You must be kidding. For one, having lived for many years both in Europe and the US, I can tell you that the drivers in the US are _far_ superior. Much more disciplined and much much safer. In Europe I am literally scared to drive (even though there are some exceptions).
Your assertion that people can and should freely choose where to live so that they can avoid driving, or that they can use (the completely non-existent) public transit, is frankly just shockingly naive and a bit arrogant. No offense.
Further, you are begging the question. Clearly people do prefer to have jobs and comfortable houses rather than to avoid driving. Secondly, it hasn't bee shown that driving in the US is riskier than anywhere else (although I don't have hard data at hand, my personal experience tells me that it is in fact exactly the opposite). Lastly, I think the majority of people agrees that if you have to drive, driving an automatic is safer.
(And yes, I do in fact drive a stick shift, simply because I enjoy it, but I do not think that it makes me a safer driver).
Hint, hint: it may have something to do with the fact that in the US one absolutely needs a car in order to get to work. Few people in Europe work 60km from home, but in the US it is common. Not giving license to someone means literally preventing them from earning a living.
Don't pass judgment before understanding the issues.
That said, I am a superior driver myself, like everyone on Slashdot, I am sure. My car has 18 gears and 3 clutches - that is because I am so manly. (I also have 3 penises).
I am guessing it used to work before the OS upgrade, so that is a completely valid question.
The attitude "we don't care if software which is not distributed by us breaks on OS upgrade" is not going to fly for long if the OS is to get some real mass usage.
You are correct about free GUIs being generally bad (the explanation is simple - good usability design is expensive and thus often incompatible with "free").
However your generalization about the "Unix design flaw" is frankly completely ridiculous. Unix and POSIX may have many design flaws, but lack of IPC mechanisms isn't one of them.
As a vegan I would never consume the resulting meat, but a vegetarian should be fine with eating meat converted from milk.
Really?? I always thought that vegetarians don't eat meat because it is healthier. At least that is how it is always presented. The moral restriction of not killing animals is a distant second.
I am somewhat aware that veganism is mostly an ethical choice, but I didn't think vegetarianism was similarly motivated.
I am a G1 user and while I am generally quite happy with my phone, there is no doubt in in my mind that objectively the applications are still of lower quality compared to the iPhone. The iPhone's approval process guarantees at least some minimal quality - developers have to test their applications at least a little before submitting them.
On my Android phone I get dozens of application updates every week. It is annoying as hell. Don't these people test their applications before they publish them? Don't they plan at least a little ahead? Just because you can publish anything anytime on the Android Market, doesn't mean that you have to.
As a user, it feels like there is more "crap" on Android, and as a result I am less inclined to pay for the expensive apps; I expect stuff for free. The iPhone feels more polished and more "commercial" to me. That said, I have purchased several Android applications and they are quite good. I hope that as the market grows it will balance itself out.
Briefly, the problem is that you need to be able to reply in HTML to HTML mails you receive.
This is a real shame, because ignoring these two problems (though I will try IMAP again per your suggestion), KMail is hands down the best darn e-mail client I have ever used.
Well, I am not running KDE 4 and won't be until it gets in Debian Stable, bit this is what the GGP said - that in KDE 4.3 you still "can't define arbitrary pages or multiple page ranges".
Printing is my major beef with KDE 4. A "desktop" without printing? WTF were they thinking? One of the primary functions of a desktop environment is to provide printing - page selection options, including odd/even, etc, is an absolute must. To me it is inconceivable that a non-alpha release of a mature desktop environment was released without full printing support.
It is even more inconceivable because KDE 3.5 is pretty awesome in that respect. Thank god I am not being forced to upgrade to KDE4 yet because I am using Debian. (Debian's slow cycle has its advantages:-)
Anyway, to me this speaks of a significant disconnect between the KDE developers and their users. I am a huge KDE fan, but this has caused me to lose confidence. (Well, some other things too, like KMail's non-functioning IMAP, or the inability to compose HTML mail - functionality which, like it or not, is a must for a modern desktop, esp. in a business environment. May be that is fixed in KDE4? I would love to move back to KMail from Thunderbird).
Re:PyPy - crashing and burning with "agile".
on
Becoming Agile
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· Score: 1
I don't think your comparison between PyPy and Shed Skin is valid. Without commenting on the merits of either project, I have to say that an efficient implementation of a convenient subset of a language is vastly easier than an efficient implementation of the whole language. The latter might not even be possible at all.
