They upgraded libraries in a *prerelease* version? Why, was there a major showstopping bug found in the old version? I hope so, because that's a pretty poor development methodology otherwise.
I'm sorry, I've spent 15 years developing commercial software, and the first rule you learn (okay, the first rule you learn is 'Always make backups of everything') is not to upgrade any of the libraries, tools, or whatever in the middle of a project unless there's a really compelling reason. That doesn't even take into accout the effects of forcing all of your installed base to upgrade a major part of their system.
I've used gimp and it's a great app. I'm sure it's even better now, but I wish the developers would be more careful. If you want to develop professional software, you have to take a relatively professionial attitude towards the process.
So, explain to me again why anyone puts up with nonsense like this these days? It's what, the 21st century, and the world is *still* putting up with a linker that can't do two passes to resolve dependencies? Or just keep a list of unresolved symbols and go back when it finds one and fill them all in, instead of making you randomly sort the list of libraries.
When I first ran into this and someone told me what the problem was, I thought he was kidding. I mean, it's nice that the linker can do its thing on a 64k machine with a tape drive, but shit, Borland's linker could handle circular dependencies on my DOS box back in 1990. I would think this would have pissed off somebody enough to fix this long ago.
I have not yet had the pleasure of installing Gnome by hand, but from a software engineering perspective, anything with this convoluted, brittle an installation does not inspire confidence in the overall quality of the product. From a user's point of view, it doesn't make anyone but the most determined individuals want to bother with it. Ever again.
I know there are ways to install big huge projects like this that work really well, usually. The problem is that if you want or need to go around the Official Method, you're screwed [1]. God forbid you should have to upgrade some portion, or install something that updates one of the libraries. I'm not singling Gnome out, it's a problem with a lot of projects. This is just a particularly egregious example.
1: At this point a more trollish person would have said "Sort of like a Microsoft development methodology".
Re:See a doctor
on
Cyberchondria
·
· Score: 5, Funny
So when I had a pain in my balls, I went to the doctor after a week, who prodded around, and pronounced me absolutely fine.
Hmmm, were they really sore, with a faint bluish color perhaps? Yes, I think I see the problem. Don't worry, it's quite common. There's a very simple treatment. Even better, you can apply it yourself. Sort of a holistic approach, as it were.
The '$_' just takes up a syllable. I don't really have a word for it, I just say "um".
This can sound a little silly when reading code to someone. Does anybody have something better they use? "dollar underscore" is entirely too many syllables.
This isn't satire - satire is funny. In the U.S. it's obvious free speech. I have no idea what Canadian law says, but I doubt this looks close enough to the original to be considered copyright infringement, which is what Martin is suing for.
It seems pretty obvious that this is not the PM's, or any politician's, site, and that it is meant as political commentary and not for purposes of deception. As long as that's clear, something's not over the line.
As we can read here, savannah is back online. After several weeks of downtime, all security problems are resolved, and the service is again operational.
Okay, I spoke too rashly. It didn't blow up, as such. After all, since all that Hydrogen suddenly wasn't in an enclosed area any more, it (probably) wouldn't have. But it did burn really really fast. Which, taken to an extreme, is what an explosion is.
I agree that the skin itself would have made a fine fireball, especially if (as another poster mentioned) it was essentially made of thermite. I'm just saying that the Hydrogen must have helped make it even more spectacular.
Yes, well, it may have been the skin that started the fire, but if the ship hadn't been filled with nice explosive Hydrogen, it wouldn't have blown up so spectacularly.
It seems like a series of bad design decisions were responsible for the disaster, but it doesn't change the fact that Hydrogen ships are a suboptimal idea.
I was the AC who posted the above, but I wasn't responding to you - I was replying to the snotty AC above who just *had* to be a dick about it. Actually, I screwed up - 'frankly' is correct. (Not sure how I missed that one - that's what I get for posting while stoned)
Rule illustrated: If you're going to do a smackdown, make sure of your facts. And your usage. Corollary illustrated: You will still miss something.
(Originally AC because I didn't want to post twice in the same thread)
This has been one of my biggest gripes about Slashdot operation since forever. I set my prefs to have 200 or 300 comments per page, since otherwise it takes 10 or 15 pages to go through a busy article, but it always comes back with 50. I just assumed it was a bug in the code, but it was never annoying enough to submit a bug report.
