If you are giving hypotetical situations, be sure to word them well. I once had an interview in which the interviewer tried giving me a hypothetical situation to get myself out of, but he had trouble simplifying it to a way that I could come up with an answer that was more general than the specific one he used to solve the real problem. Luckily the interviewer and I already knew each other, so it didn't ruin either of our days, but being able to ask a question in a way that it can provoke thought is important. If you base your hypothetical situation on a real one, it can be really easy to make it too specific and then expect the exact same solution you used...
I whipped up a little perl script earlier this summer that a friend and I used to informally prove to ourselves that the digits 0..9 are fairly evenly distributed in the first million digits of pi. I guess that doesn't really have anything to do with the randomness of their positions, but it didn't look like there are, for example, significantly more 5's than 8's in there...
I just grabbed a copy and unpacked it using the Windows-only unpacker (nice choice...) and got the licensing agreement window telling me I couldn't distribute any derivative works of whatever was in there. That sounds like it goes 100% against the GPL...
Cable modems can't be slower than 56k! It is impossible for them to drop below 60k, otherwise the bomb on them will explode and blow Ted, Neo, and all of the passengers into little pieces.
Most people are perfectly happy paying for a magazine that is mostly ads, but complain when they have to pay for something online, right? Perhaps it's because when they buy a magazine they have something to show for it. A magazine can sit on the couch, can be carried around, can be shown to friends, can be cut apart and hung up, can be folded into paper airplanes, and all kinds of other things. It is a physical object that your $5.00US bought. It is yours, and you can prove that. But something online is just another pile of electrons that you can't do anyhting with but read and hope it will still be there the next day. I have little interest in paying for something that I can't see or feel or tear apart if I don't like it. I would guess that is part of the reason people don't like the idea of paying for online content...
"...Telobity customer..."
"...Telovity, now DirectTV DSL..."
"...from Telocity."
Which is it?
And one of my favorites,
"...I wonder if their mad?"
No, not theirs, but mine. My mad. My mad at people who can't write/proofread!
(Sorry, I sometimes hit my quota of bad writeups I can read on/. without going ballistic. Go ahead, moderate me down so nobody has to learn to write correctly. It's not like that is a needed skill in real life...)
I spent a few weeks in the DR a few years ago and remember being impressed with some of their power problems/solutions. I recall one house that I visited that had a couple solar tiles on the roof, enough to run a few light bulbs and/or a small TV. Oddly (according to US standards), that was one of maybe 2 or 3 powered houses in the town. I also was told of one of the coolest power hacks I have heard of in a while: car batteries. A car battery can easily power a light for a while, and can then be recharged for a few pesos by a passing pickup truck. Nice simple power that doesn't rely on a central company running wires for you!
Although it is rather unscientific and probably unrealistic, I have noticed one good sign about mozilla as I have downloaded each release: as of late, mozilla download have been shrinking. When new features/code are continually added and the size of a program gets smaller, I take that as a good sign. For example, here are the sizes of the Linux x86 full.tar.gz file over the releases since 0.6:
0.9.2 - 9.2 M
0.9.1 - 9.4 M
0.9 - 9.4 M
0.8.1 - 11.0 M
0.8 - 11.0 M
0.7 - 10.5 M
0.6 - 10.5 M
The.8's jumped a little, but notice how the.9's picked up the slack. I think this looks quite good to me...
My winner under the Stupid category is the "admin" when I was in high school. He choose the great password of "none" for his personal account, which was easily cracked with a simple dictionary. Of course, he was really one of the biggest fools I have known in my life, so I am not really all that surprised...
You know, I think the release of Doom might have "changed the world forever" more than the release of Quake. But, perhaps that is just my skewed perspective...
So I decided to follow those links, and looked through the GPL one a little. It mentions something that Micros~1 has said before, that the GPL is a "viral open-source license." They then go on to explain this wording as meaning that "some open source licenses make it impossible for derivitive works to be distributed under any other license (ie, they infect them)." But thinking about it, I think it is rather obvious that closed source licenses are even worse than that: they don't even give you the chance to see the code, and they still can't be distributed under any other license. So basically that tells me that Micros~1 dislikes the GPL because they can't take code from something GPLed (a viral license) and convert it over to their more restrictive license (a brick-wall license). What fools they are...
What's up with this sudden drive for all ailing OS companies to write OSes for palm-like devices? Be had a great OS that they seem to have basically abandoned for BeIA, and Amiga is going embeded too. Do they think they have a better chance against PalmOS and Wince? I would much rather leave my PDA running PalmOS and let the other companies work on their mighty-cool bigger OSes. Unfortunately, I guess we are still stuck with the stuff from Micros~1 even though there are much cooler things out there...
(as a side note, I do believe that BeOS is the coolest desktop OS I have ever used. On the other hand, I havn't played with Mac OSX (and its NeXT core) much yet, so that possbily could change. Probably not though...)
Microsoft says site operators could insert a metatag disabling Smart Tags, so concerned publishers could avoid them.
