"GNU's Not Unix" is a joke, because GNU definitely is a Unix, it's just not Unix(TM).
The whole aim of GNU was to create "a complete Unix-compatible software system", a free system that worked just like commercial Unices. Stallman himself stated something along the lines of innovation being unimportant compared to producing a totally free system. So a large part of early GNU work was replicating common unix utilities.
Yes! This is what we need to happen. Every time some company comes up with their own propietary DRM system, trying to corner an entire market, people need to not buy that product. Someone else comes along with a more open system and eats their lunch, and the company gains insight.
Everybody should know that the behavior "foo = bar++" is undefined
Nope. Defined and unambiguous. Hmmm... I was about to give some examples of actual undefined behaviour, but I'd almost certainly get some wrong, or have to take an inordinate amount of time to check them. So really, the point you were trying to make is dead right. Code has to be reread and maintained, and you should usually look for clarity and lack of ambiguity (unless you're entering the IOCCC).
Someone may grab your code, rename & repackage it, strip many of your identifying marks from it, & sell it for a million dollars.
Huh? Hmm, I was about to tell you that you're wrong - but of course, someone could fork gcc, rename it and sell it for a million dollars. But they could not lawfully prevent their (rather foolish) customer from having the source code and redistributing the program to whomever they like.
That's why the GPL is more free than, say, the BSD license. Your users can do what they wish with your program as long as they don't try to take anyone else's freedom.
(Stallman does come across as fairly mental, though - stating that programmers of non-free software are 'doing something antisocial' and that they should quit.)
Do you use a mouse with a wheel? They're brilliant. You'll never go back.
My ideal would be a wheel that could be rocked left and right for the occasions when you need to side-scroll (rocking rather than a whole trackball, cos side-scrolling is rarer).
If you go by the/. norm, this isn't Identity Theft, this is Identity Infringment right?
That's pretty funny. Though obviously, once someone, uh, infringes your ID, they're going to run up credit card bills in your name, which is fraud any way you look at it.
Re:Oh Debian, I don't know what to think
on
Updates From Debian
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Yeah, but Debian is used as the sprinboard for a bunch of other distros (e.g. Knoppix) because of its stability and dependability.
"although I do find myself applying the "standard" Windows scheme on my XP machines."
Yeah, me too. Windows XP seems stable and very usable to me (c.f. Win95 etc) but there are strange backward steps.
1. The Windows XP start menu is just stupid, especially if you use the keyboard a lot.
2. I just started using XP Pro at work, and Alt-Tab task switching is practically broken. When you hit Alt-Tab to switch programs, the task switcher comes up and starts drawing a little thumbnail of the active application (instead of just the icon). This means just switching back to the last active window takes about half a second on my machine. (Anyone know if it can be set back to the old grey box with the icon in it?)
BTW, my colleagues are trying to persuade me to get a Mac. I don't know much about 'em, but they do seem to inspire loyalty.
Yes, but part of the excellence of their product is that their ads don't piss us off. They realised you will put up with a few ads in order to get an excellent product and the day they sell out peoples private data or start bombarding us with pop-ups is the day we'll walk away.
A text based graphic user interface? Did you use ASCII art to draw your widgets?
When I was a kid I wrote all kinds of routines for pop-up windows and drop-down menus in QBASIC, that worked in text mode. Like the poster above I wrote a game of life. It was great fun, doesn't everyone do this?
I stopped using BASIC when I got my first C compiler. Pascal is a nice-looking language but something about C just appeals to me more, even when you spend hours trying to debug your declarations of pointers to pointers to functions etc.
Soon I'd be getting "spam" to my GMail account based on my most frequently used words.
Uh, Gmail doesn't spam you. There are just some 'sponsored links' at the bottom of the page. It's the usual Google concept that text is much less annoying than pictures and pop-ups. Google prospers by not pissing off the people who use it.
Sure, you can avoid sending sensitive information to/from Gmail if you're worried about privacy, but Google ads seem a great way for you to 'pay' for the service. Your IM client would have a line or two of text ads, the words you use might even affect your Gmail ads, but so what?
...they will be dependent on random strangers to fix things...
That's the whole open-source development model for you. You may think you wouldn't want to depend on random strangers, but when a comunity builds up, these "random strangers" will be the experts. "Random strangers" contribute a vast amount of value to a huge number of projects.
