You *cannot* register a copyright for something that is purely functional, a "scene a faire", or otherwise not creative. The rangecheck function is not eligible for copyright, any more than the linux headers were when RMS tried to make some stupid anti-android fud to try to promote the GPLv3.
The code that did the actual speed-up (TimSort) wasn't written by a sun employee - it was ported - by the original author - from python.
Also, rangecheck isn't eligible for copyright on its own - it's purely functional, no originality, no "advancing the state of the art" - even the JUDGE could (and did) write it. Yo can't copyright something that is purely functional, no matter how much "sweat of the brow" may have been involved. Don't argue with me - take it up with the Supremes, because that's their take on it post-Feiss.
Of course it's an exact 1:1 copy - the guy who wrote it gave it to both Sun AND Android. And if you've been following the trial, Sun never registered a copyright on that specific function.
Please get your facts straight - google walked away after examining the books. There was no way that groupon was worth 6 billion - it's a huge ponzischeme.
Sure, people put their money into it knowing it was bogus - they figured there would be even greedier, bigger fools around to hold the bag.
In March, after upgrades to OpenSuse 12.1 ate my email, I tried Fedora 16, Slackware 13.37, the latest Debian and a few others. Of the bunch, Fedora, after a few initial hiccups, worked the best - until updates made it crap on itself as well.
I was so desperate that I even tried (and immediately abandoned) the Win8 Preview.
Eventually, settled on knoppix boot dvd + persistent overlay image on a usb key, and "upgraded" to Windows XP - it's the first time I'm using it in a decade. It now works faster than linux ever did, and it's stable.
After 15 years of using linux, I've changed my tune, and tell everyone the same thing:
Servers? FreeBSD - linux is not there yet, craps on itself on major upgrades way too often in comparison;
Personal computers - buy a Mac or iDevice.
Open source software? LibreOffice and Filezilla do their jobs well. Firefox is a gaping memory leaker that Mozilla has no interest in fixing, Thunderbird has its quirks, but try it if you want. If you need a WAMP get Uniform Server. GIMP does what it says, though it takes a bit of getting used to. For the rest, you're on your own.
Take a barrel of crap, add a cup of wine, you still have a barrel of crap. Similarly take a barrel of wine, add a cup of crap, the result is still a barrel of crap. It's the same with linux - there are NO "top-notch" linux distros any more. Not when creaky old XP now beats them all in terms of performance, software and hardware compatibility, and dependability, and even a patched-up Vista runs WAY better and supports "supported by linux right there on the box" hardware better.
... according to GM (and they should know, they spent $40 million a year to find out) not on Facebook, they're not.
Money talks, b***s*** walks. The entire social media space is a bubble, and we're seeing parts of it burst.. look at how badly groupon is doing - anyone who paid $20 at launch, or $31.14 in the first frenzy, must have been freaking out when it hit $9.63.
... and your inability to recognize the truth when it's spelled out in plain English marks you as the ideal "social media user."
"Social media" is a bubble, a failure, a waste of time, energy and resources. Lazy marketers thought it would be the cheap, easy way to sell s*** to everyone. Instead, it's more of a wasteland than slashdot.
GM has finally figured out what many of us have known for years. Don't be surprised if a few other companies start making the same noises.
The study itself wasn't conducted by the paper - it's just the first result in a search - there are plenty more.
Are you really that stupid to not understand the difference between a report of some research and the research itself? You must be a heavy failbook user.
The statistics from your first link are meaningless w/o context. What were these people doing? Oh gee, your stats don't analyze that.
Also, at least half of all facebook accounts are bogus. Ask any facebook gamer who has 100 accounts, or any SEO marketing "guru" who buys fake facebook accounts for as low as 5 for a penny to generate "followers" so they can defraud their customers.
Rather than reject the study, why not show a study that contradicts it?
Oh, wait - you can't, because the study only confirms what everyone has already experienced - that "social media" is b.s.
