"That information is available for me, as a technical user, if I want it"
Really? I'm a technical user, yet I have no idea where to find additional information as to why MS Word has encountered an error and needs to close. A simple "click here to view the logfile" is easily ignored by non-technical users but actually lets an advanced user figure out wtf just happened.
That would be true if there wasn't a shwack of other costs associated with each unit in addition to the cost of the parts. It costs money to build factories, ship units, print packaging, do quality control testing, etc etc. Unless Sony has also managed to make all of those things cheaper, I would bet they still aren't actually making a profit on each PS3 sold.
That said, Sony may still decide to drop the price to encourage sales now that the holiday shopping season is behind them.
You mean like "shoulder buttons" that have been on console controllers and handhelds since at least the PS1?
Re:No native OS X support?
on
GIMP 2.6 Released
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· Score: 3, Informative
I would tell you that, no, you should not install the Gimp if those are your requirements. Congratulations, you're free to use whatever fits your actual needs! However, the Gimp does fit my requirements and plenty of other people's, so kindly stop bashing it and go quietly use whatever your tool of choice is instead. Thank you.
I run linux on a laptop. Boot and shutdown times are very important when you want to start using the computer *right now* to google something/show someone a picture/remote into a server and restart apache/etc. Or in a server environment, if I do have to reboot a server, I want it to come back up as fast as possible to minimize downtime and to confirm that it's not stalled at a console prompt. Reducing perceived boot time is critical to linux' success on the desktop, and doesn't hurt at all in a server setting.
This game isn't from Sony. SecuROM comes in many, many flavours and has been used on many, many games over the years. Sony used a version that was a rootkit *once*, which is not at all the same DRM method that is used in Spore.
So, in order to play this game without a rootkit being installed: 1) purchase Spore. 2) install it. 3) play the game.
If you have problems with how the DRM in spore actually behaves, that's fine. I can't prove to you that there isn't a rootkit, but I also can't prove to you that it won't give you AIDS. At some point, you have to accept that the DRM works as advertised by EA, specifically a "one time online authentication":
Java and C#? When I started writing web apps, we had C and the CGI spec. Your new-fangled languages don't bring anything new to the table, they're just marketing buzzwords!
"Let the browser handle the View. Let the Controller exist somewhere else, independent of the presentation layer.'"
Has the author ever actually developed a web app? Javascript may be doing things like fetching data and sorting lists, but I have never seen a real application that had sufficient non-display javascript to justify splitting it into a MVC pattern. Despite the fact that we have heavyweight JS frameworks like JQuery and mootools, those are still spending their time rendering the view.
Have you ever actually tried using SQLite for any level of concurrency? It works great for single-user applications, but has massive locking failures if you try using it for a website that actually gets used. I tried it once, then switched the project to mysql.
I would strongly suggest that you do the following instead:
if (foo) { // block of code } else { // other block of code }
The reason being that I can look at either the start or the end brace, and simultaneously see the matching brace without having to scan sideways or otherwise dig through extra code. Or if I wanted to change the else to an elseif, I could just move to the end of that line start typing, without worrying about having to go back 2 characters or otherwise avoid clobbering the brace.
To take the example further, let's say the block originally looked like:
if (x > 2) { // do stuff } else { // do other stuff }
And Joe Newbie changes it to:
if (x > 2) { // do stuff } elseif (x > 3) // do other stuff }
Spot the bug. Putting the braces on their own lines prevents this sort of stupid mistake (and it *is* stupid, I agree, but it is also common). Sure, it's not that hard to find/fix once you hit compile, but wouldn't you rather be spending your time tracking down the interesting bugs than dealing with stupid bugs like this?
Density is the opposite of readable and maintainable. One of the main aspects of maintainable code is being able to find and change a single line of code quickly and without having to worry about breaking other nearby lines. Having more code per line means it takes that little bit longer to find and is that little bit riskier to change the one line of code. "Lost" in this case is only a minor delay, but when you add that delay up across several thousand bugs (i.e. any project in the Real World), it means you are wasting your time tracking down bugs in dense code rather than adding new features or working on other projects.
