Everything mentioned by the editor is already possible and probably already done with the unnoficial SDK. As an example, the Last.fm app called MobileScrobbler is one of the killer uses of a hacked iPhone/touch
I've used rails for only a few months, but already have quite a good understanding of how everything works, and have even done some hacking/patching on the backend. I've also used ActiveRecord with some applications that are not web-based, all with good success. I love every convention in Rails, except for one, which I dearly hate.
ActiveRecord was designed quite obviously from the perspective of a MySQL user. The train of thought that a DB should only be a place to dump your data and nothing more is extremely prevalent with ActiveRecord. Things like referential constraints on foreign keys are completely ignored/not used, instead being defined in entirety in the model code. Perhaps my biggest aggrivation with ActiveRecord however is that it assumes I implement enumerations as varchar datatypes. I find this just plain wrong. Here's an example:
ActiveRecord will then use its single-table inheritance logic and each subclass of User eg "Administrator" will have that name in the usertype field, stored as a string. From a data-modelling perspective, I find this so wrong. I naturally implement this using an extra table of usertypes and a foreign key in Users:
CREATE TABLE UserTypes ( id integer primary key, type varchar); CREATE TABLE Users ( id integer primary key, usertype integer references UserTypes(id) );
I have managed to get ActiveRecord to play somewhat nicely with these types of constructions by redefining some class methods in ActiveRecord::Base, but I'm definately violating DRY.
This all said, and including the time I needed to spend hacking around in the ActiveRecord code, I am still more productive with Rails. Highly recommended, just with a hint of caution towards ActiveRecord paradigms and database integrity.
I'm doing an internship mid-way through my degree in Germany right now, for about 5 months. I was given right off the bat 15 days holiday. I can take them any time I want, and with hardly any notice. This is normal.
I had the chance to hang out with the lead developer for the Skype Linux QT port a couple of summers ago at the KDE conference. He explained to me that the core p2p library that handles all the connections, routing, encoding, etc, was proprietary, and developed by a third party. Apparently the whole thing was encrypted right from the start, and that his team (doing just UI development) had no access to any code for it. I think this also explains why skype linux doesn't do Alsa yet..
This was more than a year and a half ago, so I don't know if the situation still stands.
LOL if you can't get a HP LJII, which speaks raw Postscript and/or PCL, which is the bread and butter of printing on linux, and therefore is very much supported, then I think that the problem may just lie in that your an idiot.
I purchased used an old 2nd generation TI laster printer a while ago for $15. $10 later on ebay and I had enough toner to last several years. The printer speaks PCL and Postscript. My dad first attempted to use the thing on his windows machine. TI has absolutely no drivers on the site for it.
Plug it into a linux machine, 4 clicks and it's set up as a raw printer, and workign perfectly.
Think about the teams of engineers and computer scientists who design and write for example 3DSMax and Director. I hardly think the effort required to write specialized commercial software even compares with the effort required to create something with it. Irregardless of how intuitive it is.
The city train system in the town that I go to University in (Bielefeld, Germany) has a 5 line city train system, run by Mobiel (www.mobiel.de), a part of which is underground. They've had cellular service in the underground stations for quite some time I believe. The trains are quiet enough to talk without a problem, however the costs of talking on the phone leave most people just sending texts anyways.
Why do slashdot editors not realize how cliche it sounds to use the French "sans" instead of "without". At the very least they could switch to german for a while and say "ohne".
Viewing/manipulating/storing visual medical data on a high-end desktop computer makes sense to me. I'd presume that such machines would exist in hospitals, and in doctor's offices, but I am lost as to any reason for the ipod, even after reading the article.
Many people, during commutes by train/plain or what not, listen to music, watch video, or play games on devices such as ipods. Do physicians instead flip through MRI scan output to pass the time? I wouldn't feel comfortable knowing my doctor is walking around with digital imaging of my insides on the same device he's currently using to listen to music.
If instead it's just a need to transfer data from their office to home, or between hospitals, why not use something more appropriate, such as a burned CD, or much better, through an networked inter-hospital database over an encrypted connection.
Any chance that some company has been giving this guy just more than one apple a day?
I think a lot of OSS activism is caused by almost a religious fervor. When I think about it, its just like reccommending any other product/service that has really had an effect on you.
I feel about GNU/Linux like I have "seen the light", when I compare it to even modern Windows operating systems. When I see people using windows, completely oblivious to the fact that any alternative is there, its like a punch in the gut. "Why are they paying for such vile software when such a magnificent alternative is available for free?". It is this that drives me.
