Clearly, previous generations had faith that future generations would correct this tragedy. By doing this, they have made it easier for us to extract Bill's likeness out of the photograph and manipulate it as we deem necessary.
Re:Yes, the alternatives are much better.
on
Google Tidbits
·
· Score: 1
Well, I could understand using the "standard" delimited values approach. This implies there exists metadata in the first line to describe each column. However, I would much rather see developers utilize XML--even in simple cases--rather than inventing a format. One encoding and one mechanism for defining the schema seems to make life easier overall.
I mean, come on... that's just awesome. It's like, "I'm loading XFCE 4.2.0, time to spark up."
Yes, the alternatives are much better.
on
Google Tidbits
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I would prefer that every damn application utilize its own, unique, and poorly documented formats. I mean, all that metadata is such a hassle when you want to go in and understand what a file contains! It gets in the way and is overall just so tacky.
Usually, if you buy a Mac just before the next major revision is released, you get the new version for free. I bought my mom an iMac loaded with Jaguar a couple of months before Panther came out and I was given a voucher for a free upgrade.
I was listening to the news (NRP) this morning and the reporter
explained how this was a "sudden rash" of activity. But is that
really the case? It seems to me that this has been happening for a
long time. Laser pointers have been available to the general public
for quite some time now. We are supposed to believe that people only
got it into their heads to start aiming them at planes and other
interesting targets within the past few months?
If only there were some sort of mechanism, like a serial port, over which you could run a console through which control might be exercised. But then, I am going out on a limb here.
Afterall, how many of us have been to space to see earth from a sufficient distance such that its shape is evident? (Keeping in mind that pictures, of course, can be faked.) Makes you realize just how much of what you know you cannot prove.
A project to correct so much old code on a global scale in such a small time frame being so successful in itself indicates how ridiculously blown out of proportion all of this was. We can't even get voting machines to work correctly. What makes us think that organizations around the planet can so flawlessly inspect and adjust minutiae in billions of lines of code across who knows how many languages, platforms, and applications? The answer is, we can't. If the proported number of systems affected is accurate, then statistically a large portion of those systems would have failed on Y2K because of the mistakes inherently involved in making such subtle changes. The outcome speaks for itself: problems were rare and heavily exaggerated. If Y2K was actually a serious issue, the effects of this "bug" would have been catastrophic despite the effort that was undertaken.
It's sad you work in an environment where developers do not understand the very simple concept of 'decoupling'. I am not going to sit here and expound upon the virtues of this practice because Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas have already done this in The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. If you haven't yet read this book, do so immediately. If your development staff hasn't read this book, make them. If they refuse or fail to understand it, fire them. I am convinced that 90% of our software development woes would be solved if project managers, tech-leads, and juniors alike all read and understood the concepts contained therein.
It remains unclear to me how all this elaborate encryption stops me from copying the disc. Encryption does not defeat copying, it only obscures the plaintext. They can use the strongest 2^10,000,000-bit encryption all they want. They can make sure that people with gazillion node clusters capable of a million computer hours a second couldn't decode the information in a trillion years. They can do all of this and they will be no closer to their goal.
The fact remains that we're still dealing with bits. Those bits can be read. Bits that can be read can be stored elsewhere. Oh, and devices for recovering the plaintext will be sold at Best Buy for $59.99.
In an effort to connect images of the tragedy with sites that allow people to make donations to the relief effort, myself and a number of friends have posted a list of mirrors to my weblog. Please use this to take some of the load off video.contemporaryinsanity.org and help get the word out.
I still won't be able to consider the GPL truly free, as it places restrictions and requirements, which is not free. The only truly free license is BSD.
What's your point? You have the freedom to not use it. You don't even have to agree with it to use the software released under it.
I still respect the GPL though
What does it mean to have respect for a document? Are you saying you're not going to violate the provisions of the license or are you in awe of it? The GPL is just a tool that provides a measure of protection over the work of people who want others to have access to that work. It's not a god, it's not something you are forced to use, and it's nothing all that amazing. In fact, it's just downright silly that we need it in the first place and that it has to be so damn complicated to accomplish something so stupid-simple.
So, are you against the concept of quoting or citing the words and work of giants? Linus happens to have an excellent point here. Oh, and he is indeed smarter than most of us, so there's a degree of trust we can place in his views. He's actually proven time and time again that he knows what's going on. In general, however, this is just like quoting other peoples' research. Linus is a respected member of the software development community, thus I am invoking him to support a particular viewpoint. It just so happens that he stated the case so elegantly that I have no need to add more.
The GPL or any open source licenses should do precisely what he states. Open the code and keep improvements open. Really, how hard is that? Unfortunately, people seem to think it needs to do more, do it differently, and so forth. "The GPL doesn't have a purple monkey drier in it. Let's add that!"
The more cruft added to the license, the more loopholes will inevitably surface. Just like with bugs in software.
To quote Linus Torvalds...
on
Revising the GPL
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I really want a license to do just two things: make the code available to others, and make sure that improvements stay that way. That's really it. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything else is fluff.
...
And the thing is, in my fuzzy "cannot plan his way out of a cardboard box" world, I don't worry too much about the next version of the GPL. I'm not a lawyer, I don't worry about the exact wording. In many ways, my only gripe with the GPL has been how many words it seems to need to say something very simple. That seems to be a common theme in any legal situation.