Pop quiz: find and remove the bracketed clause in the above paragraph. Then think about how much faster you would have done that if it had been on its own line. Then think about how much faster you could have done that to 100 different paragraphs. It may not make a difference on the projects you work on, but in something the size of a perl interpreter or a web browser, it makes a huge difference.
RoR is (was?) popular because it brought a lot of great ideas to the table, with a decent implementation. Those ideas have by now been stolen/copied by several other frameworks in your language of choice.
At my company, we have switching from legacy/inhouse PHP to cakePHP for new projects, and the fact of using a decent/modern MVC framework has already more than paid for the learning curve by saving weeks of development time.
Not only is it now possible to hire people who know the specific framework that we're using, but I know that the development patterns I'm using now can easily be transferred to any of the other Rails-knockoff frameworks, even across languages.
Or the fact that the "refresh" button is completely separate from the other buttons and there's no way to move it? Or that it takes a registry hack to get the menu bar to show up where it belongs? Or the fact that you *still* can't delete cookies for just certain sites?
IE7's UI is several huge steps backwards, for no apparent reason. Their rendering engine is marginally improved, but Firefox is *definitely* the better browser as far as usability goes.
A. Because it breaks the logical order of conversation. Q. Why is top posting bad?
Seriously, reply *after* the relevant bits of what you are replying to, and remove the rest. Your emails will be far shorter, they will make sense when you read through them much later, and you will no longer be fighting the email program.
"Most people" prefer top posting because that's what Outlook does, not because it's practical, readable, or efficient.
Note that playing DVDs and mp3s is a one-click operation in Ubuntu, thanks to their restricted-drivers stuff and the way their codecs can be installed. Linux can't *ship* the necessary codecs, but they are extremely easy to get installed within the first 5 minutes of using the computer.
This is news because the chroot and sftp server are now built in to the openssh binaries, so you don't have to manually set up the chroot. While there's no GUI, it is in fact now easier to set up such a thing.
I've muddled through over the years, mostly by looking at what actual graphic designers have done and trying to learn their techniques. A few things to remember:
* a boring design is better than an ugly one. Don't try too hard. * learn about negative space, colour theory, and usability. There's generally math behind them that you can learn and use. * go find some attractive sites, try to figure out 2 or 3 elements that you like, and try to copy them. * don't be afraid to rip off other sites; generally by the time you're done tweaking, your design won't look anything like the original. (Just don't steal their actual images or code) * HTML naturally leads to boxy layouts; that's okay! Don't mangle your HTML trying to avoid it; you can de-boxify with CSS and images. * find an artist friend and get them to critique your design; a few offhand comments from them can save you days! * most of the neat effects on the web these days are clever images (3-column layouts, reflection effects, rounded corners), and most of the rest are clever CSS. * you *can* get the same level of quality as a professional designer, it will just take you 100x as long. * http://www.alistapart.com/ * http://www.csszengarden.com/
That said, you probably don't want to be learning this stuff on the job while your servers catch on fire. It will be better for all involved if your boss hires someone who is already a talented designer; even an amateur designer will probably be faster than you. Design is definitely a time-money tradeoff; professional designers charge a lot because they do good work quickly. If you really want to learn this stuff, you probably don't want to do it under a deadline.
Rails and Ruby have nothing at all to do with your site's scalability, that credit goes to switching webservers and architecture. I am currently working on a perl/Catalyst app using lighttpd as the webserver, which should be able to scale insanely well because it's using load-balanced fastcgi with the static stuff handled entirely by lighty. Modern high-level frameworks exist that use perl, which let you get on with the development of your app while still using all of CPAN.
I've yet to find anything in RoR that PHP or Perl haven't already succesfully copied and improved upon.
http://www.kubuntu.org/ also has instructions for installing kde4 alongside your kde3 packages by adding a repository. You can either run the kde4 apps from within your regular kde session, or you can choose kde4 as an option from the login screen.
I just spent 20 minutes playing around with it via this method, and have seamlessly switched between kde3 and kde4 and back again.
Slashdot Mirror
Statistically, that would be "XP didn't work for my hardware".