I've seen too many "social media directors" outright lie as to how effective facebook is. They'll have just finished wasting an hour on it, and I'll ask them "what was the last post you read?" "I don't remember." "How about the one before that?" "I don't remember." "The one before?" "I don't remember." "Any of them?" "Well, um... you're being unfair!!!!"
All they remember is the s*** they posted. If that...
Facebook fans are worth 1/5 of a cent apiece - that's how much you pay when you buy them in bulk if you know where to look.
You won't get an argument from me wrt foot-cheese-eating RMS and his zealots.
I'll revisit the question when they can produce a distro that doesn't end up crapping out after a few updates. In other words, probably not before we hit the Y2k38 bug.
You don't have bottle of bleach, cleanser, a lead-acid car battery that you can drain, icing sugar, a bottle of ammonia, some drain cleaner, a propane bbq tank, rubbing alcohol, oven cleaner, hair lightener, a basketball, aluminium foil or a bicycle pump? (you can skip the potassium permanganate - a few drops of blood is also a good catalyst - high school chemistry)
You can certainly use a gps to find an existing marker to start from - you just can't use the gps as the only tool. You still need to do the actual measurements the "old way" - in part because GPS is too accurate.
When a humungous plot of land is repeatedly sub-divided, it's very rare that the land is perfectly flat, so you have "slop" - an accumulation of inaccuracies because you're measurement includes slight slopes up and down.
For example, you have a plot that was laid out as 10 miles, 250', 4" wide on the map. You start at one corner. set your GPS, and get in your car, get on the highway, go 20 miles in a big loop (because the road doesn't follow the boundary), get off the highway at the point nearest your target, traipse around until the GPS says "you are here" - and notice that you're not exactly where the actual boundary marker is.
Why? Because there are always going to be problems translating a portion of a globe to a flat map, and from accumulations of errors (search for the word "misclosure").
And in any dispute, it doesn't matter what your gps says - the legal boundaries of a smaller plot are laid out in reference to local markers - so many feet north of point x, so many feet east from point y, whatever.
Seeing as the descriptions laid out in an existing "chain of title" for a small plot can easily go back 100 years or more, and changed as the original plot was repeatedly sub-divided, it's not like they were laid out with GPS accuracy:-)
Sure, eventually the maps will all be digitized, but there's a chance that we won't have the ability to maintain a GPS system 100 years from now, just as we can no longer go to the moon, at which point it's back to the old "rod and chain."
Current rates of population increase are impossible to sustain over the next 100 years, so as some point "something's gotta give". Human nature being what it is, it's a pretty safe bet that it will get ugly. Also, with a world-wide network of "smart dust", etc., who needs gps?
Maybe the submitter thinks that a "big enough" press will be able to do "heavy fusion?" Never mind that "big enough" in this case would be ~ the size of a dwarf star...
Grow up and read my entire post - which I'l quote again - "Last I looked, (a week ago, but hey, maybe it's changed in the last 7 days) surveyors used transits and lasers, not GPS. Even a surveyor's transit is more accurate than GPS. Being accurate to within a few feet (or even a couple of inches, 9 times out of 10, with enhanced units) is not good enough in an urban setting."
That is not "factually incorrect" in any shape matter or form. That *some* surveyors use GPS in *some* situations doesn't make anything I stated incorrect - especially since even you'll have to admit that most surveying is verification of existing structures and positions, not laying out anything new.
Every building that's laid out once initially will be re-surveyed multiple times, w/o the need of a gps unit, for things like certificates of localization, for laying in new utilities or confirming the location of existing ones, etc - a far cry from the "hacking with a machete for two days" that the poster who tried to make the case for the ubiquity of GPS surveying laid out, which even you'll admit is not the usual scenario.
Last weeks work on my street is a case in point - confirming the city plan for several blocks. It was a quicky street-by-street job, with just 2 workers, a laser transit and a reflector. Nobody's going to waste time waiting for gps to verify anything when they already have the master geodesic point from which to measure off of permanently fixed right there in the ground. They just take a couple of angles to confirm its location against the corner of two buildings, then off to the next street.
