Technically speaking, Counter Strike is even more Half Life than any other FPS game (as it is HL's mode), but somehow kids still play old 1.x CS, and do not even know what the HL is. Simply, one game has an atmosphere, another one does not have, no matter how similar they might be in technical details.
Disclaimer: data based on statistics from my friend's gaming center.
If ICQ (or any other app) doesn't run correctly without admin priviledges is not a M$ fault rathern than a Mirabilis (or whoever writes ICQ now) one.
Yes and no. Problem with Windows is that many programs originated from Win 95/98/Me environment, where you practically have only admins. Or even only one user (at the same time admin).
In order to get "Windows 95" compatible certification, IIRC, you had to fulfil many requirements, many of them were there to make sure your code will run on NT systems. Although it was somewhat strange, it was good way to force programmers to make their programs reasonably compatible in time, i.e. before 95/98/Me line comes to its end of life.
I really don't know if there was requirement like "app has to work on non-admin account"; but anyway, programmers did not learn their lesson in time, and we now have a problem.
Personally, I do blame MS. As a first, they could make Win 95 true multiuser system. Since 3.11->95 step was a big one, one more hassle for programmers would not be too problematic. Second thing is that even XP is not true multiuser system. Essentially it is, but I can't easily do many things I can do in unix-like system.
Here is the example. I am programmer. I deal a lot with dlls. Quite often, I dig in system32 dir. I install/deinstall programs often. To make my life easier, I use admin-priviledged account.
When I used to work for Linux company, no matter that there I had to do much lower-level things, I allways logged as normal user. If I needed that, I was able to do su - , and to have root access any time I needed that. For complicated things, where GUI was more appropriate, I was able to run konqueror as root from CLI; all system tools when started from kicker would ask for password. In some cases all apps would be under root account, but I would be still logged under normal user account. In Windows, no matter that I may use one or even zero admin required tools, I would have to (at least practically) be in an admin account.
And as worst thing, I haven't seen that MS had done anything to improve this when XP had appeared.
There are very often stories about Wikipedia here on Slashdot. Wikipedia is also one of the largest community projects in the world, probably comparable to Linux, for example. If Linux has its own section, why Wikipedia can't get one too?
They are a company. Their sole point of existance is to make money. They aren't a charity FFS.
I don't see why people believe that if somebody's purpose is to make money it does not have to obay moral principles. Being a company does not abolish them to contribute to the society.
Ok, the test description says that its task is to show the performance of recursion.
Or, even better, idea should be to show the performance of the problem that is typically solved by recursion. If you can make qsort to work without recursion (I haven't tried this, they say it is very hard to do) and code is still reasonably readable, that's it. But I don't see the value of recursion per se, it is tool just like every other. If you have replacement for the tool, I won't make you a problem as long as problem is solved.
(I write this under assumption that Fibonacci numbers can be more easily calculated without recursion, although I am not sure if I am right.)
The only complaint I really have about Linux on the desktop these days is the confusing layout of the filesystem. Which isn't KDE's fault. I hate having programs located in 5 different directories, with their configuration files in yet ANOTHER directory. I'm used to it, and it makes sense in a way. But I'd like to see all non-OS exectuables in their own folder under one "Program Files" folder, along with their configuration files. All the "system" files could go under a "System" folder.
I agree that filesystem could be much better organized. But just like with every long-lasting project you have to inherit a lot of bad choices you made. In this particular case, this is inheritance from UNIX. What's worse, no Unix system actually depends on any filesystem organization; kernel would be perfectly happy with "Program Files", "Settings", "Libraries" etc, but programs would find themselves quite confused.
What's even worse, all Linux filesystems have symlinks, so I really don't know why usr/bin is not linked to/bin (and same for other respective dirs, you get the idea). Those/usr vs non-/usr installs drove me mad (and very often still do) during lib over-installation (if you intall programs, they run anyway, but you never know what lib is really used). It is easy to do, so I don't know why distros don't do that. With some minor hack, these links could be even hidden.
