I immediately pictured astronomers scratching their heads over Hubble photos of my former '86 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, named "Plum" (for the color, and short for "Plum Tuckered Out")... zooming through the far reaches of space.
Apples to oranges. The press release should have been more specific than just "database", but still... Berkely DB is not a "database" as most developers think of the term (relational, accessible using SQL, etc.).
Berkely DB is code that manages a data store, and you access the data using method calls within your app (you compile their code with your project), NOT using SQL, and NOT connecting to an independant application. Remote access n/a, no ODBC or JDBC, etc. etc.. Great product, but a completely different animal from MySql and other relational databases.
In fact, MySql used to offer Berkeley DB (as opposed to InnoDB, etc.) as a data storage option WITHIN the MySql product.
The company I was in previously used the expensive, Cisco system (and it was cool to see our phones in the movies - Ocean's Eleven and others)... and we still had issues with it. Even once all the wrinkles were worked out and we no longer had echoes or constant rebooting of the phone server, it was still only as resilient as our network.
Like parent poster said, it sucks when your network goes down and you reach for the phone only to see that it's also rebooting, and you are stranded.
Granted this was a year and a half ago, but you're still taking the risk of much greater technical complexity, plus sharing a network that can be brought down by a lot of other factors (whereas POTS is independant).
Before you get on the boat, you'd better be able to point to a significant savings to justify it AND you have to either factor in downtime, or pay for a bank of backup standard phone lines. Here's a good tip for evaluating providers -- ask them for contact info for a few current customers that you can talk to. They should be able to find one who can share the experiences so far. You do NOT want to be the guinea pig on the cutting edge.
My experience was, Gaim 0.75 worked fine with Gimp's GTK (20040124), but Gaim 0.76 wouldn't start because it couldn't find a "Procedure entry point".
Weird -- maybe you're using a different OS version, or something else.... I'm running win2K, with GTK+ 20040124 (I just checked) and Gaim 0.76. And I'm using Gaim right now, so I know it's working. You might want to make sure you uninstall and reinstall Gaim, instead of just putting 0.76 on top of the older version. My older version of Gaim *did* die when I dropped and reinstalled GTK out from under it.
Until an entire field is covered in it...then several...then a large township...etc. It's not a problem to kill a golf course green with a shovel or burning it, but are you going to do the same with fields and larger?
Problem solved. We already have plenty of experience safely clearing large areas of vegetation. It's simply a matter of using an herbicide that our scientists (don't worry, kids - they're experts!) can guarantee is safe.
Having lived in the Canada/US, I've noticed that traffic is also allowed to make right turns even when the walk sign is at green.
Practices vary by region, but this is true in most intersections. Not just right-on-red (avoiding the pedestrians in front of you), but also turning right OR left at a green light will generally take you through a crosswalk telling people to walk. A driver who is turning is supposed to yield to pedestrians.
This is usually okay -- you are "green" to go straight, but you remember to look if you're turning. It's scarier in places like the T intersection right near my house with a traffic light -- and (picture the T-shape) when you're going up the leg of the T, you get a GREEN light (to go either right or left) at the same time that pedestrians get a walk sign to cross where you're driving!! So you have a green light, but unless you're going straight (into the river) you're supposed to be yielding.
I usually cross at the "Don't Walk" sign, because it's easier to avoid cars that way (and someone going straight is more likely to see ME than someone making a turn).
At my last company (software and internet dev) we used our internal code libraries as a big selling point, and included it in contracts that we kept copyright of the internal libs, but granted clients an eternal license to use (but not redistribute, obviously) the binary and source code.
Trust me, clients don't object when you point to a whole chunk of the development in the spec and say "this will add no time to the schedule at all, since it's already coded, tested, and actively deployed in similar projects".
I gave up. It was impossible for me to answer most of the questions.
I work independantly, currently. I have developed projects for clients that I released as open source, and I've done plenty of very closed-source development.
Who owns the code, legally? Duh - depends on the contract. I am not a lawyer, but I AM a fine-print-reader. Often it's not a matter of opinion; it's in there in the text above your signature. If you are working for a company as an employee, I guarantee there were clauses in your NDA and non-compete agreement.
