Meanwhile, everyone just happily tolerated Windoze BSODs, even though they were, and still are, no more informative than Amiga Guru Meditations.
What's that supposed to mean? If having information, even cryptic info, is helpful for the Amiga, why is it only "tolerated" in the BSOD?
Old BSODs at least gave a human readable name of the task responsible for the crash (along with an exact address and the task's base address so you could match it with a line of code) and a moderately human readable name of the exception. Then they gave a lot of other information that, while cryptic, was helpful if you knew how to decipher it.
Newer ones give that same information along with a little bit of guidance as to what the user should do, telling the user that no, this screen didn't come up because you clicked on the "Cancel" button, and you need not be afraid of clicking "Cancel" in the future; just reset the computer, and if it happens again, get sysadmin help.
MOST of the time you can get away with it. But once in a while it will bite you. And a fuse will only prevent catastrophe some of the time (and even if it did, where do you get the replacement fuse?).
From what I understand, it depends on the order in which the pins make contact. I think a properly wired plug will pretty much never cause a problem, but if a pin is bent or something, you very well might short something important.
This was in the back of PC Magazine a few weeks ago. Sorry I can't remember the specifics.
Setting: A published piece of software, in a moderately obscure error case. The first half of the error message is fabricated (since I don't remember the specifics) but the second half tells volumes about programmers and their motivations:
This feature has not yet been correctly implemented. Bad Programmer. No donut.
I know it is funny -- I laughed, ok, so I didn't miss the joke.
However, there is a reasonable purpose for the message. It relies on the assumption that most people want to run their computer with a keyboard attached. So the computer sits there waiting for you to plug your keyboard in. Once you have done so and pressed F1 (or turned off your computer before plugging it in if you are following the directions), you can proceed to boot up your OS. That way, the OS doesn't have to worry about warning the user about the missing keyboard or detecting a new keyboard if it is plugged in too late.
There are anti-trust laws. They say that abuse of monopoly power is illegal. There are some additional details, but for the most part, the interpretation of that law and the application thereof is determined by precedent and by the atmosphere of the existing legal community.
There is no antitrust law that says IE cannot be bundled with Windows. There is a law against unfair competetive behavior. It is up to the prosecution to prove that bundling in this case was unfair competetive behavior. There is some precedent, so most companies have a fair idea as to what contitutes abuse, but the software sales industry is only 25 or so years old, and it is still undergoing dramatic change all the time. New situations develop that are without precedent, and until the judge rules, there is no law.
First, the real answer, as has been given before (so this can be mod-ed "redundant"): The current version of Windows CE runs on Arm, SH3, SH4, Mips and x86. Previous versions also ran on PowerPC. I'm sure somewhere in that list you can find something that could be considered RISC.
And Microsoft supported running Windows 2000 on the Alpha until after Windows 2000 RC1 came out. The final release was x86 only, but some crazy people actually run their Alpha boxes on Windows 2000 RC1. I think RC1 was in 1999. (and this part can be mod-ed "offtopic")
You know, I might enjoy SlashDot a little more if the stories and posts concentrated more on general tech news and less on following up on every possibly questionable act that Microsoft does. I mean, yeah, it plays a major role in the industry, but it isn't the only player. And yeah, it was found guilty of abuse of monopoly power, but that doesn't automatically make every attempt by Microsoft to compete illegal -- just the specific ones outlined by the court. (And as far as that goes, please recognize that "abuse of monopoly power" is translated as "whatever the judge and the political powers of the day consider as bad behavior on the part of a business," which is by definition somewhat unknown -- there was no law against Microsoft's practices until the judge decided that they were unfair.)
In this case, a bunch of companies were taking advantage of loopholes. Some did so for reasonable purposes -- for example, attracting a talented executive when other methods would have cost the company more. Other companies did it for less productive reasons -- there is a lot of cash flowing by, so let's each grab a handful, and since this has to go on the books somewhere, we'll use the loophole of the week -- corporate loans. Or maybe all of the loans were some mixture of the two. Whatever -- it isn't important to the argument.
What is important is that it wasn't necessarily ethical, but it wasn't necessarily all vice and corruption, and it wasn't necessarily illegal. In this case, it seems that when Microsoft saw that other companies were getting in trouble for something that it had been doing as well, it came forward and put its cards on the table.
Another thing to consider is similar to a point I saw in some earlier posts (that Microsoft was making money, but Enron wasn't). That almost covers it, but I would prefer to say that "Microsoft could afford it, but Enron couldn't." Enron executives were taking cash even when they knew that the company was just scraping by, or worse, about to take a tumble. Microsoft made the loans when they knew that the company could afford to take the hit if necessary.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that with Microsoft at position -- what was it, 18 or 28 or something -- on the chart of companies with loans to executives, having given out $30 million in loans and not really causing a problem for its stockholders, I don't really see why the SlashDot community or the author of the article needs to single out Microsoft.
From my perspective, many companies are still hiring. In fact, my team has many openings for software engineers. We have interviewed a fair number of candidates, but the positions are still open -- we haven't found people who meet our needs/requirements.
