Good point, I also use comments in the same way, although for completely different purposes than yours. And I have to admit that if there are compilers that only have the #pragma directive for the unused keyword, then that's a problem, although I have never actually worked with one that doesn't accept at least another way to use the "unused" keyword (like __attribute__(()))
In my opinion it would be very nice if someone reviewed C++ to make keywords like that something standard. And maybe also improve the language in other ways.
I still think that the unused attribute is best for this purpose. The reason? If you declare a variable as unused it will remain highlighted someway, meaning that if you choose to actually use the var in the future, it will be easier to spot it again and remove the unused attribute. If you put x=x; in the code, or even just x;, it is not likely that you will easily remember that x is "unused". Plus even if the __attribute__((unused)) may not be standard in all compilers, most compilers offer an implementation of the "unused" keyword of some sort, which means it is not a real problem when it comes to portability (just use #ifdef).
In short, the unused attribute is good since it can be used as a label and is easier to find or spot.
Those who toil in Windows -- me, for instance -- care about their OS to a certain degree, but hardly feel the need to jump to its defense or come up with ridiculous conspiracy theories to explain why, say, Bob bombed or Windows Me stank.
And someone that cares about his OS to a certain degree bothers to write an entire page (which is full of crap by the way) to explain why Mac OS X sucks as much as Windows?
How cocky are you feeling now, Mac elite? Hmm. Suddenly it's gotten pretty quiet around here.
Silence, sometimes, is valuable. You don't deserve an answer.
"The doubling up of energies on very similar projects (like Gnome and KDE) work against open source.
Why?
Because all of the man hours spent building up Gnome were spent on KDE (or K-Office, Konquerer, etc), the code would be much tighter, with greater functionality."
I don't agree on this. My experience tells me that if you reach a point where you have "passionate dissagreements" so strong as to fork a project, it's better to actually let the project fork. Unless there is a leader of some sort who can make crucial decisions and eventually choose the best path, developers will just stand by what they think is the best way to go ahead.
I found it quite amusing that people will back off the moment I tell them I can give them no guarantees. I just tell them that if something stops working or breaks, then I will simply not be responsible for that, and that I heartedly recommend them to call their tech support instead.
Probably they start thinking I'm not that good, don't know. The point is they go away = P
"The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry."
The RIAA is not a governmental institution. And as such it is doomed to be interested in protecting only one group of companies/people. Proposing and accepting laws like the one that would excempt them from anti-trust laws would be like putting the RIAA one step above of what it really should be. It would be too much power for them to use it wisely.
But the truth is that both the RIAA and the government are getting so linked and interlaced one with another, that it makes me wonder how much I want the recording industries to get in control of my life.
You see, they play the role of the weak side. They are always being "robbed" by "evil people" (they would try to convince you that "evil people" stands for "everyone"). So they have a "right" to make you pay piracy taxes on the CDs you buy, make you pay by giving you less content and eventually pay more for it, make you pay by instilling fear in your everyday life.
I can only see that offensive and absurd to say the least. I've never heard anyone call thieves his own customers, and then expect them to keep buying.
"Read up on Debian before asking such a rhetorical question. You become a debian "coder" (read: package manager) by finding a package or two to work on, and working on them. You don't directly affect Debian, and you're basically a lackey."
No. If it bothers you to answer such a rethorical question then feel free not to answer it.
"But certainly don't think that because you have some 2-year college course under your belt that you are going to jump into the think of Debian development right away."
Read the question properly. I am talking about good programmers, which to me means people with several (several) years of coding experience. If someone does a good job working on debian that doesn't mean he won't try to add malicious code into it in the future, which was the whole point of my question.
"...the perfect weapon would...shut down telecommunications networks, disrupt power supplies, and fry an adversary's countless computers and electronic gadgets, yet still leave buildings, bridges, and highways intact..."
Holy crap this weapon is perfect! Let's start a petition so that they use nukes instead...
...what does it take to become a Debian coder? I mean, if the process of becoming one is "easy" for a good programmer, what does it stop big corps like Microsoft from hiring people to sabotage linux distributions?