If they're looking to see how we feel about "cheating" a little, they need to ask questions about that - would you copy and reuse a low-level generic utility method that you didn't technically own (or would you just reimplement it), would you copy a whole library of generic utility code, would you copy the bulk of the code from an application you developed on contract, slap on a new GUI and sell it as a competing product (as one Indian outsourcing firm did, according to a recent Salon.com article)?
Instead they have questions like this:
6. Would you re-use blocks of code written elsewhere
* Only if you were confident that nobody would find out
* Whether it would be found out or not
WTF is that? Suppose my answer was "NO", or "only if it's legal"?
Sorry, guys, but writing survey questions is *hard*. You cannot simply throw a bunch of questions out there and think you're going to get useful data in return. I just quit after that one -- other people will choose randomly when there is no answer that is even remotely close.
I used Ethereal for a while, sniffing simple HTTP traffic, sorting out cookie issues and so on (I'm not a netadmin -- mostly web app development)... and it was darned handy.
Of course, when I found the live http headers plugin for Mozilla it was exactly what I needed -- just the headers, scrolling by realtime, and no more sniffing needed.
Yeah, this is slightly OT (which may be good in a discussion that seems to be a long string of ethereal links, all +5) -- but I wanted to point out to those people out there who think they "need a sniffer" -- unless you're a network admin, you probably don't.
[Plus the Futurama quotes in the/. headers are entertaining]
What happened to the Gaim systray icon? - As of 0.65 systray functionality has moved into the docklet plugin, labeled "System Tray Icon" in Gaim's plugins section (under Preferences). You will need to load this plugin for the systray features to work.
On the other hand, I just downloaded Gaim 0.76 (because I broke the old version when I upgraded GTK for GIMP 2.0)... and the tray icon is working fine, no changes on my part at all.
Hmm. Either way, you should consider another shot.
If any provision of this License Agreement is held to be unenforceable for any reason, such provision shall be reformed only to the extent necessary to make it enforceable, and such decision shall not affect the enforceability...
In all fairness, this line (or something equivalent) is in just about every legal document you will ever see. It's even in my lease (which was hand-typed by my landlord).
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
So when the only tool you own is a 580-tonne Tunnel Boring Machine, every problem begins to resemble... what?
The English channel?
NO -- though is GPL really violated?
on
Red Hat Recap
·
· Score: 2, Informative
They are specifically saying that you can't install their Linux software on other computers:
If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System [sic], then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System.
An "Installed System" is defined earlier on in the document:
The term "Installed Systems" means the number of Systems on which Customer installs the Software. The term "System" means the hardware on which the Software is installed[...]
I don't think they quite violate the GPL, though. Read on down to where they discuss what "the Software" is -- it's everything that RedHat sells you, including mostly GPL programs and some freeware (which they specifically say have their own EULAs). They go on in a lot of details about how you have different rights for different Linux programs, and copyright is held by a lot of different people, including RedHat themselves in some cases (and they DO have the right to stop you from using the stuff they have copyright over). From what I can tell, you are free to pick apart a RedHat Enterprise Linux install and install almost all of the pieces on another server, free of restrictions (though they hide these details down near the end and clearly don't want anyone doing it). Still, I suspect that if you just installed a new system straight off the CDs, you would NOT be legal even if all software is GPL, because the default install will use the RedHat online services, etc. which you haven't paid for.
Another excerpt to help you get to sleep tonight:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a modular operating system made up of hundreds of individual software components, each of which was individually written and copyrighted, and the EULA of each component is located in the source code for the component. Throughout this document the components are referred to as the "Linux Programs." Most of the Linux Programs are licensed pursuant to a Linux EULA that permits Customer to copy, modify, and redistribute the software, in both source code and binary code forms. With the exception of certain image files identified below, the remaining Linux Programs are freeware or have been placed in the public domain. Customer must review these Linux EULAs carefully, in order to understand its rights and to realize the maximum benefits available with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Nothing herein limits Customer's rights under, or grants Customer rights that supersede, the terms of any applicable Linux EULA. Red Hat may provide Red Hat Enterprise Linux or other software or content by means of Red Hat Network or Red Hat Enterprise Network. Each software component has its own applicable EULA and all content is provided subject to its own licensing terms.