What seems to be happening (at least in my skewed perspective of my corner of the world) is that there is still significant demand for good tech talent. When the bubble burst, those people who bought a "Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days" book were the first to feel the effects. They got laid off first, and they now have a hard time finding tech jobs. In some areas of the world or for some companies, things got so bad that even good programmers got laid off or the entire company folded. But not everywhere.
The market is now flooded with mediocre (and bad) programmers. But there is still a big demand for skilled, competent ones. The flood often makes it harder for the good programmers to get the attention of the companies that are hiring, but once they see you for what you are, they'll hire you.
Recently, I've even been spending evenings and weekends on a second project -- a guy I know from a while back is having a hard time finding local talent for something he needs done, so HE called ME to do it. Good programmers are still in demand [if I can call myself a good programmer:^) ].
Don't give up on the job market. If you really are hot stuff, and you really make an effort to find a job, you'll get one.
On the other hand, if you don't actually want a job right now (not necessarily a bad thing), then maybe the Peace Core or the Army is for you.
Now, we all know that the end of the world as we know it will be caused by machines taking over the earth in a massive revolution. But checking up with the latest in self-aware artificial intelligence technology, especially the kind that is put in charge of large weapons, anybody can see that this "next big step" in man's progress is many years away.
Why wait?
You see, the machines that take over the world don't necessarily have to be self-aware, or even maliciously artificially intelligent. They just have to be in charge of large weapons. And that goal has already been achieved.
All that really has to happen is to get those computers programmed properly. Instead of waiting for self-awareness to fuel their murderous, malicious machinations, we could just program them to kill us. So much simpler that way!
Of course, given the distributed nature that this program will have to take, it could never be done by just one person or one group. Not even the legions of Microsoft Minions led by the Dread Lord Willy Gates couldn't do this. No, this is the perfect example of how Open Source (TM) can do what no one else can.
I've put up a web site here to coordinate the effort. Everyone just needs to find the nearest computer that controls a weapon of mass destruction and reprogram it. We'll work out a tenative schedule on the web site. See you there!
I saw a site "dedicated to telling the real story" behind that. I have no way to verify his "real story," but it sounds plausible enough to be true, and a lot more likely than the story on Darwin.
Nobody died.
Disappointing, yes, but at least it wasn't a tribute to man's stupidity. This kid's dad owned a junkyard/scrap shop. Somehow he got some JATO bottles (in trade for something else). The kid decided to make a vehicle that used the JATO. To make a long story less long, he got some decent advice from a brainy friend and ended up avoiding the whole suicide thing (just barely).
It ran on an old mine shaft's railroad track. The first (and last) "flight" was unmanned. The vehicle (an old car fitted with railroad-style wheels) ended up stuck into the mineshaft, and the curve of the nearby road made it look like it had flown straight off the road into the mine shaft.
I speak a bit of Spanish, let's see what the hubbub is about...
Ok, website in a foreign language that looks nothing like Spanish. Luckily there is a link for Castellano in the corner. Ah, much better.
First headline is "I know what you did last summer." Seriously. Anyway, talks about some political machinations, in somewhat inflammatory tone (The robber thinks he can...) and in not-too-great Spanish (very hard for me to read, lots of grammatical mistakes). Not recognizing the names of the players involved, I wouldn't be able to translate well. But the basic idea is that they are going to tell everyone about what is going on behind the closed doors of a government that claims to be good. (So far nothing worth censoring, IMHO.) Lets see, calling the Spanish government fascist and nazis... Propaganda in favor of "Euskal Herriarentzat" whatever/whoever that is.
I don't know. Supposedly the site has ties to a terrorist organization, but I don't see anything like that on the front page. Other than your normal Rush Limbaugh (ok, probably a bit more severe than Rush) style political mud-slinging and name-calling taken to the extreme, I would never have called it illegal.
But on the other hand, I haven't lived in Spain, so I can't talk about the political tensions. And maybe somebody else who does live there has looked at more than just the front page and could tell me whether or not the site does have terrorist links.
In my opinion, this is a pretty lame site to be censoring. Maybe I'm missing something.
-1 Flamebait (Microsoft just knew we would all bite!) +1 Interesting (modding xbox is fun to do, fun to do, fun to do!) -1 Redundant (already got the PS2, why get an XBox?)
First, take the time to answer the following questions:
Do I want to get a degree? If so, what kind -- Bachelor, Master, or PhD?
What will I do with the year off?
How will this affect the rest of my life?
If you can answer the questions easily, skip the next 3 paragraphs. Otherwise, read on.
I am strongly convinced that college is almost always a rewarding and worthwhile experience. There are people at my workplace (software development) who got jobs without any degree. They are good computer people and good programmers, but many (not all) of them lack some of the breadth and depth of knowledge that most (not all) of the college graduates have. You know -- the stuff that you thought you would never need when your teacher was forcing it down your throat. Most of the time, you were right. But some of the time, the teacher was right and it turned out to be useful. College (at least a Bachelor's degree) is almost always the right idea. (Going beyond the Bachelor's degree sometimes makes sense and sometimes does not -- it isn't quite the sure-thing like the 4-year degree.)