I really think you'd be making a mistake by insisting on a signature rather than PIN.
A thief's attempt at your signature need only be an approximation to be accepted - and at some shops they don't seem to check at all. You don't really think that the millions of fraudulent transactions that are carried out on stolen cards are all from people with simple signatures, do you? If someone steals your card, they will walk into a shop and try to buy a high-value item, for example a laptop or jewellery. If the shop insists on PIN entry, they will be stopped UNLESS they've seen your number, whereas your signature is right there on the back of the card.
By the way, chip-and-PIN cards are on their way to the UK - I've already used them a few times.
Every year you can get better hardware for the same price. It could be far cheaper just to buy new hardware than to repair or replace parts for obsolete machines.
I love the Simpsons (of course), but the whole Simpsons marketing industry makes Krusty the Clown look sensible.
You can buy dozens of 'guides' to the Simpsons, every kind of toy, about a million computer games, and now a map of the damn town.
There are hundreds of episodes of the Simpsons. Isn't that enough?
I use Office 2000 (well, Word-Excel-Powerpoint), and it's excellent. I won't consider anything new (free or not) until it can't access files I need - THEN I'll be an OpenOffice user.
General consensus seems to be that Office 97 was Good Enough, and everything since is treading water. Gives free software a good chance to catch up.
Seriously, as microsoft stuff gets re-released and re-released with few changes, people will wonder why they keep paying for something that was fine in 1997. Better copy-protection will help too. When home users can't get (pirated) MS software for free, free software will be a better alternative.
If your gun exploded in your hand you'd sue the manufacturer.
It's not so simple as 'microsoft is accessory to manslaughter' though. I'm sure the Microsoft EULA says it's not for use in safety-critical applications. People need to "vote with their feet" and switch to other products if they want secure systems, then MS may address the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
"GNU's Not Unix" is a joke, because GNU definitely is a Unix, it's just not Unix(TM).
The whole aim of GNU was to create "a complete Unix-compatible software system", a free system that worked just like commercial Unices. Stallman himself stated something along the lines of innovation being unimportant compared to producing a totally free system. So a large part of early GNU work was replicating common unix utilities.
Yes! This is what we need to happen. Every time some company comes up with their own propietary DRM system, trying to corner an entire market, people need to not buy that product. Someone else comes along with a more open system and eats their lunch, and the company gains insight.
I did it on my ~20th attempt. Hang in there!
Everybody should know that the behavior "foo = bar++" is undefined
Nope. Defined and unambiguous. Hmmm... I was about to give some examples of actual undefined behaviour, but I'd almost certainly get some wrong, or have to take an inordinate amount of time to check them. So really, the point you were trying to make is dead right. Code has to be reread and maintained, and you should usually look for clarity and lack of ambiguity (unless you're entering the IOCCC).
Someone may grab your code, rename & repackage it, strip many of your identifying marks from it, & sell it for a million dollars.
Huh? Hmm, I was about to tell you that you're wrong - but of course, someone could fork gcc, rename it and sell it for a million dollars. But they could not lawfully prevent their (rather foolish) customer from having the source code and redistributing the program to whomever they like.
That's why the GPL is more free than, say, the BSD license. Your users can do what they wish with your program as long as they don't try to take anyone else's freedom.
(Stallman does come across as fairly mental, though - stating that programmers of non-free software are 'doing something antisocial' and that they should quit.)
Heh heh, slightly less stupid than me. I imagined a flash gun and thought "but the iPod doesn't have a camera."
Time for coffee, I think...
Do you use a mouse with a wheel? They're brilliant. You'll never go back.
My ideal would be a wheel that could be rocked left and right for the occasions when you need to side-scroll (rocking rather than a whole trackball, cos side-scrolling is rarer).
It's surely a bad idea to rewrite and take a step backwards. After all, Code doesn't get rusty.
Uh, ++ increments twice in brainfuck. I think you mean bf+
(Though in fact,
Add one to brainfuck giving brainfuck+1
would have the same effect (anything except +-,.>[] gets ignored by the compiler).
You can block Apple stories in your user preferences page.
If you go by the /. norm, this isn't Identity Theft, this is Identity Infringment right?
That's pretty funny. Though obviously, once someone, uh, infringes your ID, they're going to run up credit card bills in your name, which is fraud any way you look at it.