Then they just list Java as having its own special license (no mention of any of their own software...) then:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself is a collective work under U.S. Copyright Law. Subject to the trademark use limitations set forth below, Red Hat grants Customer a license in this collective work pursuant to the GNU General Public License.
At the same time, liquid-crystal displays with low response times have become more widely available. L.C.D. screens are inherently slower to respond to electrical signals than traditional cathode-ray tube designs are. The average consumer wouldn't notice the difference, but gamers who measure virtual life and death in milliseconds definitely do. Now, more expensive L.C.D. screens can almost replicate the experience of playing on a big, bulky tube.
It would be nice to have a definition of "almost replicate", but it's definitely not as bad as you've seen.
I partly agree with you, though I will say that IDEs aren't *inherently* bad -- an IDE can be much better than a simple highlighting editor -- BUT designing an IDE is very tricky.
There are lots of open-source IDE's and editors out there, partly because so many developers get that itch. They take the idea of a simple syntax-highlighting editor, and think life would be perfect if only it would automatically do X, which gets tedious doing manually. A few more people get on the project, and add support for Y and Z, and before you know it you have another sucky IDE, which usually never even gets the original syntax-highlighting and basic editing functions right.
I use Eclipse for Java development, and I have no question that it massively increases my productivity. When I save, it automatically compiles for me in the background, and shows compile errors in the margin. Lots of refactorings are automated, Ant is integrated, I can jump to an object's source from its name, etc. etc. -- but it's only good because at heart it's a good, syntax-highlighting text editor, and they are very careful about what features they add.
I haven't run across anything yet that requires any difficult or repeated configuration to work "right". Everything has a sensible default, and the settings available are for subtle tweaking, not required before I'll get a useable function.
I still use a generic programmers editor for most of my HTML (beyong the first rough draft), and all my work on XML and XSL.
It's amazing to me how many WYSIWYG HTML editors there are with "source-mode" editors that are horrendous.... They should bother to put it in, if they don't want to make it useable.
I think I'd agree with the grandparent poster about the tabs... the idea of changing function based on different *whitespace* characters just makes me jumpy.
Here's the bit from the language description:
Like Python, Prothon uses indentation to control the block structure of the program instead of block/end or {}. However, Prothon only allows tabs for indentation. Any space in an indent will cause an error. This allows each programmer to set the editor to show the tab width to whatever he pleases and the Python problems of mixed spaces and tabs cannot happen in Prothon. It also allows for minimum typing.
then...
[...]any tab indent of more than one level deeper than the previous indent level will cause the line to be considered a continuation of the previous line, which is a new feature to Prothon. The automatic continuation of lines in comma separated lists found in Python is not allowed in Prothon because of parsing differences, but usually the auto-continuation from indents alleviates the need for this.
Note that you can put spaces after tabs when in an auto-continuation. This allows you to line up the continued line for appearance.
Ouch. I've never used Python so I can't speak for that... but it would bug me to look at code and have no idea whether it would compile or not. In Prothon, one line could include some tabs for block definition, then an extra tab for line continuation, then some spaces for formatting. Now suppose the coder screwed it up.
Or suppose they edited the code in an editor that automatically converts tabs to spaces or visa-versa. Poof!! All your code is screwed, but you can't tell until you compile, and you're going to have a hell of a time fixing it, line by line if you had no backup.
There are a few indentation gotchas in Java, i.e., the braces aren't required for a single statement, so if a second statement is indented, a newbie might think it was in the block... but they catch your eye when you've been coding more than a few months.
A tabbing error could NEVER catch your eye, because it's just whitespace.
Eh, my 1 cent. I'm going to look into the prototype vs. classes thing more -- that's interesting.
Odd, this was wrong in both the linked transcript in the parent, and in the CARP take-off.
The line is NOT "Why should I be tied with the epithet 'loony'...".
Tied? Who "ties" someone with an epithet? The word is TARRED.
There are plenty of Brits out there... isn't there just one out there (who'll understand the accent) who's willing to transcribe this stuff?/grumblegrumble
Yeah, I admit I know the sketch by heart. I can even do the different accents, and the whistling bit at the end. But to the untrained eye, I seem perfectly normal....