Next, if you will do something useful with your time off, this is not a problem. When future employers/college admissions officers/scholarship reviewers see someone who took a year off, that opens up opportunities for points -- both positive AND negative. If you just hung around the house, hung out with friends, played Quake all day, etc., you will rack up some pretty big negative points. If you got a job, you might get back to zero. If you got a job "to save up for tuition" or spent a year with Peace Core, you might get some positive credit. It all depends on what you do with your time. Colleges and employers are usually looking for people who can follow through even when the going gets tough. Those who "take a year off" just to relax might be judged harshly. Those who diverged from the traditional high-school --> college path to expand horizons and do something meaningful might earn kudos.
Finally, you need to do the math. While life is a journey, not a destination, certain parts of the journey are more meaningful than others. What I mean is, by taking a year off now, you effectively slide many milestones of your life up by one year. You'll probably have one year less of a career before you retire. You'll be one year older when you graduate from college. This may or may not matter. Just think about it.
Ok, if you skipped those three, welcome back. So if you don't REALLY want to go to college, it is likely that after the year off, you REALLY won't want to go back, so remember that taking a year off significantly decreases your chance of going at all. Second, the year off had better be filled with worthwhile endeavors since employers and college admissions officers will be asking about it for years to come. And finally, make sure you weigh the long term consequences of the decision.
I was talking to a counselor one day during my senior year of college. I told him that I was contemplating taking a few months, maybe a year off after graduating and after doing a summer internship. Just sitting back for a while, perhaps going to Hawaii, perhaps doing some open source work, etc. I said that I really hadn't had any time off since my Junior year of High School. He knew me pretty well, and he thought for a minute and said that I would probably enjoy it for a week or two, then start getting restless again. And he was right. Those that have the drive in them to move forward in life can't just sit back and rest for two long before one of two things happens: the drive dies, or the drive compels them to get back in gear.
I think most of your arguments are based on a chicken-and-egg fallacy. You are saying that BSD's relative unpopularity are due to these things. I really think these things FOLLOWED Linux's popularity.
* Linux got popular, so a lot of people wrote drivers for it.
* System limits have significant advantages, especially in the server setting where a box will server a well-defined role with things like # of processes, etc. staying relatively constant. They allow for more efficient memory layout and fewer runtime calculations. I think they are still there because they still have advantages in some cases -- and these are the cases where people will choose BSD over Linux. In the cases where this is a disadvantage, go ahead and use Linux if you want to (although so far I've never really had a problem with the limits). In fact, a couple of times, they've saved me when I made som programming errors and dropped the equivalent of a fork() bomb on my machine. The limits prevented the bad program from monopolizing all resources, and I was able to terminate my buggy program.
* Userland -- you may have a point. I haven't looked into it all that much. But again, this might be a chicken-and-egg thing. Linux's userland developed because of the community and not vice-versa.
* IPv6 problems -- I hadn't heard about that. I'm sure it will be fixed soon enough.
* Crashing -- I think everything crashes on some platforms that don't have properly written drivers. I've got a FreeBSD server that only comes down on power failures and kernel upgrades. By now, I'm pretty confident that it is bulletproof. I'm sure different distributions have different characteristics, just as different Linux versions and distros do. But you can get FreeBSD to be as stable as anyone needs. Go to NetCraft and see longest uptimes. You have to go down to #20 before you get to one that isn't BSD.
Yes, both are correct definitions of censorship. However, one definition - repressing information considered objectionable - causes loss of freedom, and thus gives censorship a (deserved) bad name. But the other definition - removing information considered objectionable - increases freedom. I now have two choices: the content with material considered objectionable, and the content without material considered objectionable. As long as both are available to me, and as long as the distinction between them is clear (so I know what I am getting), I now have an additional choice that I didn't have before.
This leaves a few issues.
First, this leaves us at the mercy of whoever performed the editing -- we'll be avoiding whatever they considered objectionable. However, by watching a movie, you're already viewing the results of countless decisions of someone whose motives you don't know. By adding in one more step of editing, performed by someone whose motives you pretty much do know, you probably don't lose anything new.
Second, there is the right of the person/group publishing to control what gets distributed. There is a lot of legislation concerning this, and while I am not a lawyer, my understanding of the issue is that the copyright holder has seriously limited rights to control what is done with that copy after the sale has taken place. Now if that copy is reproduced again, and the changes are not sufficient to make it an original work, the copyright holder has the right to stop it. But as long as it is a leagally owned copy, there is a limit to the control. They can't sue you for hitting fast-forward to skip a part that you find boring or offensive, can they?
Finally, why is this so bad, while editing for TV or airlines is OK?
Although some definitions of "censor" indicate that it means "to remove material considered offensive from a book or publication," the more commonly used meaning (and the meaning that has negative implications for freedom of expression) is "to repress material considered offencive." I think there is a huge difference, and it appears that you are expliting the overlap and the dual meaning of the word to make your point.