Now, since these readings HAVE to be confirmed as per the original cadastral plans (in other words, the marker and two permanent structures) a GPS unit is *absolutely* useless. Sure, it will give you an absolute reading, but that doesn't confirm the existing relationship between the geodesic point and the two structures, as per the plans - and it's the plans that count. If and when the city cadastral plans switch entirely to GPS, then they'll be able to use a GPS - until then, forget it.
So the only weaseling out here are the self-appointed "guardians of teh new tek" who don't realize that it's not always going to interface with (or have any legal relevance wrt) several hundred years of land surveys. The plots don't care about GPS coordinates - they care about locations viz. permanent structures only.
And they're both memory hogs compared to XP - less than a quarter-gig of ram used, with the biggest memory hog right now being firefox(so what else is new?).
Next up is linux, 200 meg at idle... opening libreoffice, eclipse, gedit, a couple of terminals, jedit, firefox, opera... anything to eat up ram... still under 1 gig (while also running an ftp server, an http server, a ssh server and 2 db servers in the background).
Then... Win8 on the same machine, with ONLY firefox... 1.5 gig consumed, 75% cpu. Sick. Just sick. And the UI? Totally unusable.
So 1 gig at idle is nothing to brag about - it's a shame.
Of course, all of them fail next to BSD on the same machine, but then again, BSD + 6 consoles, each doing a compile of a huge selection of ports, go to a 7th console, log in, don't even notice that anything is going on, it just keeps chugging along.
These are real-world numbers from last month. Same hardware. The ONLY thing that was changed between runs was the OS - in each case, a fresh install.
You have me confused with the freetards. I'm an equal-opportunity software critic. Microsoft Windows 8 is the worst product Microsoft has ever made, every linux distro is proof that entropy is a fact as they all inevitably degrade to the point of being unusable ("distro-hopping" - it's a "feature"), and I hate the iMac UI for getting in my way.
The sad fact is that we're well along the path of diminishing returns when it comes to consumer operating systems, and probably closing in on the worst-case scenario - where every new feature takes away as much in one area as it adds in another.
And you're showing your ignorance - never needed more than myself and one other person, and whatever equipment happened to be available. If that turned out to be a transit that I had to take apart, grind down and relap the base (because someone mishandled it), then re-assemble and recalibrate in an afternoon because over the long term, it's better than going out and renting a new unit, so be it.
So tell us again how well your gps system works in the real world, like when you're in a large unfinished metal warehouse or hockey arena? Oh, it doesn't... right.
Why not read my post as it was intended instead of being a confrontational jerk?
My post referenced urban settings, for which GPS is not the quick+best solution, compared to a simple transit+laser (which also works great using a laser-controlled blade on a bulldozer, if you've ever seen a Cat D9 doing finish grading inside a large metal-clad building, which your GPS solution wouldn't work in). You then post something totally off (machetes in a jungle) and when I point it out, you again go "since when is land surveying restricted to uban settings?"
To turn it around, since when is surveying restricted to locations that don't have tall buildings with multi-path interference of radio signals, or exclusively outdoors and above ground?
And no, based on your intentional attempts-at-derailing-the-issue posts, I don't believe you ever "got paid to do this sh*t", not if you think that GPS is the only, or even best, solution in the majority of cases. Just like your childish foe-ing (oh, look, I hurt the poor widdle boy's feelings...).
Then I must be doing something right, if I manage to p*** off both sides, because others have accused me of the exact opposite, even to being a shill for Microsoft, because I've called most linux distros crapware because they all eventually become exactly that - a load of crap. Just like I have no problem saying that RMS is a disgusting misogynist who has done more harm than good over the last decade, and we either distance ourselves from him and his ilk, or we reap the consequences.
Microsoft's Metro is no better - it (and Win8, judging from the last preview - which I tried... did you??) is also crap, with no features that will ultimately redeem it.