Yeah, but Debian is used as the sprinboard for a bunch of other distros (e.g. Knoppix) because of its stability and dependability.
That could be its main strength.
"although I do find myself applying the "standard" Windows scheme on my XP machines."
Yeah, me too. Windows XP seems stable and very usable to me (c.f. Win95 etc) but there are strange backward steps.
1. The Windows XP start menu is just stupid, especially if you use the keyboard a lot.
2. I just started using XP Pro at work, and Alt-Tab task switching is practically broken. When you hit Alt-Tab to switch programs, the task switcher comes up and starts drawing a little thumbnail of the active application (instead of just the icon). This means just switching back to the last active window takes about half a second on my machine. (Anyone know if it can be set back to the old grey box with the icon in it?)
BTW, my colleagues are trying to persuade me to get a Mac. I don't know much about 'em, but they do seem to inspire loyalty.
Yes, but part of the excellence of their product is that their ads don't piss us off. They realised you will put up with a few ads in order to get an excellent product and the day they sell out peoples private data or start bombarding us with pop-ups is the day we'll walk away.
A text based graphic user interface? Did you use ASCII art to draw your widgets?
When I was a kid I wrote all kinds of routines for pop-up windows and drop-down menus in QBASIC, that worked in text mode. Like the poster above I wrote a game of life. It was great fun, doesn't everyone do this?
I stopped using BASIC when I got my first C compiler. Pascal is a nice-looking language but something about C just appeals to me more, even when you spend hours trying to debug your declarations of pointers to pointers to functions etc.
Soon I'd be getting "spam" to my GMail account based on my most frequently used words.
Uh, Gmail doesn't spam you. There are just some 'sponsored links' at the bottom of the page. It's the usual Google concept that text is much less annoying than pictures and pop-ups. Google prospers by not pissing off the people who use it.
Sure, you can avoid sending sensitive information to/from Gmail if you're worried about privacy, but Google ads seem a great way for you to 'pay' for the service. Your IM client would have a line or two of text ads, the words you use might even affect your Gmail ads, but so what?
...they will be dependent on random strangers to fix things...
That's the whole open-source development model for you. You may think you wouldn't want to depend on random strangers, but when a comunity builds up, these "random strangers" will be the experts. "Random strangers" contribute a vast amount of value to a huge number of projects.
I really think you'd be making a mistake by insisting on a signature rather than PIN.
A thief's attempt at your signature need only be an approximation to be accepted - and at some shops they don't seem to check at all. You don't really think that the millions of fraudulent transactions that are carried out on stolen cards are all from people with simple signatures, do you? If someone steals your card, they will walk into a shop and try to buy a high-value item, for example a laptop or jewellery. If the shop insists on PIN entry, they will be stopped UNLESS they've seen your number, whereas your signature is right there on the back of the card.
By the way, chip-and-PIN cards are on their way to the UK - I've already used them a few times.
Yes.
Every year you can get better hardware for the same price. It could be far cheaper just to buy new hardware than to repair or replace parts for obsolete machines.
Microsoft Works.
LOL thanks AC, that was hilarious.
Maybe someday computers will be vulnerable to confusing riddles and arguments.
I love the Simpsons (of course), but the whole Simpsons marketing industry makes Krusty the Clown look sensible. You can buy dozens of 'guides' to the Simpsons, every kind of toy, about a million computer games, and now a map of the damn town. There are hundreds of episodes of the Simpsons. Isn't that enough?
I use Office 2000 (well, Word-Excel-Powerpoint), and it's excellent. I won't consider anything new (free or not) until it can't access files I need - THEN I'll be an OpenOffice user.
General consensus seems to be that Office 97 was Good Enough, and everything since is treading water. Gives free software a good chance to catch up.
Seriously, as microsoft stuff gets re-released and re-released with few changes, people will wonder why they keep paying for something that was fine in 1997. Better copy-protection will help too. When home users can't get (pirated) MS software for free, free software will be a better alternative.
SCO is dying!
Why oh why isn't this the title of the story? What a great chance down the drain.
If your gun exploded in your hand you'd sue the manufacturer.
It's not so simple as 'microsoft is accessory to manslaughter' though. I'm sure the Microsoft EULA says it's not for use in safety-critical applications. People need to "vote with their feet" and switch to other products if they want secure systems, then MS may address the problem.