What bothers me most about these typical "OS vs Proprietary" flamewars-in-waiting is when writers compare specific applications with some nebulous "Open Source" concept. You've all seen reviews that go something like this:
Open Source programs have serious problems. For example, I downloaded an Open Source command-line HTML-parser written by an undergraduate student. After feeding it random non-HTML files, the program crashed roughly half the time. By contrast, I evaluated the latest copy of Adobe Photoshop for Windows. Photoshop easily helped me modify my vacation photos, without a single glitch. Clearly, Proprietary applications are better suited for the market.
Most of the time, these writers compare all open source programs -- many of which are hobby projects -- to individual, highly-polished applications. Hardly fair and unbiased.
I mean, video surveillance might have its good points.
CafeGrrrl69: "Heya, stud." BigMan: "Hi there." CafeGrrrl69: "I'm an 18-year old DD blonde. Wanna have some fun?" BigMan: "No you're not. You're a 40-year old balding man in a ketchup-stained track suit." CafeGrrrl69: "Shit." NO CARRIER
It's hardly that unprofessional. It comes across as a personal opinion, rather than a "purely factual" representation, but it is in no way insulting or offensive, any more so than asking someone to move out of your way in a supermarket aisle. Besides, when has SCO acted purely according to professional business standards anyway?
Personally, I think the mildly-annoyed personal flair indicates that he's seriously considered the issue and is weighing in on it, rather than simply having his lawyers whip up some legalese response. But then, that's just me.
1. That's a Unicode Problem. As I said, that may be interesting for the data handed to the compiler, but not for the IDE.
If you're comfortable doing everything through your IDE, then fine. Me, I prefer to make quick and dirty hacks via a simple text editor. No fancy case-correction there.
2. VARPTR is a Variable Pointer. Why shouldn't it be necessary to look something up in the documentary if you don't know your language well?
I'm very thankful I'll never have to maintain any of your code that you might deploy in a corporate environment. Seriously, one of the reason why names should be intuitive is that you may not be the only one to look at the code. You may know that VAR = variable, but what about everyone else? 100 ambiguous variables later, and that someone's going to be pretty pissed that they have to keep referring back to your data dictionary.
3. That is an unproofed assumption. Consider the comparison with LaTeX for example. Just because you use a system that automagically formats your text nicely (maybe because you can't), does this imply that you can't write a good text?
The parent was suggesting that an incapability to handle case correctly is a reflection of a lack of knowledge of language structure, not language content. Your LaTeX example is wrong, in that you should have stated "does this imply that you can't write a text with proper grammar and structure". Very different things.
4. All-Upper-Case is as consistent. What's your point? I have never confused any variables for functions and vice versa, but that may be because I don't insist on naming things like "ThisIsAThingy" and "ThatIsAThingy"?
Agaim, your code = your knowledge. It's good if you're the only one who will ever look at the code, but not very useful outside of that. And the "thingy" reference is another good reason why variable names should be descriptive, not abbreviated or cryptic. Besides, all caps is harsher on the eyes. Still, suit yourself...
I generally avoid most of the longer domains that I suspect are spampots, usually of the form "some-unnecessarily-long-hyphenated-domain.com", but it sounds like simple redirects to me.
...instead of getting the best site, I get the most commercial site... i.e. if I search for "mp3 player"...
The problem with this example, of course, is that the context is rather difficult to discern. Are most web surfers looking for a review of a certain MP3 player, or are they looking for a cheap online store to snag an easy Xmas gift? Both contexts would demand two different sets of search results.
To find reviews and datasheets (or other non-commercial pages), it's pretty much necessary to add +review or +specifications to your search. Now, the fact that these results are sub par is another matter entirely.
As for returning just the domains, I'm not too sure why you'd want that. First of all, Google indicates the domain below the site's description. Why not look there? I find it's easy to eliminate bogus links that way. Second, searches would be good if domain names were immediately identifiable by product names, but they are often not. For example, I just installed FreePDF on a few Windows machines. The domain returned would be "www.webxd.com", which would leave me wondering if that was really the correct site or just another Spam farm.
The numbers are good. The claim runs something like this:
There are 6,220,454 unique addresses. If you typed them each out once, you'd have this many different addresses.
Of these addresses, some appear once. Some appear twice. Some appear many more times. They're still unique the first time they're listed, but not during subsequent listings.
Another example, this time of 5 unique letters, with some appearing many times:
have an IBM thinkpad 600c laptop that requires the laptop mouse to configure the bios.