Shed Skin is not Python. It is a language that has some syntactic similarity to Python and a few similar libraries. Again, I am not commenting on the merit of the project - just stating facts.
Case in point for Java, some of GCJ's important static optimizations for Java were actually unusable when used on a real Java project like Eclipse. GCJ does support most of the language, but when used in that mode the code it is significantly slower than a JIT (perhaps surprising many people).
My personal opinion about PyPy, in case anyone cares, is that it is interesting, but if the intent is to have a practical result it is clearly a mistake.
Oh, yes, yes, JavaScript will imminently reach native code speed... when pigs fly. Remember this: JavaScript will never become 2x faster than what it is now. We are at the end of the curve of easy speed improvements, and it is nowhere near to native code speed.
As a language JavaScript is impossible to optimize well. We will be lucky if it ever gets close to Java's performance, considering that Java is already about an order of magnitude slower than native in extreme cases.
BTW, I am not saying that JavaScript (or Java) is too slow, simply that in absolute terms it will never be close to native.
Yes, and anybody who has actually used Linux, instead of just playing with it, knows that upgrading your OS every 6 months is madness, so in case they do use Ubuntu at least they stick to the LTS versions...:-)
The fact that the editors thought that Slashdot needed an explanation of what OpenSSH is makes me feel dirty. It is like explaining what H2O is. If you don't know what OpenSSH is you should not be reading Slashdot, you bastards!
No Linux support on any models? Unlike you I don't claim to have experience with all Brother models.
However I do have a network Brother printer (MFC 7820N) which I have been using for a long time exclusively under Linux. It worked out of the box in Debian (not your fancy latest Ubuntu). Brother does provide a custom driver which is better. When I was downloading it I happened to notice that there were Linux drivers for many other models. Perhaps you simply didn't see them. Ah, the scanner also works under Linux.
Don't get me wrong though - it is not perfect. The same printer is faster and more usable under Windows. But is also perfectly usable and reliable under Linux with no effort and I would buy it again if it broke.
I am with you! Thank god I am not the only sane person here. When garbage like this is on the front page of Slashdot, perhaps it is time to stop reading it.
Firstly, what TiVo did was realize that people would pay for a service like that, and that it can be sold at an affordable price. This is their great breakthrough, not the technology which is conceptually simple. Neither should be patentable.
Your Edison comparison is severely flawed. It is not like everybody could manufacture a light bulb with off-the self parts, but they simply didn't realize that people would need them.
Lastly, juries favor the plaintiffs in cases like this. You can be sure that for a jury the technology in a Tivo would be indistinguishable from magic. How do you think they are going to vote?
The technology was adopted by other large companies because it is obvious. It should be un-patentable. Show me one Slashdot reader who didn't immediately grasp the principle of how TiVo works and knew how to basically implement something similar. It is ridiculous. It is very simple in principle and can be implemented with off-the-shelf technology.
Not every good idea or every technically well executed product deserves to be patented.
No, my point was that Planesdragon gave a pretty clear and rational definition of a "man" or "woman". You may disagree with it, but your far too emotional arguments implied that you did not really try to understand it because apparently you have some some other (sociological?) agenda.
It amazes me how people could give up their land lines, when the alternatives are an order of magnitude more unreliable.
Guess what, I live in the Bay Area, not in a desert somewhere. I pay 60$ for Internet service from Comcast. It is pretty fast (10Mbps). And yet, I get an Internet outage at least once ever week. Sometimes it last an hour, sometimes more. I would be a complete idiot to give up my land line and rely on cable.
DSL? Well, it needs a fucking land line doesn't it?
Cell phone? Are you fucking kidding me? I get several dropped calls every week, plus the quality is substantially inferior to the land line.
And my land line? It works all the time every time. It is the only thing that works people!! It even works when the power is down. Have you lost your minds?
So, I live in one of the most "civilized" places in the planet, and yet I have no alternative to my land line. I don't know where and how the people without land lines live, but it must be in another dimension (or at least another country).
That is precisely what may be causing your problem. Easy going people who do not have passion for politics or ideals essentially leave the government do whatever it wants to...