OS X is UNIX-based kernel, but it does not have too messy filesystem organisation, but they did it in moment when it was obvious they would break backward compatibility.
Slightly OT, I think that init system should be simplified too, but I really don't have an idea how.
But hey, this is Slashdot, so dont worry; it's OK that you don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about.
I posted (recently valid) piece of code that confuses compiler, and you say I don't have a fucking clue... Really, this is what you can expect only in Slashdot.
I agree that I did not know if it was urban legend, but for sake of correctness, you should notice that not-so-old Fortran was typo prone.
Perhaps I'm just ignorant, but I cannot think of an instance where Microsoft used one of its patents aggressively against a competitor.
You might be right - if I were CEO of any SW big company, in current system I would run as hell to get as many patents as I can get, just for defending reasons. It might be the case with MS here - maybe they really do not have bad intentions, which is still somewhat hard to believe.
But let us consider the usage of same portfolio as a threat: when you are powerful enough, you don't have to start war against someone - your threats may be much more efficient (i.e. faster and cheaper).
If you don't have reach dady behind you, your small start-up company may be run out of business just with couple of letters from MS's (or any other big SW company's) legal dept.
I have never had any problems related to mouse usage, but friend of mine, who has broken his wrist long time ago has had serious problems. His solution is to use drawing table with "pen". Althogh it is somewhat strange to keep pen always in your hand during the typing, for short typing you can still hold pen in your hand, unlike the mouse.
The latest Russian aircraft costs less than half as much as our most advanced one, yet delivers more power and is even easily maintained.
Most interesting devices that you can see from former USSR are devices made in 70s - early 80s. After that period, West run far further than Russians were able to follow.
What is exciting in their design is simplicity, and maintainance. With lack of resources, their design had to be robust. You may laugh on Ladas, but Lada Niva, Russian SUV is a good car. Russian mechanical watches, optical devices were pretty robust.
Their military equipment followed these rules, too (and I am officer in reserve). Unfortunately, it does not mean that their devices are efficient (as they always had a lot of cheap fuel - there is even a joke in Serbia told for someones who spends too much - "to spend like Russian vehicle"). It does not mean they are ecological - all their eqiupment has NiCd batteries, but NiCd batteries are best (exluding being highly toxic).
Compare AK47 (ok, it is a bit old design - from '47 as its name says) with M4 (I had both of them in my hands). M4 is subtle, but AK is robust. It means that it can be mass-produced with inexpirienced technicians. M4 requires a lot of maintance, AK does not. Result - M4 is less heavy, which is good for its purpose, but most typical problem with AK can be solved using your boot or even hammer (ok, handle, not the head). Don't try that on M4.
Unfortunately, I think that these two design patterns will tend toward each other, ot more precisely, that Russian model will follow Western one. Lack of some resources, with cheap other resources (in Russian case, metal and oil) gives inovative ideas. But now, when resources cost everywhere more or less the same, designs will everywhere be the same.
I would still suggest, just as a part of education, every engeener to take one standardly built device with one comparable device developed while resources were expensive. Just like AK - M4 comparison. Or, for instance, study all devices made by soldiers on front lines, or ilegal devices designed by prisoners. There is a lot to learn.
We are going to get ruled more and more by corporations, rather than governments. Since Microsoft is making more than most American states, they also wield quite a bit of power.
Problem with large corporations is that their influence is not proportional to their product. The majority of new welth does not come from large corporations, but it comes from SME. Still, large corporations are much more influental in all goverment branches (Disney, as a good example) comparting to small companies. That way they are able to move the government in their favor.
That is nothing new. Same process happened in USA, Europe and Japan before WWII. Result, counted in dosens of deaths, forced in important changes in all of these regions (USA, Europe, Japan). The main difference was then that main industry was steel-based - current EU was founded as a treaty to control stell and coal industry.
Unfortunately, people do not want to learn from history. In last 12 years laws in USA are changed in order to favor big corporations. EU does not have enough democracy built in in its legistlative process, and software patents are case where it finally became obvious.