Looking now, it appears that they've changed things, a bit. From the configuration page:
Comment Limit (only display this many comments, for best results, set this to a low number and sort by score) If set above 100, then it is ignored and 50 is used instead.
Which would be one of the hokiest things I've ever seen, if not for the fact that my previous setting of 200 was still there, which is even hokier. If you're going to cap the value, fine, but change the damn thing in the database, and tell me about it. And for god's sake, why would you clamp values above 100 to 50? Why not to -- 100?
Like I said, this new behavior showed up sometime in the last month or so. Who knows, because there appears to be no actual release process for Slashode, other than "I changed something, let's push it live." Am I the only one that realizes that, in the real world, you test your changes on a staging server, then, if nothing is broken, push them live on a defined schedule, say, Fridays at midnight? I'm really tired of seeing randomly generated pages or broken story links showing up out of nowhere.
Okay, I know it's all free, and if I don't like it I should start my own site, and all that. It's still not very professional and it still pisses me off. I'll quit my bitching now.
Let's face it, the most relevant and useful thing we're likely to get from 64-bit desktop applications and systems is going to be the ability to keep time from ending in 2038.
I think it might have had something to do with the "I know a couple of women with imacs, chosen because they matched the carpet or something" at the start of your comment, and the "fortunately I have better things to do than stare at in-animate objects".
Obviously, you are not the target audience for a Macintosh. Now quit whining about moderation.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes, and the even more offensive version I learned:
Black Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
Of course, this was in Maine in the mid-80s, in a college class with exactly one female, taught by a crusty old Navy vet. Not exactly PC California.
I used to think this was kinda funny, back then, but today I'm a bit ashamed of myself for that. It's still a damn good mnemonic, though.
You know, if you replace "Scientology Works" in his posts with "BSD is dying", you can see who writes those things.
They upgraded libraries in a *prerelease* version? Why, was there a major showstopping bug found in the old version? I hope so, because that's a pretty poor development methodology otherwise.
I'm sorry, I've spent 15 years developing commercial software, and the first rule you learn (okay, the first rule you learn is 'Always make backups of everything') is not to upgrade any of the libraries, tools, or whatever in the middle of a project unless there's a really compelling reason. That doesn't even take into accout the effects of forcing all of your installed base to upgrade a major part of their system.
I've used gimp and it's a great app. I'm sure it's even better now, but I wish the developers would be more careful. If you want to develop professional software, you have to take a relatively professionial attitude towards the process.
So, explain to me again why anyone puts up with nonsense like this these days? It's what, the 21st century, and the world is *still* putting up with a linker that can't do two passes to resolve dependencies? Or just keep a list of unresolved symbols and go back when it finds one and fill them all in, instead of making you randomly sort the list of libraries.
When I first ran into this and someone told me what the problem was, I thought he was kidding. I mean, it's nice that the linker can do its thing on a 64k machine with a tape drive, but shit, Borland's linker could handle circular dependencies on my DOS box back in 1990. I would think this would have pissed off somebody enough to fix this long ago.
I have not yet had the pleasure of installing Gnome by hand, but from a software engineering perspective, anything with this convoluted, brittle an installation does not inspire confidence in the overall quality of the product. From a user's point of view, it doesn't make anyone but the most determined individuals want to bother with it. Ever again.
I know there are ways to install big huge projects like this that work really well, usually. The problem is that if you want or need to go around the Official Method, you're screwed [1]. God forbid you should have to upgrade some portion, or install something that updates one of the libraries. I'm not singling Gnome out, it's a problem with a lot of projects. This is just a particularly egregious example.
1: At this point a more trollish person would have said "Sort of like a Microsoft development methodology".
So when I had a pain in my balls, I went to the doctor after a week, who prodded around, and pronounced me absolutely fine.
Hmmm, were they really sore, with a faint bluish color perhaps? Yes, I think I see the problem. Don't worry, it's quite common. There's a very simple treatment. Even better, you can apply it yourself. Sort of a holistic approach, as it were.
No, it was right on the money. But I gotta ask ya, is getting the promotion that important that you have to give up your health?
I just hope the medical plan covers this.
IE munged my post
This should have been done like so:
Yeah, that's what it was
foreach keys %problems
delete $problems{$_} if $_
Life should work like that
Enlightenment grows
Learn something new every day
Left brace still at large
The '$_' just takes up a syllable. I don't really have a word for it, I just say "um".
