Microsoft:
* used anti-competitive licensing terms
* disallowed customers from using other products
* forced customers to accept terms that were harmful to them
* broke previous rulings regulating their behaviour
Rambus:
* patented a bunch of ideas that are generally regarded as not being particularly original
* demanded license fees from RAM manufacturers
* got what they asked for
* will need to defend the validity of their patents in court against Micron's claims
* may ultimately lose ownership of the patents and have to give the money back
The point is that Rambus hasn't broken any laws, while Microsoft has. One has to approve of lawbreakers ending up in court.
Sure, Hemos is still out to lunch: Rambus isn't using the courts at all to get what they want. Micron is. And because the case hasn't even made it to the courtroom, you can't say Rambus is winning in the courtroom.
Different beasts, Microsoft and Rambus. One has a viable product, thumped the marketplace, and engaged in anticompetitive practices. The other has no viable product, got thumped in the marketplace, and is engaged in dubious patent licensing.
So remove MSIE completely. In the future, return any software that turns out to require MSIE components.
The process is quite nicely automated by [98Lite] which, despite the site name, actually has utilities that will remove MSIE from Win95, Win98, WIN98SE, and WinME. It'll nuke MSIEv3 through v5.x, and it does it safely.
I just finished reading Mario Puzo's "The Last Don." In it is a bit of an explanation of the movie business pay-out system. I've no reason to disbelieve what he's written: why invent, when real-life is more horrifying?
Anyway, it turns out to be pretty much the same way that the music industry works. A $15M picture that grosses $100M will see 50% of that amount paid out to the theatres, leaving $50M for the studio. This is called the "rentals," but I'm gonna call it the "gross," 'cause we're probably all more familiar with that term.
So the studio subtracts the cost of making the movie, plus they subtract about thirty percent of the gross for distribution costs, and also the cost of making the prints and advertising costs. You might end up with $15M left over once that's all done with.
Ah! But they also get twenty-five percent for studio overhead (utilities, soundstage rental, etc). The big-name star will be taking at least 5% of gross; and the director and producer will take another 5%. And the costs of the loan for the $15M to make the film will be taken out.
There'll be less than $6M left at this point. A bunch of other dick-them-around costs will be stolen from the left-overs. Then, and only then, will the smaller actors and the screenwriter and the novelist they stole the idea from get paid.
It's the music industry all over again. The studios take by far the bulk of the money, and the creative artists -- the writers, many of the actors -- get bupkis. Or so it goes in Puzo's book.
Can't imagine why the music and movie industries get away with what's basically racketeering. Don't you Americans have some sort of law about that?
Oh, my bad. The *law* is against the racketeering... but the *money* is what talks. Corrupt judges that won't recuse themselves from cases they're partial to... purchased politicians that pass laws favouring their owners... a docile public that hasn't the guts to demand change...
I trust you're talking that "there will come a time in the __UK__ where a customer... can self-install."
'cause over here in the colonies (ie. Canada), we're already doing it. Two hundred bucks gets you a DSL modem and a handful of socket splitters/bypass filters. Thirty-five bucks a money gets you the ADSL service.
But, then, Canada has always had pretty much leading telecommunications technology: first microwave transmission systems, first digital switchs, first fiber-to-home.
Er, yes, that's right: we do fiber-to-home already. The telco's are savvy enough to have realized a half-dozen years ago that it was cheaper to be laying dark fiber than to have to try to retrofit.
Oh! Oh! Oh! My god, (wo)man, that's *BRILLIANT*! I wish I'd thought of that!
Okay, so now my needs change to the system I originally described, with a super-reflective backing on the display, to minimize the need for backlighting, and...
144DPI (or 216DPI) Greyscale TFT LCD. (That's a resolution that works nicely with the 72-points-in-an-inch metric.)
Doesn't necessarily need to give me two days of battery life, but must give me at least 16 hours. And recharge fully within six hours. Preferably four.
You did notice that the article mentioned "He said product tests indicated that the new Crusoe chip afforded PictureBook users two times the stamina of previous models. The typical session span with the Crusoe chip could last up to 5.5 hours."
