Nothing could be more free than air, yet companies compress it, scent it, or wrap bits of fried potato or flavored cream around air and sell air for outrageous sums.
Nothing could be more free than water, yet companies filter it, bottle it, flavor it and sell water for outrageous sums.
Meditate on this and perhaps you will see that the idea of selling that which is free is not so odd after all.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." (Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, Viking Penguin (1995), p. 265.)
I'm not disagreeing with your post in general, but I do have a question. How is the whole of the language object orientated? Sure, the object orientation is a big part of it, but it's in no way necessary to writing a program, even a complex one.
Really? Somehow it seems like it would be difficult to write a Python program of any kind without going through an object. Filehandles, for instance, are by definition objects, so you would be hard pressed to get any input or output. I also find it difficult to imagine a program of any complexity that didn't go through the sys. or os. hierarchies.
That aside, it was my understanding back when I was working with Python on a regular basis that objects underlie everything in Python, whether or not you use their object-ness in your programs. I've never considered myself a Python guru so I'll leave it to others to explain this better, or perhaps, tell me how full of it I am. My main point still stands, though. In Perl you can write programs all day, every day and never come near an object or OO behavior. In Python this would be difficult at best. --
Perhaps it depends on how your mind works. Python is a highly disciplined language where in general there is One True Way. It's very easy to read. The object-oriented features of Python are more deeply embedded than those of Perl (read: the whole blippin' language is object oriented). And of course it's an excellent language for beginning programmers.
If Python points to the One True Way, Perl points to All Of The Many True Ways. It doesn't impose its structure on you. This can be bad if your mind demands structure; it's good if, like mine, your mind is completely unstructured (some might say "loosely hinged") but you occasionally want to impose structore onto it -- though only if you have to, not because the language demands it. What with the regular expressions and variable designators ($%@ and their friends) Perl is occasionally compared to "executable line noise." This bothers some people, although considering that my first language used variables like B! and X$ and U#, it doesn't bother me. The OO features of Perl are easier to avoid than Python's if you don't want to use them. And of course, it's an excellent language for beginning programmers.
Python might be a better choice for writing large programs that are going to require a lot of maintenance, or that will someday be moved over to C. Perl definitely shines in the areas of system maintenance, quick one-off scripts and one-liners. One-liners in particular are impossible in Python because of its use of whitespace and newlines as delimiters, although Python's interactive mode is much better than Perl's. Both are good for rapid prototyping.
I would say check 'em both out and use whichever one suits you. I tend to prefer Perl, but that's just because it works the way my mind works. YMMV (Your mind may vary). --
1. Create an MP3 of someone reading the DeCSS source code aloud with a Metallica or Dr. Dre song (the original, please, not a knockoff or Muzak version!) in the background.
2. Drop it onto both the MPAA's and RIAA's web sites. Make sure you put a link to the counterpart version on their home pages.
3. Sit back and watch the fun as they sue each other. --
the last thing I personally want to see when I look up at the sky is something man made
Especially if it's the size of Skylab and coming straight toward you . .. --
Re:Does Jobs bugger everything all to hell?
on
Looking Back At NeXT
·
· Score: 1
Oh, I don't know. Pixar's done just fine. Granted they're not a computer company, but they make and sell a pretty good product (though most of the credit for the 'making' part should go to John Lasseter).
Also, look at the turnaround Apple has made since he came back on. While I'm sure Bill doesn't exactly lose sleep over whether Mac OS is going to displace Windows, Apple is turning a profit ad that's better than they were doing not so long ago.
I think marketing is both Steve's greatest strength and his biggest weakness. When he succeeds, he succeeds big (example: the iMac). When he fails, he fails big (example: failing to open the Mac architecture early on). And then, of course, there's the wild card -- the Jobsian Reality Distortion Field. --
Another reason for staying at Microsoft is, believe it or not, it looks really good on your resume. Every recruiter I've talked to since I started at Microsoft has commented on my service there, even when we were talking about jobs that didn't relate to what I was doing at MS. --
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwith-standing.