In general, people with windows I can't be assed to help. Even if they're willing to pay decent, which they seldem are. Except if its cute girls, then I'll do it for free, for beer, or for something more desireable than either..
For Linux tech support, I charge varying amounts, usually flat rates.
When I went to KDE's Akademy this past August, I put my laptop bag through quite an ordeal - 3 hours in the middle of the night in the middle of pouring rain to get from north London to Stanstead airport by bus, and then a week and I half where I practically lived out of it. I would have liked to have had a proper backpack.
Could someone explain what exactly is in this library of congress? Is it just a big library of stuff?
Based solely on the name, I would infer that it would contain alot of US historical documents, government stuff, and what not. In which case, scanning would NOT "benefit" society as a whole. Perhaps US society. Not the rest of the world. Nobody else would really care.
Bottom line: For broad hardware support, Windows is still much better than Linux. That's not bias--it's a demonstrable fact.
No, that demonstrates that the distros you tried have issues with *ONE* single piece of hardware. How is this broad AT ALL?
I haven't had issues with sound in any distro in the past 2 years at least, with many different soundcards, including some professional home studio oriented ones.
Besides that, hardware in linux is completely distro independant. Hardware support (with a few exceptions) is 99% kernel dependant. Download your kernel, configure your driver support, go.
"- It's easy to use (before someone chimes in with their anecdotal "this happened to me once" situation, yes, for the majority of people Windows is very easy to use)
- Easy to download and install drivers.
- As a result, easy to go down to Wal-mart and buy a new printer and have it work in less than a minute."
Wrong. Windows drivers are a nightmare compared to Linux now-adays:
When I install a new windows system, I need to find and install drivers for all the hardware on that system. That means either using terribly outated (Even when new) OEM driver cd's that usually get lost in desk clutter, or searching endlessly on the net for the "right" driver. Most people don't even realize that installing the correct driver for your chipset and not the default one is actually very beneficial.
Installing drivers on Linux couldn't be easier now-adays. 99% of them come right with your kernel. No endless searching the net. Auto-detection in most cases works better too.
In short, I look forward to installing a new device on my linux system, while I find installing a new device on a windows system a big uncomfortable hassle. On linux, the process is nearly always the same. Example for a new nic:
lspci;
to find the type of nic.
modprobe "driver";
and then
dmesg|less
to make sure everything went properly. On windows, I have to search through often very annoying OEM websites, each with totally different interfaces, download the driver, install, and then reboot. Yuck.
I work in a callcenter providing technical support for Bresnan Communications, a smallish ISP in the states. You know what our solution most of the time when customers call in with driver problems for their USB cable modems? Go buy a NIC. Installing the usb drivers is wayy too much of a pain in the ass. It can sometimes take hours, especially with win98. Dont have the driver disk for your NIC? Go and buy a new one. It'll come with a driver disk. And at least you'll be able to identify the chip..
"- Endless software, including lots of freeware. There's more software for Windows because Windows is easier to develop for, with no endless list of competing, inconsistent toolkits that exist simply to reinvent the wheel yet again and introduce another "choice""
More than one thing wrong here.. GPL is _more_ free than freeware. It promotes community, sharing, and openness. It is often usually of higher quality, as well. And there's tons of it. Check out freshmeat.net or sourceforge.
Windows is not easier to code for, for more than one reason:
It costs money to purchase the operating system, development environment, and compiler. I have to earn the money in order to spend it, which requires effort.
API's like QT and KDE are far better, easier, and faster to learn and use than anything in windows.
Many of the toolkits on Linux also exist on windows. QT, for instance, has a better api, and is realistically cross-platform, such that many commercial developers use it as opposed to MFC or.NET
"If you honestly think the reason that 95% of the marketshare is using Windows is simply because of Photoshop, you're deluded. OS X has Photoshop as well, but look at its share compared to Windows."
I'm sure there's more to it than just photoshop. Maybe monopoly leveraging has a little to do with it? Personally, I despise photoshop, and shudder whenever I have to use it. I *hate* the user interface after being introduced to the Gimp. Keyboard and mouse focus in PS is so fucked up its not even funny. The zoom tool is fuckign useless: I can left click on my image and zoom in. I have to rmb and choose from a menu to zoom out!! and the scrollwheel does dick all.
I absolutely loved the first book in the series (I actually never knew there were 2 other books.)
It was pretty much the first novel I read when I was very young (about 10?) that I absolutely loved.
I don't remember all that much (I'll have to re-read it), but I remember how strong the main character was. How well I could identify. It was pretty much my first taste in literature like this.
Theres a chance that your student may have a diagnosable social disorder. (too lazy to look up proper name for it)
A guy I went to school with had this. It was very apparent: he could never say the right thing at the right time, had sever difficulty recognizing social patterns, etc.