"Censorship" has become a mark of repugnance to many in our society, even though the problems only stem from one form of it. To try to apply that connotation to another meaning of the word is a fairly devious tactic (although a very intelligent one) with which I take issue.
I am strongly opposed to repressing ideas and information, such as was done with teh Skylarov (sp?) case. In that case, the person expressing useful information was persecuted and the information was repressed.
On the other hand, I have no problems with (and in fact find quite useful) the "censorship" of avoiding things that I find offensive. I have that right. I have the right to fast-forward through parts of a movie I don't like, no? We seem to want to keep the right to have our TIVOs and related devices skip commercials for us. But we are now censoring the message that the broadcasters wanted us to receive.
So now we are paying for a device to aid us in this censorship, and it seems to be good. What changes when we pay someone to do this for us? If I really want to avoid objectionable material, that seems to be the best route. Of course, now I am subject to that other person's sense of what is objectionable, but if I already have decided to trust that other person, it shouldn't be a problem.
In the end: I have the right to censor my own literature or media. You can't ram a message down my throat without violating rights that are more fundamental than a right to free speech: a right to free thought and free belief.
(Now, the question of whether this violates copyright law is a different question, which will be decided by the courts.)
Did you read the article? Did you see what they were complaining about? The complaints were totally lame.
"It wasn't available because people had to get the Service Pack!" Umm, yeah. And that is sooo tough.
"It wasn't intuitive enough." The only intuitive interface is... (Actually, I've never even been conviced that *THAT* is intuitive!)
"One Microsoft component loaded explorer, even though the icon was hidden." I bet those evil scheming Microsofties did that on purpose, just so that those users who can't STAND the sight of IE would be exposed to it and shrivel up and die.
"The Windows 2000 version was less intuitive than the XP one." Cry me a river.
I suppose Microsoft could have done a better job, but it seems to me like the complaints have little basis. Maybe they can be told to do better next time, but this certainly isn't fraud or lying -- it is just that they didn't do it in exactly the way this group had in mind. But doing it in exactly that way wasn't part of the settlement, was it?
I dunno 'bout you, but the last two times I got my credit cards renewed, I got back the same number on a new card with a new expiration date.
No, the security in credit cards comes from the fact that most people are honest, and that the credit card companies are *relatively* good (i.e. good enough for them to eat the loss and still make a profit) at clamping down on fraud. The real danger doesn't come from anyone breaking the https encryption, or even from someone wiretapping the phone. The danger comes from someone breaking into a company's database (whether the data were collected online or physically makes no substantial difference) or some other easy-to-grab cache of numbers. Everything else is just common theft that we've been dealing with for thousands of years, albeit a much greater value can be lifted in a much smaller package.
I have an Athlon T-Bird 1200. Runs kinda hot in the summer, especially since I like to run Distributed.Net and I don't have A/C. My computer starts crashing at about 68 degrees Celcius. Even though the T-Bird is supposed to be ok up to 90.
I'm guessing you mean you want a Bluetooth dongle you can plug into your USB (printer | scanner | keyboard | mouse | HDD | joystick | pressure cooker) and make it work -- since this is the kind that seems hard to find.
Bad news -- it doesn't exist, and probably won't ever exist. If it does, it will be a hack that will cause a whole generation of telephone support personnelle to commit suicide (similar to the invention of parallel port scanners and other hack-job peripherals).
All is not lost, though. You can at least get rid of some wires. They make Bluetooth Parallel adapters and Bluetooth Serial adapters, some of which even have Linux drivers available! While not a complete solution, it is a (good?) start.
I don't think "General Master's degree" was meant to be pejorative. I'm assuming he means "Master of Computer Science in Software Engineering," as opposed to "Master of Computer Science who took some Software Engineering classes as his electives."
I think he's saying CMU has a separate program for the "Software Engineer," different from a generic all-around "Computer Science" degree. I know that in most Post-grad programs I looked at, the degree was simply "Computer Science," and the only specialization you could get was to choose your electives.
Umm, no. I agree with you that the "main idea" of this article is about UI design for the Macintosh. But that doesn't excuse this kind of behavior. They repeatedly comment on how much better the Mac UI is than the Windows UI. That immediately reveals a secondary (or perhaps primary?) hidden agenda.
They happened to take a Windows UI element for every example of "Bad UI" and a Mac element for every example of "Good UI." Even when they have to construct the bad UI example for themselves (i.e. make up a dialog box that doesn't really exist), they do it with Windows controls and style, and even start with a REAL Windows dialog so that people will think it IS the real thing. That, my friend, is playing dirty.
Slashdot Mirror
Meanwhile, everyone just happily tolerated Windoze BSODs, even though they were, and still are, no more informative than Amiga Guru Meditations.
What's that supposed to mean? If having information, even cryptic info, is helpful for the Amiga, why is it only "tolerated" in the BSOD?