So treaties and the Constitution are both "the supreme law of the land." --
I'm not sure what your point is here. Since there are no floats or strings as such, only scalars, you'll never have a type mismatch. In the example you give above, I assume the correct code would be something like
but that would be both inefficient and probably wrong. I say "probably" because unless you have an $rs[0] element your variables are all going to be off by one position -- a mistake you could just as easily make in C. This should become evident as soon as you start seeing people with no (actually, undefined) cash with social security numbers of "Fred" and names like "Flintstone 225.62". And it's inefficient because it'd be much easier to say
($ssn, $firstname, $lastname, $cash) = @rs;
No subscripts to worry about there, and I may have been staring at Perl code too long, but to me it doesn't look like line noise.
If you're relying on typing as a first check of the validity of your data, admittedly that's something that Perl doesn't do. However it would probably take about ten minutes of looking at the regular expression of Programming Perl to see that, for instance, you could check the validity of a Social Security number with
$ssn =~/^\d\d\d[ -]?\d\d[ -]?\d\d\d\d$/ or die "Bad SSN ($ssn)";
assuming that the database application you're getting the SSN from isn't already doing it for you. --
I find Perl especially aesthetic, especially those dollar signs -- the ones in front of the multiple digits on the checks my employer gives me for writing Perl code. --
Re:Spam legislation won't stop the problem
on
MAPS vs. ORBS
·
· Score: 2
Frankly I expect most spammers to ignore the law, but if anyone gets caught spamming, the prosecutors can whack them hard enough with these laws to keep from doing it again, even if they can't pin other offenses like fraud or FDA violations on them. Sort of like sending Al Capone up the river for income tax evasion rather than for murder, bootlegging, and promoting gambling and prostitution. Hopefully, anyway.
You're probably right about pushing this offshore, but I'm willing to bet that US citizens sending spam from the US to the US by way of an offshore open relay will still be prosecuted under the law. --
It took me something like two months to get my WordPerfect rebate. Bought it in March, got the rebate in May. About the same amount of time it took me to get the rebate on my Voodoo video card, actually. Usually rebates aren't handled directly by the company whose product you're buying, though, so I don't think we can blame Corel for this one. IIRC, the check I got was from someplace in Arizona. --
I think the other part of it is the idea that, by using this jargon, someone is "one of us" rather than "one of them." Jargons serve two purposes in linguistics:
1. Shorthand for concepts. I mean, we could say "someone who enjoys figuring out how things work, or is a good coder or adept at coming up with solutions to problems," but we say "hacker" instead.
2. Differentiation from the masses. To geeks phrases like "I don't have the bandwidth to read fiction these days" or "How should I know how to put the swingset together? RTFM" make sense, but to the outsider they can be as unintelligible as Cockney slang. (Misuse of jargon is also a red flag that someone doesn't belong, or is trying too hard to fit in.)
So 31337 5P34k is both of the above for the script kiddie. However, in this case, there's a third dimension to it -- marking someone as a sad, pathetic individual who thinks that being able to read and write a simple substitution cipher and click a couple of buttons in a pre-built dialog box is a substitute for technical mastery of a computer and its operating system. --
<RANT>Why the hell would Disney want the Anaheim Angels or the Anaheim Mighty Ducks? It's not just that the Angels, with all their talent, miss the playoffs year after year. IMHO a company like Disney has no business whatever owning a baseball, hockey, or any other sports team. I can see them owning ABC as a guaranteed market for its content. But ESPN is a considerable stretch. And baseball and hockey teams, for cryin' out loud? It's not like they're Ted Turner and they need them to fill air time on ABC.
So Disney taking over Apple makes as much sense as a number of other acquisitions they've spent money on in the last several years while Disneyland falls apart, which is to say none at all.</RANT>
Actually, though, the main reason I don't believe this merger rumor is that I can't see Michael Eisner giving up control of Disney under any circumstances that don't involve carting him out of his office feet first. --
Who has worked for someone like this before? You know, the cult leader type who makes proclaimations, expects undying devotion from his staff, regularly promotes and fires arbitrarily and so on?