I agree with Torvalds - technical merit over politics - which is ironic, because linux nowadays bears a strong resemblance to kludgeware.
After ~15 years, I've given up on ever seeing a linux distro that will be "good enough" for the masses for daily use. It's not going to happen, because of three things:
1. The "RTFM" + GPL quasi-religious zeolotry + "I want it for nothing" attitude of linux users;
2. The GPL itself - one of the reasons the underpinnings of the #1 desktop unix is FreeBSD (Apple) and not linux - who needs the hassles?;
3. Forking - there are too many forking forks. We're seeing the same thing happening with Android, and when Google tries to control it by saying they're delaying release of the source because they want to get a stable API and reduce forking, the self-anointed GPL crusaders go nutzo.
You can't even GIVE AWAY linux. I know - I've tried. Eventually it always end up being wiped, because it doesn't do the job. Even I had to give up after first Opensuse, the Fedora, Slackware, Debian and a whole slew of other distros all crapped out. Reduced to booting with Knoppix + a hard drive memory overlay for persistent data, I said "screw this" and dug out my old copy of XP. The machine works faster than it has in years, my linux-compatible color laser printer (says so on the box, even though it was mostly "it'll work until an update kills it, then not work until I switch distros, until the next distro update kills it") actually works consistently, and while I *hate* OSX, I can see my next computer probably being a mac, because I want something that works - not something that breaks something every update, lacks a ton of software, and generally sucks.
So now I tell people - for home and personal use, just get a mac. For servers, install freebsd because you'll be able to run the same server 10 years from now, no hassles, no breaking on updates, even if you go 5 years or more between updates and skip multiple major revisions. Been there, done that, got the "what do you mean you shelled into the production server and upgraded it - that's impossible, there's a BIOS bug that will make it hang on reboot and it's 500 miles each way to pick it up and fix it" speech, to which I responded "I did the upgrades manually, it's been working fine for a week, just like the local one I tested everything on has been working fine" - and which is, sad to say from too many minor upgrades crapping themselves, impossible with linux.
Linux? For hobbyists, or a back end if you can hide it with something like Android. The computing world would have been better off if BSD adoption hadn't been stalled for 2 years because of the AT&T lawsuit - we'd all be writing on BSD machines, and the latest Windows would be a shell running atop *nix.
Have you ever used a transit or other surveying tool? I doubt it.
Read the footnotes - nobody is going to use that for a quick survey to lay out the foundations for a building. For example, mode 1 - +/- HALF A METER (not 3mm)
Accuracy and reliability may be subject to anomalies due to multipath, obstructions, satellite geometry, and atmospheric conditions. The specifications stated recommend the use of stable mounts in an open sky view, EMI and multipath clean environment, optimal GNSS constellation configurations, along with the use of survey practices that are generally accepted for performing the highest-order surveys for the applicable application including occupation times appropriate for baseline length. Baselines longer than 30 km require precise ephemeris and occupations up to 24 hours may be required to achieve the high accuracy static specification.
Contrast that to a couple of minutes to set up and level a tripod, and take a fix on a couple of known markers - works w/o an open sky, works with trees overhead, works without concerns for multi-path interference from other buildings, works w/o needing multiple satellites being overhead, etc.
The same considerations apply to the other modes as well, including the "3mm" (which is not going to happen in real life - by the time you've got your 3mm reading, I'm already packed up and gone, and I haven't used a transit in about 15 years).
Swinging a machete and cutting line takes time and costs money. If you can get a location by setting up on a point and gathering data for half a day instead of cutting line and running a traverse to get to it for two days, then you've come out way ahead.
What part of that is congruent with my "is not good enough in an urban setting"?
the longer an antenna is left in one position and more satellites fly over, you get better and better resolution.
A transit is quick to set up and get working within a minute or so, doesn't "get more accurate as you wait for more satellites to pass overhead", etc. Also, a transit will work fine in a warehouse or other strutural building where the steel walls and shielding would cause problems with GPS, as well as underground, where GPS absolutely cannot work. Or do you have a neutrino-powered GPS?