Which is, in my opinion, pretty damned dismal.
What I *really* don't understand is why no manufacturer is releasing a Pentium-200-based laptop. With the kind of technology that could be applied to that level of CPU (.15um, advanced power saving modes, miniscule voltage/amperage requirements), the CPU would become an insignificant drain on the batter.
Yes, yes: backlights are the powersucker. Surely there are technologiesHe said product tests indicated that the new Crusoe chip afforded PictureBook users two times the stamina of previous models. The typical session span with the Crusoe chip could last up to 5.5 hours.
And a 200MHz Pentium is more than enough for the typical wordprocessing functions of a laptop. Few and far between are the folk who are attempting to run Quake 1024x768x32 on their laptop...
If the manufacturers would just get sensible about it all, we could have a P200, 96Mb, 6Gb system with a near-full-size keyboard and good video-out, that would be *ideal* for wordprocessing, accounting and web browsing -- probably the better part of 90% of most laptop functions.
Fix the backlight problem, and those puppies would run for *days* on a single charge, not a bloody useless 5 hours!
Price it at sub-$1K, and the world would beat a path to their door. My god, I'd take two of them!
You know, Carnage4Life, every once in a while someone posts a well-structured, well-phrased, well-designed argument on Slashdot.
These superlative arguments are immediately followed by a ill-reasoned, illogical, poorly-phrased, frequently irrelevant and, may I be so blunt, remarkably *stupid* attempts at counter-argument.
Frankly, Carnage, I'd love to read many, many more postings from you -- but my patience for wading through the shite to get to the pearls is rapidly wearing thin.
It is, I suspect, time to just give up on Slashdot entirely. The revolting masses have swarmed the system, and it's just sinking to the level of the lowest common denominator.
Just wanted you to know that at least one person acknowledges the quality of your post and agrees with your argument. Maybe I'll get to see you over at the other, better discussion boards...
Are you so sure? It seems to me that the DVD player manufacturers are held liable for cocking up the decryption code. Photocopy manufacturers universally implement anti-counterfeit technology into their high-end colour copiers--they must do so out of liability, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
CNRI seems to be doing RMS a biiiiig favour. It's bought to the front an important potential flaw in the GPL. CNRI's motivations are suspect (what with the UCITA issue), but the outcome may be an overall Very Good Thing for GPL.
'cause it seems to me that if the GPL doesn't stipulate the choice of law that will be used in taking GPL to court, then it could easily be taken to court in Bermuda... and I'm fairly sure that the Bermuda government wouldn't be shy about making anti-GPL laws should a big business promise to bring big money into the country.
CNRI's actions may force RMS to specify choice of law, which will in turn make the GPL more secure.
Perhaps the geek community can even influence a State into passing GPL-friendly law, instead of UCITA. That'd really help the software community.
And is it really so different than the hoops we adults have to jump through to get certain things?
Try getting into the bar the day you turn legal. There's every chance you'll be carded -- even through you're an adult! (Hell, I was carded until I was in my mid-twenties -- I'm nevah gonna look my age!)
Try getting something as innocuous as telephone service. If you haven't been a customer before, chances are they're going to want a background check and a sizeable deposit. And you haven't even proved yourself untrustworthy -- you're considered guilty until proven innocent!
What's most amusing, though, are the knuckleheads who are crying out about how KMart is repressing the freedom of the individual. What about the freedom of the company to set its own policies?
Their fallback argument is always that it's not the government's job to raise our children.
By that same token, then, it's not the government's job to school our children -- what is schooling if not inculcating our cultural norms and values in our children... in other words, raising them?
In summary: get over it already. KMart isn't keeping parents from allowing your children to play with violent video games. Go in there with your kid, buy whatever violent and pornographic materials you care to, and hand it over to your nosepickers. It is, after all, a free country... for better or worse.
I was educated very little by the University I attended. Oh, sure, I *learned* lots -- organic chemistry, political history, all sorts of shit -- but those were just boring facts, that I could have picked up on my own.
