It's a simple enough question, and one for which I haven't yet seen any answer. Why? What is it in Windows 10 that makes it so desirable for _Microsoft_ to _give away_?
Remember, if you are not paying for a service, it is because you are the _product_.
Sure, a lot of coastal protections were built in modern times, but that didn't stop people from digging major canals manually in earlier centuries. The Noordzeekanaal was dug by handpower, as were the canals around the Haarlemmermeerpolder. And Holland wasn't nearly as over-populated then as it is now. The point being: it can be done, if you want to. If you spend your time actually fixing your problem instead of whining about it...
Also, Vikings are from Scandinavia, not the Netherlands.
Back in the day it didn't, so we mostly built our systems around hot failover clusters that work on the OS level. We also have our own replication solution running (this is part of the application level code, using Postgres triggers) which transfers the data on the fly through various security barriers for the purpose of remote viewing. This is not just simple replication though; it wouldn't work with any off-the-shelf solution anyway.
We haven't really looked at the built-in replication since we already have working solutions that we are happy with, but it seems to be getting more capable with each successive Postgres release.
So much, then, for managed languages. I thought managed pointers and garbage collection were supposed to free us from all those ills, but evidentally not.
Shame that further down they perpetuate the myth of the C/C++ language. That language doesn't exist - it's either one or the other. In C you'd use raw memory pointers if you wanted to pass a buffer around, making it easy to access it beyond its boundaries. In C++ you'd pass a buffer object that knows its own size, and either dynamically resizes or at least throws an exception on an illegal access.
Because C and C++ have such vastly different approach to the same problem I'd love to see C and C++ split out.
My software stores spacecraft testing data. Each test is good for a couple of gigabytes, and we run dozens each year. We use PostgreSQL because:
- Rock-solid stability. Zero data loss after a decade and a half of operations. Zero problems of _any kind_, over that same period. - Great features and excellent standard conformance. - Documentation is absolutely excellent, best of any open source project I know of. - pgAdmin 3 allows trivial on-the-fly inspection of databases. - No licensing issues. No payment "per core", "per connection", or whatever other bullshit they've come up with now. Install where we like, as much as we like.
We didn't choose MySQL because it lacked ACID compliance (data loss would be problematic), and because it has entirely too many weird gotchas. Sure, you can work around all of those... But why would you if you can also choose PostgreSQL?
As for Oracle, that's what we used before PostgreSQL. Back in the days, you couldn't store more than 2000 characters in a string, their C interface was the stuff of nightmares, support tools were non-existent, and installing it yourself, or on anything that wasn't the Blessed HPUX Cluster, was impossible. We had two (minor) data loss events in three years, but that might have been a hardware issue. But the killer reason is of course licensing - with Oracle, we had one server on which all work had to take place. Now we have dozens, and setting up an ad-hoc server for some quick testing is trivial - both technically, and in terms of licensing.
I can take a laptop to a customer site and do a demo or some work, without worrying about licensing. With Oracle you never know whether you are compliant or not, and being found to be non-compliant is extremely, extremely painful.
Because to a-technical people, "wifi" is something completely different from "telephone". They simply don't know both are a form of radio, and if someone told them most likely wouldn't believe it anyway.
If it's for standard office use or similar, just buy a pre-built one. You can get nifty tiny, silent cases that are vastly overpowered for anything you might want to do with it. If you need more power, I would select the components myself, but leave the grunt work of building to a retailer. Where I live that costs about 75 euro and gets you three years of warranty, so it's a great deal.
Pre-built gaming systems tend to be unbalanced, throwing lots of money at high-end components where only very marginal gains can be expected in actual real-life performance. You don't need "black" CPUs or hand-picked memory, and you don't need dual graphics cards either - unless you enjoy paying through the nose for a problematic component that will be outgunned six months down the road anyway.
As for the notion that you need to build one yourself to prove your manhood: look buddy, unless you soldered your own graphics card or whatever, all you are doing is clicking together some premade components. A monkey could do it.
Let's see, what might be a good way to stop foreigners from killing our citizens... Ah yes: DO NOT LET THEM INTO THE COUNTRY.
It's so easy, so simple... And so utterly without benefit to the ruling class. Arguments we've heard so far include "...but there are many here already so it won't help". Well, KICK THOSE OUT, then. Europe is unique in that we apparently cannot kick anybody out of our countries. Other countries certainly have no problem getting rid of undesirables - why can't we?
