Re:Looks great, why not for Windows too?
on
Gnumeric Turns 5
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It looks like a great replacement for Excel... why not make it buildable on Windows too?
I'm glad someone asked this because I was just reading this article wondering the same thing. When I boot into my Linux partition, I'll occasionally try something that's Linux only like Gnumeric or Gnucash, but I find that it's too time consuming to learn the ins-and-out of all the Linux only incarnations of programs when I'm still primarily a Windows user. Programs like Gaim, GIMP, Dia, Mozilla, Apache, and OpenOffice are just more appealing programs to me because I can take their functionality back and forth between Windows and Linux. I don't know if there are many in this crowd that feel the same way about it, but from my standpoint if it runs on only one platform (Linux), then I'm no better off using it than I am the equivalent Windows-only program. I think a Windows version would make a big difference for some people.
I know you were moderated as "Funny", so I hope people take what you suggested as a joke (you were joking right?)! The only way that this do-not-call list will work is if it is not abused. Otherwise, telemarketers can easily claim that the entire list is bogus, which could potentially lose us the one victory we've had in decades over them!
The goal here, I think, should be to let telemarketers call those people who don't sign themselves up. If Susie-No-Friends needs calls during dinner so that she has someone to talk to over her Mac-and-Cheese, why should she be deprived of that? If they aren't calling me, that's all that counts. Others can sign themselves up if they want to. Automating a way to add other people's phone numbers to this list gains no further victory. We've already won this battle. Put down your swords and go home.
I'm not so sure. I can't imagine having fewer choices is a good thing when the choices are already limited as it is. Whether or not you personally would choose Safari over IE, someone else might want to make the opposite choice... and I think that's a good thing.
If you're looking only at a personal agenda of ridding the world of IE, then this announcement probably sounds neat-o. Truthfully, with all the web "standards" Microsoft invented via IE, my first thought is to share your same sentiment. "Anything to get them out of the way so that sites aren't only designed and tested for IE! Woo-hoo!" But, if choice is what you demand, then this might not turn out to be nearly as good as it appears.
It seems that complex math is always the example people pull out to support operator overloading
I was just thinking the same thing as I read the parent comment. Everyone uses complex numbers as an example. But, when programming in Java, it's not being able to overload == and != (and even sometimes [] if we're talking about collections) that drives me up a wall!
Take for example a class which contains both native types and objects. In order to implement the equals(object obj) method, you have to do the following:
return this.intType == obj.intType && this.objectType.Equals(obj.objectType) && this.byteType == obj.byteType && this.objectType2.Equals(obj.objectType2);// etc. etc. etc.
Yes... it's functional. No, it's not pretty. And that's where operator overloading is most sorely missed in my book.
I would love to have something like a "stringent" mode while developing web pages (ala browser producer error instead of trying to render the html)
You can use XHTML and then use any XML parser to check your page. If it doesn't parse, it isn't valid.
If you're used to writing nasty HTML like <b><i>example</b></i> then you'll probably complain the XHTML feels a little too stringent, but once you get used to it, designing your page just feels so much nicer.
If your friends are playing in the sand box and one of them starts peeing in the sand, then you and your friends kick him out of the sand box.
That doesn't change the fact that there's still pee in the sand (in this case pee == bad PR). And, if the kid peeing owns the portion of the sandbox he's whizzing in, well there isn't much to do about it if he doesn't want to leave. With as litigation happy as SCO is acting right now, what's the point in using strong arm tactics to remove them from the UL effort?
So what does this do to the whole virtual machine concept? With this integrated into Windows, wouldn't you just write your application for the "best platform" (meaning cheapest, or most stable, or fastest, or whatever your needs may be) and let the other platforms merely emulate? Seems like the need for a bytecode VM would be moot then (in a perfect world only of course).
> it could be a whole new "lemonade stand" industry...
I think the startup cost for that business would put your son in the hole for the next 5 blizzards. At least with lemonade, the startup cost is offset after the first couple of sales.
According to the CNN article: In October Microsoft released a fix for a different SQL Server problem that if installed in the expected manner would have made patched systems vulnerable again, he said. "If I followed their advice I'd have been vulnerable."