What *educated* me was life on campus.
Living in a dormitory with forty people, most of whom I'd never ordinarily wish to eat dinner with, let alone live with.
Living in a community of 30 000 people of varied backgrounds, from all over the country. Completely different folk than in my hometown, or any town I've ever lived in. People who were there to expand their education, not to hold down a job and raise a family.
Working in teams with people who are learning on-the-fly. People who are excited and aggressive about defending their ideas in the face of competing ideas. Who introduce ideas that are completely off-the-map -- but end up being relevent, and were available only because they took an obscure course and happened to put two-and-two together.
Do I get educated in "real life"? Sure. But it's not as cutting-edge. Everyone's more grown-up about it: we've all come to realize that maybe we don't know everything already, so we listen more easily and don't get so pumped about forcing others to understand and accept us.
It's a different pace, now. It's not a highly accelerated education curve. And there is definitely not the variety: most of us are just trying to keep ahead of taxes, children and skyrocketing gas prices.
Not true! I'm in Canada, and I've written missives to Australian and American government peons and representatives.
I never expect them to my voice in drawing up their stats, but I'm sure it must have some influence. After all, if someone half the world away has noticed that you're doing something stupid, you've got to start wondering if everyone has noticed...:*)
And any halfwit knows that the key to having blazingly fast Python apps is to write them in Python (blazingly fast development), profile them, and then rewrite the slow bits in C (blazingly fast execution).
I suppose your next trick will be to test Javascript against assembly code!
Python r2.0 is on its way, coming soon to a [BeOpen] site near you.
Among its other features, as listed in a [What's New] doc, are:
Unicode.
List comprehensions (automagic list looping).
Augmented assignment (+= syntactic sugar).
New string methods.
Improved GC.
Several new functions.
Comprehensive XML libraries.
HTTP1.1 support.
Improved curses support.
SSL support.
A new regular expression parser (Unicode-compatible).
Improved IDE.
The root of the problem, currently, is that the license defines the legal domain it must be challenged in.
Which is to say that if there is going to be legal action taken, it must be taken in the state of Virginia, as defined by the CNRI Python license. You can't challenge it without going to Virginia, and if you are challenged, it will by by the laws of Virginia.
*THE REASONING* behind this is that without specifying who's laws apply, inevitably someone will challenge it in the least restrictive venue possible: ie. a venue in which the GPL can't be enforced *at all*.
CNRI makes a good point, and RMS will probably be forced to finally admit that he's made a mistake.
History of Barcodes is at, of all places [Lasco Fittings]. It makes interesting reading - go there!
Barcodes are designed to be read left-to-right OR right-to-left. You obviously can't read them top-to-bottom!
The reading is based on the timing of white-and-black, and assumed that the bars are passing by the reader at a reasonably consistent speed. Thus, it doesn't make a lot of difference how fast or slow you scan, as long as you're within the limits of the scanning device's tolerance.
I really doubt there's a whole lot of innovation in the scanner itself. Barcode-reading technology is pretty advanced, with a lot of much bigger fish looking for an edge: NCR is far more likely to have the next big advance than some backwaters wannabe startup.
Colour me odd, but by far most of my computer time is spent staring at text on the screen: word processing, graphics creation, page layout and web browsing.
My impression of Slashdot folk is that a good number of them spend most of their time coding software or creating web pages.
In other words, our machines are our tools for creating products, which we get paid for.
For all of us (with the exception of the 3D modeling folk), shouldn't our primary concern then be to obtain the absolute best *2D* card? The one that produces the sharpest, stable-est output?
By all indications, that'd be either a Matrox or an ATi card... not a card that cares more for 3D performance than 2D quality.
Just my opinion and, like I said, maybe I'm the odd one out on this sort of product choice...
But the $70 Celeron boards are crap compared to the Socket A boards.
What sort of loon would take a good, fast 750MHz processor and bottleneck it with a junk mobo? I suppose that question answers itself, of course: the sort of loon that'd buy a Celeron in the first place, when he could get a Duron instead...