Sounds like poor design for a specific BIOS, and not a general BIOS issue. All of my BIOSes, laptop or not, are easily navigated using the tab and enter keys.
Do you have a favorite licensed soundtrack, or is the whole concept a concern to you?
Not sure about how things were licensed and whatnot, but my favourite soundtrack was probably Trent Reznor's (NIN) score for Quake. Creepy ambient music, perfect for blasting zombies. The soundtrack to the sequel sounded too cheesy-90s-action-flick.
...include characters diving away from oncoming vehicles instead of going "splat" and a big floating arrow pointing the player toward a destination.
Having read this, I'll repeat the parent poster's sentiments: how can you obtain a patent on characters diving away from cars, or a large floating arrow? This is ridiculous. Game designers would make more money simply patenting "pixelated red brick" than by making an actual game.
If the games are so similar (and I'm quite sure they are), there must be another way to prove it than by resorting to "we have exclusive rights on floating arrows".
If strcmp says that two strings are different, but you say that they mean the same thing...
...then you might have an excellent example of the "richness" of a language, and not necessarily a "problem" with it. The following sentences would all be different to strcmp, but are semantically the same[*] for all intents and purposes:
Part of the reason why languages haven't dropped multiple words with the same meaning is that people enjoy using a variety of words to express the same idea. Without this variety, a language seems stale and boring. Consider the classic anecdote about esperanto's lack of adoption due to it being too regular.
[*] Quibble as you will, but any distinctions between these words are so subtle that they are not used interchangeably in regular English conversation.
Additionally, it would seem to me that one could argue in court, "You say your software is not spyware, since it is always installed with the user's permission. Fine - prove your assertion. We want a list of all computers with Gator on them, and proof that the users consented to the installation."
Only the way the justice system works is that the burden of proof lies with the prosecution, not the defendant. If you were launching a suit against Gator, you'd be required to "prove" that many users had their software installed without their knowledge/permission, rather than "prove" some users consented.
Having said that, I second the recommendation for a "tattleware" label.
...privacy they can control for the dynamic, pervasive computing environments of the future.
I'd like to see how this jives with the slowly-growing move toward "trusted computing". The dynamic, pervasive computing environments of the future may be designed to give the illusion of privacy, while silently reporting back to $CORPORATION. "Control" might be little more than a toggle switch which disables the "now transmitting data" message box.
I've heard of schools fighting against textbooks even into the 20th century for this very reason.
Now that's just silliness. In my opinion, what kids need to learn is how to effectively use those books. Obviously, it's pointless to require each student to construct his/her own atomic analyser to find out properties of specific atoms, when a table would be more than sufficient. I fear that many teachers simply resort to saying "look it up", producing the effect I lamented about earlier.
What teachers need to do -- and to be fair, many do indeed do this -- is to teach kids that books can give you answers, but being able to interpret, analyze and apply those answers is the more important goal.
The article is interesting, but I cringed when I saw this point:
First of all, we know that books are not ways of making somebody else think in our place; on the contrary, they are machines that provoke further thoughts.
Ideally this is true, and it's the expected opinion of Eco, who makes his living off of the written word. In reality, though, books often do little to promote further thinking. I need only think back to my time as a TA, when many students wouldn't understand how to solve a particular problem because they couldn't simply look it up in a textbook. Even when a solution was there for them to find, most would simply duplicate the answer without understanding the thought-process behind it. Even today, a significant portion of co-workers wouldn't try to figure out a non-trivial problem because they feel as if it's a waste of time, and surely there's already an answer written up somewhere for them to find. The new human nature, I guess.
While this has more to do with information itself than with the benefits of paper vs. electronic memory, the mere fact that so much information is recorded on one form or another has significantly altered the mind-set of today's generation. A great number of us really are allowing others to think for us. While Eco rightly suggests that books are limited in their abilities, namely they can only record and not compute, I feel that they often promote less thinking.
Slashdot Mirror
This would make an interesting science experiment. Have a link or ref handy? I'm genuinely curious now.
What bothers me most about these typical "OS vs Proprietary" flamewars-in-waiting is when writers compare specific applications with some nebulous "Open Source" concept. You've all seen reviews that go something like this:
Open Source programs have serious problems. For example, I downloaded an Open Source command-line HTML-parser written by an undergraduate student. After feeding it random non-HTML files, the program crashed roughly half the time. By contrast, I evaluated the latest copy of Adobe Photoshop for Windows. Photoshop easily helped me modify my vacation photos, without a single glitch. Clearly, Proprietary applications are better suited for the market.