Last I looked, (a week ago, but hey, maybe it's changed in the last 7 days) surveyors used transits and lasers, not GPS. Even a surveyor's transit is more accurate than GPS. Being accurate to within a few feet (or even a couple of inches, 9 times out of 10, with enhanced units) is not good enough in an urban setting.
Slashdot Mirror
You *cannot* register a copyright for something that is purely functional, a "scene a faire", or otherwise not creative. The rangecheck function is not eligible for copyright, any more than the linux headers were when RMS tried to make some stupid anti-android fud to try to promote the GPLv3.
The code that did the actual speed-up (TimSort) wasn't written by a sun employee - it was ported - by the original author - from python.
Also, rangecheck isn't eligible for copyright on its own - it's purely functional, no originality, no "advancing the state of the art" - even the JUDGE could (and did) write it. Yo can't copyright something that is purely functional, no matter how much "sweat of the brow" may have been involved. Don't argue with me - take it up with the Supremes, because that's their take on it post-Feiss.
Of course it's an exact 1:1 copy - the guy who wrote it gave it to both Sun AND Android. And if you've been following the trial, Sun never registered a copyright on that specific function.
Oracle is *SO* screwed.
Please get your facts straight - google walked away after examining the books. There was no way that groupon was worth 6 billion - it's a huge ponzi scheme.
Sure, people put their money into it knowing it was bogus - they figured there would be even greedier, bigger fools around to hold the bag.
In March, after upgrades to OpenSuse 12.1 ate my email, I tried Fedora 16, Slackware 13.37, the latest Debian and a few others. Of the bunch, Fedora, after a few initial hiccups, worked the best - until updates made it crap on itself as well.
I was so desperate that I even tried (and immediately abandoned) the Win8 Preview.
Eventually, settled on knoppix boot dvd + persistent overlay image on a usb key, and "upgraded" to Windows XP - it's the first time I'm using it in a decade. It now works faster than linux ever did, and it's stable.
After 15 years of using linux, I've changed my tune, and tell everyone the same thing:
Servers? FreeBSD - linux is not there yet, craps on itself on major upgrades way too often in comparison;
Personal computers - buy a Mac or iDevice.
Open source software? LibreOffice and Filezilla do their jobs well. Firefox is a gaping memory leaker that Mozilla has no interest in fixing, Thunderbird has its quirks, but try it if you want. If you need a WAMP get Uniform Server. GIMP does what it says, though it takes a bit of getting used to. For the rest, you're on your own.
Take a barrel of crap, add a cup of wine, you still have a barrel of crap. Similarly take a barrel of wine, add a cup of crap, the result is still a barrel of crap. It's the same with linux - there are NO "top-notch" linux distros any more. Not when creaky old XP now beats them all in terms of performance, software and hardware compatibility, and dependability, and even a patched-up Vista runs WAY better and supports "supported by linux right there on the box" hardware better.
You get what you pay for.
... according to GM (and they should know, they spent $40 million a year to find out) not on Facebook, they're not.
Money talks, b***s*** walks. The entire social media space is a bubble, and we're seeing parts of it burst .. look at how badly groupon is doing - anyone who paid $20 at launch, or $31.14 in the first frenzy, must have been freaking out when it hit $9.63.
Facebook is going to be another groupon.
... and your inability to recognize the truth when it's spelled out in plain English marks you as the ideal "social media user."
"Social media" is a bubble, a failure, a waste of time, energy and resources. Lazy marketers thought it would be the cheap, easy way to sell s*** to everyone. Instead, it's more of a wasteland than slashdot.
GM has finally figured out what many of us have known for years. Don't be surprised if a few other companies start making the same noises.
The study itself wasn't conducted by the paper - it's just the first result in a search - there are plenty more.
Are you really that stupid to not understand the difference between a report of some research and the research itself? You must be a heavy failbook user.
