Anyone who says free software is worth nothing from a revenue perspective or for recovering costs of education is a fool. On the contrary, it's worth a lot more than proprietary software in this regard. One of those reasons is that you can make so much more money with it. Consider consulting: in addition to being cheaper than your competition, you can also reap larger profits. You can also provide more nimble and customized solutions. In addition to being cheaper, more profitable and flexible, you are increasing the pool of community resources and knowledge as well. That translates into further income for you. In othewords, with open source software, everyone is helping everyone else make money while they help themselves. It's only the uncreative, myopic folks out there who cannot understand business models that use open source software to turn a profit. Take the blinders off!
It is not difficult to find a veritable mount of cheap oscilloscopes on eBay. You say you only need it for demonstration purposes, so why do you need something shiny and new? It can even be argued that the older analog oscilloscopes are better than newer digital ones. As always, resort to eBay if you need something not so good, and fairly cheap. Chances are you can find it there.
On the matter of choosing a UI design for Google, it is of course just downright stupid to build any appearance into a website. The markup should be standards compliant and structural. Websites should obviously provide a default set of stylesheets and images, but the user should be able to apply any stylesheet they want. In the world envisioned by the W3C, there's nothing stopping you from applying any appearance you want to the web, rather than the other way around.
Your sarcasm is only partially correct. Though the settlement constitutes a fraction of their resources, you are wrong to haphazardly label this award as insinificant. If you read page 20 of the settlement, you will find the amount awarded to over 3.5 million people is $143,075,000. That is not trivial and sets a useful legal precedent. You do damage to the cause against the RIAA by belittling this victory.
Computer science isn't "knowing computers on a deeper level." Computer science is algorithms and lots of math. Computer scientists don't care about how a computer works. They don't care about the language either. They are interested in data structures and how to work with them. What language is in use is really unimportant, be it Java or Assembly.
I've seen some really complex explinations in this thread. It's really not that complicated. If an argument is of a certain type, the supplied value must be of that type. End of story.
So, let's think about inheritance. All ArrayList objects are List objects. However, not all List objects are also ArrayList objects. If you declare a variable as List, all anyone knows is that it is simply a List object, even if its initialized as ArrayList. You can, however, test for the type of the value (getClass().getName(), instanceof, etc.) and then cast appropriately. So, if you are certain that your List variable contains a value of type ArrayList, you can down-cast it to ArrayList and pass it in.
By the way, at the risk of being too specific, here's a pointer when you're using the Java Collections Framework. Usually, you want to use the interface classes for your arguments and return values. Use List, Set, etc. for arguments and returns, not their implementations. The whole point of an interface is you don't care how it's implementing, you just care about what is implemented. In certain cases, you do care about the implementation. For example, TreeMap sorts the entries by key, where as LinkedHashMap guarantees the results will be kept in the same order as they were added. These properties are useful in some cases, but in general, use the base class whenever possible.
So, in summary remember or learn inheritence rules and the distinction between the type of a variable and the type of a variable's value.
Mr. Evans has made some assertions about the SCO case that are exaggerated or outright false. (Notably why SCO is suing IBM.) Those need to be addressed in any letter sent to the BBC. It needs to be emphasized that SCO has failed to demonstrate proof of its claims to the public and especially to the court.
Basically, we need to make it clear that Mr. Evans did no research, whatsoever, and that his article is written entirely based on hearsay and unsubstantiated opinion. Your letter is strong and empassioned, but it doesn't prove anything (and even contains factual errors--for instance, the matter of DRM in Linux). Debunk the original article, fact-for-fact. Any editor at the BBC who reads your letter isn't going to be convinced unless she's already "in the know" and may not even associate what you're saying with the FUD in the article.
The BBC web site has a feedback form where you can report factual errors on articles. Well, this article has a lot of factual errors and we should report them. Please do not use this form to be a dick! If we all write calm, well-composed, and well-cited responses that make sense, the BBC may pull the article, issue a correction, or even shut Mr. Stephen Evans up for us. Don't vindicate this fool (or mouth piece) by spamming or trolling.
While the 2.2 kernel was pretty much a bust, the 2.4 kernel proved itself wonderfully capable.
I humbly disagree. 2.4 has been a nightmare. I don't think any other stable Linux kernel series has seen so much mid-stream fluxuation or show-stopper bugs. For quite some time it was prone to crash, we had the severe VFS bug in 2.4.11, we had VM maintainers switching out the algorithm used to allocate memory, the functionality of the cryptoapi+cryptoloop subsystems has been broken between the last 3 releases such that encrypted devices are unusable between version n and n+/-1. I could probably go on, but that would require more time and I'm in haste. My point is, 2.4 had few significant improvements and inferior stability (in terms of development and system) over 2.2. I would not say it has proven to be anything other than a fiasco!