It takes time and energy to do radio drama, but mostly it takes someone with the vision and energy to do it properly, and a station willing both to put up the money for it and to air it without worrying whether it will drop their ratings because it isn't exactly in their format. It works quite well on Seattle's KIRO. I haven't checked in the last few months, but last I heard it was still running on the weekends barring baseball/football games. It fits well into KIRO's format (primarily news/talk) and demographic (25+, tending toward affluence), and producer Jim French obviously brings a passion to it. Not many radio stations have that sort of combination any more; geez, most radio stations would be lost if they couldn't play the same fifty songs over and over.
I'd like to see Moscowitz get on the air again, or even better, onto a streaming audio server. He's sort of a low-rent, home-grown Dr. Demento who runs (ran) a couple of hours of novelty tunes, followed by a couple of hours of really old country. We're talking everything from The Prisoner's Song and Sons of the Pioneers through Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, Ernest Tubb, Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline and on down to maybe the early seventies. I liked it, and I don't care much for country. --
I don't understand the logic here. Since KDE is explicitly Qt-based, doesn't it follow that any software written for KDE would be implicitly written to be lined against Qt?
I'm not counting anything originally written for plain-vanilla X, since those apps will run under any window manager or no window manager. If programmer Baz has somehow written KDE-specific code into the app, that appears to me to be the fault of programmer Baz and not KDE, and that reverting to the KDE-free version of the app would solve the problem. Which brnigs up the question, are there any apps that fit the scenario you describe above? --
Re:Where's the value in a linux distro?
on
Linux Mergers?
·
· Score: 2
I question how much value there is in big names -- after all, I don't think Mandrake has any behind it, or didn't when it got started -- but certainly the reputation and QA are important.
In general, it's easier and probably cheaper to use something that already exists as a launching pad than start from scratch. So if Compaq wanted to get into the Linux business big-time, they might find it easier to start by buying a distribution that already exists, or at least using it as a starting point.
Just for example (and this is straight off the top of my tiny little noggin, so don't flame me), let's say they made a deal with Corel to buy all the rights to Corel Linux in exchange for cash that Corel either desparately needs or could certainly use, depending on who you listen to. THEN they hire someone like Alan Cox, GPL whatever parts of Tru64Unix they need to and add them to their distribution, and release Compaq Linux. Suddenly they've hit the ground running with a 64-bit Linux that benefits eveyone involved. Compaq sells a pile of Linux servers and gets some credibility for the 64-bit stuff they've added to the mix. Corel gets a cash infusion and a platform for WordPerfect sales. Linux users get a 64-bit version of Our Favorite OS. And presumably Alan Cox-or-someone-like-him gets a good-paying job. --
Good question. Loompanics Press published a book at one time by Erwin Strauss called something like How To Start Your Own Country, but I never got around to buying or reading it.
Seems like starting your own country would be tough, especially since you'd have to come up with a good answer to the natural question, "Why should we recognize your government?" I'm afraid the bar for the definition of the word "good" would be set pretty high. --
You're making some assumptions here that aren't necessarily warranted:
1. That there is communication between the Mac Office and Windows Office teams. I had friends who worked in both, and from what they've told me, there isn't any to speak of.
2. That there is shared code between the Windows Office and Mac Office groups. Again, from what I understand that isn't the case. They have shared features, yes, they can read each other's files, yes, but the underlying code is quite different. It has to be -- the architecture of the two systems they run on (hardware and software) is very different.
There is, however, a great deal of communication and code-sharing between the Mac Internet and Mac Office groups. In my opinion, splitting that up would be more detrimental to their products than dividing them up along product lines.
That is what I mean by "it would make sense." You are right in saying that the Mac applications will be more profitable for whichever entity ends up with them than they are for Microsoft as it's currently constituted.
I also happen to believe that Mac users, who rate plenty high on the fanaticism scale, would be more willing to buy from Mac-centric companies than from companies for whom the Mac is just a small division of some other small division. I don't have any hard figures to back that up -- just a gut feeling from having spent a great deal of time in the Mac community. Perhaps it's the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field at work. --
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing could be more free than air, yet companies compress it, scent it, or wrap bits of fried potato or flavored cream around air and sell air for outrageous sums.
