a leader in the same way that every group of people needs a leader. If one isn't appointed, then one will appear from within the group. Leaderless groups of people do not exist, or at least not for long. They become groups with a leader.
It is better for that leader to be the lecturer than a student.
Hold up, kemosabe. You call those things basic features?
OK, so maybe that aren't basic.
If you leave Java paradise, refactoring becomes very hard.
Really? The guys who make resharper (which I linked to) seem to have it worked out. I haven't tested to see whether it works for VB.Net, but given that I don't code in VB.Net, this is not an issue for me. Haven't checked C++ under VS.Net either.
Anyway the point of my comment was that VS.Net is not necessarily the *best* IDE out there, others do a better job. And your comments about IDEA and Dylan IDE are only proving my point.
And to continue my rant about Visual Studio (well more about.Net), while the.Net framework is rather nice and ASP.Net has the potential to be nice, the controls are stuffed. Writing standards compliant, cross browser HTML with.Net is really, really hard. So hard that for an awful lot of things I have had to roll my own controls, because the other ones just do not produce valid code. Either that or they override the values you have set.
Visual Studio is usually considered one of the best if not the best IDE for development
OK I take issue with this. I program windows code for a living. I spend most of my programming time in Visual Studio (the rest in Textpad and Query Analyszer). Visual studio is ok, but it is only good if you haven't seen something better. And by something better, I mean Eclipse.
I personally haven't used it, but the other programmer who works has used it extensively. And VS.Net just doesn't have the features. To get the features you need to pay another $140 (US) for Resharper. This is to add basic features like:
- Highlighting member variables in different colours to varaibles declared in the body of a function - jumping to the correct overloaded function when you click "Go to Definition" - displays redundant/uncessary using statements in grey (and can automatically remove them) - rename all instances of a variable (Search and Replace has limits and I' can't be stuffed to write a regex every single time I want to replace a variable) - Decent refactoring tools
The reason I mention all these is because they are all things that Eclipse has that VS.Net 2003 doesn't have.
VS.Net is OK, certainly better than any of the VS6 apps (although VC++6 was pretty good), but it is still lacking.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd argue that you are wrong.
.com.au) to reflect the name change. As some people still access our services by the older domain names, we keep them alive. Even if we didn't we offer services to Australia and the world. It is important to reflect that in our domain names.
The company I work for has 4 domains. Having been there for long enough I can tell you the history of it.
Domain 1 was bought because although it did not directly relate to the company name, it was thought to be a neat domain name. Domain 2 was bought because the company wanted a domain that was closer to the company name. Last year the company changed its name, and bought domains 3 and 4 (.com and
I agree with Paul Graham's leading paragraphs to some extent.
One of the things I hear a lot on slashdot is that somehow software patents are different, that with software there is only one way to do things and that the patent blocks that (eg the LZW algorithm). What is more this is described as unique in software, ie this did not occur before they allowed software patents.
The thing is, its not. I was chatting to a biologist friend regarding patents, and there are similar issues in biology. He was describing one particular process for extracting DNA which is the so much better than earlier methods that it is, in effect, almost the only one used. The process (and the enzyme) is patented, so everyone who works in this area licenses the patent or buys the enzymes from a licensee.
Or take the medical field. If you patent a drug, and there are no other comparable drugs then if people want to use that drug, they must license from you.
Or take the area I was trained in, Engineering. Suppose someone patented FEA (Finite Element Analysis).
The point is Paul Graham is largely correct. The issues we are having with software have occurred earlier with patents. They are not completely new.
'sides, show me a geek that doesn't love DDR! :)
And here. But then I am married geek, so maybe I'm just an atypical geek.
Anyway, my personal experience is that when I exercise, I need less sleep. It actually saves time to exercise. Not that I follow my own advice.
I had to run back to my flat this morning to pick something up for my wife and was horrified to discover how unfit I was. Bugger sleep, I'm getting up half an hour earlier tomorrow to go for a run.