We don't want muslims. We've had 40 years to get to know muslims and by know we are entitled to an opinion about them. Muslims are trouble. Muslims make constant unreasonable demands. Muslims want us to become muslim, and our countries to be ruled by islam - and WE DON'T.
"But you are bombing Syria!" That's like saying we should be punished for bad behaviour, and we should do nothing to stop the punishment from happening. Not just that: the choice to bomb Syria was made by the same politicians that now want the punishment to continue! Which sounds a lot like "I did something bad and now you all have to suffer for it". Let's face it: we are at war. The war was started around 700 with the muslim invasion of Spain, and continues until today. We have EVERY RIGHT to defend ourselves and our countries, and we have EVERY RIGHT to deport who we don't want here.
"But when we close the borders we must also stop all trade!" That's a truly sad argument. We don't want muslims. Trade can continue fine. Any politician that doesn't understand that should be removed from office because anyone with the understanding and IQ of a sea cucumber really shouldn't be ruling anything, never mind an entire country.
"But..." No. Fuck you. This is about survival, and we are not obliged by any historical context or event to cease striving for our own survival.
We set up a public database where companies can register the fact that they are not creating any backdoors. This registration has to be renewed each year. This registration is not illegal - it simply informs the public that the government has not made any special demands, which is perfectly lawful.
Of course, if the government does make any special demands, the company cannot register the lack of backdoors anymore, and the registration will automatically be removed from the database. From that point we know that company is under government orders to include backdoors.
Plus we're tired of being tricked into accidentally downloading unwanted virusscanners (flash), toolbars (java), and whatever other crap they want to bundle. We are tired of running two dozen automatic update tools at all times, all fighting for internet access and all using memory and CPU time. Sure, it's very little and it mostly ends up in swap anyways - but it adds up. And we are certainly tired of having to deal with that crap every time we boot the machine.
It's a great mystery to me why Windows does not have a unified update service (like Windows Update, but also including tools from 3rd parties). It doesn't even have to go through Microsofts servers - just let programs register their own server with the update service, and then let the update service do updates at times when it is convenient to me.
I've solved at least part of this problem by simply not having QuickTime or Java installed. Flash is installed, but only runs on demand (which is actually far less often than you'd imagine). Windows Update I've shut down after Microsoft started pushing spyware and adware as "important updates". So now I run a risk of "hackers". So far they've proven less of a nuisance than actual vendors...
There are too many people. We could easily reduce our ecological and energy footprint if we allowed our populations to shrink (through natural processes over the course of a few generations, I'm not advocating large-scale slaughter). As long as we maintain policies designed to boost population size (such as massive benefits instead of extra taxation for children, as well as unlimited immigration) our resource usage will grow.
Interestingly, so-called "green" parties tend to be hugely in favor of immigration... Makes you wonder about their real priorities.
It's not about the question, it's a way for our cultural elite to make derogatory comments about video games, and by extension the people who play them. Asking the question is an elitist trick to separate you from them.
If videogames were art, then they must also accept that the people who play them appreciate art. It would elevate Mario to the level of the Mona Lisa, and a gamer to their own level of rarified cultural sensitivity. Since that can never be allowed to happen, games can never be art.
For the rest you are absolutely right: who gives a fuck whether they consider our hobby to be art? Both the question and any answer we could come up with are irrelevant.
My opinion, not that it matters at all, is that video games can be, but don't have to be, art. It's all about the experience they offer - if it's one that stays with you, it's art. Same as with "real" art, really...
We can do much worse than simply ignoring them. We can write some software that downloads their ads, and clicks on everything that can be clicked, _without ever showing it to the user_. Overnight the value of a click-through would plummet, as these mechanical (and worthless) clicks cannot be distinguished from real clicks.
So, is this a risk the advertising industry wants to take?
Because "slightlydarksalmon", "mauvelikepeach" or "bananawithahintofcinnamon" is soooo much more easy to understand then a bunch of hexadecimal numbers... And then they have the gall of accusing _us_ of talking an obscure lingo:-(
I've taken part in a few of these (long ago), but the 'coding' was always extremely minimal. Winning came down to being good at math, knowing things like how to find intersections between a circle and a line, for example. It's cool if people know that, but in my experience with practical for-profit coding for the last twenty years, such problems hardly ever come up - and if they do, it is as a very small part of a much larger piece of software.
In my opinion, the skills demonstrates in this type of coding contest have almost no bearing on any kind of coding carreer. By which I do not mean to downplay their obvious mad c0ding skillz, these are some very smart people, but the article suggests these guys would have high value as corporate coders, which I find rather doubtful.