As a server admin, how do you know which patches will cause more harm than good? Is a good server admin one who installs every patch that's released right away and breaks things, or one who doesn't and gets broken into? When we installed SQL Server's SP3 at work, we found that the statement "DBCC SHRINKDB('insertDatabaseNameHere')" was depricated and disabled in favor of using "DBCC SHRINKDATABASE('insertDatabaseNameHere')". This wasn't a new release... this was a service pack! I don't think you can solely blame admins for not patching. Some blame HAS to fall on the coders who left the hole open in the first place.
This is far better than those wankers over at CleanFlicks [cleanflicks.com] who not only have an agenda, but also infringe on the copyright of directors and producers (in fact they've been sued already for that very same reason).
This device is no different than the service that CleanFlicks provides. It's a glorified version of the MUTE and FAST-FORWARD buttons for goodness sake. I'm a happy CleanFlicks customer for just that reason. Since it's a co-op, I own the movies that I rent from them. So I basically pay them to hit the mute and fast-forward buttons in the places where I'd hit them myself. Big deal. Hollywood can't possibly think it can sit over people's shoulders and tell them what to hear or feel during which scene, nor can it keep people from sheilding their eyes from an unexpected gory scene.
I think there's really a desire for this kind of service, whether you do it yourself or someone does it for you (assuming you trust them). I'd think with DVDs it'd be even easier than with VHS, so I'm surprised there aren't more products to do this out there. There could be some sort of download for each movie that contains the minute ranges to show for each desired movie rating.
Maybe it's time to dig out those old DeCSS perl scripts and play around...
SQL 7 is *not* succeptable to this vulnerability. SQL 7 doesn't use port 1434 for anything. That's new in SQL 2000. However, 7.0 is vulnerable to plenty of other things.
I disagree. 10 million lines of code is not nearly enough for AI programming. If we ever get to a point where we're building Asimov style humanoids, there's no way 10 million lines is enough (even with shortcut languages like PERL and Python:-)
I'm not saying this guy is right, but I will agree that we're not ready to maintain a codebase massive enough to do all the things we'll ever try to do with only our current conventions to get us there.
Re: So what? You ain't seen nothing yet!
on
The Future of Java?
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· Score: 1
Java has made more inroads in the server room than it has on the desktop. Almost everyone will agree that applets were a huge mistake. Many others will also agree that AWT is not really a very good GUI development library. Fewer still (but I'm guessing still a majority) will express distaste for SWING. Minus the people who just don't like SWING because of the nasty metal theme, and then you loose that majority.
Then, talk to those people who've done J2EE, JSP, and EJBs for a large project. That's the crowd in whom Sun has invested correctly, and that's the crowd who'll sing Java's praises for years to come. It truly is good stuff.
You can use a hammer to pound in a screw, but a screwdriver is better for the task. Don't criticize Java for being a bad screwdriver. It's a damn good hammer.
When I said "KDE apps run only on KDE" I, of course, meant that "KDE apps run only where KDE's libraries are installed". I suppose someone will split hairs over Gnome being able to run KDE apps and vice-versa. The point is that either due to the license or whatever, KDE apps don't run outside of their little niche, so because of that limitation, I advocate GTK apps.
> Well Mozilla is really huge... Konqueror is pretty
> tiny in comparison.
Is it? Konq isn't a stand alone application. It shares code. So, while Moz may seem bigger, if you look at everything Konq uses in order to function, this tight little app... well... probably isn't.
> Why would anyone running KDE not want all KDE apps
> in this light?
If KDE were the only window manager in existance, sure. But at work I have use Windows 2k. But that doesn't matter with GTK because I can still run many of the same apps I use at home (GAIM, Dia, GIMP, etc. etc.). KDE apps run only on KDE (maybe that will change in the future for one reason or another, but for now it's true). Why would I want to use applications that can't follow me where ever I go? Being able to use these apps on Windows first is what made my swich to Linux (and Gnome) easier. For many people, it will not happen the other way around.