Point is, not only are the AMD CPUs a good bit better than the Celerons, the motherboards are better as well. Your AMD+good mobo is going to be a good byte (ooh, a pun!) better than the Intel+cheap mobo.
(Think I'll mention in an aside here that Abit has a RAID-supporting Socket-A mobo. Sounds awful cool!)
(A great programmer, on the other hand, uses a very high-level-language (ie. Python), and then profiles the code and rewrites the bits that really need the speed in a lower level language (ie. C/C++). The programmer thus achieves far greater productivity. The time saved can be dedicated to improving the code even more, or adding additional functionality, or performing very extended fault/bug testing, or moving onto another project.)
<snark mode off>
Erm. Ah, did anyone hear anything?
Oh. I thought not. Nevermind, it must have just been my imagination. Sorry.
Might as well continue the Pascal thread, by mentioning that Wirth then went on to address Pascal's deficiencies by creating Modula, and then Oberon.
Modula is fully capable of support systems programming: you can write OSes, drivers, whatever. In that regard, it is as powerful as C. Unlike C, it has an excellent syntax and superlative large-project structures. You haven't experienced wonderful programming until you've experienced interface modules that are kept completely seperate from the corresponding code modules.
Oberon is an OS and language, combined. I don't know enough about it to provide any greater detail.
Modula-3 is a DEC initiative to develop the best p ossible large-project/team-project programming language. There are a *lot* of ideas and tools in the Modula-3 world that should be liberally stolen and redeployed in other languages.
I might also mention that Turbo Pascal is, in most ways, just a Borland interpretation of Modula-2. Indeed, it was originally suppposed to be named for Modula, but the marketing 'droids realized that pretending it was Pascal was a wise and politic move.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft:
* used anti-competitive licensing terms
* disallowed customers from using other products
* forced customers to accept terms that were harmful to them
* broke previous rulings regulating their behaviour
Rambus:
* patented a bunch of ideas that are generally regarded as not being particularly original
* demanded license fees from RAM manufacturers
* got what they asked for
* will need to defend the validity of their patents in court against Micron's claims
* may ultimately lose ownership of the patents and have to give the money back
The point is that Rambus hasn't broken any laws, while Microsoft has. One has to approve of lawbreakers ending up in court.
Sure, Hemos is still out to lunch: Rambus isn't using the courts at all to get what they want. Micron is. And because the case hasn't even made it to the courtroom, you can't say Rambus is winning in the courtroom.
Different beasts, Microsoft and Rambus. One has a viable product, thumped the marketplace, and engaged in anticompetitive practices. The other has no viable product, got thumped in the marketplace, and is engaged in dubious patent licensing.
With any luck, both will receive a comeuppance.
--
So remove MSIE completely. In the future, return any software that turns out to require MSIE components.
The process is quite nicely automated by [98Lite] which, despite the site name, actually has utilities that will remove MSIE from Win95, Win98, WIN98SE, and WinME. It'll nuke MSIEv3 through v5.x, and it does it safely.
Worth a shot, at any rate!
--
I just finished reading Mario Puzo's "The Last Don." In it is a bit of an explanation of the movie business pay-out system. I've no reason to disbelieve what he's written: why invent, when real-life is more horrifying?
Anyway, it turns out to be pretty much the same way that the music industry works. A $15M picture that grosses $100M will see 50% of that amount paid out to the theatres, leaving $50M for the studio. This is called the "rentals," but I'm gonna call it the "gross," 'cause we're probably all more familiar with that term.
So the studio subtracts the cost of making the movie, plus they subtract about thirty percent of the gross for distribution costs, and also the cost of making the prints and advertising costs. You might end up with $15M left over once that's all done with.
Ah! But they also get twenty-five percent for studio overhead (utilities, soundstage rental, etc). The big-name star will be taking at least 5% of gross; and the director and producer will take another 5%. And the costs of the loan for the $15M to make the film will be taken out.
There'll be less than $6M left at this point. A bunch of other dick-them-around costs will be stolen from the left-overs. Then, and only then, will the smaller actors and the screenwriter and the novelist they stole the idea from get paid.