The statistics from your first link are meaningless w/o context. What were these people doing? Oh gee, your stats don't analyze that.
Also, at least half of all facebook accounts are bogus. Ask any facebook gamer who has 100 accounts, or any SEO marketing "guru" who buys fake facebook accounts for as low as 5 for a penny to generate "followers" so they can defraud their customers.
Rather than reject the study, why not show a study that contradicts it?
Oh, wait - you can't, because the study only confirms what everyone has already experienced - that "social media" is b.s.
I've seen too many "social media directors" outright lie as to how effective facebook is. They'll have just finished wasting an hour on it, and I'll ask them "what was the last post you read?" "I don't remember." "How about the one before that?" "I don't remember." "The one before?" "I don't remember." "Any of them?" "Well, um ... you're being unfair!!!!"
All they remember is the s*** they posted. If that ...
Facebook fans are worth 1/5 of a cent apiece - that's how much you pay when you buy them in bulk if you know where to look.
Facebook, twitter, SEO, it's all G.I.G.O.
You won't get an argument from me wrt foot-cheese-eating RMS and his zealots.
I'll revisit the question when they can produce a distro that doesn't end up crapping out after a few updates. In other words, probably not before we hit the Y2k38 bug.
Narcissistic, insecure, low self esteem, they're on facebook to "be seen" and try to feel that their lives are worth something.
Social media is a failure.
You don't have bottle of bleach, cleanser, a lead-acid car battery that you can drain, icing sugar, a bottle of ammonia, some drain cleaner, a propane bbq tank, rubbing alcohol, oven cleaner, hair lightener, a basketball, aluminium foil or a bicycle pump? (you can skip the potassium permanganate - a few drops of blood is also a good catalyst - high school chemistry)
You can certainly use a gps to find an existing marker to start from - you just can't use the gps as the only tool. You still need to do the actual measurements the "old way" - in part because GPS is too accurate.
When a humungous plot of land is repeatedly sub-divided, it's very rare that the land is perfectly flat, so you have "slop" - an accumulation of inaccuracies because you're measurement includes slight slopes up and down.
For example, you have a plot that was laid out as 10 miles, 250', 4" wide on the map. You start at one corner. set your GPS, and get in your car, get on the highway, go 20 miles in a big loop (because the road doesn't follow the boundary), get off the highway at the point nearest your target, traipse around until the GPS says "you are here" - and notice that you're not exactly where the actual boundary marker is.
Why? Because there are always going to be problems translating a portion of a globe to a flat map, and from accumulations of errors (search for the word "misclosure").
And in any dispute, it doesn't matter what your gps says - the legal boundaries of a smaller plot are laid out in reference to local markers - so many feet north of point x, so many feet east from point y, whatever.
Seeing as the descriptions laid out in an existing "chain of title" for a small plot can easily go back 100 years or more, and changed as the original plot was repeatedly sub-divided, it's not like they were laid out with GPS accuracy :-)
Sure, eventually the maps will all be digitized, but there's a chance that we won't have the ability to maintain a GPS system 100 years from now, just as we can no longer go to the moon, at which point it's back to the old "rod and chain."
Current rates of population increase are impossible to sustain over the next 100 years, so as some point "something's gotta give". Human nature being what it is, it's a pretty safe bet that it will get ugly. Also, with a world-wide network of "smart dust", etc., who needs gps?
Maybe the submitter thinks that a "big enough" press will be able to do "heavy fusion?" Never mind that "big enough" in this case would be ~ the size of a dwarf star ...
You're doing it wrong - you have to throw the snakes INTO the plane ... the thrust is from all the H1Bs then jumping out.
That is not "factually incorrect" in any shape matter or form. That *some* surveyors use GPS in *some* situations doesn't make anything I stated incorrect - especially since even you'll have to admit that most surveying is verification of existing structures and positions, not laying out anything new.