Stealing is not free!![...]Most notable is time cost
I agree that there is a cost to stealing, but I disagree that the cost is time. By the time I drive out to the mall, find a parking spot, walk to the CD store, find the CD, stand in line and buy the CD, walk back to the car, and drive home I could have found the CD on some P2P 5 times over.
The real cost to those who steal (and to those who don't due to the backlash towards those who do) is economic and/or political. And that's the battle we're losing. It really is more convenient and less time consuming to download music. If the RIAA embraced that fact, they could profit from it. Instead, they're trying to dictate demand based on their desire to supply music in the one way they think they can control, and they still haven't realized that their economic theory is flawed (that is until/unless they manage to litigate their problems away).
Maybe I missed the bus, but what's forward compatibility? Isn't that really just backward compatibility in a future version? Does this require omniscience to acheive? What's the secret here?
Re:1.2.1 does have better security than 1.1 or 1.0
on
Mozilla 1.2.1 Released
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· Score: 1
> 1.2.1 does have better security than 1.1 or 1.0.1
That's if you don't consider pre-fetching being on by default to be a potential security risk. I'm probably a little paranoid, but I'm sticking with 1.1 until Phoenix gets a little less beta (which doesn't seem like it'll be too much longer) or until pre-fetching is off by default in Moz (and yes I know I can turn it off myself... it's the principle darn it).
Re:How do you get Palm Sync to work?
on
Mozilla 1.2 Unleashed
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· Score: 2, Informative
If you're on Windows, there's a shortcut in your mozilla folder in your start menu which installs the feature. I don't know where it is on Linux. I'm at work so I haven't installed it on anything but Windows:-)
> Yes I know of course you can turn it off, but for > the folks that don't I just see this as *possibly* > not a good idea in the grand scheme of things.
I couldn't agree more. There really hasn't been much discussion about the problems with pre-fetching. I'm an avid Mozilla fan, but since this feature is turned on by default with no *easy* (and by easy, I mean Joe Sixpack can find it without bothering to read anything more than his options menu) way of turning it off, I'm starting to wonder if the Mozilla folks have just turned a dangerous corner.
I've been giving this some thought since the beta release, and here's why I think it's a VERY bad feature to have turned on by default (and remember I'm looking from the perspective of someone not knowing this feature even exists, let alone how to edit a config file - ie: my parents/grandparents/non-geeks):
* Using Moz at work - For those people who choose to use Mozilla at work, one of the problems I see with pre-fetching is that inappropriate sites could be pre-fetched without a user's consent. If a strict browsing policy is in place, This could end up looking very bad for someone who didn't do anything wrong. A quick check of the weather could end up looking like an hour spent browsing the net. Or, even worse, this could cause numerous hits to blacklisted sites which could then cause some form of backlash from a strict employer.
* Shady content providers - Why would I want some content provider to force 50 potential 'next browse' pages on me (even if I don't notice my bandwith being hogged)? It will inflate their server hits, and thus potentially create a selling point to get more advertisers. But 90% of a website's hits may never be viewed by a user. I can see this as a sneaky way for people just trying to inflate their site numbers.
* Unkown exploits - Every software has bugs. But finding those bugs does not necessarily mean that exploiting them is easy. This feature strikes me as one which will come back to bite you.
* Waste of resources - My CPU, my hard drive, my choice. Enough said.
Anyone else annoyed/worried/paranoid about this feature? I'm a little ticked at the Mozilla developer's view of this *feature* as something that if people want to turn it off, then the implementation should be changed so that people want it on. I think this reasoning is fundamentally flawed in that the problems will not be solved by changing the implementation. The problem, in my opinion, is the feature itself.
Personally, I blame MTV
Are you saying "Video killed the radio star"?
Sorry, 80's flashback. It's not the 21st century until 20th Century Fox changes their name, is it?
There was also a recent article in Discovery magazine mentioning this bad-science-blundering. They provided the link to bad astronomy and mentioned some of the other urban-legends-of-science like being able to balance an egg during the equinox.
One of the points they presented was how scientists do some experiments with bouncing laser beams off a mirror on the moon which the Apollo astronauts placed there. How's that for not landing on the moon?!