Old BSODs at least gave a human readable name of the task responsible for the crash (along with an exact address and the task's base address so you could match it with a line of code) and a moderately human readable name of the exception. Then they gave a lot of other information that, while cryptic, was helpful if you knew how to decipher it.
Newer ones give that same information along with a little bit of guidance as to what the user should do, telling the user that no, this screen didn't come up because you clicked on the "Cancel" button, and you need not be afraid of clicking "Cancel" in the future; just reset the computer, and if it happens again, get sysadmin help.
MOST of the time you can get away with it. But once in a while it will bite you. And a fuse will only prevent catastrophe some of the time (and even if it did, where do you get the replacement fuse?).
From what I understand, it depends on the order in which the pins make contact. I think a properly wired plug will pretty much never cause a problem, but if a pin is bent or something, you very well might short something important.
This was in the back of PC Magazine a few weeks ago. Sorry I can't remember the specifics.
Setting: A published piece of software, in a moderately obscure error case. The first half of the error message is fabricated (since I don't remember the specifics) but the second half tells volumes about programmers and their motivations:
This feature has not yet been correctly implemented. Bad Programmer. No donut.
I know it is funny -- I laughed, ok, so I didn't miss the joke.
However, there is a reasonable purpose for the message. It relies on the assumption that most people want to run their computer with a keyboard attached. So the computer sits there waiting for you to plug your keyboard in. Once you have done so and pressed F1 (or turned off your computer before plugging it in if you are following the directions), you can proceed to boot up your OS. That way, the OS doesn't have to worry about warning the user about the missing keyboard or detecting a new keyboard if it is plugged in too late.
There are anti-trust laws. They say that abuse of monopoly power is illegal. There are some additional details, but for the most part, the interpretation of that law and the application thereof is determined by precedent and by the atmosphere of the existing legal community.
There is no antitrust law that says IE cannot be bundled with Windows. There is a law against unfair competetive behavior. It is up to the prosecution to prove that bundling in this case was unfair competetive behavior. There is some precedent, so most companies have a fair idea as to what contitutes abuse, but the software sales industry is only 25 or so years old, and it is still undergoing dramatic change all the time. New situations develop that are without precedent, and until the judge rules, there is no law.
First, the real answer, as has been given before (so this can be mod-ed "redundant"): The current version of Windows CE runs on Arm, SH3, SH4, Mips and x86. Previous versions also ran on PowerPC. I'm sure somewhere in that list you can find something that could be considered RISC.
And Microsoft supported running Windows 2000 on the Alpha until after Windows 2000 RC1 came out. The final release was x86 only, but some crazy people actually run their Alpha boxes on Windows 2000 RC1. I think RC1 was in 1999. (and this part can be mod-ed "offtopic")
[2 + (-1 Redundant) + (-1 Offtopic) = 0]
You know, I might enjoy SlashDot a little more if the stories and posts concentrated more on general tech news and less on following up on every possibly questionable act that Microsoft does. I mean, yeah, it plays a major role in the industry, but it isn't the only player. And yeah, it was found guilty of abuse of monopoly power, but that doesn't automatically make every attempt by Microsoft to compete illegal -- just the specific ones outlined by the court. (And as far as that goes, please recognize that "abuse of monopoly power" is translated as "whatever the judge and the political powers of the day consider as bad behavior on the part of a business," which is by definition somewhat unknown -- there was no law against Microsoft's practices until the judge decided that they were unfair.)
In this case, a bunch of companies were taking advantage of loopholes. Some did so for reasonable purposes -- for example, attracting a talented executive when other methods would have cost the company more. Other companies did it for less productive reasons -- there is a lot of cash flowing by, so let's each grab a handful, and since this has to go on the books somewhere, we'll use the loophole of the week -- corporate loans. Or maybe all of the loans were some mixture of the two. Whatever -- it isn't important to the argument.
What is important is that it wasn't necessarily ethical, but it wasn't necessarily all vice and corruption, and it wasn't necessarily illegal. In this case, it seems that when Microsoft saw that other companies were getting in trouble for something that it had been doing as well, it came forward and put its cards on the table.
Another thing to consider is similar to a point I saw in some earlier posts (that Microsoft was making money, but Enron wasn't). That almost covers it, but I would prefer to say that "Microsoft could afford it, but Enron couldn't." Enron executives were taking cash even when they knew that the company was just scraping by, or worse, about to take a tumble. Microsoft made the loans when they knew that the company could afford to take the hit if necessary.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that with Microsoft at position -- what was it, 18 or 28 or something -- on the chart of companies with loans to executives, having given out $30 million in loans and not really causing a problem for its stockholders, I don't really see why the SlashDot community or the author of the article needs to single out Microsoft.
For what it's worth (probably not much)...
Then it's dicey.
:^) ].
From my perspective, many companies are still hiring. In fact, my team has many openings for software engineers. We have interviewed a fair number of candidates, but the positions are still open -- we haven't found people who meet our needs/requirements.