Every building that's laid out once initially will be re-surveyed multiple times, w/o the need of a gps unit, for things like certificates of localization, for laying in new utilities or confirming the location of existing ones, etc - a far cry from the "hacking with a machete for two days" that the poster who tried to make the case for the ubiquity of GPS surveying laid out, which even you'll admit is not the usual scenario.
Last weeks work on my street is a case in point - confirming the city plan for several blocks. It was a quicky street-by-street job, with just 2 workers, a laser transit and a reflector. Nobody's going to waste time waiting for gps to verify anything when they already have the master geodesic point from which to measure off of permanently fixed right there in the ground. They just take a couple of angles to confirm its location against the corner of two buildings, then off to the next street.
Now, since these readings HAVE to be confirmed as per the original cadastral plans (in other words, the marker and two permanent structures) a GPS unit is *absolutely* useless. Sure, it will give you an absolute reading, but that doesn't confirm the existing relationship between the geodesic point and the two structures, as per the plans - and it's the plans that count. If and when the city cadastral plans switch entirely to GPS, then they'll be able to use a GPS - until then, forget it.
So the only weaseling out here are the self-appointed "guardians of teh new tek" who don't realize that it's not always going to interface with (or have any legal relevance wrt) several hundred years of land surveys. The plots don't care about GPS coordinates - they care about locations viz. permanent structures only.
Next up is linux, 200 meg at idle ... opening libreoffice, eclipse, gedit, a couple of terminals, jedit, firefox, opera ... anything to eat up ram ... still under 1 gig (while also running an ftp server, an http server, a ssh server and 2 db servers in the background).
Then ... Win8 on the same machine, with ONLY firefox ... 1.5 gig consumed, 75% cpu. Sick. Just sick. And the UI? Totally unusable.
So 1 gig at idle is nothing to brag about - it's a shame.
Of course, all of them fail next to BSD on the same machine, but then again, BSD + 6 consoles, each doing a compile of a huge selection of ports, go to a 7th console, log in, don't even notice that anything is going on, it just keeps chugging along.
These are real-world numbers from last month. Same hardware. The ONLY thing that was changed between runs was the OS - in each case, a fresh install.
You have me confused with the freetards. I'm an equal-opportunity software critic. Microsoft Windows 8 is the worst product Microsoft has ever made, every linux distro is proof that entropy is a fact as they all inevitably degrade to the point of being unusable ("distro-hopping" - it's a "feature"), and I hate the iMac UI for getting in my way.
The sad fact is that we're well along the path of diminishing returns when it comes to consumer operating systems, and probably closing in on the worst-case scenario - where every new feature takes away as much in one area as it adds in another.
And you're showing your ignorance - never needed more than myself and one other person, and whatever equipment happened to be available. If that turned out to be a transit that I had to take apart, grind down and relap the base (because someone mishandled it), then re-assemble and recalibrate in an afternoon because over the long term, it's better than going out and renting a new unit, so be it.
So tell us again how well your gps system works in the real world, like when you're in a large unfinished metal warehouse or hockey arena? Oh, it doesn't ... right.
My post referenced urban settings, for which GPS is not the quick+best solution, compared to a simple transit+laser (which also works great using a laser-controlled blade on a bulldozer, if you've ever seen a Cat D9 doing finish grading inside a large metal-clad building, which your GPS solution wouldn't work in). You then post something totally off (machetes in a jungle) and when I point it out, you again go "since when is land surveying restricted to uban settings?"
To turn it around, since when is surveying restricted to locations that don't have tall buildings with multi-path interference of radio signals, or exclusively outdoors and above ground?
And no, based on your intentional attempts-at-derailing-the-issue posts, I don't believe you ever "got paid to do this sh*t", not if you think that GPS is the only, or even best, solution in the majority of cases. Just like your childish foe-ing (oh, look, I hurt the poor widdle boy's feelings ...).