If it was possible for this to happen, and it was possible for a Debian coder to add malicious code without other coders noticing, this could be a very serious problem about open source distributions of software.
Please take note that I am favorable to the open source initiative.
The problem here is at several different levels. You can no longer expect nowadays to be protected by simply closing your doors to the outside world (ie. protecting your computer against outside attacks), but you also have to learn how to protect your computer from internal attacks. The risk of having a program already installed in your computer trying to access your data is quite higher these days than it was a few years ago, and for this very reason corporations should spend more time trying to develop encrypted systems for data storage and tighter policies aimed at improving their security systems.
It's also necessary to protect your data against your very own employees when they are not supposed to be able to see it. And I can say that often this is not the case.
Another important and necessary step is to instruct people using computers to work on security. And this is often not the case either.
I don't think your comparison is a fair one as killing someone is far more serious than copyright infringement (even they are giving more importance to the latter recently). While preventing homicides is a good reason why personal freedom should be limited in some way (ie. you can't buy guns), I don't think the same should be applied to copyright infringement (ie. you can't use programs that let you share material).
"I personally believe that the concept of copyright needs some serious overhaul; when 50 million people believe something is right and some 10,000 believe it is wrong, then by the laws of most countries, it cannot be wrong for a long time more"
I'm not sure about this. My bet is that the problem is caused by ridiculous costs for media. People don't have the money to buy all they want to have.
To me, the solution is either find a way to make people loose faith in their p2p system to get copyrighted material (corrupting copyrighted files comes to my mind, and it would probably cost less than all of what they're doing right now) or offer them some really good alternatives that will make them reconsider sticking to the laws (easy ways to pay for a great low cost service of media distribution).
(1)Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer's business..."
To be honest I can't think of a good reason why you shouldn't be able to develop applications that relate to your employer's business in your own time, with your equipment, as long as the code you use is not copied from the projects you do for your employer (copyrights are used to prevent this from happening). Ideas can't be patented and are not protected by copyright, so I'm really having a bad time trying to figure out why this exception has been inserted there.
Unfortunately it seems this law is not so useful for us poor software developers.
It IS a parents business to know what is going on in their childs life. That is nearly THE definition of an involved parent.
During the growth of the child, there are aspects of their lives a parent will no longer have access to, and this is completely normal. A 10 years old kid is not a 15 years old one, and a 15 years old one is not an 18 years old one, so sneaking into your kid's private life after a certain age IS WRONG, and it is completely understandable that in such a situation they will:
1 - never respect your rules 2 - attempt to create a distance between you and them
When they grow up you are supposed to teach them, not control them. You are supposed to learn to trust them too, otherwise it means your work as a parent so far has been useless.
Todays society shrugs that model but it is the parents job to help guide those *sweetheart* relationships (or to end them if needed).
No, no and no. Doing so will just create problems between teenagers and adults. If there actually IS a VERY GOOD REASON why a relationship between your kid and another kid has to end, then it is your task to explain your concerns to them, because telling them to finish the relationship is both completely wrong and out of your league. And to be honest I think that most of the times such good reasons are just unjustified parent fears.
Your task is to talk to them into reasoning when they are out of a path, and sometimes even recognizing how wrong you can be as a parent on certain points. I know it's hard, but that's how it should be.
There's a difference between useable and supported. For instance I was using a voodoo 3 video card on a G3 of mine some time ago and it did work. It was unsupported though, as 3dfx never got it to work themselves on a Mac. So if the thing exploded in front of me there would have been just one person to blame: me.
Finding out that an unsupported product was working in ways it was not intended to doesn't mean at all that Apple should support your use of the product that way. And I would have to see how those 3rd party apps made the song works on Macintosh iPods, because if they use non-standard methods it is obvious that Apple can't support those (nor any serious company would).
And for a final note: the manual clearly states that the old Mac iPod is only to be used on Macintosh computers. The words "supported" and "unsupported" have more importance than many people gave to it.