Yeah, and concerned car owners can lock their doors, and concerned grocery store oweners can get video cameras, but that doesn't make stealing an open car or robbing an unguarded store alright... This all sounds pretty horrible to me. I don't want somebody sticking ads or other links onto my pages for me, making it look like I am endorsing something I may know nothing about. But since "IE won the browser war," I guess they can do whatever they monopolistically want...
Localization in CG movies. Just like when I choose a different language/locale on my X login screen and everything comes up in a different language, it would be great if they could program the movies to do it all fairly automatically.
Of course I understand that that would be horribly, horribly difficult. But it is a fun idea at least...
Well, it's an up-to-date clone of a 30 year old OS. And since the basic idea behind computers hasn't changed all that much in the last 30 years (excluding clustering and stuff like that), I think that is fine...
Does Linux really matter? On the x86 side we have Windows, Solaris, and *BSD, and on the Mac side there are a couple versions of MacOS that act fairly differently. Hasn't the ship passed already?
Of course it hasn't. If we just settled with what there was, we would all be using horribly out-dated software that all came from the same company. And anyway, Opera isn't open source, and Konq is fairly tightly tied in with KDE. What about Gnome users or people like me who tend to just use fvwm and no extra desktop stuff? Mozilla is great in my mind...
The desktop is dead because it is in development? Sounds to me like it is alive and kicking away at what needs to be done. Perhaps the author runs in a reverse-time mode or something, but I keep looking at true desktop Linux (Gnome/KDE/XFCE/etc) and keep seeing more and more good things. For example, I just got a little handspring visor (which I went on to name "Manos", the Handspring of Fate) that I rather easily set up to sync with a bunch of Gnome tools, AvantGo, and some other stuff. That there is _real_ desktop material, not serving web pages and/or email. So I wouldn't pronounce it dead before it stops being developed. The BeOS desktop may (sadly) be pretty dead, the NeXT desktop may be dead/mutated, and so on, but the Linux desktop is nowhere near dead...
My PS/2 is a Model 55/SX from about 1988 or so. It has 4 meg of memory and runs at 16 MHz. It also powers my fishcam. When I got ahold of it it had Win3.1 on it, and might have even had AOL on it already (I don't recall...). So HA! My PS/2 already has AOL!
Dude, those triangles are just sticky-up rocks with shadows falling from the sun positioned at the top of the picture. My guess would be that it was setting at the time...
Slashdot Mirror
If you are giving hypotetical situations, be sure to word them well. I once had an interview in which the interviewer tried giving me a hypothetical situation to get myself out of, but he had trouble simplifying it to a way that I could come up with an answer that was more general than the specific one he used to solve the real problem. Luckily the interviewer and I already knew each other, so it didn't ruin either of our days, but being able to ask a question in a way that it can provoke thought is important. If you base your hypothetical situation on a real one, it can be really easy to make it too specific and then expect the exact same solution you used...
That was my guess. Looking back at it, I probably didn't write quite as clearly as I should have... Oh, well.
Er... I think that is what I was saying...
I whipped up a little perl script earlier this summer that a friend and I used to informally prove to ourselves that the digits 0..9 are fairly evenly distributed in the first million digits of pi. I guess that doesn't really have anything to do with the randomness of their positions, but it didn't look like there are, for example, significantly more 5's than 8's in there...
I just grabbed a copy and unpacked it using the Windows-only unpacker (nice choice...) and got the licensing agreement window telling me I couldn't distribute any derivative works of whatever was in there. That sounds like it goes 100% against the GPL...
Cable modems can't be slower than 56k! It is impossible for them to drop below 60k, otherwise the bomb on them will explode and blow Ted, Neo, and all of the passengers into little pieces.
Most people are perfectly happy paying for a magazine that is mostly ads, but complain when they have to pay for something online, right? Perhaps it's because when they buy a magazine they have something to show for it. A magazine can sit on the couch, can be carried around, can be shown to friends, can be cut apart and hung up, can be folded into paper airplanes, and all kinds of other things. It is a physical object that your $5.00US bought. It is yours, and you can prove that. But something online is just another pile of electrons that you can't do anyhting with but read and hope it will still be there the next day. I have little interest in paying for something that I can't see or feel or tear apart if I don't like it. I would guess that is part of the reason people don't like the idea of paying for online content...
Attack of the poorly written writeups!
/. without going ballistic. Go ahead, moderate me down so nobody has to learn to write correctly. It's not like that is a needed skill in real life...)
"...Telobity customer..."
"...Telovity, now DirectTV DSL..."
"...from Telocity."
Which is it?
And one of my favorites,
"...I wonder if their mad?"
No, not theirs, but mine. My mad. My mad at people who can't write/proofread!
(Sorry, I sometimes hit my quota of bad writeups I can read on
I spent a few weeks in the DR a few years ago and remember being impressed with some of their power problems/solutions. I recall one house that I visited that had a couple solar tiles on the roof, enough to run a few light bulbs and/or a small TV. Oddly (according to US standards), that was one of maybe 2 or 3 powered houses in the town. I also was told of one of the coolest power hacks I have heard of in a while: car batteries. A car battery can easily power a light for a while, and can then be recharged for a few pesos by a passing pickup truck. Nice simple power that doesn't rely on a central company running wires for you!