Jerk City Troll, you are so abrasive. There really are much better ways to make your point. It's so unpleasant to read anything you post.
This comes from years of pent-up frustration from working with people who don't understand why this stuff is important. What's worse is reading people making suggestions to learners that will no doubt perpetuate bad web development practices. It's often been a difficult up-hill battle where people refuse to even try the standards-compliant, structural-markup approach. Nevertheless, I've proven the virtues of standards-compliance time after time again.
Most recently, my company was slating a lot of time to make an alternate theme and printer-friendly pages for a web application. I convinced them to let me redo the site in XHTML and I was able to deliver any theme they wanted in less than half a day creating new stylesheets. With benefits like these, I just cringe at other approaches.
But yes, I need to learn to be less pissy.:) (Sorry to everyone who I've spit venom at today.)
Yes, you are correct that I fucked that up. I was in a rush. Awesome site btw, I love the design and the code. Little by little, well-built as well as well-designed sites are popping up. A couple years ago, you saw none of that.
For those of you that suggested just using XHTML and CSS.. that tends not to be an option in the real world. You would be amazed at how many Companies use version 4 browsers. And anything on the Mac is just a nightmare.
Yes, I would be surprised. Do you have any statistics to back this up? And as for bad browsers on the Mac, what the fuck are you talking about? IE5, Safari, OmniWeb, and Mozilla (and derivatives) are all on the Mac and are all very standards compliant. OS X supports more browsers than any other platform.
By the way, you've clearly missed the whole point on standards compliant web development. If you build a web site with standards, its degredation (if necessary) will be graceful. For example, if I write pages using XHTML, everything from screen-readers to Lynx to Netscape 4 to the latest version of WhizbangBrowser will be able to use and navigate the content. That is most definitely not the case with other "solutions".
If we use DHTML and JavaScript on the other hand, everyone except those with WhizbangBrowser are locked out of the content. I think what you meant to say was: "For those of you that suggested just using DHTML and JavaScript.. that tends not to be an option in the real world. You would be amazed at how many Companies use version 4 browsers. And anything on Windows is just a nightmare."
There is no better way to create a more useless website to more people. You might as well just close your site now since you're limiting it to as few people as possible.
If you're even thinking about DHTML, you probably aren't up to par with the latest web technologies that are designed to be more accessible and progressive. Please stop what you are doing and read Designing With Web Standards before you even think about building a website.
Chances are, there is no need for any JavaScript on your website. It only adds needless complexity and helps things break. Again, as the parent poster write, use XHTML and CSS.
Its good for image rollovers and validating forms but the moment you try and do anything fancy with it like manipulating layers you will be plagued by crossbrowser incompatibilities.
No, no, NO!
First of all, do not use JavaScript for image rollovers. It's a terrible idea and the person who thought of using JavaScript for image rollovers should be shot. You never put images in webpages where the image is not the content. That's presentational HTML. Instead, follow this example which uses pure CSS. The basic idea is that you use the:hover pseudo-class to change the background property of a hyperlink. That background image can contain all states or it can be separate files. Wrap the inner text with a span tag and specify that span tags within the scope of your anchor tag get a display: none propety. Its so simple, it works without JavaScript, loads faster, cross-browser compatible, and if the user is running a non-graphical browser, it's still accessible. Here's a quick example (where somepic.png contains both roll over states, one at (0, 0) and the other at (0, 20):
a.Foo { display: block; width: 100; height: 20; background: url("somepic.png") top left no-repeat; }
a.Foo:hover { background-position: -20px; }
a.Foo span { display: none; }
Then in your markup, you put this:
<a href="foo.html" class="Foo"><span>link to foo</span></a>
Next, you should never rely on JavaScript to do your form validation. That's the most stupid, absurd thing I've ever heard. Leaving input validation in the hands of the client is to trust the user to not attempt to screw up your input. For forms to the useful, they have to be submitted to some kind of server-side logic. That is where the form validation should take place because then the user cannot side-step your input validation.
Yikes. With people like you building websites, no wonder the Web is such a disaster today. Please change professions ASAP or read Designing With Web Standards
I sure do hope that these litigious bastards will finally get the miserable end they deserve! Do you suppose the judge will scoff at this nonsense now?