Then I must be doing something right, if I manage to p*** off both sides, because others have accused me of the exact opposite, even to being a shill for Microsoft, because I've called most linux distros crapware because they all eventually become exactly that - a load of crap. Just like I have no problem saying that RMS is a disgusting misogynist who has done more harm than good over the last decade, and we either distance ourselves from him and his ilk, or we reap the consequences.
Microsoft's Metro is no better - it (and Win8, judging from the last preview - which I tried ... did you??) is also crap, with no features that will ultimately redeem it.
I agree with Torvalds - technical merit over politics - which is ironic, because linux nowadays bears a strong resemblance to kludgeware.
After ~15 years, I've given up on ever seeing a linux distro that will be "good enough" for the masses for daily use. It's not going to happen, because of three things:
1. The "RTFM" + GPL quasi-religious zeolotry + "I want it for nothing" attitude of linux users;
2. The GPL itself - one of the reasons the underpinnings of the #1 desktop unix is FreeBSD (Apple) and not linux - who needs the hassles?;
3. Forking - there are too many forking forks. We're seeing the same thing happening with Android, and when Google tries to control it by saying they're delaying release of the source because they want to get a stable API and reduce forking, the self-anointed GPL crusaders go nutzo.
You can't even GIVE AWAY linux. I know - I've tried. Eventually it always end up being wiped, because it doesn't do the job. Even I had to give up after first Opensuse, the Fedora, Slackware, Debian and a whole slew of other distros all crapped out. Reduced to booting with Knoppix + a hard drive memory overlay for persistent data, I said "screw this" and dug out my old copy of XP. The machine works faster than it has in years, my linux-compatible color laser printer (says so on the box, even though it was mostly "it'll work until an update kills it, then not work until I switch distros, until the next distro update kills it") actually works consistently, and while I *hate* OSX, I can see my next computer probably being a mac, because I want something that works - not something that breaks something every update, lacks a ton of software, and generally sucks.
So now I tell people - for home and personal use, just get a mac. For servers, install freebsd because you'll be able to run the same server 10 years from now, no hassles, no breaking on updates, even if you go 5 years or more between updates and skip multiple major revisions. Been there, done that, got the "what do you mean you shelled into the production server and upgraded it - that's impossible, there's a BIOS bug that will make it hang on reboot and it's 500 miles each way to pick it up and fix it" speech, to which I responded "I did the upgrades manually, it's been working fine for a week, just like the local one I tested everything on has been working fine" - and which is, sad to say from too many minor upgrades crapping themselves, impossible with linux.
Linux? For hobbyists, or a back end if you can hide it with something like Android. The computing world would have been better off if BSD adoption hadn't been stalled for 2 years because of the AT&T lawsuit - we'd all be writing on BSD machines, and the latest Windows would be a shell running atop *nix.
Read the footnotes - nobody is going to use that for a quick survey to lay out the foundations for a building. For example, mode 1 - +/- HALF A METER (not 3mm)
Contrast that to a couple of minutes to set up and level a tripod, and take a fix on a couple of known markers - works w/o an open sky, works with trees overhead, works without concerns for multi-path interference from other buildings, works w/o needing multiple satellites being overhead, etc.
The same considerations apply to the other modes as well, including the "3mm" (which is not going to happen in real life - by the time you've got your 3mm reading, I'm already packed up and gone, and I haven't used a transit in about 15 years).
What part of that is congruent with my "is not good enough in an urban setting"?
A transit is quick to set up and get working within a minute or so, doesn't "get more accurate as you wait for more satellites to pass overhead", etc. Also, a transit will work fine in a warehouse or other strutural building where the steel walls and shielding would cause problems with GPS, as well as underground, where GPS absolutely cannot work. Or do you have a neutrino-powered GPS?
Last I looked, (a week ago, but hey, maybe it's changed in the last 7 days) surveyors used transits and lasers, not GPS. Even a surveyor's transit is more accurate than GPS. Being accurate to within a few feet (or even a couple of inches, 9 times out of 10, with enhanced units) is not good enough in an urban setting.