Slashdot Mirror
You must be kidding. For one, having lived for many years both in Europe and the US, I can tell you that the drivers in the US are _far_ superior. Much more disciplined and much much safer. In Europe I am literally scared to drive (even though there are some exceptions).
Your assertion that people can and should freely choose where to live so that they can avoid driving, or that they can use (the completely non-existent) public transit, is frankly just shockingly naive and a bit arrogant. No offense.
Further, you are begging the question. Clearly people do prefer to have jobs and comfortable houses rather than to avoid driving. Secondly, it hasn't bee shown that driving in the US is riskier than anywhere else (although I don't have hard data at hand, my personal experience tells me that it is in fact exactly the opposite). Lastly, I think the majority of people agrees that if you have to drive, driving an automatic is safer. (And yes, I do in fact drive a stick shift, simply because I enjoy it, but I do not think that it makes me a safer driver).
Hint, hint: it may have something to do with the fact that in the US one absolutely needs a car in order to get to work. Few people in Europe work 60km from home, but in the US it is common. Not giving license to someone means literally preventing them from earning a living. Don't pass judgment before understanding the issues. That said, I am a superior driver myself, like everyone on Slashdot, I am sure. My car has 18 gears and 3 clutches - that is because I am so manly. (I also have 3 penises).
I am guessing it used to work before the OS upgrade, so that is a completely valid question. The attitude "we don't care if software which is not distributed by us breaks on OS upgrade" is not going to fly for long if the OS is to get some real mass usage.
What you said :-)
You are correct about free GUIs being generally bad (the explanation is simple - good usability design is expensive and thus often incompatible with "free").
However your generalization about the "Unix design flaw" is frankly completely ridiculous. Unix and POSIX may have many design flaws, but lack of IPC mechanisms isn't one of them.
You seem to hate unchecked exceptions.Checked exceptions force you to think about handling or propagating.
I think yours may be the best Slashdot post ever!!!
Really?? I always thought that vegetarians don't eat meat because it is healthier. At least that is how it is always presented. The moral restriction of not killing animals is a distant second.
I am somewhat aware that veganism is mostly an ethical choice, but I didn't think vegetarianism was similarly motivated.
I am a G1 user and while I am generally quite happy with my phone, there is no doubt in in my mind that objectively the applications are still of lower quality compared to the iPhone. The iPhone's approval process guarantees at least some minimal quality - developers have to test their applications at least a little before submitting them.
On my Android phone I get dozens of application updates every week. It is annoying as hell. Don't these people test their applications before they publish them? Don't they plan at least a little ahead? Just because you can publish anything anytime on the Android Market, doesn't mean that you have to.
As a user, it feels like there is more "crap" on Android, and as a result I am less inclined to pay for the expensive apps; I expect stuff for free. The iPhone feels more polished and more "commercial" to me. That said, I have purchased several Android applications and they are quite good. I hope that as the market grows it will balance itself out.
About HTML mail, take a look at this bug (from 2004, no less): http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86423
Briefly, the problem is that you need to be able to reply in HTML to HTML mails you receive.
This is a real shame, because ignoring these two problems (though I will try IMAP again per your suggestion), KMail is hands down the best darn e-mail client I have ever used.
Well, I am not running KDE 4 and won't be until it gets in Debian Stable, bit this is what the GGP said - that in KDE 4.3 you still "can't define arbitrary pages or multiple page ranges".
Printing is my major beef with KDE 4. A "desktop" without printing? WTF were they thinking? One of the primary functions of a desktop environment is to provide printing - page selection options, including odd/even, etc, is an absolute must. To me it is inconceivable that a non-alpha release of a mature desktop environment was released without full printing support.
It is even more inconceivable because KDE 3.5 is pretty awesome in that respect. Thank god I am not being forced to upgrade to KDE4 yet because I am using Debian. (Debian's slow cycle has its advantages :-)
Anyway, to me this speaks of a significant disconnect between the KDE developers and their users. I am a huge KDE fan, but this has caused me to lose confidence. (Well, some other things too, like KMail's non-functioning IMAP, or the inability to compose HTML mail - functionality which, like it or not, is a must for a modern desktop, esp. in a business environment. May be that is fixed in KDE4? I would love to move back to KMail from Thunderbird).