Nothing could be more free than water, yet companies filter it, bottle it, flavor it and sell water for outrageous sums.
Meditate on this and perhaps you will see that the idea of selling that which is free is not so odd after all.
--
I'm certain a group of 31337 h4x0r2 in St. Petersburg will be deterred by an American law against breaking into computers.
I know, I know, you can't expect to make sense of laws related to computers or efforts by the clue-challenged to pass them.
--
I don't know, maybe we should ask Bill Gates?
e s.html:
From http://www.vi s.caltech.edu/~pz/letters-from-the-front/bill-gat
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." (Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, Viking Penguin (1995), p. 265.)
--
I'm not disagreeing with your post in general, but I do have a question. How is the whole of the language object orientated? Sure, the object orientation is a big part of it, but it's in no way necessary to writing a program, even a complex one.
Really? Somehow it seems like it would be difficult to write a Python program of any kind without going through an object. Filehandles, for instance, are by definition objects, so you would be hard pressed to get any input or output. I also find it difficult to imagine a program of any complexity that didn't go through the sys. or os. hierarchies.
That aside, it was my understanding back when I was working with Python on a regular basis that objects underlie everything in Python, whether or not you use their object-ness in your programs. I've never considered myself a Python guru so I'll leave it to others to explain this better, or perhaps, tell me how full of it I am. My main point still stands, though. In Perl you can write programs all day, every day and never come near an object or OO behavior. In Python this would be difficult at best.
--
Perhaps it depends on how your mind works. Python is a highly disciplined language where in general there is One True Way. It's very easy to read. The object-oriented features of Python are more deeply embedded than those of Perl (read: the whole blippin' language is object oriented). And of course it's an excellent language for beginning programmers.
If Python points to the One True Way, Perl points to All Of The Many True Ways. It doesn't impose its structure on you. This can be bad if your mind demands structure; it's good if, like mine, your mind is completely unstructured (some might say "loosely hinged") but you occasionally want to impose structore onto it -- though only if you have to, not because the language demands it. What with the regular expressions and variable designators ($%@ and their friends) Perl is occasionally compared to "executable line noise." This bothers some people, although considering that my first language used variables like B! and X$ and U#, it doesn't bother me. The OO features of Perl are easier to avoid than Python's if you don't want to use them. And of course, it's an excellent language for beginning programmers.
Python might be a better choice for writing large programs that are going to require a lot of maintenance, or that will someday be moved over to C. Perl definitely shines in the areas of system maintenance, quick one-off scripts and one-liners. One-liners in particular are impossible in Python because of its use of whitespace and newlines as delimiters, although Python's interactive mode is much better than Perl's. Both are good for rapid prototyping.
I would say check 'em both out and use whichever one suits you. I tend to prefer Perl, but that's just because it works the way my mind works. YMMV (Your mind may vary).
--
1. Create an MP3 of someone reading the DeCSS source code aloud with a Metallica or Dr. Dre song (the original, please, not a knockoff or Muzak version!) in the background.
2. Drop it onto both the MPAA's and RIAA's web sites. Make sure you put a link to the counterpart version on their home pages.
3. Sit back and watch the fun as they sue each other.
--
the last thing I personally want to see when I look up at the sky is something man made
.
Especially if it's the size of Skylab and coming straight toward you . .
--
Oh, I don't know. Pixar's done just fine. Granted they're not a computer company, but they make and sell a pretty good product (though most of the credit for the 'making' part should go to John Lasseter).
Also, look at the turnaround Apple has made since he came back on. While I'm sure Bill doesn't exactly lose sleep over whether Mac OS is going to displace Windows, Apple is turning a profit ad that's better than they were doing not so long ago.
I think marketing is both Steve's greatest strength and his biggest weakness. When he succeeds, he succeeds big (example: the iMac). When he fails, he fails big (example: failing to open the Mac architecture early on). And then, of course, there's the wild card -- the Jobsian Reality Distortion Field.
--
As Linux zealots are beginning to find out, it's a lot easier to masquerade as a better product than it is to go out and be one.