Check it out some details here
Slashdot Mirror
It looks like a great replacement for Excel... why not make it buildable on Windows too?
I'm glad someone asked this because I was just reading this article wondering the same thing. When I boot into my Linux partition, I'll occasionally try something that's Linux only like Gnumeric or Gnucash, but I find that it's too time consuming to learn the ins-and-out of all the Linux only incarnations of programs when I'm still primarily a Windows user. Programs like Gaim, GIMP, Dia, Mozilla, Apache, and OpenOffice are just more appealing programs to me because I can take their functionality back and forth between Windows and Linux. I don't know if there are many in this crowd that feel the same way about it, but from my standpoint if it runs on only one platform (Linux), then I'm no better off using it than I am the equivalent Windows-only program. I think a Windows version would make a big difference for some people.
I know you were moderated as "Funny", so I hope people take what you suggested as a joke (you were joking right?)! The only way that this do-not-call list will work is if it is not abused. Otherwise, telemarketers can easily claim that the entire list is bogus, which could potentially lose us the one victory we've had in decades over them!
The goal here, I think, should be to let telemarketers call those people who don't sign themselves up. If Susie-No-Friends needs calls during dinner so that she has someone to talk to over her Mac-and-Cheese, why should she be deprived of that? If they aren't calling me, that's all that counts. Others can sign themselves up if they want to. Automating a way to add other people's phone numbers to this list gains no further victory. We've already won this battle. Put down your swords and go home.
Isn't this a good thing for all of us?
I'm not so sure. I can't imagine having fewer choices is a good thing when the choices are already limited as it is. Whether or not you personally would choose Safari over IE, someone else might want to make the opposite choice... and I think that's a good thing.
If you're looking only at a personal agenda of ridding the world of IE, then this announcement probably sounds neat-o. Truthfully, with all the web "standards" Microsoft invented via IE, my first thought is to share your same sentiment. "Anything to get them out of the way so that sites aren't only designed and tested for IE! Woo-hoo!" But, if choice is what you demand, then this might not turn out to be nearly as good as it appears.
It seems that complex math is always the example people pull out to support operator overloading
// etc. etc. etc.
I was just thinking the same thing as I read the parent comment. Everyone uses complex numbers as an example. But, when programming in Java, it's not being able to overload == and != (and even sometimes [] if we're talking about collections) that drives me up a wall!
Take for example a class which contains both native types and objects. In order to implement the equals(object obj) method, you have to do the following:
return this.intType == obj.intType && this.objectType.Equals(obj.objectType) && this.byteType == obj.byteType && this.objectType2.Equals(obj.objectType2);
Yes... it's functional. No, it's not pretty. And that's where operator overloading is most sorely missed in my book.
I would love to have something like a "stringent" mode while developing web pages (ala browser producer error instead of trying to render the html)
You can use XHTML and then use any XML parser to check your page. If it doesn't parse, it isn't valid.
If you're used to writing nasty HTML like <b><i>example</b></i> then you'll probably complain the XHTML feels a little too stringent, but once you get used to it, designing your page just feels so much nicer.
If your friends are playing in the sand box and one of them starts peeing in the sand, then you and your friends kick him out of the sand box.
That doesn't change the fact that there's still pee in the sand (in this case pee == bad PR). And, if the kid peeing owns the portion of the sandbox he's whizzing in, well there isn't much to do about it if he doesn't want to leave. With as litigation happy as SCO is acting right now, what's the point in using strong arm tactics to remove them from the UL effort?
Um... Cygwin?
So what does this do to the whole virtual machine concept? With this integrated into Windows, wouldn't you just write your application for the "best platform" (meaning cheapest, or most stable, or fastest, or whatever your needs may be) and let the other platforms merely emulate? Seems like the need for a bytecode VM would be moot then (in a perfect world only of course).
> it could be a whole new "lemonade stand" industry...
I think the startup cost for that business would put your son in the hole for the next 5 blizzards. At least with lemonade, the startup cost is offset after the first couple of sales.