Basic income applies to ***everyone*** - it is touted as one of the advantages since you can then stop checking if someone qualifies or not. If you do not grant it to everyone than the entire machinery of checking and verification remains intact, removing one of the main arguments (the cost saving aspect).
There are about 300 million people in the US. At a rate of $800 per month (the lowest you gave), the total cost will be 2.9 trillion per year. Total government spending is on the order of 3.5 trillion per year, including everything - military, wars, social security, high ways, education, health care, etc. Of this budget, social security accounts for about 0.7 trillion, or 20% of the cost of basic income.
This is all basic math and publically accessible sources. How the fuck can you claim that "eliminating existing programs" will already give you 75% of the needed budget? Are you really that simple? Have you never even bothered to look at this for more than five minutes? And the same goes for everybody who voted this up.
You can have your basic income if you give up on military spending, healthcare spending, education spending, highways, the space program, etc. Or you can fund it through a massive money-printing program. But wait, you have "forgotten about inflation", so that's not a concern. Inflation is not real. Giving everybody free cash has no consequences in the real world.
Drug addicts do not get any cheaper when you give them money either. They will just use it to buy more drugs instead of shelter, food, etc., and then _still_ require society to pay for their non-drug needs.
As for the Canada program: it was not funded by the town itself, but required external funding, and the program has since been stopped. If it were truly such a massive success, don't you think it would instead have spread throughout the country?
Right now they have, essentially, infinite protection for free. The entire cost of that protection is born by society, and they have the entire benefit. In the new plan, at least they get to pay for that privilege. The cost should be high enough that there is a real trade-off to be made: keep a work under wraps, or donate it to the public domain.
Also, you might be distressed to learn that Lovecraft passed away, and is thus unlikely to get great enjoyment out of any renewed income streams.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a simple enough question, and one for which I haven't yet seen any answer. Why? What is it in Windows 10 that makes it so desirable for _Microsoft_ to _give away_?
Remember, if you are not paying for a service, it is because you are the _product_.
Sure, a lot of coastal protections were built in modern times, but that didn't stop people from digging major canals manually in earlier centuries. The Noordzeekanaal was dug by handpower, as were the canals around the Haarlemmermeerpolder. And Holland wasn't nearly as over-populated then as it is now. The point being: it can be done, if you want to. If you spend your time actually fixing your problem instead of whining about it...
Also, Vikings are from Scandinavia, not the Netherlands.
Back in the day it didn't, so we mostly built our systems around hot failover clusters that work on the OS level. We also have our own replication solution running (this is part of the application level code, using Postgres triggers) which transfers the data on the fly through various security barriers for the purpose of remote viewing. This is not just simple replication though; it wouldn't work with any off-the-shelf solution anyway.
We haven't really looked at the built-in replication since we already have working solutions that we are happy with, but it seems to be getting more capable with each successive Postgres release.
So much, then, for managed languages. I thought managed pointers and garbage collection were supposed to free us from all those ills, but evidentally not.
Shame that further down they perpetuate the myth of the C/C++ language. That language doesn't exist - it's either one or the other. In C you'd use raw memory pointers if you wanted to pass a buffer around, making it easy to access it beyond its boundaries. In C++ you'd pass a buffer object that knows its own size, and either dynamically resizes or at least throws an exception on an illegal access.
Because C and C++ have such vastly different approach to the same problem I'd love to see C and C++ split out.
My software stores spacecraft testing data. Each test is good for a couple of gigabytes, and we run dozens each year. We use PostgreSQL because:
- Rock-solid stability. Zero data loss after a decade and a half of operations. Zero problems of _any kind_, over that same period.
- Great features and excellent standard conformance.
- Documentation is absolutely excellent, best of any open source project I know of.
- pgAdmin 3 allows trivial on-the-fly inspection of databases.
- No licensing issues. No payment "per core", "per connection", or whatever other bullshit they've come up with now. Install where we like, as much as we like.
We didn't choose MySQL because it lacked ACID compliance (data loss would be problematic), and because it has entirely too many weird gotchas. Sure, you can work around all of those... But why would you if you can also choose PostgreSQL?