Luckily for us, modern industry is "content based" so to say, and unlike with steel, war is not its best environment for success. People do not tend to go to cinemas during the war. Also, outsorcing work for Nike sportshoes to sweatshops in Philipines does not work well if your cargo ship is hit by submarine. So we may conclude, that we will maybe live in poverty, but at least we will not die in war!
I had (or maybe I still have) a plan of writing web-based introduction to Linux programming. Related to IPC, I am wandering, which areas are really important? For instance, pipes are nice, but I used them only for testing, never in real-life app. Basically, I prefer signals, sempaphores and shared memory. I have never used even real-time signals, no matter that they are really better, I had no real reason to use them instead of standard ones.
I would like to know, what do you use in your apps?
Now, I'm no EE, so somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking that generating that much power from solar cells would be an undertaking in and of itself. You'd be hard pressed to generate that much energy in space.
It seems feasable.
I am EE, but I don't know what is the value of Sun's radiation. IIRC, it is about 400W/m^2 on Earth, so it is in worst case the same in orbit. With cell's efficiency of 25%, we get about 100W/m2, so for 60,000,000W we need only 600,000m2. It is sqare with side of 775m - not something too complicated to build even on our current technological level.
NASA was given a blank cheque in the 60s to get a man to the Moon. With the advantage of hindsight, we can see that NASA managed the project extremely well and there was very little waste.
Unfortunately, we cannot compare W. Von Braun and aparatchik who runs FBI's IT department. Von Braun was a man with vision from his youth to send a rocket to another planet (at least his current biographies say so). We may argue about his role in WWII, but we must admit that his WWII project was also quite successful - V2 was at least decade in front of any equvialent project of that time.
If you find me the man who was able successfuly to run expensive technical project in war time, with shortage of all possible suplies, and with a threat of being sent to Eastern front if anything goes wrong, I'll hire that man for any project.
Apple, on the other hand, can annoy 97% of the computer market and still be successful, as long as they don't annoy the 3% who are buying Macs.
Actually, I am quite confused how their customers are not annoyed already. No matter how cool their equipment may look, they had way too many strange decisions, and those hurted their users seriously. For instance, not changing core OS until it was too late, change in CPU architecture which was quite painful (at least for me who depended on 3rd party software)... And they are consistently overpriced.
And yes, I wanted to by MiniMac too, but then I realized that I could get much better headles PC for that money (not being so cool, but still...)
And nomatter of their strange policy toward customers, I had to choose my wording here on/., and still I can bet I'll be modded as troll.
With or without the name of the manufacturer, it is the same. You can always discover the manufacturer - MAC address is unique, and its first part is assotiated with the manufacturer.
Serbia has one large reversible power plant on Drina River. Its efficiency is about 2/3.
Water is pumped during the night (when thermal plants produce more than system consumes - and you cannot stop/start thermal plants every couple of hours), and it generates electricity during so-called "peak hours". Great thing, although a bit too large for our needs - it was designed for larger system (i.e. system of former Yugoslavia).
In fact, *no one* wants to be in the terminal/user support business.
No one wants to support your home Windows (or even Linux, BSD, Mac...) machine. But machine that has only browser, media player and built in OS is not much more complicatet than set-top boxes for digital cable TV, for instance. And digital operaters are willing to update software on them and do similar things (at least I was able to see that in real life). If set-top box breaks, they replace it with new one.
Don't look from current perspective, look current trend - mail apps have moved to web. I have never used Outlook, but I use web based scheduling sofware. If I need central server to store my data (e.g. exchange server) why to have client app, when I already have all-in-one client - web browser? Many, many more application are moved to web every day. Once, when we get finally some more advanced technology in our browsers than current JavaScript (XUL or something similar) we will see new vawe of apps.
Offtopic:
Do you know that web browser is not first "universal client"? Telnet client could be used for many protocols. POP3, for instance, is quite usable over telnet sessions. It will even provide you help in human readable form.
Slashdot Mirror
Technically speaking, Counter Strike is even more Half Life than any other FPS game (as it is HL's mode), but somehow kids still play old 1.x CS, and do not even know what the HL is. Simply, one game has an atmosphere, another one does not have, no matter how similar they might be in technical details.