Most of the time, these writers compare all open source programs -- many of which are hobby projects -- to individual, highly-polished applications. Hardly fair and unbiased.
(now goes off to read the article)
I mean, video surveillance might have its good points.
CafeGrrrl69: "Heya, stud."
BigMan: "Hi there."
CafeGrrrl69: "I'm an 18-year old DD blonde. Wanna have some fun?"
BigMan: "No you're not. You're a 40-year old balding man in a ketchup-stained track suit."
CafeGrrrl69: "Shit." NO CARRIER
USPTO writes: "We have received an application for WidgetX from a company in California. Should we accept it?"
Surely that should cut down the time.
It's hardly that unprofessional. It comes across as a personal opinion, rather than a "purely factual" representation, but it is in no way insulting or offensive, any more so than asking someone to move out of your way in a supermarket aisle. Besides, when has SCO acted purely according to professional business standards anyway?
Personally, I think the mildly-annoyed personal flair indicates that he's seriously considered the issue and is weighing in on it, rather than simply having his lawyers whip up some legalese response. But then, that's just me.
1. That's a Unicode Problem. As I said, that may be interesting for the data handed to the compiler, but not for the IDE.
If you're comfortable doing everything through your IDE, then fine. Me, I prefer to make quick and dirty hacks via a simple text editor. No fancy case-correction there.
2. VARPTR is a Variable Pointer. Why shouldn't it be necessary to look something up in the documentary if you don't know your language well?
I'm very thankful I'll never have to maintain any of your code that you might deploy in a corporate environment. Seriously, one of the reason why names should be intuitive is that you may not be the only one to look at the code. You may know that VAR = variable, but what about everyone else? 100 ambiguous variables later, and that someone's going to be pretty pissed that they have to keep referring back to your data dictionary.
3. That is an unproofed assumption. Consider the comparison with LaTeX for example. Just because you use a system that automagically formats your text nicely (maybe because you can't), does this imply that you can't write a good text?
The parent was suggesting that an incapability to handle case correctly is a reflection of a lack of knowledge of language structure, not language content. Your LaTeX example is wrong, in that you should have stated "does this imply that you can't write a text with proper grammar and structure". Very different things.
4. All-Upper-Case is as consistent. What's your point? I have never confused any variables for functions and vice versa, but that may be because I don't insist on naming things like "ThisIsAThingy" and "ThatIsAThingy"?
Agaim, your code = your knowledge. It's good if you're the only one who will ever look at the code, but not very useful outside of that. And the "thingy" reference is another good reason why variable names should be descriptive, not abbreviated or cryptic. Besides, all caps is harsher on the eyes. Still, suit yourself...
I generally avoid most of the longer domains that I suspect are spampots, usually of the form "some-unnecessarily-long-hyphenated-domain.com", but it sounds like simple redirects to me.
The problem with this example, of course, is that the context is rather difficult to discern. Are most web surfers looking for a review of a certain MP3 player, or are they looking for a cheap online store to snag an easy Xmas gift? Both contexts would demand two different sets of search results.
To find reviews and datasheets (or other non-commercial pages), it's pretty much necessary to add +review or +specifications to your search. Now, the fact that these results are sub par is another matter entirely.
As for returning just the domains, I'm not too sure why you'd want that. First of all, Google indicates the domain below the site's description. Why not look there? I find it's easy to eliminate bogus links that way. Second, searches would be good if domain names were immediately identifiable by product names, but they are often not. For example, I just installed FreePDF on a few Windows machines. The domain returned would be "www.webxd.com", which would leave me wondering if that was really the correct site or just another Spam farm.
Still, interesting...
The numbers are good. The claim runs something like this:
There are 6,220,454 unique addresses. If you typed them each out once, you'd have this many different addresses.
Of these addresses, some appear once. Some appear twice. Some appear many more times. They're still unique the first time they're listed, but not during subsequent listings.
Another example, this time of 5 unique letters, with some appearing many times:
AAABBCCCCCCDDDE
A-E are unique, though there are repeats.
have an IBM thinkpad 600c laptop that requires the laptop mouse to configure the bios.
Sounds like poor design for a specific BIOS, and not a general BIOS issue. All of my BIOSes, laptop or not, are easily navigated using the tab and enter keys.
Still, a serial console setup wouldn't hurt.
I file all of my bills in a circular metallic file, which I clean out weekly. It sure makes my bill-organization easier.
Hold on, someone's pounding on the door...
MUTE's routing mechanism is inspired by ant behaviour.