I understand your points, but the moment someone tells you you shouldn't be using your hardware in certain ways, it is YOU who become responsable for misusing it.
What? Regardless of whether or not you should be running this software on an old ipod, Apple has a responsibility to *not* destroy your hardware. Period.
It is quite funny to see people so sure that it was iTunes that rendered their iPods useless and not their stupid behaviour of connecting a MACINTOSH iPod with NO SUPPORT FOR PCs to their PCs. This way of reasoning is as stupid as saying that if I try to insert a Zip disk on my CD drive and it breaks, the guys that made the CD drive are responsible for it.
In the very least, Apple needs to issue a warning that the device might be rendered useless in the process of upgrading.
What part of UN-SUPPORTED did you not understand? The reason why it's not supported is NOT because they coded it to break your iPod, but because there are probably differences between PCs and Macs that made it impossible for them to make the device work properly on both at first.
I mean, do you have a warning message on all your wall plugs that says you shouldn't touch them or you could die? It's basic commonsense. If someone tells you not to do something and you do it, then you shouldn't cry afterwards.
...Apple has a responsibility to *not* destroy your hardware. Period.
Believe me, if Apple had been there when all that people plugged their iPods to the PCs they would have probably spanked them real bad.
"When I called Apple, they stated that they simply don't support the use of the older Mac iPods on PC's and are not responsible, even though they admit that it was their own software that caused this"
Some people really push it to the limit. They use a product for what they think it should do, and not for what it's supposed to do. The fact you were using iTunes on a PC when you connected your iPod wasn't a hint from Apple telling you to go ahead. I mean come on, I know it must be sad to break an iPod so stupidly, but instead of bashing Apple why don't you just learn an important lesson from it? Risk whatever you want to risk with your tests, but don't blame others for your mistakes.
"...personal webpages won't end up with many other pages linking to them unless the content is very popular."
To be honest I must say that I thank them for this. When I use google, or any other search engine, the last thing I wish to find are personal websites with unpopular content. While creating sites and sharing them with the world is something everyone can do, making good sites with good content is not. I can only see an advantage with this system as a site now needs to struggle more to remain popular.
My search on the word "linux" gave me a list of results that were quite funny indeed. The first results, and many of the other ones, were URLs for places like Amazon where I could buy great linux software. Here is the result number 4, which was one that surprised me:
"Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP Learn about the Microsoft alternatives and how to move to them from open source products."
How can they expect such a biased search engine to actually become as popular as Google?
Slashdot Mirror
Good point, I also use comments in the same way, although for completely different purposes than yours. And I have to admit that if there are compilers that only have the #pragma directive for the unused keyword, then that's a problem, although I have never actually worked with one that doesn't accept at least another way to use the "unused" keyword (like __attribute__(()))
In my opinion it would be very nice if someone reviewed C++ to make keywords like that something standard. And maybe also improve the language in other ways.
Diego Rey
I still think that the unused attribute is best for this purpose. The reason? If you declare a variable as unused it will remain highlighted someway, meaning that if you choose to actually use the var in the future, it will be easier to spot it again and remove the unused attribute. If you put x=x; in the code, or even just x;, it is not likely that you will easily remember that x is "unused". Plus even if the __attribute__((unused)) may not be standard in all compilers, most compilers offer an implementation of the "unused" keyword of some sort, which means it is not a real problem when it comes to portability (just use #ifdef).
In short, the unused attribute is good since it can be used as a label and is easier to find or spot.
Diego Rey
And someone that cares about his OS to a certain degree bothers to write an entire page (which is full of crap by the way) to explain why Mac OS X sucks as much as Windows?
Silence, sometimes, is valuable. You don't deserve an answer.
Diego Rey
I don't agree on this. My experience tells me that if you reach a point where you have "passionate dissagreements" so strong as to fork a project, it's better to actually let the project fork. Unless there is a leader of some sort who can make crucial decisions and eventually choose the best path, developers will just stand by what they think is the best way to go ahead.