Disclaimer: data based on statistics from my friend's gaming center.
In order to get "Windows 95" compatible certification, IIRC, you had to fulfil many requirements, many of them were there to make sure your code will run on NT systems. Although it was somewhat strange, it was good way to force programmers to make their programs reasonably compatible in time, i.e. before 95/98/Me line comes to its end of life.
I really don't know if there was requirement like "app has to work on non-admin account"; but anyway, programmers did not learn their lesson in time, and we now have a problem.
Personally, I do blame MS. As a first, they could make Win 95 true multiuser system. Since 3.11->95 step was a big one, one more hassle for programmers would not be too problematic. Second thing is that even XP is not true multiuser system. Essentially it is, but I can't easily do many things I can do in unix-like system.
Here is the example. I am programmer. I deal a lot with dlls. Quite often, I dig in system32 dir. I install/deinstall programs often. To make my life easier, I use admin-priviledged account.
When I used to work for Linux company, no matter that there I had to do much lower-level things, I allways logged as normal user. If I needed that, I was able to do su - , and to have root access any time I needed that. For complicated things, where GUI was more appropriate, I was able to run konqueror as root from CLI; all system tools when started from kicker would ask for password. In some cases all apps would be under root account, but I would be still logged under normal user account. In Windows, no matter that I may use one or even zero admin required tools, I would have to (at least practically) be in an admin account.
And as worst thing, I haven't seen that MS had done anything to improve this when XP had appeared.
There are very often stories about Wikipedia here on Slashdot. Wikipedia is also one of the largest community projects in the world, probably comparable to Linux, for example. If Linux has its own section, why Wikipedia can't get one too?
(I write this under assumption that Fibonacci numbers can be more easily calculated without recursion, although I am not sure if I am right.)
What's even worse, all Linux filesystems have symlinks, so I really don't know why usr/bin is not linked to
OS X is UNIX-based kernel, but it does not have too messy filesystem organisation, but they did it in moment when it was obvious they would break backward compatibility.
Slightly OT, I think that init system should be simplified too, but I really don't have an idea how.
I agree that I did not know if it was urban legend, but for sake of correctness, you should notice that not-so-old Fortran was typo prone.
But let us consider the usage of same portfolio as a threat: when you are powerful enough, you don't have to start war against someone - your threats may be much more efficient (i.e. faster and cheaper).
If you don't have reach dady behind you, your small start-up company may be run out of business just with couple of letters from MS's (or any other big SW company's) legal dept.
I have never had any problems related to mouse usage, but friend of mine, who has broken his wrist long time ago has had serious problems. His solution is to use drawing table with "pen". Althogh it is somewhat strange to keep pen always in your hand during the typing, for short typing you can still hold pen in your hand, unlike the mouse.
Just 5 minutes before I read this post, I turned firewall on my WinXP SP2 machine off, testing someting on our LAN.
Can you imagine what amount of fear I felt when I realized that this guy lived only 2 miles from my office...
What is exciting in their design is simplicity, and maintainance. With lack of resources, their design had to be robust. You may laugh on Ladas, but Lada Niva, Russian SUV is a good car. Russian mechanical watches, optical devices were pretty robust.
Their military equipment followed these rules, too (and I am officer in reserve). Unfortunately, it does not mean that their devices are efficient (as they always had a lot of cheap fuel - there is even a joke in Serbia told for someones who spends too much - "to spend like Russian vehicle"). It does not mean they are ecological - all their eqiupment has NiCd batteries, but NiCd batteries are best (exluding being highly toxic).
Compare AK47 (ok, it is a bit old design - from '47 as its name says) with M4 (I had both of them in my hands). M4 is subtle, but AK is robust. It means that it can be mass-produced with inexpirienced technicians. M4 requires a lot of maintance, AK does not. Result - M4 is less heavy, which is good for its purpose, but most typical problem with AK can be solved using your boot or even hammer (ok, handle, not the head). Don't try that on M4.