As for Oracle, that's what we used before PostgreSQL. Back in the days, you couldn't store more than 2000 characters in a string, their C interface was the stuff of nightmares, support tools were non-existent, and installing it yourself, or on anything that wasn't the Blessed HPUX Cluster, was impossible. We had two (minor) data loss events in three years, but that might have been a hardware issue. But the killer reason is of course licensing - with Oracle, we had one server on which all work had to take place. Now we have dozens, and setting up an ad-hoc server for some quick testing is trivial - both technically, and in terms of licensing.
I can take a laptop to a customer site and do a demo or some work, without worrying about licensing. With Oracle you never know whether you are compliant or not, and being found to be non-compliant is extremely, extremely painful.
Storage beyond 10GB, maybe? Or would that be entirely too obvious?
Because to a-technical people, "wifi" is something completely different from "telephone". They simply don't know both are a form of radio, and if someone told them most likely wouldn't believe it anyway.
If it's for standard office use or similar, just buy a pre-built one. You can get nifty tiny, silent cases that are vastly overpowered for anything you might want to do with it. If you need more power, I would select the components myself, but leave the grunt work of building to a retailer. Where I live that costs about 75 euro and gets you three years of warranty, so it's a great deal.
Pre-built gaming systems tend to be unbalanced, throwing lots of money at high-end components where only very marginal gains can be expected in actual real-life performance. You don't need "black" CPUs or hand-picked memory, and you don't need dual graphics cards either - unless you enjoy paying through the nose for a problematic component that will be outgunned six months down the road anyway.
As for the notion that you need to build one yourself to prove your manhood: look buddy, unless you soldered your own graphics card or whatever, all you are doing is clicking together some premade components. A monkey could do it.
That cable is three times longer than the standard allows. I imagine it just doesn't work very well.
Oh lovely, that's only 105-180 million people who subscribe to that particular ideology then...
How many "lone wolves" do we need before it is considered a bit of a problem?
Let's see, what might be a good way to stop foreigners from killing our citizens... Ah yes: DO NOT LET THEM INTO THE COUNTRY.
It's so easy, so simple... And so utterly without benefit to the ruling class. Arguments we've heard so far include "...but there are many here already so it won't help". Well, KICK THOSE OUT, then. Europe is unique in that we apparently cannot kick anybody out of our countries. Other countries certainly have no problem getting rid of undesirables - why can't we?
We don't want muslims. We've had 40 years to get to know muslims and by know we are entitled to an opinion about them. Muslims are trouble. Muslims make constant unreasonable demands. Muslims want us to become muslim, and our countries to be ruled by islam - and WE DON'T.
"But you are bombing Syria!" That's like saying we should be punished for bad behaviour, and we should do nothing to stop the punishment from happening. Not just that: the choice to bomb Syria was made by the same politicians that now want the punishment to continue! Which sounds a lot like "I did something bad and now you all have to suffer for it". Let's face it: we are at war. The war was started around 700 with the muslim invasion of Spain, and continues until today. We have EVERY RIGHT to defend ourselves and our countries, and we have EVERY RIGHT to deport who we don't want here.
"But when we close the borders we must also stop all trade!" That's a truly sad argument. We don't want muslims. Trade can continue fine. Any politician that doesn't understand that should be removed from office because anyone with the understanding and IQ of a sea cucumber really shouldn't be ruling anything, never mind an entire country.
"But..." No. Fuck you. This is about survival, and we are not obliged by any historical context or event to cease striving for our own survival.
We set up a public database where companies can register the fact that they are not creating any backdoors. This registration has to be renewed each year. This registration is not illegal - it simply informs the public that the government has not made any special demands, which is perfectly lawful.
Of course, if the government does make any special demands, the company cannot register the lack of backdoors anymore, and the registration will automatically be removed from the database. From that point we know that company is under government orders to include backdoors.
It's always good to see mature professionals make decisions for solid technical reasons.
Oh, excuse me. "Windows Telemetry".
Plus we're tired of being tricked into accidentally downloading unwanted virusscanners (flash), toolbars (java), and whatever other crap they want to bundle. We are tired of running two dozen automatic update tools at all times, all fighting for internet access and all using memory and CPU time. Sure, it's very little and it mostly ends up in swap anyways - but it adds up. And we are certainly tired of having to deal with that crap every time we boot the machine.
It's a great mystery to me why Windows does not have a unified update service (like Windows Update, but also including tools from 3rd parties). It doesn't even have to go through Microsofts servers - just let programs register their own server with the update service, and then let the update service do updates at times when it is convenient to me.