This is answering a question with a question... but how public does a work need to be in order to constitute prior art?
I can't help with this one, but there've been a few/. discussions before where I was using the patented process, but only within an academic environment, or on a company intranet.
I've read about the same thing regarding overprotective/sanitary parents.
The kids who go to day care (and are exposed to every germ and virus within a 30 mile radius, every day) DO get mild illnesses more often while they're little... but as they grow up their immune systems are super-fortified against just about everything, and they are much healthier overall then the kids whose parents disinfected everything and kept them away from any other kid with a sniffle.
Obviously this does NOT mean you should encourage your kid to eat dirt and so on, because a really concentrated source of bacteria (e.g. dog turd) could make them seriously ill, and it's a good habit to wash their hands before meals. It's just an interesting case of more of a good thing (cleanliness) NOT being better.
The patent system is at its weakest when the examiners make obvious mistakes, like granting patents for technological advances that have significant prior art or are blazingly obvious extensions of existing tech.
People question the system, with reason, each time it is obviously serving to stifle innovation, like when a company with a questionable patent uses it purely to bring lawsuits against "violators" instead of even trying to develop a product.
More resources for the patent office will probably result in more and better examiners who will be able to avoid these kinds of extreme abuses... which in turn will reduce press coverage and public awareness of the continuing (but more subtle) problems -- which will in turn serve perpetuate the patent system in spite of its fundamental flaws that remain unresolved.
Making a wheel less squeaky doesn't get it greased.
Personally, I think it's a good move, simply because I don't see the patent system as a "house of cards" type of thing. There will be changes eventually (probably later rather than sooner), but it's not the kind of system that will collapse -- after all, it does serve a purpose in spite of its weaknesses and loopholes.
I can't imagine that lowering the refresh rate to 60 Hz would be a good thing in any situation.
I *did* look at the example page, and the first one especially clearly showed me that the vertical bars were darker (I have a 19" CRT).
But when I look at a flat black field (i.e, background to text on my system), it just looks black. How is this hurting my eyes?
I know when I look at black text on a white field I feel like I'm going to go snowblind until I lower the contrast/ brightness to a point where details are clearly lost from graphics. And when I look at pale text on a black field, I can sit farther back and read without straining at all.
If you're making a point about how these monitors may not accurately represent an image, fine -- but we're talking about ease of reading text here, so who cares?
Slashdot Mirror
It's quite clear to me that most of the problems in our patent system were caused by Albert Einstein.
Now patent clerks everywhere do half-assed work, their brains busy trying to come up with the next great theory of time, gravity, and light.
"Hubble Photo of Sedan Suprises Astronomers"
I immediately pictured astronomers scratching their heads over Hubble photos of my former '86 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, named "Plum" (for the color, and short for "Plum Tuckered Out")... zooming through the far reaches of space.
So it DID go to car heaven!!
Is THAT how the lyric goes?
I always thought it was "there's a bathroom on the right".
Apples to oranges. The press release should have been more specific than just "database", but still... Berkely DB is not a "database" as most developers think of the term (relational, accessible using SQL, etc.).
Berkely DB is code that manages a data store, and you access the data using method calls within your app (you compile their code with your project), NOT using SQL, and NOT connecting to an independant application. Remote access n/a, no ODBC or JDBC, etc. etc.. Great product, but a completely different animal from MySql and other relational databases.
In fact, MySql used to offer Berkeley DB (as opposed to InnoDB, etc.) as a data storage option WITHIN the MySql product.
The company I was in previously used the expensive, Cisco system (and it was cool to see our phones in the movies - Ocean's Eleven and others)... and we still had issues with it. Even once all the wrinkles were worked out and we no longer had echoes or constant rebooting of the phone server, it was still only as resilient as our network.
Like parent poster said, it sucks when your network goes down and you reach for the phone only to see that it's also rebooting, and you are stranded.
Granted this was a year and a half ago, but you're still taking the risk of much greater technical complexity, plus sharing a network that can be brought down by a lot of other factors (whereas POTS is independant).
