Given that I always say NO GODDAMNIT NO NO NO NO! to those requests because I don't want some idiot social networking fuckhead marketer spamming all my contacts, saying "we'll just do it automagically" fills me with terror.
Why on Earth are they trying to turn Firefox into the Mozilla Application Suite!? There's a reason that failed, and Firefox, originally just an afterthought to quiet those complaining about Mozilla's bloat, won out.
What is wrong with "do one thing and do it well?"
In any case, I look forward to the next project, which spins off a browser from the Firefox project for people who just want a browser.
1) Undercut everyone on price. 2) Drive all competitors out of business. 3) Profit!...not new at all. What is particularly dangerous is that retailers with enough market share can do more than just manipulate price. Witness Walmart's insistence on "explicit" music being edited without any packaging notice. That's the sort of thing that happens when a single retailer wins.
The battle has sadly mostly been lost for music, to Apple. (Ironically enough.) I would hate to see the same damn thing happen to ebooks.
The fact that helloworld.c compiles to 11k has less to do with bloat than it has to do with people generally not caring about 11k. You could get rid of that 11k, but to do so, you'd have to make trade offs that either make real programs either slower or bigger, or make compilation slower. Very few people would make those trade offs in the other direction. Those that do either use special purpose compilers or (more likely) write in assembly.
Back in the DOS days, any moderately competent programmer knew how to copy arbitrary data to screen buffer, allowing you to display text without any libraries. It's been many years, so I am probably getting this wrong, but in psuedocode it'd look something like
That's the C version, of course. You'd actually do it in assembly. My suspicion is that you could do it in on the order of 20 to 25 bytes, but again, it's been decades since I've done anything like that.
I've noticed that people who like to post long screeds about how LCD is no worse than eInk usually have never actually used eInk.
Personally, I've read extensively on everything from a CRT to a laptop to an old Palm III, and I am willing to pay for a dedicated eInk device because, in my extensive experience, eInk is more comfortable to read on. If you've done the same and find LCD adequate, that's fine, but if your one of the many people that's never actually used eInk for a minute or two, I'm not sure your opinion on the adequacy of LCD for reading is particularly useful.
The trouble with these sorts of devices is that they scream "secret data here!". I'd be real curious how those nickels look on an airport X-ray machine.
If I wanted to sneak information around, I'd put it on hidden directory is an SD card full of tourist photos and I'd leave it sitting in my camera. Ideally, I'd want it in a file that would get deleted during the camera's "delete photo" operation. (Probably take some camera research to figure out the best device. Depending on the goal, it could be placed in the photodata directly.) With appropriate social engineering, one might even be able to get the bad guys to order you to delete it if things go pear shaped.
I am old enough to remember reading this article back in 1995. His view was uncommon back then, though shared by a lot of anti-Internet curmudgeons. His article was a reaction to all the people touting the Internet as something that would swallow up all commerce.
Or maybe, given the way crime has been dropping since 1992, society is actually generating more caring, less violent children despite what the media and researchers with agendas would have you believe.
Twitter doesn't do anything like this. It just gives you a flat view from the people you follow, and lets you manually search using hand-entered search terms.
You know, whenever I hear the complaint "they won't hire me because I don't know $ProgrammingLanguage. This is stupid, because you can learn a programming language in two weeks!" I have to wonder what they were doing in the two weeks before the interview.
16.7 percent for everyone aged 15 to 24, 8.2 percent for everyone aged 25 to 44, and 6.3 percent for everyone aged 45 and older. So, the older you are, the less likely you are to be unemployed.
The median weekly salary for workers in the 16-to-24 age bracket is about 41 percent less than what someone aged 25 to 44 makes -- and they're making 6 percent less than the folks in the 55-and-up group.
At 44, I've finally moved fully into management. The last production line of code I wrote was about a year ago, capping a 23 year career as a programmer. I moved into management because it paid well. I am firmly convinced, given the headhunters who've called and people I've talked to that I could have stayed in coding without much fear. (Assuming I continued to stay up-to-date technically.) However, my salary as a coder was as high as I could expect it to go and so the only way up was management.
The big problem is that the voters have ended up removing a lot of the power of the legislature to cut spending and raise taxes. A huge percentage of the budget is fixed by voter mandate. You can say it is "tax and spend Democrats" all you want, but a lot of the budget is mandated by "X funds must be spent on Y" propositions.
It's a combination. It's a Democratic majority that refuse to cut any spending combined with a Republican minority that, given the California 2/3rds requirement, vetoes any tax increase. It's a deadly combo that guarantees the state will never be run in a fiscally responsible way. (i.e. insisting that inflows == outflows.)
If either party were able to fully define both tax and spending levels, the state would be better off.
When I was in college, I worked in the computer lab, and the bulk of my time was spent helping students with their assignments. Sometimes, it was valuable, explaining how things worked, what the algorithms were, etc. Other times, I'd get the "what do I type now" guys, who just wanted me to rattle off what the solution was. I presume by "no outside help" they mean the latter.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that I always say NO GODDAMNIT NO NO NO NO! to those requests because I don't want some idiot social networking fuckhead marketer spamming all my contacts, saying "we'll just do it automagically" fills me with terror.
Why on Earth are they trying to turn Firefox into the Mozilla Application Suite!? There's a reason that failed, and Firefox, originally just an afterthought to quiet those complaining about Mozilla's bloat, won out.