This is a move specifically calculated to appeal to Windows users, and to increase Mac OS X marketshare and usage (and thus Mac OS X software development), period.
And it is working. Money permitting, I'll be buying a Macbook pro early next year. I'm only really waiting to see what happens WRT Vista.
This will be my work machine. I code windows software for a living.
It has worked and it continues to work well despite all the short comings mentioned in the article
I'd argue that it doesn't work well now, largely due to spam. I'm not talking about spam cluttering our inboxes.
The issue is that now you cannot be sure that someone has actually recieved an email. 3-5 years ago if you sent an email and it didn't hit the destination (mailbox full, doesn't exist) you got a bounce message. However one of the side effects of spam is that it is quite possible that your address has been used as the sender for a heap of spam ("joe job"). And given that a lot of spam doesn't hit an actual mailbox, you get a lot of bounces. The end result is that either you train a spam filter to catch all the bounces (legitimate or otherwise), or you wade through them.
Email does not work well now.
Just to add to that, the Christian position is that God answers your prayers but not necessarily in the way you expect. There is an old joke: I prayed for patience and God gave me people who needed patience. Or if you want an actual reference:
7To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Paul asks for God to remove the thorn (probably some physical issue), and God answers his prayer by teaching Paul to depend on him. God does not remove the thorn.
These studies are a waste of time from a Christian perspective.
The problem with direct proportional representation is that you can end up with a very fragmented parliment, making it harder to for a coalition or pass laws.
Australia has a slighly different system.
The House of Representatives (which is where you get the Prime Minister, cabinet etc) is elected by regions. But the senate is proportionally elected. For laws to be passed, they must pass both the house of representatives and the senate.
Honestly, I didn't start using XP until after SP2 came out. I probably won't buy Vista until I get a 64-bit chip. Just because it doesn't run on every existing system the day it hits the shelves doesn't mean a whole lot; certainly two years after it's released people will have had time to upgrade.
I'm with you. I moved to XP largely because I bought a laptop that came with XP. I can only think of 3 features that are improvements in XP over 2000:
1. You can lock the start bar so you don't accidentally drag it somewhere.
2. kind of tab completion on the command line
3. the automatic photo viewer thing for pictures, letting you scroll through them.
The number of things that XP has introduced that are worse than 2000 (which fortunately you can turn off with the right regsitry hacks):
1. GUI
2. search dog
3. autoplay
Call me old and crotechety, but I don't see Aero as an enchancement. I see it as something that makes my machine run slower. I'd prefer it if they spent their development time working on making the OS smaller and tighter.
Nah they hava already made the ipod flea
Here is a better solution. Buy a domain name. Then you have an infinite number of email addresses that are not depandant on some company. Don't like the service someone provides, switch hosts. Or roll your own mail server (which actually isn't as hard as it may sound).
And in Autralia, I recall voting in a recent election where there were some 300 names on the ballot. This was for our senate, which has proportional representation (ie if you get 5% of the votes contry wide, you get 5% of the seats). You could vote for the fishing party.
While the ballot paper might have been jokingly called the tablecloth, it worked *country wide*. The population of Australia is 18-19 million. Surely that is larger than many US states.
They just don't carry it s far back as Windows. Moreover, when Apple releases an OS upgrade, your old machine gets faster, not slower.
Actually, from anecdotal experience Windows 2003 server was faster than Windows 2000 server, on the same hardware. AFAIK, that is the first time that has happened with a Microsoft OS release. Looking at the direction they are taking with Vista, it also looks like it will be the last time.
What windows needs is a *really* cut down version where you can choose what you install. When you install windows, even on a server, you get the whole echilada. Can someone tell me why I need a mail client/media player/paint on a server? For that matter, why do I need a browser or even a GUI?
Why can't I run a really cut down version? The rest is just increases the number of attack vectors.