I've solved at least part of this problem by simply not having QuickTime or Java installed. Flash is installed, but only runs on demand (which is actually far less often than you'd imagine). Windows Update I've shut down after Microsoft started pushing spyware and adware as "important updates". So now I run a risk of "hackers". So far they've proven less of a nuisance than actual vendors...
There are too many people. We could easily reduce our ecological and energy footprint if we allowed our populations to shrink (through natural processes over the course of a few generations, I'm not advocating large-scale slaughter). As long as we maintain policies designed to boost population size (such as massive benefits instead of extra taxation for children, as well as unlimited immigration) our resource usage will grow.
Interestingly, so-called "green" parties tend to be hugely in favor of immigration... Makes you wonder about their real priorities.
It's not about the question, it's a way for our cultural elite to make derogatory comments about video games, and by extension the people who play them. Asking the question is an elitist trick to separate you from them.
If videogames were art, then they must also accept that the people who play them appreciate art. It would elevate Mario to the level of the Mona Lisa, and a gamer to their own level of rarified cultural sensitivity. Since that can never be allowed to happen, games can never be art.
For the rest you are absolutely right: who gives a fuck whether they consider our hobby to be art? Both the question and any answer we could come up with are irrelevant.
My opinion, not that it matters at all, is that video games can be, but don't have to be, art. It's all about the experience they offer - if it's one that stays with you, it's art. Same as with "real" art, really...
We can do much worse than simply ignoring them. We can write some software that downloads their ads, and clicks on everything that can be clicked, _without ever showing it to the user_. Overnight the value of a click-through would plummet, as these mechanical (and worthless) clicks cannot be distinguished from real clicks.
So, is this a risk the advertising industry wants to take?
Because "slightlydarksalmon", "mauvelikepeach" or "bananawithahintofcinnamon" is soooo much more easy to understand then a bunch of hexadecimal numbers... And then they have the gall of accusing _us_ of talking an obscure lingo :-(
That way lots of stuff could be farmed out to other people without the actual kernel people even needing to know about it.
I've taken part in a few of these (long ago), but the 'coding' was always extremely minimal. Winning came down to being good at math, knowing things like how to find intersections between a circle and a line, for example. It's cool if people know that, but in my experience with practical for-profit coding for the last twenty years, such problems hardly ever come up - and if they do, it is as a very small part of a much larger piece of software.
In my opinion, the skills demonstrates in this type of coding contest have almost no bearing on any kind of coding carreer. By which I do not mean to downplay their obvious mad c0ding skillz, these are some very smart people, but the article suggests these guys would have high value as corporate coders, which I find rather doubtful.
Basic income applies to ***everyone*** - it is touted as one of the advantages since you can then stop checking if someone qualifies or not. If you do not grant it to everyone than the entire machinery of checking and verification remains intact, removing one of the main arguments (the cost saving aspect).
There are about 300 million people in the US. At a rate of $800 per month (the lowest you gave), the total cost will be 2.9 trillion per year. Total government spending is on the order of 3.5 trillion per year, including everything - military, wars, social security, high ways, education, health care, etc. Of this budget, social security accounts for about 0.7 trillion, or 20% of the cost of basic income.
This is all basic math and publically accessible sources. How the fuck can you claim that "eliminating existing programs" will already give you 75% of the needed budget? Are you really that simple? Have you never even bothered to look at this for more than five minutes? And the same goes for everybody who voted this up.
You can have your basic income if you give up on military spending, healthcare spending, education spending, highways, the space program, etc. Or you can fund it through a massive money-printing program. But wait, you have "forgotten about inflation", so that's not a concern. Inflation is not real. Giving everybody free cash has no consequences in the real world.
Drug addicts do not get any cheaper when you give them money either. They will just use it to buy more drugs instead of shelter, food, etc., and then _still_ require society to pay for their non-drug needs.
As for the Canada program: it was not funded by the town itself, but required external funding, and the program has since been stopped. If it were truly such a massive success, don't you think it would instead have spread throughout the country?
I think the estimated 270 million victims of islam would probably disagree, had any of them survived:
http://www.politicalislam.com/...
Switzerland is due to have a referendum in 2016 to let The People decide on basic income. It certainly doesn't have it now.
Right now they have, essentially, infinite protection for free. The entire cost of that protection is born by society, and they have the entire benefit. In the new plan, at least they get to pay for that privilege. The cost should be high enough that there is a real trade-off to be made: keep a work under wraps, or donate it to the public domain.
Also, you might be distressed to learn that Lovecraft passed away, and is thus unlikely to get great enjoyment out of any renewed income streams.