Of course, that's just my HO,
Diego Rey
SCO: "IBM sucks! And we can prove it!"
Judge: "Ok, then prove it..."
SCO: "*DRUMS*... they are using our code!!!!"
Judge: "SCO, stop being such an ass, that's no proof."
SCO: "Yeh... ehmmm... I guess we will never know unless we check that, uh??"
Diego Rey
I found it quite amusing that people will back off the moment I tell them I can give them no guarantees. I just tell them that if something stops working or breaks, then I will simply not be responsible for that, and that I heartedly recommend them to call their tech support instead.
Probably they start thinking I'm not that good, don't know. The point is they go away = P
Diego Rey
Inside the user's brain...
BRRRRRRrrrrr TRONK TRONK BRRRRRRRrrrrrr...
*SMOKE COMING OUT FROM EARS*
Process interrupted (Site www.slashdot.org has too many links.)
Diego Rey
A MacYoda menu?
Diego
Woah, this is the first time I think a box with 512 CPUs at 700 Mhz each one is crap.
Diego Rey
From the official RIAA web site:
"The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry."
The RIAA is not a governmental institution. And as such it is doomed to be interested in protecting only one group of companies/people. Proposing and accepting laws like the one that would excempt them from anti-trust laws would be like putting the RIAA one step above of what it really should be. It would be too much power for them to use it wisely.
But the truth is that both the RIAA and the government are getting so linked and interlaced one with another, that it makes me wonder how much I want the recording industries to get in control of my life.
You see, they play the role of the weak side. They are always being "robbed" by "evil people" (they would try to convince you that "evil people" stands for "everyone"). So they have a "right" to make you pay piracy taxes on the CDs you buy, make you pay by giving you less content and eventually pay more for it, make you pay by instilling fear in your everyday life.
I can only see that offensive and absurd to say the least. I've never heard anyone call thieves his own customers, and then expect them to keep buying.
Diego Rey
No. If it bothers you to answer such a rethorical question then feel free not to answer it.
Read the question properly. I am talking about good programmers, which to me means people with several (several) years of coding experience. If someone does a good job working on debian that doesn't mean he won't try to add malicious code into it in the future, which was the whole point of my question.
Diego Rey
Holy crap this weapon is perfect! Let's start a petition so that they use nukes instead...
Diego Rey
...what does it take to become a Debian coder? I mean, if the process of becoming one is "easy" for a good programmer, what does it stop big corps like Microsoft from hiring people to sabotage linux distributions?
If it was possible for this to happen, and it was possible for a Debian coder to add malicious code without other coders noticing, this could be a very serious problem about open source distributions of software.
Please take note that I am favorable to the open source initiative.
Diego Rey
The problem here is at several different levels. You can no longer expect nowadays to be protected by simply closing your doors to the outside world (ie. protecting your computer against outside attacks), but you also have to learn how to protect your computer from internal attacks. The risk of having a program already installed in your computer trying to access your data is quite higher these days than it was a few years ago, and for this very reason corporations should spend more time trying to develop encrypted systems for data storage and tighter policies aimed at improving their security systems.
It's also necessary to protect your data against your very own employees when they are not supposed to be able to see it. And I can say that often this is not the case.
Another important and necessary step is to instruct people using computers to work on security. And this is often not the case either.
Diego Rey
I repeatedly click on the "connect" button until it starts working again?
Diego Rey
I'm not sure about this. My bet is that the problem is caused by ridiculous costs for media. People don't have the money to buy all they want to have.
To me, the solution is either find a way to make people loose faith in their p2p system to get copyrighted material (corrupting copyrighted files comes to my mind, and it would probably cost less than all of what they're doing right now) or offer them some really good alternatives that will make them reconsider sticking to the laws (easy ways to pay for a great low cost service of media distribution).
Just my 2 cents,
Diego Rey
To be honest I can't think of a good reason why you shouldn't be able to develop applications that relate to your employer's business in your own time, with your equipment, as long as the code you use is not copied from the projects you do for your employer (copyrights are used to prevent this from happening). Ideas can't be patented and are not protected by copyright, so I'm really having a bad time trying to figure out why this exception has been inserted there.