Before you get on the boat, you'd better be able to point to a significant savings to justify it AND you have to either factor in downtime, or pay for a bank of backup standard phone lines. Here's a good tip for evaluating providers -- ask them for contact info for a few current customers that you can talk to. They should be able to find one who can share the experiences so far. You do NOT want to be the guinea pig on the cutting edge.
I think I'm going to stick with my initial thought, that the answer is "y", the spanish word meaning "and".
Think about it -- piney, crabby, saucy!
Oooh - saucy...
And RMS *of course* is 100% sure the answer is "GNU/" but I still like mine better.
My experience was, Gaim 0.75 worked fine with Gimp's GTK (20040124), but Gaim 0.76 wouldn't start because it couldn't find a "Procedure entry point".
Weird -- maybe you're using a different OS version, or something else.... I'm running win2K, with GTK+ 20040124 (I just checked) and Gaim 0.76. And I'm using Gaim right now, so I know it's working. You might want to make sure you uninstall and reinstall Gaim, instead of just putting 0.76 on top of the older version. My older version of Gaim *did* die when I dropped and reinstalled GTK out from under it.
Until an entire field is covered in it...then several...then a large township...etc. It's not a problem to kill a golf course green with a shovel or burning it, but are you going to do the same with fields and larger?
Two words: Agent Orange!
Problem solved. We already have plenty of experience safely clearing large areas of vegetation. It's simply a matter of using an herbicide that our scientists (don't worry, kids - they're experts!) can guarantee is safe.
Having lived in the Canada/US, I've noticed that traffic is also allowed to make right turns even when the walk sign is at green.
Practices vary by region, but this is true in most intersections. Not just right-on-red (avoiding the pedestrians in front of you), but also turning right OR left at a green light will generally take you through a crosswalk telling people to walk. A driver who is turning is supposed to yield to pedestrians.
This is usually okay -- you are "green" to go straight, but you remember to look if you're turning. It's scarier in places like the T intersection right near my house with a traffic light -- and (picture the T-shape) when you're going up the leg of the T, you get a GREEN light (to go either right or left) at the same time that pedestrians get a walk sign to cross where you're driving!! So you have a green light, but unless you're going straight (into the river) you're supposed to be yielding.
I usually cross at the "Don't Walk" sign, because it's easier to avoid cars that way (and someone going straight is more likely to see ME than someone making a turn).
At my last company (software and internet dev) we used our internal code libraries as a big selling point, and included it in contracts that we kept copyright of the internal libs, but granted clients an eternal license to use (but not redistribute, obviously) the binary and source code.
Trust me, clients don't object when you point to a whole chunk of the development in the spec and say "this will add no time to the schedule at all, since it's already coded, tested, and actively deployed in similar projects".
Did anyone try taking the survey?
I gave up. It was impossible for me to answer most of the questions.
I work independantly, currently. I have developed projects for clients that I released as open source, and I've done plenty of very closed-source development.
Who owns the code, legally? Duh - depends on the contract. I am not a lawyer, but I AM a fine-print-reader. Often it's not a matter of opinion; it's in there in the text above your signature. If you are working for a company as an employee, I guarantee there were clauses in your NDA and non-compete agreement.
If they're looking to see how we feel about "cheating" a little, they need to ask questions about that - would you copy and reuse a low-level generic utility method that you didn't technically own (or would you just reimplement it), would you copy a whole library of generic utility code, would you copy the bulk of the code from an application you developed on contract, slap on a new GUI and sell it as a competing product (as one Indian outsourcing firm did, according to a recent Salon.com article)?
Instead they have questions like this:
6. Would you re-use blocks of code written elsewhere
* Only if you were confident that nobody would find out
* Whether it would be found out or not
WTF is that? Suppose my answer was "NO", or "only if it's legal"?
Sorry, guys, but writing survey questions is *hard*. You cannot simply throw a bunch of questions out there and think you're going to get useful data in return. I just quit after that one -- other people will choose randomly when there is no answer that is even remotely close.
I used Ethereal for a while, sniffing simple HTTP traffic, sorting out cookie issues and so on (I'm not a netadmin -- mostly web app development)... and it was darned handy.