Penguinistas have known this for years. But enough about Windows...
--
Another reason for staying at Microsoft is, believe it or not, it looks really good on your resume. Every recruiter I've talked to since I started at Microsoft has commented on my service there, even when we were talking about jobs that didn't relate to what I was doing at MS.
--
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwith-standing.
So treaties and the Constitution are both "the supreme law of the land."
--
but that would be both inefficient and probably wrong. I say "probably" because unless you have an $rs[0] element your variables are all going to be off by one position -- a mistake you could just as easily make in C. This should become evident as soon as you start seeing people with no (actually, undefined) cash with social security numbers of "Fred" and names like "Flintstone 225.62". And it's inefficient because it'd be much easier to say
No subscripts to worry about there, and I may have been staring at Perl code too long, but to me it doesn't look like line noise.
If you're relying on typing as a first check of the validity of your data, admittedly that's something that Perl doesn't do. However it would probably take about ten minutes of looking at the regular expression of Programming Perl to see that, for instance, you could check the validity of a Social Security number with
assuming that the database application you're getting the SSN from isn't already doing it for you.
--
I find Perl especially aesthetic, especially those dollar signs -- the ones in front of the multiple digits on the checks my employer gives me for writing Perl code.
--
Frankly I expect most spammers to ignore the law, but if anyone gets caught spamming, the prosecutors can whack them hard enough with these laws to keep from doing it again, even if they can't pin other offenses like fraud or FDA violations on them. Sort of like sending Al Capone up the river for income tax evasion rather than for murder, bootlegging, and promoting gambling and prostitution. Hopefully, anyway.
You're probably right about pushing this offshore, but I'm willing to bet that US citizens sending spam from the US to the US by way of an offshore open relay will still be prosecuted under the law.
--
It took me something like two months to get my WordPerfect rebate. Bought it in March, got the rebate in May. About the same amount of time it took me to get the rebate on my Voodoo video card, actually. Usually rebates aren't handled directly by the company whose product you're buying, though, so I don't think we can blame Corel for this one. IIRC, the check I got was from someplace in Arizona.
--
I think the other part of it is the idea that, by using this jargon, someone is "one of us" rather than "one of them." Jargons serve two purposes in linguistics:
1. Shorthand for concepts. I mean, we could say "someone who enjoys figuring out how things work, or is a good coder or adept at coming up with solutions to problems," but we say "hacker" instead.
2. Differentiation from the masses. To geeks phrases like "I don't have the bandwidth to read fiction these days" or "How should I know how to put the swingset together? RTFM" make sense, but to the outsider they can be as unintelligible as Cockney slang. (Misuse of jargon is also a red flag that someone doesn't belong, or is trying too hard to fit in.)
So 31337 5P34k is both of the above for the script kiddie. However, in this case, there's a third dimension to it -- marking someone as a sad, pathetic individual who thinks that being able to read and write a simple substitution cipher and click a couple of buttons in a pre-built dialog box is a substitute for technical mastery of a computer and its operating system.
--
Why the hell would Disney want Apple?
<RANT>Why the hell would Disney want the Anaheim Angels or the Anaheim Mighty Ducks? It's not just that the Angels, with all their talent, miss the playoffs year after year. IMHO a company like Disney has no business whatever owning a baseball, hockey, or any other sports team. I can see them owning ABC as a guaranteed market for its content. But ESPN is a considerable stretch. And baseball and hockey teams, for cryin' out loud? It's not like they're Ted Turner and they need them to fill air time on ABC.
So Disney taking over Apple makes as much sense as a number of other acquisitions they've spent money on in the last several years while Disneyland falls apart, which is to say none at all. </RANT>
Actually, though, the main reason I don't believe this merger rumor is that I can't see Michael Eisner giving up control of Disney under any circumstances that don't involve carting him out of his office feet first.
--
Who has worked for someone like this before? You know, the cult leader type who makes proclaimations, expects undying devotion from his staff, regularly promotes and fires arbitrarily and so on?
Yeah, I worked at Microsoft for a while . . .