According to the CNN article: In October Microsoft released a fix for a different SQL Server problem that if installed in the expected manner would have made patched systems vulnerable again, he said. "If I followed their advice I'd have been vulnerable."
As a server admin, how do you know which patches will cause more harm than good? Is a good server admin one who installs every patch that's released right away and breaks things, or one who doesn't and gets broken into? When we installed SQL Server's SP3 at work, we found that the statement "DBCC SHRINKDB('insertDatabaseNameHere')" was depricated and disabled in favor of using "DBCC SHRINKDATABASE('insertDatabaseNameHere')". This wasn't a new release... this was a service pack! I don't think you can solely blame admins for not patching. Some blame HAS to fall on the coders who left the hole open in the first place.
Beautiful. Elegant. Classy. Original. And, most of all, an undoubted truism. 4 stars. Moderation pts please?
This is far better than those wankers over at CleanFlicks [cleanflicks.com] who not only have an agenda, but also infringe on the copyright of directors and producers (in fact they've been sued already for that very same reason).
This device is no different than the service that CleanFlicks provides. It's a glorified version of the MUTE and FAST-FORWARD buttons for goodness sake. I'm a happy CleanFlicks customer for just that reason. Since it's a co-op, I own the movies that I rent from them. So I basically pay them to hit the mute and fast-forward buttons in the places where I'd hit them myself. Big deal. Hollywood can't possibly think it can sit over people's shoulders and tell them what to hear or feel during which scene, nor can it keep people from sheilding their eyes from an unexpected gory scene.
I think there's really a desire for this kind of service, whether you do it yourself or someone does it for you (assuming you trust them). I'd think with DVDs it'd be even easier than with VHS, so I'm surprised there aren't more products to do this out there. There could be some sort of download for each movie that contains the minute ranges to show for each desired movie rating.
Maybe it's time to dig out those old DeCSS perl scripts and play around...
Oops. Slapper -> Slammer. My bad.
SQL 7 is *not* succeptable to this vulnerability. SQL 7 doesn't use port 1434 for anything. That's new in SQL 2000. However, 7.0 is vulnerable to plenty of other things.
I disagree. 10 million lines of code is not nearly enough for AI programming. If we ever get to a point where we're building Asimov style humanoids, there's no way 10 million lines is enough (even with shortcut languages like PERL and Python :-)
I'm not saying this guy is right, but I will agree that we're not ready to maintain a codebase massive enough to do all the things we'll ever try to do with only our current conventions to get us there.
Java has made more inroads in the server room than it has on the desktop. Almost everyone will agree that applets were a huge mistake. Many others will also agree that AWT is not really a very good GUI development library. Fewer still (but I'm guessing still a majority) will express distaste for SWING. Minus the people who just don't like SWING because of the nasty metal theme, and then you loose that majority.
Then, talk to those people who've done J2EE, JSP, and EJBs for a large project. That's the crowd in whom Sun has invested correctly, and that's the crowd who'll sing Java's praises for years to come. It truly is good stuff.
You can use a hammer to pound in a screw, but a screwdriver is better for the task. Don't criticize Java for being a bad screwdriver. It's a damn good hammer.
When I said "KDE apps run only on KDE" I, of course, meant that "KDE apps run only where KDE's libraries are installed". I suppose someone will split hairs over Gnome being able to run KDE apps and vice-versa. The point is that either due to the license or whatever, KDE apps don't run outside of their little niche, so because of that limitation, I advocate GTK apps.
> Well Mozilla is really huge... Konqueror is pretty
> tiny in comparison.
Is it? Konq isn't a stand alone application. It shares code. So, while Moz may seem bigger, if you look at everything Konq uses in order to function, this tight little app... well... probably isn't.
> Why would anyone running KDE not want all KDE apps
> in this light?
If KDE were the only window manager in existance, sure. But at work I have use Windows 2k. But that doesn't matter with GTK because I can still run many of the same apps I use at home (GAIM, Dia, GIMP, etc. etc.). KDE apps run only on KDE (maybe that will change in the future for one reason or another, but for now it's true). Why would I want to use applications that can't follow me where ever I go? Being able to use these apps on Windows first is what made my swich to Linux (and Gnome) easier. For many people, it will not happen the other way around.