- 0.9.2 - 9.2 M
- 0.9.1 - 9.4 M
- 0.9 - 9.4 M
- 0.8.1 - 11.0 M
- 0.8 - 11.0 M
- 0.7 - 10.5 M
- 0.6 - 10.5 M
TheMy winner under the Stupid category is the "admin" when I was in high school. He choose the great password of "none" for his personal account, which was easily cracked with a simple dictionary. Of course, he was really one of the biggest fools I have known in my life, so I am not really all that surprised...
You know, I think the release of Doom might have "changed the world forever" more than the release of Quake. But, perhaps that is just my skewed perspective...
So I decided to follow those links, and looked through the GPL one a little. It mentions something that Micros~1 has said before, that the GPL is a "viral open-source license." They then go on to explain this wording as meaning that "some open source licenses make it impossible for derivitive works to be distributed under any other license (ie, they infect them)." But thinking about it, I think it is rather obvious that closed source licenses are even worse than that: they don't even give you the chance to see the code, and they still can't be distributed under any other license. So basically that tells me that Micros~1 dislikes the GPL because they can't take code from something GPLed (a viral license) and convert it over to their more restrictive license (a brick-wall license). What fools they are...
As my high school Biology teacher used to say:
"Ehhhh... There are fungus among us..."
What's up with this sudden drive for all ailing OS companies to write OSes for palm-like devices? Be had a great OS that they seem to have basically abandoned for BeIA, and Amiga is going embeded too. Do they think they have a better chance against PalmOS and Wince? I would much rather leave my PDA running PalmOS and let the other companies work on their mighty-cool bigger OSes. Unfortunately, I guess we are still stuck with the stuff from Micros~1 even though there are much cooler things out there...
(as a side note, I do believe that BeOS is the coolest desktop OS I have ever used. On the other hand, I havn't played with Mac OSX (and its NeXT core) much yet, so that possbily could change. Probably not though...)
Microsoft says site operators could insert a metatag disabling Smart Tags, so concerned publishers could avoid them.
Yeah, and concerned car owners can lock their doors, and concerned grocery store oweners can get video cameras, but that doesn't make stealing an open car or robbing an unguarded store alright... This all sounds pretty horrible to me. I don't want somebody sticking ads or other links onto my pages for me, making it look like I am endorsing something I may know nothing about. But since "IE won the browser war," I guess they can do whatever they monopolistically want...
Localization in CG movies. Just like when I choose a different language/locale on my X login screen and everything comes up in a different language, it would be great if they could program the movies to do it all fairly automatically.
Of course I understand that that would be horribly, horribly difficult. But it is a fun idea at least...
Well, it's an up-to-date clone of a 30 year old OS. And since the basic idea behind computers hasn't changed all that much in the last 30 years (excluding clustering and stuff like that), I think that is fine...
Does Linux really matter? On the x86 side we have Windows, Solaris, and *BSD, and on the Mac side there are a couple versions of MacOS that act fairly differently. Hasn't the ship passed already?
Of course it hasn't. If we just settled with what there was, we would all be using horribly out-dated software that all came from the same company. And anyway, Opera isn't open source, and Konq is fairly tightly tied in with KDE. What about Gnome users or people like me who tend to just use fvwm and no extra desktop stuff? Mozilla is great in my mind...
(or name+code release date)
Oh, you mean like Windows 95/98/2000 and most any other Micros~1 product? I had always (or at least since 1995) thought that was rather annoying...
The desktop is dead because it is in development? Sounds to me like it is alive and kicking away at what needs to be done. Perhaps the author runs in a reverse-time mode or something, but I keep looking at true desktop Linux (Gnome/KDE/XFCE/etc) and keep seeing more and more good things. For example, I just got a little handspring visor (which I went on to name "Manos", the Handspring of Fate) that I rather easily set up to sync with a bunch of Gnome tools, AvantGo, and some other stuff. That there is _real_ desktop material, not serving web pages and/or email. So I wouldn't pronounce it dead before it stops being developed. The BeOS desktop may (sadly) be pretty dead, the NeXT desktop may be dead/mutated, and so on, but the Linux desktop is nowhere near dead...
Yeah, I know. I just moved and havn't set it back up yet. Some day it will be working again, once I figure out how to set everything back up...
My PS/2 is a Model 55/SX from about 1988 or so. It has 4 meg of memory and runs at 16 MHz. It also powers my fishcam. When I got ahold of it it had Win3.1 on it, and might have even had AOL on it already (I don't recall...). So HA! My PS/2 already has AOL!
(Oh, wait. Maybe that isn't what he meant...)
Dude, those triangles are just sticky-up rocks with shadows falling from the sun positioned at the top of the picture. My guess would be that it was setting at the time...
Either that or they are ALIENS!
You spelled Gattaca wrong!