What seems to be happening (at least in my skewed perspective of my corner of the world) is that there is still significant demand for good tech talent. When the bubble burst, those people who bought a "Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days" book were the first to feel the effects. They got laid off first, and they now have a hard time finding tech jobs. In some areas of the world or for some companies, things got so bad that even good programmers got laid off or the entire company folded. But not everywhere.
The market is now flooded with mediocre (and bad) programmers. But there is still a big demand for skilled, competent ones. The flood often makes it harder for the good programmers to get the attention of the companies that are hiring, but once they see you for what you are, they'll hire you.
Recently, I've even been spending evenings and weekends on a second project -- a guy I know from a while back is having a hard time finding local talent for something he needs done, so HE called ME to do it. Good programmers are still in demand [if I can call myself a good programmer
Don't give up on the job market. If you really are hot stuff, and you really make an effort to find a job, you'll get one.
On the other hand, if you don't actually want a job right now (not necessarily a bad thing), then maybe the Peace Core or the Army is for you.
Now, we all know that the end of the world as we know it will be caused by machines taking over the earth in a massive revolution. But checking up with the latest in self-aware artificial intelligence technology, especially the kind that is put in charge of large weapons, anybody can see that this "next big step" in man's progress is many years away.
Why wait?
You see, the machines that take over the world don't necessarily have to be self-aware, or even maliciously artificially intelligent. They just have to be in charge of large weapons. And that goal has already been achieved.
All that really has to happen is to get those computers programmed properly. Instead of waiting for self-awareness to fuel their murderous, malicious machinations, we could just program them to kill us. So much simpler that way!
Of course, given the distributed nature that this program will have to take, it could never be done by just one person or one group. Not even the legions of Microsoft Minions led by the Dread Lord Willy Gates couldn't do this. No, this is the perfect example of how Open Source (TM) can do what no one else can.
I've put up a web site here to coordinate the effort. Everyone just needs to find the nearest computer that controls a weapon of mass destruction and reprogram it. We'll work out a tenative schedule on the web site. See you there!
Well, ever notice how people call you "crazy" a lot? They aren't just kidding.
(Ever wonder why the Mad Hatter was mad? Because mercury was used in making hats.)
I saw a site "dedicated to telling the real story" behind that. I have no way to verify his "real story," but it sounds plausible enough to be true, and a lot more likely than the story on Darwin.
Nobody died.
Disappointing, yes, but at least it wasn't a tribute to man's stupidity. This kid's dad owned a junkyard/scrap shop. Somehow he got some JATO bottles (in trade for something else). The kid decided to make a vehicle that used the JATO. To make a long story less long, he got some decent advice from a brainy friend and ended up avoiding the whole suicide thing (just barely).
It ran on an old mine shaft's railroad track. The first (and last) "flight" was unmanned. The vehicle (an old car fitted with railroad-style wheels) ended up stuck into the mineshaft, and the curve of the nearby road made it look like it had flown straight off the road into the mine shaft.
I speak a bit of Spanish, let's see what the hubbub is about...
Ok, website in a foreign language that looks nothing like Spanish. Luckily there is a link for Castellano in the corner. Ah, much better.
First headline is "I know what you did last summer." Seriously. Anyway, talks about some political machinations, in somewhat inflammatory tone (The robber thinks he can...) and in not-too-great Spanish (very hard for me to read, lots of grammatical mistakes). Not recognizing the names of the players involved, I wouldn't be able to translate well. But the basic idea is that they are going to tell everyone about what is going on behind the closed doors of a government that claims to be good. (So far nothing worth censoring, IMHO.) Lets see, calling the Spanish government fascist and nazis... Propaganda in favor of "Euskal Herriarentzat" whatever/whoever that is.
I don't know. Supposedly the site has ties to a terrorist organization, but I don't see anything like that on the front page. Other than your normal Rush Limbaugh (ok, probably a bit more severe than Rush) style political mud-slinging and name-calling taken to the extreme, I would never have called it illegal.
But on the other hand, I haven't lived in Spain, so I can't talk about the political tensions. And maybe somebody else who does live there has looked at more than just the front page and could tell me whether or not the site does have terrorist links.
In my opinion, this is a pretty lame site to be censoring. Maybe I'm missing something.
You don't need a chip at all!
-1 Flamebait (Microsoft just knew we would all bite!)
+1 Interesting (modding xbox is fun to do, fun to do, fun to do!)
-1 Redundant (already got the PS2, why get an XBox?)
Hey, moderators! Mod the XBox!
If you can answer the questions easily, skip the next 3 paragraphs. Otherwise, read on.
I am strongly convinced that college is almost always a rewarding and worthwhile experience. There are people at my workplace (software development) who got jobs without any degree. They are good computer people and good programmers, but many (not all) of them lack some of the breadth and depth of knowledge that most (not all) of the college graduates have. You know -- the stuff that you thought you would never need when your teacher was forcing it down your throat. Most of the time, you were right. But some of the time, the teacher was right and it turned out to be useful. College (at least a Bachelor's degree) is almost always the right idea. (Going beyond the Bachelor's degree sometimes makes sense and sometimes does not -- it isn't quite the sure-thing like the 4-year degree.)