Stealing is not free!![...]Most notable is time cost
I agree that there is a cost to stealing, but I disagree that the cost is time. By the time I drive out to the mall, find a parking spot, walk to the CD store, find the CD, stand in line and buy the CD, walk back to the car, and drive home I could have found the CD on some P2P 5 times over.
The real cost to those who steal (and to those who don't due to the backlash towards those who do) is economic and/or political. And that's the battle we're losing. It really is more convenient and less time consuming to download music. If the RIAA embraced that fact, they could profit from it. Instead, they're trying to dictate demand based on their desire to supply music in the one way they think they can control, and they still haven't realized that their economic theory is flawed (that is until/unless they manage to litigate their problems away).
Maybe I missed the bus, but what's forward compatibility? Isn't that really just backward compatibility in a future version? Does this require omniscience to acheive? What's the secret here?
> 1.2.1 does have better security than 1.1 or 1.0.1
That's if you don't consider pre-fetching being on by default to be a potential security risk. I'm probably a little paranoid, but I'm sticking with 1.1 until Phoenix gets a little less beta (which doesn't seem like it'll be too much longer) or until pre-fetching is off by default in Moz (and yes I know I can turn it off myself... it's the principle darn it).
If you're on Windows, there's a shortcut in your mozilla folder in your start menu which installs the feature. I don't know where it is on Linux. I'm at work so I haven't installed it on anything but Windows :-)
> Yes I know of course you can turn it off, but for
> the folks that don't I just see this as *possibly*
> not a good idea in the grand scheme of things.
I couldn't agree more. There really hasn't been much discussion about the problems with pre-fetching. I'm an avid Mozilla fan, but since this feature is turned on by default with no *easy* (and by easy, I mean Joe Sixpack can find it without bothering to read anything more than his options menu) way of turning it off, I'm starting to wonder if the Mozilla folks have just turned a dangerous corner.
I've been giving this some thought since the beta release, and here's why I think it's a VERY bad feature to have turned on by default (and remember I'm looking from the perspective of someone not knowing this feature even exists, let alone how to edit a config file - ie: my parents/grandparents/non-geeks):
* Using Moz at work - For those people who choose to use Mozilla at work, one of the problems I see with pre-fetching is that inappropriate sites could be pre-fetched without a user's consent. If a strict browsing policy is in place, This could end up looking very bad for someone who didn't do anything wrong. A quick check of the weather could end up looking like an hour spent browsing the net. Or, even worse, this could cause numerous hits to blacklisted sites which could then cause some form of backlash from a strict employer.
* Shady content providers - Why would I want some content provider to force 50 potential 'next browse' pages on me (even if I don't notice my bandwith being hogged)? It will inflate their server hits, and thus potentially create a selling point to get more advertisers. But 90% of a website's hits may never be viewed by a user. I can see this as a sneaky way for people just trying to inflate their site numbers.
* Unkown exploits - Every software has bugs. But finding those bugs does not necessarily mean that exploiting them is easy. This feature strikes me as one which will come back to bite you.
* Waste of resources - My CPU, my hard drive, my choice. Enough said.
Anyone else annoyed/worried/paranoid about this feature? I'm a little ticked at the Mozilla developer's view of this *feature* as something that if people want to turn it off, then the implementation should be changed so that people want it on. I think this reasoning is fundamentally flawed in that the problems will not be solved by changing the implementation. The problem, in my opinion, is the feature itself.
Personally, I blame MTV Are you saying "Video killed the radio star"? Sorry, 80's flashback. It's not the 21st century until 20th Century Fox changes their name, is it?
There was also a recent article in Discovery magazine mentioning this bad-science-blundering. They provided the link to bad astronomy and mentioned some of the other urban-legends-of-science like being able to balance an egg during the equinox. One of the points they presented was how scientists do some experiments with bouncing laser beams off a mirror on the moon which the Apollo astronauts placed there. How's that for not landing on the moon?! Check it out some details here