--
It takes time and energy to do radio drama, but mostly it takes someone with the vision and energy to do it properly, and a station willing both to put up the money for it and to air it without worrying whether it will drop their ratings because it isn't exactly in their format. It works quite well on Seattle's KIRO. I haven't checked in the last few months, but last I heard it was still running on the weekends barring baseball/football games. It fits well into KIRO's format (primarily news/talk) and demographic (25+, tending toward affluence), and producer Jim French obviously brings a passion to it. Not many radio stations have that sort of combination any more; geez, most radio stations would be lost if they couldn't play the same fifty songs over and over.
I'd like to see Moscowitz get on the air again, or even better, onto a streaming audio server. He's sort of a low-rent, home-grown Dr. Demento who runs (ran) a couple of hours of novelty tunes, followed by a couple of hours of really old country. We're talking everything from The Prisoner's Song and Sons of the Pioneers through Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, Ernest Tubb, Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline and on down to maybe the early seventies. I liked it, and I don't care much for country.
--
I don't understand the logic here. Since KDE is explicitly Qt-based, doesn't it follow that any software written for KDE would be implicitly written to be lined against Qt?
I'm not counting anything originally written for plain-vanilla X, since those apps will run under any window manager or no window manager. If programmer Baz has somehow written KDE-specific code into the app, that appears to me to be the fault of programmer Baz and not KDE, and that reverting to the KDE-free version of the app would solve the problem. Which brnigs up the question, are there any apps that fit the scenario you describe above?
--
I question how much value there is in big names -- after all, I don't think Mandrake has any behind it, or didn't when it got started -- but certainly the reputation and QA are important.
In general, it's easier and probably cheaper to use something that already exists as a launching pad than start from scratch. So if Compaq wanted to get into the Linux business big-time, they might find it easier to start by buying a distribution that already exists, or at least using it as a starting point.
Just for example (and this is straight off the top of my tiny little noggin, so don't flame me), let's say they made a deal with Corel to buy all the rights to Corel Linux in exchange for cash that Corel either desparately needs or could certainly use, depending on who you listen to. THEN they hire someone like Alan Cox, GPL whatever parts of Tru64Unix they need to and add them to their distribution, and release Compaq Linux. Suddenly they've hit the ground running with a 64-bit Linux that benefits eveyone involved. Compaq sells a pile of Linux servers and gets some credibility for the 64-bit stuff they've added to the mix. Corel gets a cash infusion and a platform for WordPerfect sales. Linux users get a 64-bit version of Our Favorite OS. And presumably Alan Cox-or-someone-like-him gets a good-paying job.
--
Remind me to explain the concept of a joke to you sometime.
--
I mean, if I buy a car I'm supposed to have a driver's license, right?
--
Good question. Loompanics Press published a book at one time by Erwin Strauss called something like How To Start Your Own Country, but I never got around to buying or reading it.
Seems like starting your own country would be tough, especially since you'd have to come up with a good answer to the natural question, "Why should we recognize your government?" I'm afraid the bar for the definition of the word "good" would be set pretty high.
--
You're making some assumptions here that aren't necessarily warranted:
1. That there is communication between the Mac Office and Windows Office teams. I had friends who worked in both, and from what they've told me, there isn't any to speak of.
2. That there is shared code between the Windows Office and Mac Office groups. Again, from what I understand that isn't the case. They have shared features, yes, they can read each other's files, yes, but the underlying code is quite different. It has to be -- the architecture of the two systems they run on (hardware and software) is very different.
There is, however, a great deal of communication and code-sharing between the Mac Internet and Mac Office groups. In my opinion, splitting that up would be more detrimental to their products than dividing them up along product lines.
That is what I mean by "it would make sense." You are right in saying that the Mac applications will be more profitable for whichever entity ends up with them than they are for Microsoft as it's currently constituted.
I also happen to believe that Mac users, who rate plenty high on the fanaticism scale, would be more willing to buy from Mac-centric companies than from companies for whom the Mac is just a small division of some other small division. I don't have any hard figures to back that up -- just a gut feeling from having spent a great deal of time in the Mac community. Perhaps it's the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field at work.
--