Rumour has it that the RIAA is secretly developing software that emulates a giant maginfying glass...
That's already happened.
blame gun manufacturers
New York Sues Gun Makers
blame car manufacturers
Car manufacturers, dealers and mechanics are sued for consequences of breakdowns
blame alcohol manufacturers
Bourbon Drinker Sues For Son's Birth Defects
...and why so long?
The United States originally wanted to collect 60 pieces of data and keep it for 50 years.
What pratical purpose would be served by knowing that I ordered chicken 50 years ago?
AnalogX's TagMaster is pretty slick.
Do you have a favorite licensed soundtrack, or is the whole concept a concern to you?
Not sure about how things were licensed and whatnot, but my favourite soundtrack was probably Trent Reznor's (NIN) score for Quake. Creepy ambient music, perfect for blasting zombies. The soundtrack to the sequel sounded too cheesy-90s-action-flick.
Dance Dance Revolution, anyone? 3 rounds of Maniac can feel far longer than any marathon.
I've written a little program that debugs configure automatically. To compile my program, simply run configure, then run ... oh, wait. Never mind.
Having read this, I'll repeat the parent poster's sentiments: how can you obtain a patent on characters diving away from cars, or a large floating arrow? This is ridiculous. Game designers would make more money simply patenting "pixelated red brick" than by making an actual game.
If the games are so similar (and I'm quite sure they are), there must be another way to prove it than by resorting to "we have exclusive rights on floating arrows".
If strcmp says that two strings are different, but you say that they mean the same thing...
...then you might have an excellent example of the "richness" of a language, and not necessarily a "problem" with it. The following sentences would all be different to strcmp, but are semantically the same[*] for all intents and purposes:
"It's enormous".
"It's immense".
"It's massive".
"It's huge".
Part of the reason why languages haven't dropped multiple words with the same meaning is that people enjoy using a variety of words to express the same idea. Without this variety, a language seems stale and boring. Consider the classic anecdote about esperanto's lack of adoption due to it being too regular.
[*] Quibble as you will, but any distinctions between these words are so subtle that they are not used interchangeably in regular English conversation.
But it is GATOR that is suing...
Well, that certainly seems reasonable enough then.
Additionally, it would seem to me that one could argue in court, "You say your software is not spyware, since it is always installed with the user's permission. Fine - prove your assertion. We want a list of all computers with Gator on them, and proof that the users consented to the installation."
Only the way the justice system works is that the burden of proof lies with the prosecution, not the defendant. If you were launching a suit against Gator, you'd be required to "prove" that many users had their software installed without their knowledge/permission, rather than "prove" some users consented.
Having said that, I second the recommendation for a "tattleware" label.
I'd like to see how this jives with the slowly-growing move toward "trusted computing". The dynamic, pervasive computing environments of the future may be designed to give the illusion of privacy, while silently reporting back to $CORPORATION. "Control" might be little more than a toggle switch which disables the "now transmitting data" message box.
I've heard of schools fighting against textbooks even into the 20th century for this very reason.
Now that's just silliness. In my opinion, what kids need to learn is how to effectively use those books. Obviously, it's pointless to require each student to construct his/her own atomic analyser to find out properties of specific atoms, when a table would be more than sufficient. I fear that many teachers simply resort to saying "look it up", producing the effect I lamented about earlier.
What teachers need to do -- and to be fair, many do indeed do this -- is to teach kids that books can give you answers, but being able to interpret, analyze and apply those answers is the more important goal.
Let's not even mention Google...
The article is interesting, but I cringed when I saw this point:
First of all, we know that books are not ways of making somebody else think in our place; on the contrary, they are machines that provoke further thoughts.
Ideally this is true, and it's the expected opinion of Eco, who makes his living off of the written word. In reality, though, books often do little to promote further thinking. I need only think back to my time as a TA, when many students wouldn't understand how to solve a particular problem because they couldn't simply look it up in a textbook. Even when a solution was there for them to find, most would simply duplicate the answer without understanding the thought-process behind it. Even today, a significant portion of co-workers wouldn't try to figure out a non-trivial problem because they feel as if it's a waste of time, and surely there's already an answer written up somewhere for them to find. The new human nature, I guess.
While this has more to do with information itself than with the benefits of paper vs. electronic memory, the mere fact that so much information is recorded on one form or another has significantly altered the mind-set of today's generation. A great number of us really are allowing others to think for us. While Eco rightly suggests that books are limited in their abilities, namely they can only record and not compute, I feel that they often promote less thinking.