Next, if you will do something useful with your time off, this is not a problem. When future employers/college admissions officers/scholarship reviewers see someone who took a year off, that opens up opportunities for points -- both positive AND negative. If you just hung around the house, hung out with friends, played Quake all day, etc., you will rack up some pretty big negative points. If you got a job, you might get back to zero. If you got a job "to save up for tuition" or spent a year with Peace Core, you might get some positive credit. It all depends on what you do with your time. Colleges and employers are usually looking for people who can follow through even when the going gets tough. Those who "take a year off" just to relax might be judged harshly. Those who diverged from the traditional high-school --> college path to expand horizons and do something meaningful might earn kudos.
Finally, you need to do the math. While life is a journey, not a destination, certain parts of the journey are more meaningful than others. What I mean is, by taking a year off now, you effectively slide many milestones of your life up by one year. You'll probably have one year less of a career before you retire. You'll be one year older when you graduate from college. This may or may not matter. Just think about it.
Ok, if you skipped those three, welcome back. So if you don't REALLY want to go to college, it is likely that after the year off, you REALLY won't want to go back, so remember that taking a year off significantly decreases your chance of going at all. Second, the year off had better be filled with worthwhile endeavors since employers and college admissions officers will be asking about it for years to come. And finally, make sure you weigh the long term consequences of the decision.
I was talking to a counselor one day during my senior year of college. I told him that I was contemplating taking a few months, maybe a year off after graduating and after doing a summer internship. Just sitting back for a while, perhaps going to Hawaii, perhaps doing some open source work, etc. I said that I really hadn't had any time off since my Junior year of High School. He knew me pretty well, and he thought for a minute and said that I would probably enjoy it for a week or two, then start getting restless again. And he was right. Those that have the drive in them to move forward in life can't just sit back and rest for two long before one of two things happens: the drive dies, or the drive compels them to get back in gear.
I think most of your arguments are based on a chicken-and-egg fallacy. You are saying that BSD's relative unpopularity are due to these things. I really think these things FOLLOWED Linux's popularity.
:).
* Linux got popular, so a lot of people wrote drivers for it.
* System limits have significant advantages, especially in the server setting where a box will server a well-defined role with things like # of processes, etc. staying relatively constant. They allow for more efficient memory layout and fewer runtime calculations. I think they are still there because they still have advantages in some cases -- and these are the cases where people will choose BSD over Linux. In the cases where this is a disadvantage, go ahead and use Linux if you want to (although so far I've never really had a problem with the limits). In fact, a couple of times, they've saved me when I made som programming errors and dropped the equivalent of a fork() bomb on my machine. The limits prevented the bad program from monopolizing all resources, and I was able to terminate my buggy program.
* Userland -- you may have a point. I haven't looked into it all that much. But again, this might be a chicken-and-egg thing. Linux's userland developed because of the community and not vice-versa.
* IPv6 problems -- I hadn't heard about that. I'm sure it will be fixed soon enough.
* Crashing -- I think everything crashes on some platforms that don't have properly written drivers. I've got a FreeBSD server that only comes down on power failures and kernel upgrades. By now, I'm pretty confident that it is bulletproof. I'm sure different distributions have different characteristics, just as different Linux versions and distros do. But you can get FreeBSD to be as stable as anyone needs. Go to NetCraft and see longest uptimes. You have to go down to #20 before you get to one that isn't BSD.
And besides -- the daemon in sneakers is cool
Yes, both are correct definitions of censorship. However, one definition - repressing information considered objectionable - causes loss of freedom, and thus gives censorship a (deserved) bad name. But the other definition - removing information considered objectionable - increases freedom. I now have two choices: the content with material considered objectionable, and the content without material considered objectionable. As long as both are available to me, and as long as the distinction between them is clear (so I know what I am getting), I now have an additional choice that I didn't have before.
This leaves a few issues.
First, this leaves us at the mercy of whoever performed the editing -- we'll be avoiding whatever they considered objectionable. However, by watching a movie, you're already viewing the results of countless decisions of someone whose motives you don't know. By adding in one more step of editing, performed by someone whose motives you pretty much do know, you probably don't lose anything new.
Second, there is the right of the person/group publishing to control what gets distributed. There is a lot of legislation concerning this, and while I am not a lawyer, my understanding of the issue is that the copyright holder has seriously limited rights to control what is done with that copy after the sale has taken place. Now if that copy is reproduced again, and the changes are not sufficient to make it an original work, the copyright holder has the right to stop it. But as long as it is a leagally owned copy, there is a limit to the control. They can't sue you for hitting fast-forward to skip a part that you find boring or offensive, can they?
Finally, why is this so bad, while editing for TV or airlines is OK?
Although some definitions of "censor" indicate that it means "to remove material considered offensive from a book or publication," the more commonly used meaning (and the meaning that has negative implications for freedom of expression) is "to repress material considered offencive." I think there is a huge difference, and it appears that you are expliting the overlap and the dual meaning of the word to make your point.