Ah, but convection doesn't work, so you increase the possibility of any fluxes not properly floating to the top. You also have to wory about the flux evaporating and causing the solder to be propelled away from the workpiece. Also, some soldering and welding processes are designed to work inside the atmosphere, others are designed to work outside of the atmosphere.
What about MIG welding. AFAIK, this would not require flux floating the surface.
Let's join the dots there:
....
... the early Christians were fed to the lions because they were fanatical assholes who deserved it.
The early Christians would show up at other temples and scream at the people there about their worshiping slighting the "one true God" and they would suffer eternal damnation.
therefore
According to you, that is grounds to be fed to lions? I'm just asking so that I can to clarify your position.
So, has MS learned yet that ActiveX (I'm assuming Active Scripting is similar or the same thing) is "A Bad Thing" yet?
You assume incorrectly. Active scripting is what Microsoft calls VBScript and JScript/Javascript.
So Firefox/Opera/Safari/Konquerer suffers from the same "Bad Thing" by including Javascript.
I as a republican disagree with your assertion.
Heh, and here I was thinking that only a communist (in the "commune" sense) would disagree with that (ie but people can just live in one happy, open community with a flat organisational structure).
The only proper reason a teacher should be made such a "leader" is for the benefit of the students
I'd agree with that. Incidentally it is also the Christian model of leadership.
I guess I'm not convinced that he necessarily exercised his authority just to prove he had it. Maybe I am just being too charitable towards him.
What absolute rubbish.
He is paid to impart knowledge. He cannot impart knowledge in an unruly environment. There must be order. So part of his job is to ensure order. That includes kicking out a student if necessary.
I wasn't aware there was supposed to be a "leader" in every classroom, at least outside of elementary school.
A classroom needs a leader in the same way that every group of people needs a leader. If one isn't appointed, then one will appear from within the group. Leaderless groups of people do not exist, or at least not for long. They become groups with a leader.
It is better for that leader to be the lecturer than a student.
Hold up, kemosabe. You call those things basic features?
OK, so maybe that aren't basic.
If you leave Java paradise, refactoring becomes very hard.
Really? The guys who make resharper (which I linked to) seem to have it worked out. I haven't tested to see whether it works for VB.Net, but given that I don't code in VB.Net, this is not an issue for me. Haven't checked C++ under VS.Net either.
Anyway the point of my comment was that VS.Net is not necessarily the *best* IDE out there, others do a better job. And your comments about IDEA and Dylan IDE are only proving my point.
plan old xml (POX)
Is it just me or is that acronym a little too accurate. pox = Syphilis
And to continue my rant about Visual Studio (well more about .Net), while the .Net framework is rather nice and ASP.Net has the potential to be nice, the controls are stuffed. Writing standards compliant, cross browser HTML with .Net is really, really hard. So hard that for an awful lot of things I have had to roll my own controls, because the other ones just do not produce valid code. Either that or they override the values you have set.
Visual Studio is usually considered one of the best if not the best IDE for development
OK I take issue with this. I program windows code for a living. I spend most of my programming time in Visual Studio (the rest in Textpad and Query Analyszer). Visual studio is ok, but it is only good if you haven't seen something better. And by something better, I mean Eclipse.
I personally haven't used it, but the other programmer who works has used it extensively. And VS.Net just doesn't have the features. To get the features you need to pay another $140 (US) for Resharper. This is to add basic features like:
- Highlighting member variables in different colours to varaibles declared in the body of a function
- jumping to the correct overloaded function when you click "Go to Definition"
- displays redundant/uncessary using statements in grey (and can automatically remove them)
- rename all instances of a variable (Search and Replace has limits and I' can't be stuffed to write a regex every single time I want to replace a variable)
- Decent refactoring tools
The reason I mention all these is because they are all things that Eclipse has that VS.Net 2003 doesn't have.
VS.Net is OK, certainly better than any of the VS6 apps (although VC++6 was pretty good), but it is still lacking.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink neer all day.