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone who says free software is worth nothing from a revenue perspective or for recovering costs of education is a fool. On the contrary, it's worth a lot more than proprietary software in this regard. One of those reasons is that you can make so much more money with it. Consider consulting: in addition to being cheaper than your competition, you can also reap larger profits. You can also provide more nimble and customized solutions. In addition to being cheaper, more profitable and flexible, you are increasing the pool of community resources and knowledge as well. That translates into further income for you. In othewords, with open source software, everyone is helping everyone else make money while they help themselves. It's only the uncreative, myopic folks out there who cannot understand business models that use open source software to turn a profit. Take the blinders off!
Yes, that was supposed to be a joke. That is probably one of the highest-end oscilloscope anywhere in the world.
It's funny. Laugh.
It is not difficult to find a veritable mount of cheap oscilloscopes on eBay. You say you only need it for demonstration purposes, so why do you need something shiny and new? It can even be argued that the older analog oscilloscopes are better than newer digital ones. As always, resort to eBay if you need something not so good, and fairly cheap. Chances are you can find it there.
Is it just me, or does http://www.fuellessflight.com/ closely resemble another rather interesting web site which we've seen on /. before?
On the matter of choosing a UI design for Google, it is of course just downright stupid to build any appearance into a website. The markup should be standards compliant and structural. Websites should obviously provide a default set of stylesheets and images, but the user should be able to apply any stylesheet they want. In the world envisioned by the W3C, there's nothing stopping you from applying any appearance you want to the web, rather than the other way around.
Your sarcasm is only partially correct. Though the settlement constitutes a fraction of their resources, you are wrong to haphazardly label this award as insinificant. If you read page 20 of the settlement, you will find the amount awarded to over 3.5 million people is $143,075,000. That is not trivial and sets a useful legal precedent. You do damage to the cause against the RIAA by belittling this victory.
G00D KERNEL MAKING PERS0NS SH0ULD HAVE A NICE TIE
GOOD W0RK HACKER PERS0N, HAVE A TIE
Two animated GIFs: one gets revealed slowly and the other gets revealed REALLY fast! I know this sells lots of broadband to dialup customers...
...it's surprising they didn't name it "Starfox".
(Apologies to Eli. :)
Computer science isn't "knowing computers on a deeper level." Computer science is algorithms and lots of math. Computer scientists don't care about how a computer works. They don't care about the language either. They are interested in data structures and how to work with them. What language is in use is really unimportant, be it Java or Assembly.
Kind of funny, considering that Solaris is a derivative of BSD.
I've seen some really complex explinations in this thread. It's really not that complicated. If an argument is of a certain type, the supplied value must be of that type. End of story.
So, let's think about inheritance. All ArrayList objects are List objects. However, not all List objects are also ArrayList objects. If you declare a variable as List, all anyone knows is that it is simply a List object, even if its initialized as ArrayList. You can, however, test for the type of the value ( getClass().getName() , instanceof , etc.) and then cast appropriately. So, if you are certain that your List variable contains a value of type ArrayList, you can down-cast it to ArrayList and pass it in.
By the way, at the risk of being too specific, here's a pointer when you're using the Java Collections Framework. Usually, you want to use the interface classes for your arguments and return values. Use List, Set, etc. for arguments and returns, not their implementations. The whole point of an interface is you don't care how it's implementing, you just care about what is implemented. In certain cases, you do care about the implementation. For example, TreeMap sorts the entries by key, where as LinkedHashMap guarantees the results will be kept in the same order as they were added. These properties are useful in some cases, but in general, use the base class whenever possible.
So, in summary remember or learn inheritence rules and the distinction between the type of a variable and the type of a variable's value.
Mr. Evans has made some assertions about the SCO case that are exaggerated or outright false. (Notably why SCO is suing IBM.) Those need to be addressed in any letter sent to the BBC. It needs to be emphasized that SCO has failed to demonstrate proof of its claims to the public and especially to the court.
Basically, we need to make it clear that Mr. Evans did no research, whatsoever, and that his article is written entirely based on hearsay and unsubstantiated opinion. Your letter is strong and empassioned, but it doesn't prove anything (and even contains factual errors--for instance, the matter of DRM in Linux). Debunk the original article, fact-for-fact. Any editor at the BBC who reads your letter isn't going to be convinced unless she's already "in the know" and may not even associate what you're saying with the FUD in the article.
The BBC web site has a feedback form where you can report factual errors on articles. Well, this article has a lot of factual errors and we should report them. Please do not use this form to be a dick! If we all write calm, well-composed, and well-cited responses that make sense, the BBC may pull the article, issue a correction, or even shut Mr. Stephen Evans up for us. Don't vindicate this fool (or mouth piece) by spamming or trolling.