Unfortunately it seems this law is not so useful for us poor software developers.
Diego Rey
During the growth of the child, there are aspects of their lives a parent will no longer have access to, and this is completely normal. A 10 years old kid is not a 15 years old one, and a 15 years old one is not an 18 years old one, so sneaking into your kid's private life after a certain age IS WRONG, and it is completely understandable that in such a situation they will:
1 - never respect your rules
2 - attempt to create a distance between you and them
When they grow up you are supposed to teach them, not control them. You are supposed to learn to trust them too, otherwise it means your work as a parent so far has been useless.
No, no and no. Doing so will just create problems between teenagers and adults. If there actually IS a VERY GOOD REASON why a relationship between your kid and another kid has to end, then it is your task to explain your concerns to them, because telling them to finish the relationship is both completely wrong and out of your league. And to be honest I think that most of the times such good reasons are just unjustified parent fears.
Your task is to talk to them into reasoning when they are out of a path, and sometimes even recognizing how wrong you can be as a parent on certain points. I know it's hard, but that's how it should be.
Diego Rey
There's a difference between useable and supported. For instance I was using a voodoo 3 video card on a G3 of mine some time ago and it did work. It was unsupported though, as 3dfx never got it to work themselves on a Mac. So if the thing exploded in front of me there would have been just one person to blame: me.
Finding out that an unsupported product was working in ways it was not intended to doesn't mean at all that Apple should support your use of the product that way. And I would have to see how those 3rd party apps made the song works on Macintosh iPods, because if they use non-standard methods it is obvious that Apple can't support those (nor any serious company would).
And for a final note: the manual clearly states that the old Mac iPod is only to be used on Macintosh computers. The words "supported" and "unsupported" have more importance than many people gave to it.
I understand your points, but the moment someone tells you you shouldn't be using your hardware in certain ways, it is YOU who become responsable for misusing it.
Diego Rey
It is quite funny to see people so sure that it was iTunes that rendered their iPods useless and not their stupid behaviour of connecting a MACINTOSH iPod with NO SUPPORT FOR PCs to their PCs. This way of reasoning is as stupid as saying that if I try to insert a Zip disk on my CD drive and it breaks, the guys that made the CD drive are responsible for it.
What part of UN-SUPPORTED did you not understand? The reason why it's not supported is NOT because they coded it to break your iPod, but because there are probably differences between PCs and Macs that made it impossible for them to make the device work properly on both at first.
I mean, do you have a warning message on all your wall plugs that says you shouldn't touch them or you could die? It's basic commonsense. If someone tells you not to do something and you do it, then you shouldn't cry afterwards.
Believe me, if Apple had been there when all that people plugged their iPods to the PCs they would have probably spanked them real bad.
Diego Rey
Weird... my iPod stopped working when I tried inserting it in the DVD drive, and the bastards won't support that either.
> (
Diego Rey
Some people really push it to the limit. They use a product for what they think it should do, and not for what it's supposed to do. The fact you were using iTunes on a PC when you connected your iPod wasn't a hint from Apple telling you to go ahead. I mean come on, I know it must be sad to break an iPod so stupidly, but instead of bashing Apple why don't you just learn an important lesson from it? Risk whatever you want to risk with your tests, but don't blame others for your mistakes.
Diego Rey
To be honest I must say that I thank them for this. When I use google, or any other search engine, the last thing I wish to find are personal websites with unpopular content. While creating sites and sharing them with the world is something everyone can do, making good sites with good content is not. I can only see an advantage with this system as a site now needs to struggle more to remain popular.
Diego Rey
My search on the word "linux" gave me a list of results that were quite funny indeed. The first results, and many of the other ones, were URLs for places like Amazon where I could buy great linux software. Here is the result number 4, which was one that surprised me:
"Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP
Learn about the Microsoft alternatives and how to move to them from open source products."
How can they expect such a biased search engine to actually become as popular as Google?
Decameron