I don't think your comparison between PyPy and Shed Skin is valid. Without commenting on the merits of either project, I have to say that an efficient implementation of a convenient subset of a language is vastly easier than an efficient implementation of the whole language. The latter might not even be possible at all.
Shed Skin is not Python. It is a language that has some syntactic similarity to Python and a few similar libraries. Again, I am not commenting on the merit of the project - just stating facts.
Case in point for Java, some of GCJ's important static optimizations for Java were actually unusable when used on a real Java project like Eclipse. GCJ does support most of the language, but when used in that mode the code it is significantly slower than a JIT (perhaps surprising many people).
My personal opinion about PyPy, in case anyone cares, is that it is interesting, but if the intent is to have a practical result it is clearly a mistake.
Oh, yes, yes, JavaScript will imminently reach native code speed ... when pigs fly. Remember this: JavaScript will never become 2x faster than what it is now. We are at the end of the curve of easy speed improvements, and it is nowhere near to native code speed.
As a language JavaScript is impossible to optimize well. We will be lucky if it ever gets close to Java's performance, considering that Java is already about an order of magnitude slower than native in extreme cases.
BTW, I am not saying that JavaScript (or Java) is too slow, simply that in absolute terms it will never be close to native.
Yes, and anybody who has actually used Linux, instead of just playing with it, knows that upgrading your OS every 6 months is madness, so in case they do use Ubuntu at least they stick to the LTS versions... :-)
The fact that the editors thought that Slashdot needed an explanation of what OpenSSH is makes me feel dirty. It is like explaining what H2O is. If you don't know what OpenSSH is you should not be reading Slashdot, you bastards!
No Linux support on any models? Unlike you I don't claim to have experience with all Brother models.
However I do have a network Brother printer (MFC 7820N) which I have been using for a long time exclusively under Linux. It worked out of the box in Debian (not your fancy latest Ubuntu). Brother does provide a custom driver which is better. When I was downloading it I happened to notice that there were Linux drivers for many other models. Perhaps you simply didn't see them. Ah, the scanner also works under Linux.
Don't get me wrong though - it is not perfect. The same printer is faster and more usable under Windows. But is also perfectly usable and reliable under Linux with no effort and I would buy it again if it broke.
I am with you! Thank god I am not the only sane person here.
When garbage like this is on the front page of Slashdot, perhaps it is time to stop reading it.
I am afraid I disagree.
Firstly, what TiVo did was realize that people would pay for a service like that, and that it can be sold at an affordable price. This is their great breakthrough, not the technology which is conceptually simple. Neither should be patentable.
Your Edison comparison is severely flawed. It is not like everybody could manufacture a light bulb with off-the self parts, but they simply didn't realize that people would need them.
Lastly, juries favor the plaintiffs in cases like this. You can be sure that for a jury the technology in a Tivo would be indistinguishable from magic. How do you think they are going to vote?
The technology was adopted by other large companies because it is obvious. It should be un-patentable. Show me one Slashdot reader who didn't immediately grasp the principle of how TiVo works and knew how to basically implement something similar. It is ridiculous. It is very simple in principle and can be implemented with off-the-shelf technology.
Not every good idea or every technically well executed product deserves to be patented.
what
No, my point was that Planesdragon gave a pretty clear and rational definition of a "man" or "woman". You may disagree with it, but your far too emotional arguments implied that you did not really try to understand it because apparently you have some some other (sociological?) agenda.
That may be so, but has nothing to do with the point.
It amazes me how people could give up their land lines, when the alternatives are an order of magnitude more unreliable.
Guess what, I live in the Bay Area, not in a desert somewhere. I pay 60$ for Internet service from Comcast. It is pretty fast (10Mbps). And yet, I get an Internet outage at least once ever week. Sometimes it last an hour, sometimes more. I would be a complete idiot to give up my land line and rely on cable.
DSL? Well, it needs a fucking land line doesn't it?
Cell phone? Are you fucking kidding me? I get several dropped calls every week, plus the quality is substantially inferior to the land line.
And my land line? It works all the time every time. It is the only thing that works people!! It even works when the power is down. Have you lost your minds?
So, I live in one of the most "civilized" places in the planet, and yet I have no alternative to my land line. I don't know where and how the people without land lines live, but it must be in another dimension (or at least another country).
That is precisely what may be causing your problem. Easy going people who do not have passion for politics or ideals essentially leave the government do whatever it wants to...