I humbly disagree. 2.4 has been a nightmare. I don't think any other stable Linux kernel series has seen so much mid-stream fluxuation or show-stopper bugs. For quite some time it was prone to crash, we had the severe VFS bug in 2.4.11, we had VM maintainers switching out the algorithm used to allocate memory, the functionality of the cryptoapi+cryptoloop subsystems has been broken between the last 3 releases such that encrypted devices are unusable between version n and n+/-1. I could probably go on, but that would require more time and I'm in haste. My point is, 2.4 had few significant improvements and inferior stability (in terms of development and system) over 2.2. I would not say it has proven to be anything other than a fiasco!
No.
Outsourcing is exactly what governments do with open source. They contract companies to improve it or implement some sort of solution.
What is both scary and ludicrous is that someone moderated you "insightful". And sorry to go OT, but your signature needs addressing:
The concern about unnatural global warming is not merely an increase in average temperature. It's about an increase in temperature extremes.
This comes from years of pent-up frustration from working with people who don't understand why this stuff is important. What's worse is reading people making suggestions to learners that will no doubt perpetuate bad web development practices. It's often been a difficult up-hill battle where people refuse to even try the standards-compliant, structural-markup approach. Nevertheless, I've proven the virtues of standards-compliance time after time again.
Most recently, my company was slating a lot of time to make an alternate theme and printer-friendly pages for a web application. I convinced them to let me redo the site in XHTML and I was able to deliver any theme they wanted in less than half a day creating new stylesheets. With benefits like these, I just cringe at other approaches.
But yes, I need to learn to be less pissy. :) (Sorry to everyone who I've spit venom at today.)
Yes, you are correct that I fucked that up. I was in a rush. Awesome site btw, I love the design and the code. Little by little, well-built as well as well-designed sites are popping up. A couple years ago, you saw none of that.
Yes, I would be surprised. Do you have any statistics to back this up? And as for bad browsers on the Mac, what the fuck are you talking about? IE5, Safari, OmniWeb, and Mozilla (and derivatives) are all on the Mac and are all very standards compliant. OS X supports more browsers than any other platform.
By the way, you've clearly missed the whole point on standards compliant web development. If you build a web site with standards, its degredation (if necessary) will be graceful. For example, if I write pages using XHTML, everything from screen-readers to Lynx to Netscape 4 to the latest version of WhizbangBrowser will be able to use and navigate the content. That is most definitely not the case with other "solutions".
If we use DHTML and JavaScript on the other hand, everyone except those with WhizbangBrowser are locked out of the content. I think what you meant to say was: "For those of you that suggested just using DHTML and JavaScript.. that tends not to be an option in the real world. You would be amazed at how many Companies use version 4 browsers. And anything on Windows is just a nightmare."
Please get a clue.
I second this.
There is no better way to create a more useless website to more people. You might as well just close your site now since you're limiting it to as few people as possible.
If you're even thinking about DHTML, you probably aren't up to par with the latest web technologies that are designed to be more accessible and progressive. Please stop what you are doing and read Designing With Web Standards before you even think about building a website.
Chances are, there is no need for any JavaScript on your website. It only adds needless complexity and helps things break. Again, as the parent poster write, use XHTML and CSS.
No, no, NO!
First of all, do not use JavaScript for image rollovers. It's a terrible idea and the person who thought of using JavaScript for image rollovers should be shot. You never put images in webpages where the image is not the content. That's presentational HTML. Instead, follow this example which uses pure CSS. The basic idea is that you use the :hover pseudo-class to change the background property of a hyperlink. That background image can contain all states or it can be separate files. Wrap the inner text with a span tag and specify that span tags within the scope of your anchor tag get a display: none propety. Its so simple, it works without JavaScript, loads faster, cross-browser compatible, and if the user is running a non-graphical browser, it's still accessible. Here's a quick example (where somepic.png contains both roll over states, one at (0, 0) and the other at (0, 20):
Then in your markup, you put this:
Next, you should never rely on JavaScript to do your form validation. That's the most stupid, absurd thing I've ever heard. Leaving input validation in the hands of the client is to trust the user to not attempt to screw up your input. For forms to the useful, they have to be submitted to some kind of server-side logic. That is where the form validation should take place because then the user cannot side-step your input validation.
Yikes. With people like you building websites, no wonder the Web is such a disaster today. Please change professions ASAP or read Designing With Web Standards
Put your money where your mouth is.
Thank you for not smoking crack and taking this in the humor in which it was written.
I sure do hope that these litigious bastards will finally get the miserable end they deserve! Do you suppose the judge will scoff at this nonsense now?