This can sound a little silly when reading code to someone. Does anybody have something better they use? "dollar underscore" is entirely too many syllables.
Perl, Perl, do you use
To compile your own hai-kus
Regexps fun to abuse
And in an entirely different meter:
Perl, Perl, what do you use
To compile your own haikus
Regexps are fun to abuse
I know what I'd surely choose
Perl, the only tool to use
Sorry, Unix kid
Perl runs just fine on Windows
Thank you anyway
Sadly, this won't work
Missing opening bracket
And semicolon
foreach keys %problems
delete $problems{$_}
Life should work like that
Look at that picture more closely, in the upper left corner. There's a lake! It must be - it even has surf.
Hot damn! I knew all this persistence would pay off. Water on Mars. And you "scientists" thought you were so smart.
This isn't satire - satire is funny. In the U.S. it's obvious free speech. I have no idea what Canadian law says, but I doubt this looks close enough to the original to be considered copyright infringement, which is what Martin is suing for.
It seems pretty obvious that this is not the PM's, or any politician's, site, and that it is meant as political commentary and not for purposes of deception. As long as that's clear, something's not over the line.
As we can read here, savannah is back online. After several weeks of downtime, all security problems are resolved, and the service is again operational.
So, was I the only person who read the headline, *and* the blurb, and immediately thought of something completely different?
I gotta say, that has to be the worst karma whoring ever...
Okay, I spoke too rashly. It didn't blow up, as such. After all, since all that Hydrogen suddenly wasn't in an enclosed area any more, it (probably) wouldn't have. But it did burn really really fast. Which, taken to an extreme, is what an explosion is.
I agree that the skin itself would have made a fine fireball, especially if (as another poster mentioned) it was essentially made of thermite. I'm just saying that the Hydrogen must have helped make it even more spectacular.
Yes, well, it may have been the skin that started the fire, but if the ship hadn't been filled with nice explosive Hydrogen, it wouldn't have blown up so spectacularly.
It seems like a series of bad design decisions were responsible for the disaster, but it doesn't change the fact that Hydrogen ships are a suboptimal idea.
I was the AC who posted the above, but I wasn't responding to you - I was replying to the snotty AC above who just *had* to be a dick about it. Actually, I screwed up - 'frankly' is correct. (Not sure how I missed that one - that's what I get for posting while stoned)
Rule illustrated: If you're going to do a smackdown, make sure of your facts. And your usage.
Corollary illustrated: You will still miss something.
(Originally AC because I didn't want to post twice in the same thread)
Well done, sir. I complement you!
Tabbed browsing is one of the best inovations yet......
Yes, and it was invented by Opera, on Windows, over 5 years ago. What was your point again?
This has been one of my biggest gripes about Slashdot operation since forever. I set my prefs to have 200 or 300 comments per page, since otherwise it takes 10 or 15 pages to go through a busy article, but it always comes back with 50. I just assumed it was a bug in the code, but it was never annoying enough to submit a bug report.
Looking now, it appears that they've changed things, a bit. From the configuration page:
Comment Limit (only display this many comments, for best results, set this to a low number and sort by score) If set above 100, then it is ignored and 50 is used instead.
Which would be one of the hokiest things I've ever seen, if not for the fact that my previous setting of 200 was still there, which is even hokier. If you're going to cap the value, fine, but change the damn thing in the database, and tell me about it. And for god's sake, why would you clamp values above 100 to 50? Why not to -- 100?
Like I said, this new behavior showed up sometime in the last month or so. Who knows, because there appears to be no actual release process for Slashode, other than "I changed something, let's push it live." Am I the only one that realizes that, in the real world, you test your changes on a staging server, then, if nothing is broken, push them live on a defined schedule, say, Fridays at midnight? I'm really tired of seeing randomly generated pages or broken story links showing up out of nowhere.
Okay, I know it's all free, and if I don't like it I should start my own site, and all that. It's still not very professional and it still pisses me off. I'll quit my bitching now.
Let's face it, the most relevant and useful thing we're likely to get from 64-bit desktop applications and systems is going to be the ability to keep time from ending in 2038.
I think it might have had something to do with the "I know a couple of women with imacs, chosen because they matched the carpet or something" at the start of your comment, and the "fortunately I have better things to do than stare at in-animate objects".
Obviously, you are not the target audience for a Macintosh. Now quit whining about moderation.