"That information is available for me, as a technical user, if I want it"
Really? I'm a technical user, yet I have no idea where to find additional information as to why MS Word has encountered an error and needs to close. A simple "click here to view the logfile" is easily ignored by non-technical users but actually lets an advanced user figure out wtf just happened.
That would be true if there wasn't a shwack of other costs associated with each unit in addition to the cost of the parts. It costs money to build factories, ship units, print packaging, do quality control testing, etc etc. Unless Sony has also managed to make all of those things cheaper, I would bet they still aren't actually making a profit on each PS3 sold.
That said, Sony may still decide to drop the price to encourage sales now that the holiday shopping season is behind them.
I'm curious how you posted to slashdot with a typewriter...
You mean like "shoulder buttons" that have been on console controllers and handhelds since at least the PS1?
I would tell you that, no, you should not install the Gimp if those are your requirements. Congratulations, you're free to use whatever fits your actual needs! However, the Gimp does fit my requirements and plenty of other people's, so kindly stop bashing it and go quietly use whatever your tool of choice is instead. Thank you.
I run linux on a laptop. Boot and shutdown times are very important when you want to start using the computer *right now* to google something/show someone a picture/remote into a server and restart apache/etc. Or in a server environment, if I do have to reboot a server, I want it to come back up as fast as possible to minimize downtime and to confirm that it's not stalled at a console prompt. Reducing perceived boot time is critical to linux' success on the desktop, and doesn't hurt at all in a server setting.
I'm not saying it's okay. I'm saying it's NOT A ROOTKIT.
This game isn't from Sony. SecuROM comes in many, many flavours and has been used on many, many games over the years. Sony used a version that was a rootkit *once*, which is not at all the same DRM method that is used in Spore.
So, in order to play this game without a rootkit being installed:
1) purchase Spore.
2) install it.
3) play the game.
If you have problems with how the DRM in spore actually behaves, that's fine. I can't prove to you that there isn't a rootkit, but I also can't prove to you that it won't give you AIDS. At some point, you have to accept that the DRM works as advertised by EA, specifically a "one time online authentication":
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/06/20/spore-creature-creator-drm-explained-direct-from-ea
Java and C#? When I started writing web apps, we had C and the CGI spec. Your new-fangled languages don't bring anything new to the table, they're just marketing buzzwords!
"Let the browser handle the View. Let the Controller exist somewhere else, independent of the presentation layer.'"
Has the author ever actually developed a web app? Javascript may be doing things like fetching data and sorting lists, but I have never seen a real application that had sufficient non-display javascript to justify splitting it into a MVC pattern. Despite the fact that we have heavyweight JS frameworks like JQuery and mootools, those are still spending their time rendering the view.
Have you ever actually tried using SQLite for any level of concurrency? It works great for single-user applications, but has massive locking failures if you try using it for a website that actually gets used. I tried it once, then switched the project to mysql.
I would strongly suggest that you do the following instead:
The reason being that I can look at either the start or the end brace, and simultaneously see the matching brace without having to scan sideways or otherwise dig through extra code. Or if I wanted to change the else to an elseif, I could just move to the end of that line start typing, without worrying about having to go back 2 characters or otherwise avoid clobbering the brace.
To take the example further, let's say the block originally looked like:
And Joe Newbie changes it to:
Spot the bug. Putting the braces on their own lines prevents this sort of stupid mistake (and it *is* stupid, I agree, but it is also common). Sure, it's not that hard to find/fix once you hit compile, but wouldn't you rather be spending your time tracking down the interesting bugs than dealing with stupid bugs like this?
Density is the opposite of readable and maintainable. One of the main aspects of maintainable code is being able to find and change a single line of code quickly and without having to worry about breaking other nearby lines. Having more code per line means it takes that little bit longer to find and is that little bit riskier to change the one line of code. "Lost" in this case is only a minor delay, but when you add that delay up across several thousand bugs (i.e. any project in the Real World), it means you are wasting your time tracking down bugs in dense code rather than adding new features or working on other projects.
Pop quiz: find and remove the bracketed clause in the above paragraph. Then think about how much faster you would have done that if it had been on its own line. Then think about how much faster you could have done that to 100 different paragraphs. It may not make a difference on the projects you work on, but in something the size of a perl interpreter or a web browser, it makes a huge difference.