/. headers are entertaining]
Of course, when I found the live http headers plugin for Mozilla it was exactly what I needed -- just the headers, scrolling by realtime, and no more sniffing needed.
Yeah, this is slightly OT (which may be good in a discussion that seems to be a long string of ethereal links, all +5) -- but I wanted to point out to those people out there who think they "need a sniffer" -- unless you're a network admin, you probably don't.
[Plus the Futurama quotes in the
From their win32 page:
On the other hand, I just downloaded Gaim 0.76 (because I broke the old version when I upgraded GTK for GIMP 2.0)... and the tray icon is working fine, no changes on my part at all.
Hmm. Either way, you should consider another shot.
If any provision of this License Agreement is held to be unenforceable for any reason, such provision shall be reformed only to the extent necessary to make it enforceable, and such decision shall not affect the enforceability...
In all fairness, this line (or something equivalent) is in just about every legal document you will ever see. It's even in my lease (which was hand-typed by my landlord).
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
So when the only tool you own is a 580-tonne Tunnel Boring Machine, every problem begins to resemble... what?
The English channel?
They are specifically saying that you can't install their Linux software on other computers:
If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System [sic], then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System.
An "Installed System" is defined earlier on in the document:
The term "Installed Systems" means the number of Systems on which Customer installs the Software. The term "System" means the hardware on which the Software is installed[...]
I don't think they quite violate the GPL, though. Read on down to where they discuss what "the Software" is -- it's everything that RedHat sells you, including mostly GPL programs and some freeware (which they specifically say have their own EULAs). They go on in a lot of details about how you have different rights for different Linux programs, and copyright is held by a lot of different people, including RedHat themselves in some cases (and they DO have the right to stop you from using the stuff they have copyright over). From what I can tell, you are free to pick apart a RedHat Enterprise Linux install and install almost all of the pieces on another server, free of restrictions (though they hide these details down near the end and clearly don't want anyone doing it). Still, I suspect that if you just installed a new system straight off the CDs, you would NOT be legal even if all software is GPL, because the default install will use the RedHat online services, etc. which you haven't paid for.
Another excerpt to help you get to sleep tonight:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a modular operating system made up of hundreds of individual software components, each of which was individually written and copyrighted, and the EULA of each component is located in the source code for the component. Throughout this document the components are referred to as the "Linux Programs." Most of the Linux Programs are licensed pursuant to a Linux EULA that permits Customer to copy, modify, and redistribute the software, in both source code and binary code forms. With the exception of certain image files identified below, the remaining Linux Programs are freeware or have been placed in the public domain. Customer must review these Linux EULAs carefully, in order to understand its rights and to realize the maximum benefits available with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Nothing herein limits Customer's rights under, or grants Customer rights that supersede, the terms of any applicable Linux EULA. Red Hat may provide Red Hat Enterprise Linux or other software or content by means of Red Hat Network or Red Hat Enterprise Network. Each software component has its own applicable EULA and all content is provided subject to its own licensing terms.
Then they just list Java as having its own special license (no mention of any of their own software...) then:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself is a collective work under U.S. Copyright Law. Subject to the trademark use limitations set forth below, Red Hat grants Customer a license in this collective work pursuant to the GNU General Public License.
I partly agree with you, though I will say that IDEs aren't *inherently* bad -- an IDE can be much better than a simple highlighting editor -- BUT designing an IDE is very tricky.
There are lots of open-source IDE's and editors out there, partly because so many developers get that itch. They take the idea of a simple syntax-highlighting editor, and think life would be perfect if only it would automatically do X, which gets tedious doing manually. A few more people get on the project, and add support for Y and Z, and before you know it you have another sucky IDE, which usually never even gets the original syntax-highlighting and basic editing functions right.
I use Eclipse for Java development, and I have no question that it massively increases my productivity. When I save, it automatically compiles for me in the background, and shows compile errors in the margin. Lots of refactorings are automated, Ant is integrated, I can jump to an object's source from its name, etc. etc. -- but it's only good because at heart it's a good, syntax-highlighting text editor, and they are very careful about what features they add.
I haven't run across anything yet that requires any difficult or repeated configuration to work "right". Everything has a sensible default, and the settings available are for subtle tweaking, not required before I'll get a useable function.