He was also one of the smartest people I went to school with.
Slashdot Mirror
Everything mentioned by the editor is already possible and probably already done with the unnoficial SDK. As an example, the Last.fm app called MobileScrobbler is one of the killer uses of a hacked iPhone/touch
I've used rails for only a few months, but already have quite a good understanding of how everything works, and have even done some hacking/patching on the backend. I've also used ActiveRecord with some applications that are not web-based, all with good success. I love every convention in Rails, except for one, which I dearly hate.
ActiveRecord was designed quite obviously from the perspective of a MySQL user. The train of thought that a DB should only be a place to dump your data and nothing more is extremely prevalent with ActiveRecord. Things like referential constraints on foreign keys are completely ignored/not used, instead being defined in entirety in the model code. Perhaps my biggest aggrivation with ActiveRecord however is that it assumes I implement enumerations as varchar datatypes. I find this just plain wrong. Here's an example:
ActiveRecord way:
CREATE TABLE Users (
id integer primary key,
username varchar,
usertype varchar
);
ActiveRecord will then use its single-table inheritance logic and each subclass of User eg "Administrator" will have that name in the usertype field, stored as a string. From a data-modelling perspective, I find this so wrong. I naturally implement this using an extra table of usertypes and a foreign key in Users:
CREATE TABLE UserTypes ( id integer primary key, type varchar);
CREATE TABLE Users (
id integer primary key,
usertype integer references UserTypes(id)
);
I have managed to get ActiveRecord to play somewhat nicely with these types of constructions by redefining some class methods in ActiveRecord::Base, but I'm definately violating DRY.
This all said, and including the time I needed to spend hacking around in the ActiveRecord code, I am still more productive with Rails. Highly recommended, just with a hint of caution towards ActiveRecord paradigms and database integrity.
I'm doing an internship mid-way through my degree in Germany right now, for about 5 months. I was given right off the bat 15 days holiday. I can take them any time I want, and with hardly any notice. This is normal.
I had the chance to hang out with the lead developer for the Skype Linux QT port a couple of summers ago at the KDE conference. He explained to me that the core p2p library that handles all the connections, routing, encoding, etc, was proprietary, and developed by a third party. Apparently the whole thing was encrypted right from the start, and that his team (doing just UI development) had no access to any code for it. I think this also explains why skype linux doesn't do Alsa yet..
This was more than a year and a half ago, so I don't know if the situation still stands.
LOL if you can't get a HP LJII, which speaks raw Postscript and/or PCL, which is the bread and butter of printing on linux, and therefore is very much supported, then I think that the problem may just lie in that your an idiot.
I purchased used an old 2nd generation TI laster printer a while ago for $15. $10 later on ebay and I had enough toner to last several years. The printer speaks PCL and Postscript. My dad first attempted to use the thing on his windows machine. TI has absolutely no drivers on the site for it.
Plug it into a linux machine, 4 clicks and it's set up as a raw printer, and workign perfectly.
Obviously you must aim really low.
Think about the teams of engineers and computer scientists who design and write for example 3DSMax and Director. I hardly think the effort required to write specialized commercial software even compares with the effort required to create something with it. Irregardless of how intuitive it is.
Asterisk is more than capable at providing a custom IVR. Asterisk is not just a PBX, it's a whole lot more.
The city train system in the town that I go to University in (Bielefeld, Germany) has a 5 line city train system, run by Mobiel (www.mobiel.de), a part of which is underground. They've had cellular service in the underground stations for quite some time I believe. The trains are quiet enough to talk without a problem, however the costs of talking on the phone leave most people just sending texts anyways.
Viewing/manipulating/storing visual medical data on a high-end desktop computer makes sense to me. I'd presume that such machines would exist in hospitals, and in doctor's offices, but I am lost as to any reason for the ipod, even after reading the article. Many people, during commutes by train/plain or what not, listen to music, watch video, or play games on devices such as ipods. Do physicians instead flip through MRI scan output to pass the time? I wouldn't feel comfortable knowing my doctor is walking around with digital imaging of my insides on the same device he's currently using to listen to music. If instead it's just a need to transfer data from their office to home, or between hospitals, why not use something more appropriate, such as a burned CD, or much better, through an networked inter-hospital database over an encrypted connection. Any chance that some company has been giving this guy just more than one apple a day?
Since when is the US the only country doing AIDS research?