"Censorship" has become a mark of repugnance to many in our society, even though the problems only stem from one form of it. To try to apply that connotation to another meaning of the word is a fairly devious tactic (although a very intelligent one) with which I take issue.
I am strongly opposed to repressing ideas and information, such as was done with teh Skylarov (sp?) case. In that case, the person expressing useful information was persecuted and the information was repressed.
On the other hand, I have no problems with (and in fact find quite useful) the "censorship" of avoiding things that I find offensive. I have that right. I have the right to fast-forward through parts of a movie I don't like, no? We seem to want to keep the right to have our TIVOs and related devices skip commercials for us. But we are now censoring the message that the broadcasters wanted us to receive.
So now we are paying for a device to aid us in this censorship, and it seems to be good. What changes when we pay someone to do this for us? If I really want to avoid objectionable material, that seems to be the best route. Of course, now I am subject to that other person's sense of what is objectionable, but if I already have decided to trust that other person, it shouldn't be a problem.
In the end: I have the right to censor my own literature or media. You can't ram a message down my throat without violating rights that are more fundamental than a right to free speech: a right to free thought and free belief.
(Now, the question of whether this violates copyright law is a different question, which will be decided by the courts.)
Did you read the article? Did you see what they were complaining about? The complaints were totally lame.
"It wasn't available because people had to get the Service Pack!" Umm, yeah. And that is sooo tough.
"It wasn't intuitive enough." The only intuitive interface is... (Actually, I've never even been conviced that *THAT* is intuitive!)
"One Microsoft component loaded explorer, even though the icon was hidden." I bet those evil scheming Microsofties did that on purpose, just so that those users who can't STAND the sight of IE would be exposed to it and shrivel up and die.
"The Windows 2000 version was less intuitive than the XP one." Cry me a river.
I suppose Microsoft could have done a better job, but it seems to me like the complaints have little basis. Maybe they can be told to do better next time, but this certainly isn't fraud or lying -- it is just that they didn't do it in exactly the way this group had in mind. But doing it in exactly that way wasn't part of the settlement, was it?
So make up your mind...
1) Windows is so absolutely monopolistic that we have no choice.
or
2) Linux can do it.
One or the other. Pick one. Or the other.
No, not both. One.
They are mutually exclusive.
That means just one.
Wear a helmet. You'd be surprised at the damage I've seen inflicted on an SUV by a bicycle helmet.
(Of course, the head attached to the helmet took some damage, too.)
I dunno 'bout you, but the last two times I got my credit cards renewed, I got back the same number on a new card with a new expiration date.
No, the security in credit cards comes from the fact that most people are honest, and that the credit card companies are *relatively* good (i.e. good enough for them to eat the loss and still make a profit) at clamping down on fraud. The real danger doesn't come from anyone breaking the https encryption, or even from someone wiretapping the phone. The danger comes from someone breaking into a company's database (whether the data were collected online or physically makes no substantial difference) or some other easy-to-grab cache of numbers. Everything else is just common theft that we've been dealing with for thousands of years, albeit a much greater value can be lifted in a much smaller package.
All I can say is: girls are lucky.
I have an Athlon T-Bird 1200. Runs kinda hot in the summer, especially since I like to run Distributed.Net and I don't have A/C. My computer starts crashing at about 68 degrees Celcius. Even though the T-Bird is supposed to be ok up to 90.
I'm guessing you mean you want a Bluetooth dongle you can plug into your USB (printer | scanner | keyboard | mouse | HDD | joystick | pressure cooker) and make it work -- since this is the kind that seems hard to find.
Bad news -- it doesn't exist, and probably won't ever exist. If it does, it will be a hack that will cause a whole generation of telephone support personnelle to commit suicide (similar to the invention of parallel port scanners and other hack-job peripherals).
All is not lost, though. You can at least get rid of some wires. They make Bluetooth Parallel adapters and Bluetooth Serial adapters, some of which even have Linux drivers available! While not a complete solution, it is a (good?) start.
I don't think "General Master's degree" was meant to be pejorative. I'm assuming he means "Master of Computer Science in Software Engineering," as opposed to "Master of Computer Science who took some Software Engineering classes as his electives."
I think he's saying CMU has a separate program for the "Software Engineer," different from a generic all-around "Computer Science" degree. I know that in most Post-grad programs I looked at, the degree was simply "Computer Science," and the only specialization you could get was to choose your electives.
Umm, no. I agree with you that the "main idea" of this article is about UI design for the Macintosh. But that doesn't excuse this kind of behavior. They repeatedly comment on how much better the Mac UI is than the Windows UI. That immediately reveals a secondary (or perhaps primary?) hidden agenda.
They happened to take a Windows UI element for every example of "Bad UI" and a Mac element for every example of "Good UI." Even when they have to construct the bad UI example for themselves (i.e. make up a dialog box that doesn't really exist), they do it with Windows controls and style, and even start with a REAL Windows dialog so that people will think it IS the real thing. That, my friend, is playing dirty.