I still use a generic programmers editor for most of my HTML (beyong the first rough draft), and all my work on XML and XSL.
It's amazing to me how many WYSIWYG HTML editors there are with "source-mode" editors that are horrendous.... They should bother to put it in, if they don't want to make it useable.
Just google for it -- there are instructions all over the place for making didgeridoos out of PCV piping.
They work well, too (though the circular breathing takes practice, or course).
Here's the bit from the language description:
then...
Ouch. I've never used Python so I can't speak for that... but it would bug me to look at code and have no idea whether it would compile or not. In Prothon, one line could include some tabs for block definition, then an extra tab for line continuation, then some spaces for formatting. Now suppose the coder screwed it up.
Or suppose they edited the code in an editor that automatically converts tabs to spaces or visa-versa. Poof!! All your code is screwed, but you can't tell until you compile, and you're going to have a hell of a time fixing it, line by line if you had no backup.
There are a few indentation gotchas in Java, i.e., the braces aren't required for a single statement, so if a second statement is indented, a newbie might think it was in the block... but they catch your eye when you've been coding more than a few months.
A tabbing error could NEVER catch your eye, because it's just whitespace.
Eh, my 1 cent. I'm going to look into the prototype vs. classes thing more -- that's interesting.
Odd, this was wrong in both the linked transcript in the parent, and in the CARP take-off.
/grumblegrumble
The line is NOT "Why should I be tied with the epithet 'loony'...".
Tied? Who "ties" someone with an epithet?
The word is TARRED.
There are plenty of Brits out there... isn't there just one out there (who'll understand the accent) who's willing to transcribe this stuff?
Yeah, I admit I know the sketch by heart. I can even do the different accents, and the whistling bit at the end. But to the untrained eye, I seem perfectly normal....
This is answering a question with a question... but how public does a work need to be in order to constitute prior art?
/. discussions before where I was using the patented process, but only within an academic environment, or on a company intranet.
I can't help with this one, but there've been a few
I've read about the same thing regarding overprotective/sanitary parents.
The kids who go to day care (and are exposed to every germ and virus within a 30 mile radius, every day) DO get mild illnesses more often while they're little... but as they grow up their immune systems are super-fortified against just about everything, and they are much healthier overall then the kids whose parents disinfected everything and kept them away from any other kid with a sniffle.
Obviously this does NOT mean you should encourage your kid to eat dirt and so on, because a really concentrated source of bacteria (e.g. dog turd) could make them seriously ill, and it's a good habit to wash their hands before meals. It's just an interesting case of more of a good thing (cleanliness) NOT being better.
The patent system is at its weakest when the examiners make obvious mistakes, like granting patents for technological advances that have significant prior art or are blazingly obvious extensions of existing tech.
People question the system, with reason, each time it is obviously serving to stifle innovation, like when a company with a questionable patent uses it purely to bring lawsuits against "violators" instead of even trying to develop a product.
More resources for the patent office will probably result in more and better examiners who will be able to avoid these kinds of extreme abuses... which in turn will reduce press coverage and public awareness of the continuing (but more subtle) problems -- which will in turn serve perpetuate the patent system in spite of its fundamental flaws that remain unresolved.
Making a wheel less squeaky doesn't get it greased.
Personally, I think it's a good move, simply because I don't see the patent system as a "house of cards" type of thing. There will be changes eventually (probably later rather than sooner), but it's not the kind of system that will collapse -- after all, it does serve a purpose in spite of its weaknesses and loopholes.
I can't imagine that lowering the refresh rate to 60 Hz would be a good thing in any situation.
I *did* look at the example page, and the first one especially clearly showed me that the vertical bars were darker (I have a 19" CRT).
But when I look at a flat black field (i.e, background to text on my system), it just looks black. How is this hurting my eyes?
I know when I look at black text on a white field I feel like I'm going to go snowblind until I lower the contrast/ brightness to a point where details are clearly lost from graphics. And when I look at pale text on a black field, I can sit farther back and read without straining at all.
If you're making a point about how these monitors may not accurately represent an image, fine -- but we're talking about ease of reading text here, so who cares?