What is wrong with "do one thing and do it well?"
In any case, I look forward to the next project, which spins off a browser from the Firefox project for people who just want a browser.
Amazon is trying a very old business model:
1) Undercut everyone on price. ...not new at all. What is particularly dangerous is that retailers with enough market share can do more than just manipulate price. Witness Walmart's insistence on "explicit" music being edited without any packaging notice. That's the sort of thing that happens when a single retailer wins.
2) Drive all competitors out of business.
3) Profit!
The battle has sadly mostly been lost for music, to Apple. (Ironically enough.) I would hate to see the same damn thing happen to ebooks.
As opposed to movies and TV, which never, ever suffer from bad acting.
Yup, thanks. It's been many years, obviously.
The fact that helloworld.c compiles to 11k has less to do with bloat than it has to do with people generally not caring about 11k. You could get rid of that 11k, but to do so, you'd have to make trade offs that either make real programs either slower or bigger, or make compilation slower. Very few people would make those trade offs in the other direction. Those that do either use special purpose compilers or (more likely) write in assembly.
Back in the DOS days, any moderately competent programmer knew how to copy arbitrary data to screen buffer, allowing you to display text without any libraries. It's been many years, so I am probably getting this wrong, but in psuedocode it'd look something like
char*cp="Hello World";
char *addr=0xB8000000;
while(*addr++ = *cp++);
That's the C version, of course. You'd actually do it in assembly. My suspicion is that you could do it in on the order of 20 to 25 bytes, but again, it's been decades since I've done anything like that.
Have you actually tried it?
I've noticed that people who like to post long screeds about how LCD is no worse than eInk usually have never actually used eInk.
Personally, I've read extensively on everything from a CRT to a laptop to an old Palm III, and I am willing to pay for a dedicated eInk device because, in my extensive experience, eInk is more comfortable to read on. If you've done the same and find LCD adequate, that's fine, but if your one of the many people that's never actually used eInk for a minute or two, I'm not sure your opinion on the adequacy of LCD for reading is particularly useful.
I think I'll send a letter to my congresswoman asking for a bill requiring all text ads be at least 141 characters in length.
The trouble with these sorts of devices is that they scream "secret data here!". I'd be real curious how those nickels look on an airport X-ray machine.
If I wanted to sneak information around, I'd put it on hidden directory is an SD card full of tourist photos and I'd leave it sitting in my camera. Ideally, I'd want it in a file that would get deleted during the camera's "delete photo" operation. (Probably take some camera research to figure out the best device. Depending on the goal, it could be placed in the photodata directly.) With appropriate social engineering, one might even be able to get the bad guys to order you to delete it if things go pear shaped.
You realize that the last PPC Macs are so slow that they have little hope of running a modern game anyway, right?
I am old enough to remember reading this article back in 1995. His view was uncommon back then, though shared by a lot of anti-Internet curmudgeons. His article was a reaction to all the people touting the Internet as something that would swallow up all commerce.
Or maybe, given the way crime has been dropping since 1992, society is actually generating more caring, less violent children despite what the media and researchers with agendas would have you believe.
That same area experienced an ungodly 9.5 earthquake (worst ever recorded) in 1960 so they have both experience and incentive in earthquake safety.
Twitter doesn't do anything like this. It just gives you a flat view from the people you follow, and lets you manually search using hand-entered search terms.
If you bought an HDMI cable for $60, you are an idiot. I bought an 8' one at Frys for $14.95 last weekend.
You know, whenever I hear the complaint "they won't hire me because I don't know $ProgrammingLanguage. This is stupid, because you can learn a programming language in two weeks!" I have to wonder what they were doing in the two weeks before the interview.
Exactly. To quote the article in two places:
At 44, I've finally moved fully into management. The last production line of code I wrote was about a year ago, capping a 23 year career as a programmer. I moved into management because it paid well. I am firmly convinced, given the headhunters who've called and people I've talked to that I could have stayed in coding without much fear. (Assuming I continued to stay up-to-date technically.) However, my salary as a coder was as high as I could expect it to go and so the only way up was management.
I do all of those things with my MacBook today, so I'm not sure another device is justified.
You've never used it, and therefore you know it is no better. ...makes sense.
I am sorry. I appear to have forgotten to use the <sarcasm> tag on that last comment.
The big problem is that the voters have ended up removing a lot of the power of the legislature to cut spending and raise taxes. A huge percentage of the budget is fixed by voter mandate. You can say it is "tax and spend Democrats" all you want, but a lot of the budget is mandated by "X funds must be spent on Y" propositions.
Yeah, Arnie is as right wing as a pro-environment, gay-friendly, pro-choice Republican can be.
It's a combination. It's a Democratic majority that refuse to cut any spending combined with a Republican minority that, given the California 2/3rds requirement, vetoes any tax increase. It's a deadly combo that guarantees the state will never be run in a fiscally responsible way. (i.e. insisting that inflows == outflows.)
If either party were able to fully define both tax and spending levels, the state would be better off.
When I was in college, I worked in the computer lab, and the bulk of my time was spent helping students with their assignments. Sometimes, it was valuable, explaining how things worked, what the algorithms were, etc. Other times, I'd get the "what do I type now" guys, who just wanted me to rattle off what the solution was. I presume by "no outside help" they mean the latter.