Unfortunately, I think that these two design patterns will tend toward each other, ot more precisely, that Russian model will follow Western one. Lack of some resources, with cheap other resources (in Russian case, metal and oil) gives inovative ideas. But now, when resources cost everywhere more or less the same, designs will everywhere be the same.
I would still suggest, just as a part of education, every engeener to take one standardly built device with one comparable device developed while resources were expensive. Just like AK - M4 comparison. Or, for instance, study all devices made by soldiers on front lines, or ilegal devices designed by prisoners. There is a lot to learn.
That is nothing new. Same process happened in USA, Europe and Japan before WWII. Result, counted in dosens of deaths, forced in important changes in all of these regions (USA, Europe, Japan). The main difference was then that main industry was steel-based - current EU was founded as a treaty to control stell and coal industry.
Unfortunately, people do not want to learn from history. In last 12 years laws in USA are changed in order to favor big corporations. EU does not have enough democracy built in in its legistlative process, and software patents are case where it finally became obvious.
Luckily for us, modern industry is "content based" so to say, and unlike with steel, war is not its best environment for success. People do not tend to go to cinemas during the war. Also, outsorcing work for Nike sportshoes to sweatshops in Philipines does not work well if your cargo ship is hit by submarine. So we may conclude, that we will maybe live in poverty, but at least we will not die in war!
Is this a bug in /. parser?
/. listed this:
Parent posted link:
http://linux.slashdot.org/redhat.com
But
RedHat[redhat.com]
instead of:
RedHat[linux.slashdot.org]
or maybe:
RedHat[slashdot.org]
I had (or maybe I still have) a plan of writing web-based introduction to Linux programming. Related to IPC, I am wandering, which areas are really important? For instance, pipes are nice, but I used them only for testing, never in real-life app. Basically, I prefer signals, sempaphores and shared memory. I have never used even real-time signals, no matter that they are really better, I had no real reason to use them instead of standard ones.
I would like to know, what do you use in your apps?
I am EE, but I don't know what is the value of Sun's radiation. IIRC, it is about 400W/m^2 on Earth, so it is in worst case the same in orbit. With cell's efficiency of 25%, we get about 100W/m2, so for 60,000,000W we need only 600,000m2. It is sqare with side of 775m - not something too complicated to build even on our current technological level.
W2 = double U two = double U2 = double Bono
So, W2 is pronounced Bono-Bono.
Unfortunately, we cannot compare W. Von Braun and aparatchik who runs FBI's IT department. Von Braun was a man with vision from his youth to send a rocket to another planet (at least his current biographies say so). We may argue about his role in WWII, but we must admit that his WWII project was also quite successful - V2 was at least decade in front of any equvialent project of that time.
If you find me the man who was able successfuly to run expensive technical project in war time, with shortage of all possible suplies, and with a threat of being sent to Eastern front if anything goes wrong, I'll hire that man for any project.
And yes, I wanted to by MiniMac too, but then I realized that I could get much better headles PC for that money (not being so cool, but still...)
And nomatter of their strange policy toward customers, I had to choose my wording here on
With or without the name of the manufacturer, it is the same. You can always discover the manufacturer - MAC address is unique, and its first part is assotiated with the manufacturer.
Serbia has one large reversible power plant on Drina River. Its efficiency is about 2/3.
Water is pumped during the night (when thermal plants produce more than system consumes - and you cannot stop/start thermal plants every couple of hours), and it generates electricity during so-called "peak hours". Great thing, although a bit too large for our needs - it was designed for larger system (i.e. system of former Yugoslavia).
Don't look from current perspective, look current trend - mail apps have moved to web. I have never used Outlook, but I use web based scheduling sofware. If I need central server to store my data (e.g. exchange server) why to have client app, when I already have all-in-one client - web browser? Many, many more application are moved to web every day. Once, when we get finally some more advanced technology in our browsers than current JavaScript (XUL or something similar) we will see new vawe of apps.
Offtopic:
Do you know that web browser is not first "universal client"? Telnet client could be used for many protocols. POP3, for instance, is quite usable over telnet sessions. It will even provide you help in human readable form.