I think a lot of OSS activism is caused by almost a religious fervor. When I think about it, its just like reccommending any other product/service that has really had an effect on you. I feel about GNU/Linux like I have "seen the light", when I compare it to even modern Windows operating systems. When I see people using windows, completely oblivious to the fact that any alternative is there, its like a punch in the gut. "Why are they paying for such vile software when such a magnificent alternative is available for free?". It is this that drives me.
The NSA is the official communications security body of the US government.
The Finnish company mentioned in the article is in Finland. I doubt they would have anything to worry about.
Lets see..
In general, people with windows I can't be assed to help. Even if they're willing to pay decent, which they seldem are. Except if its cute girls, then I'll do it for free, for beer, or for something more desireable than either..
For Linux tech support, I charge varying amounts, usually flat rates.
After Supernova went down, the whole community slowed down for a couple of weeks, but I think its back up again.
Instead of using different tracker sites to search for torrents, use Google, which has indexed them all!
Just search "whatever I want to find +torrent". Beautiful.
Parent is completely and utterly wrong.
No one in Canada owns a gun for self defence. Only for hunting, and by that means, usually only people living outside the city would own one.
Handguns are illegal to own. All rifles must be registered, and the owners now have to go through a training/gun saftey/registration course.
Unlike in the states, it's illegal for the Wallmart down the street to sell guns.
When I went to KDE's Akademy this past August, I put my laptop bag through quite an ordeal - 3 hours in the middle of the night in the middle of pouring rain to get from north London to Stanstead airport by bus, and then a week and I half where I practically lived out of it. I would have liked to have had a proper backpack.
Could someone explain what exactly is in this library of congress? Is it just a big library of stuff?
Based solely on the name, I would infer that it would contain alot of US historical documents, government stuff, and what not. In which case, scanning would NOT "benefit" society as a whole. Perhaps US society. Not the rest of the world. Nobody else would really care.
Please be careful around the stairwells when these robots are about. Pak Chooie.
This is just like "Math in art", or "History of calculus" courses that fulfil math requirements.
They're still bloody arts courses.
No, that demonstrates that the distros you tried have issues with *ONE* single piece of hardware. How is this broad AT ALL?
I haven't had issues with sound in any distro in the past 2 years at least, with many different soundcards, including some professional home studio oriented ones.
Besides that, hardware in linux is completely distro independant. Hardware support (with a few exceptions) is 99% kernel dependant. Download your kernel, configure your driver support, go.
Wrong. Windows drivers are a nightmare compared to Linux now-adays:
In short, I look forward to installing a new device on my linux system, while I find installing a new device on a windows system a big uncomfortable hassle. On linux, the process is nearly always the same. Example for a new nic:
to find the type of nic.
and then
to make sure everything went properly. On windows, I have to search through often very annoying OEM websites, each with totally different interfaces, download the driver, install, and then reboot. Yuck.
I work in a callcenter providing technical support for Bresnan Communications, a smallish ISP in the states. You know what our solution most of the time when customers call in with driver problems for their USB cable modems? Go buy a NIC. Installing the usb drivers is wayy too much of a pain in the ass. It can sometimes take hours, especially with win98. Dont have the driver disk for your NIC? Go and buy a new one. It'll come with a driver disk. And at least you'll be able to identify the chip..
More than one thing wrong here.. GPL is _more_ free than freeware. It promotes community, sharing, and openness. It is often usually of higher quality, as well. And there's tons of it. Check out freshmeat.net or sourceforge.
Windows is not easier to code for, for more than one reason:
Many of the toolkits on Linux also exist on windows. QT, for instance, has a better api, and is realistically cross-platform, such that many commercial developers use it as opposed to MFC or .NET
I'm sure there's more to it than just photoshop. Maybe monopoly leveraging has a little to do with it? Personally, I despise photoshop, and shudder whenever I have to use it. I *hate* the user interface after being introduced to the Gimp. Keyboard and mouse focus in PS is so fucked up its not even funny. The zoom tool is fuckign useless: I can left click on my image and zoom in. I have to rmb and choose from a menu to zoom out!! and the scrollwheel does dick all.
I absolutely loved the first book in the series (I actually never knew there were 2 other books.)
It was pretty much the first novel I read when I was very young (about 10?) that I absolutely loved.
I don't remember all that much (I'll have to re-read it), but I remember how strong the main character was. How well I could identify. It was pretty much my first taste in literature like this.
Theres a chance that your student may have a diagnosable social disorder. (too lazy to look up proper name for it)
A guy I went to school with had this. It was very apparent: he could never say the right thing at the right time, had sever difficulty recognizing social patterns, etc.
He was also one of the smartest people I went to school with.
I was always one with the railgun in Quake II. Instagib railgun with ninja rope is still by far the most FPS fun I have ever had in any game.