This story paints (pun intended) this application as being an alternative to The GIMP. That's all well and good if you can accept that a big, 20-ton CAT buldozer is a suitable alternative to a common backyard shovel. Yes, the shovel has an easier to use interface, but it's not built for moving mountains, just tending gardens.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - horror/sci fi FPS game developer John Carmack was found dead in his UAC barracks on Mars this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to Satanic culture. Truly an American icon.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly, previous generations had faith that future generations would correct this tragedy. By doing this, they have made it easier for us to extract Bill's likeness out of the photograph and manipulate it as we deem necessary.
Well, I could understand using the "standard" delimited values approach. This implies there exists metadata in the first line to describe each column. However, I would much rather see developers utilize XML--even in simple cases--rather than inventing a format. One encoding and one mechanism for defining the schema seems to make life easier overall.
I mean, come on... that's just awesome. It's like, "I'm loading XFCE 4.2.0, time to spark up."
I would prefer that every damn application utilize its own, unique, and poorly documented formats. I mean, all that metadata is such a hassle when you want to go in and understand what a file contains! It gets in the way and is overall just so tacky.
Usually, if you buy a Mac just before the next major revision is released, you get the new version for free. I bought my mom an iMac loaded with Jaguar a couple of months before Panther came out and I was given a voucher for a free upgrade.
I was listening to the news (NRP) this morning and the reporter explained how this was a "sudden rash" of activity. But is that really the case? It seems to me that this has been happening for a long time. Laser pointers have been available to the general public for quite some time now. We are supposed to believe that people only got it into their heads to start aiming them at planes and other interesting targets within the past few months?
If only there were some sort of mechanism, like a serial port, over which you could run a console through which control might be exercised. But then, I am going out on a limb here.
Sounds like a fair trade to me.
Be that as it may, there are still solutions like VMware that eliminate this problem. And VMware is not all that expensive these days.
Afterall, how many of us have been to space to see earth from a sufficient distance such that its shape is evident? (Keeping in mind that pictures, of course, can be faked.) Makes you realize just how much of what you know you cannot prove.
A project to correct so much old code on a global scale in such a small time frame being so successful in itself indicates how ridiculously blown out of proportion all of this was. We can't even get voting machines to work correctly. What makes us think that organizations around the planet can so flawlessly inspect and adjust minutiae in billions of lines of code across who knows how many languages, platforms, and applications? The answer is, we can't. If the proported number of systems affected is accurate, then statistically a large portion of those systems would have failed on Y2K because of the mistakes inherently involved in making such subtle changes. The outcome speaks for itself: problems were rare and heavily exaggerated. If Y2K was actually a serious issue, the effects of this "bug" would have been catastrophic despite the effort that was undertaken.
It's sad you work in an environment where developers do not understand the very simple concept of 'decoupling'. I am not going to sit here and expound upon the virtues of this practice because Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas have already done this in The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. If you haven't yet read this book, do so immediately. If your development staff hasn't read this book, make them. If they refuse or fail to understand it, fire them. I am convinced that 90% of our software development woes would be solved if project managers, tech-leads, and juniors alike all read and understood the concepts contained therein.
It remains unclear to me how all this elaborate encryption stops me from copying the disc. Encryption does not defeat copying, it only obscures the plaintext. They can use the strongest 2^10,000,000-bit encryption all they want. They can make sure that people with gazillion node clusters capable of a million computer hours a second couldn't decode the information in a trillion years. They can do all of this and they will be no closer to their goal.
The fact remains that we're still dealing with bits. Those bits can be read. Bits that can be read can be stored elsewhere. Oh, and devices for recovering the plaintext will be sold at Best Buy for $59.99.
In an effort to connect images of the tragedy with sites that allow people to make donations to the relief effort, myself and a number of friends have posted a list of mirrors to my weblog. Please use this to take some of the load off video.contemporaryinsanity.org and help get the word out.
Quick, let's make sure we pass some legislation that makes Craig's List illegal so we can prop up the profitability of antiquated business models.
Isn't everything on the Internet true? This sure is a crazy turn of the trend!
Give me your full name and address immediately.
I believe Descartes would ask if the box was wet or dry.
What's your point? You have the freedom to not use it. You don't even have to agree with it to use the software released under it.
What does it mean to have respect for a document? Are you saying you're not going to violate the provisions of the license or are you in awe of it? The GPL is just a tool that provides a measure of protection over the work of people who want others to have access to that work. It's not a god, it's not something you are forced to use, and it's nothing all that amazing. In fact, it's just downright silly that we need it in the first place and that it has to be so damn complicated to accomplish something so stupid-simple.
So, are you against the concept of quoting or citing the words and work of giants? Linus happens to have an excellent point here. Oh, and he is indeed smarter than most of us, so there's a degree of trust we can place in his views. He's actually proven time and time again that he knows what's going on. In general, however, this is just like quoting other peoples' research. Linus is a respected member of the software development community, thus I am invoking him to support a particular viewpoint. It just so happens that he stated the case so elegantly that I have no need to add more.
The GPL or any open source licenses should do precisely what he states. Open the code and keep improvements open. Really, how hard is that? Unfortunately, people seem to think it needs to do more, do it differently, and so forth. "The GPL doesn't have a purple monkey drier in it. Let's add that!"
The more cruft added to the license, the more loopholes will inevitably surface. Just like with bugs in software.
Linus, in a recent interview, says:
What else is there to say?
In Korea, 5MB iPod killers are for old people.
This story paints (pun intended) this application as being an alternative to The GIMP. That's all well and good if you can accept that a big, 20-ton CAT buldozer is a suitable alternative to a common backyard shovel. Yes, the shovel has an easier to use interface, but it's not built for moving mountains, just tending gardens.
STRANGELY IR0NIC
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - horror/sci fi FPS game developer John Carmack was found dead in his UAC barracks on Mars this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to Satanic culture. Truly an American icon.