RoR is (was?) popular because it brought a lot of great ideas to the table, with a decent implementation. Those ideas have by now been stolen/copied by several other frameworks in your language of choice.
If you know PHP, check out http://www.cakephp.org/
If you know perl, check out http://www.catalystframework.org/
At my company, we have switching from legacy/inhouse PHP to cakePHP for new projects, and the fact of using a decent/modern MVC framework has already more than paid for the learning curve by saving weeks of development time.
Not only is it now possible to hire people who know the specific framework that we're using, but I know that the development patterns I'm using now can easily be transferred to any of the other Rails-knockoff frameworks, even across languages.
Or the fact that the "refresh" button is completely separate from the other buttons and there's no way to move it? Or that it takes a registry hack to get the menu bar to show up where it belongs? Or the fact that you *still* can't delete cookies for just certain sites?
IE7's UI is several huge steps backwards, for no apparent reason. Their rendering engine is marginally improved, but Firefox is *definitely* the better browser as far as usability goes.
Or perhaps the fact taht opera has 1% market share while firefox has 18% might have something to do with it.
A. Because it breaks the logical order of conversation. Q. Why is top posting bad?
Seriously, reply *after* the relevant bits of what you are replying to, and remove the rest. Your emails will be far shorter, they will make sense when you read through them much later, and you will no longer be fighting the email program.
"Most people" prefer top posting because that's what Outlook does, not because it's practical, readable, or efficient.
Indeed, we live in a Huxleyian dystopia instead.
http://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-World-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0060929871
Note that playing DVDs and mp3s is a one-click operation in Ubuntu, thanks to their restricted-drivers stuff and the way their codecs can be installed. Linux can't *ship* the necessary codecs, but they are extremely easy to get installed within the first 5 minutes of using the computer.
This is news because the chroot and sftp server are now built in to the openssh binaries, so you don't have to manually set up the chroot. While there's no GUI, it is in fact now easier to set up such a thing.
I've muddled through over the years, mostly by looking at what actual graphic designers have done and trying to learn their techniques. A few things to remember:
* a boring design is better than an ugly one. Don't try too hard.
* learn about negative space, colour theory, and usability. There's generally math behind them that you can learn and use.
* go find some attractive sites, try to figure out 2 or 3 elements that you like, and try to copy them.
* don't be afraid to rip off other sites; generally by the time you're done tweaking, your design won't look anything like the original. (Just don't steal their actual images or code)
* HTML naturally leads to boxy layouts; that's okay! Don't mangle your HTML trying to avoid it; you can de-boxify with CSS and images.
* find an artist friend and get them to critique your design; a few offhand comments from them can save you days!
* most of the neat effects on the web these days are clever images (3-column layouts, reflection effects, rounded corners), and most of the rest are clever CSS.
* you *can* get the same level of quality as a professional designer, it will just take you 100x as long.
* http://www.alistapart.com/
* http://www.csszengarden.com/
That said, you probably don't want to be learning this stuff on the job while your servers catch on fire. It will be better for all involved if your boss hires someone who is already a talented designer; even an amateur designer will probably be faster than you. Design is definitely a time-money tradeoff; professional designers charge a lot because they do good work quickly. If you really want to learn this stuff, you probably don't want to do it under a deadline.
Rails and Ruby have nothing at all to do with your site's scalability, that credit goes to switching webservers and architecture. I am currently working on a perl/Catalyst app using lighttpd as the webserver, which should be able to scale insanely well because it's using load-balanced fastcgi with the static stuff handled entirely by lighty. Modern high-level frameworks exist that use perl, which let you get on with the development of your app while still using all of CPAN.
I've yet to find anything in RoR that PHP or Perl haven't already succesfully copied and improved upon.
No, it *used* to be a googlewhack, but now they've wrecked that by filling the internet with irrelevant hits with that phrase.
http://www.kubuntu.org/ also has instructions for installing kde4 alongside your kde3 packages by adding a repository. You can either run the kde4 apps from within your regular kde session, or you can choose kde4 as an option from the login screen.
I just spent 20 minutes playing around with it via this method, and have seamlessly switched between kde3 and kde4 and back again.