It's the music industry all over again. The studios take by far the bulk of the money, and the creative artists -- the writers, many of the actors -- get bupkis. Or so it goes in Puzo's book.
Can't imagine why the music and movie industries get away with what's basically racketeering. Don't you Americans have some sort of law about that?
Oh, my bad. The *law* is against the racketeering... but the *money* is what talks. Corrupt judges that won't recuse themselves from cases they're partial to... purchased politicians that pass laws favouring their owners... a docile public that hasn't the guts to demand change...
--
I trust you're talking that "there will come a time in the __UK__ where a customer... can self-install."
'cause over here in the colonies (ie. Canada), we're already doing it. Two hundred bucks gets you a DSL modem and a handful of socket splitters/bypass filters. Thirty-five bucks a money gets you the ADSL service.
But, then, Canada has always had pretty much leading telecommunications technology: first microwave transmission systems, first digital switchs, first fiber-to-home.
Er, yes, that's right: we do fiber-to-home already. The telco's are savvy enough to have realized a half-dozen years ago that it was cheaper to be laying dark fiber than to have to try to retrofit.
Na-na-a-boo-boo. [grin!]
--
I want colour, too... but do I'll take high-res grey over grotty-res colour any day!
--
Stupid, stupid me: I've toyed with the idea of buying one for ages, and forgot all about it in the heat of the moment!
It's the [Psion] product line, which is almost exactly what I described: runs forever on a couple of AA batteries, has right software, etcetera.
Heck, there's even a colour-screen model. And the word processor is MSWord compatible. And they're small.
K, now I'm horny to go buy one. Damn!
--
Oh! Oh! Oh! My god, (wo)man, that's *BRILLIANT*! I wish I'd thought of that!
Okay, so now my needs change to the system I originally described, with a super-reflective backing on the display, to minimize the need for backlighting, and...
144DPI (or 216DPI) Greyscale TFT LCD. (That's a resolution that works nicely with the 72-points-in-an-inch metric.)
Doesn't necessarily need to give me two days of battery life, but must give me at least 16 hours. And recharge fully within six hours. Preferably four.
--
You did notice that the article mentioned "He said product tests indicated that the new Crusoe chip afforded PictureBook users two times the stamina of previous models. The typical session span with the Crusoe chip could last up to 5.5 hours."
Which is, in my opinion, pretty damned dismal.
What I *really* don't understand is why no manufacturer is releasing a Pentium-200-based laptop. With the kind of technology that could be applied to that level of CPU (.15um, advanced power saving modes, miniscule voltage/amperage requirements), the CPU would become an insignificant drain on the batter.
Yes, yes: backlights are the powersucker. Surely there are technologiesHe said product tests indicated that the new Crusoe chip afforded PictureBook users two times the stamina of previous models. The typical session span with the Crusoe chip could last up to 5.5 hours.
And a 200MHz Pentium is more than enough for the typical wordprocessing functions of a laptop. Few and far between are the folk who are attempting to run Quake 1024x768x32 on their laptop...
If the manufacturers would just get sensible about it all, we could have a P200, 96Mb, 6Gb system with a near-full-size keyboard and good video-out, that would be *ideal* for wordprocessing, accounting and web browsing -- probably the better part of 90% of most laptop functions.
Fix the backlight problem, and those puppies would run for *days* on a single charge, not a bloody useless 5 hours!
Price it at sub-$1K, and the world would beat a path to their door. My god, I'd take two of them!
--
Sigh.
You know, Carnage4Life, every once in a while someone posts a well-structured, well-phrased, well-designed argument on Slashdot.
These superlative arguments are immediately followed by a ill-reasoned, illogical, poorly-phrased, frequently irrelevant and, may I be so blunt, remarkably *stupid* attempts at counter-argument.
Frankly, Carnage, I'd love to read many, many more postings from you -- but my patience for wading through the shite to get to the pearls is rapidly wearing thin.
It is, I suspect, time to just give up on Slashdot entirely. The revolting masses have swarmed the system, and it's just sinking to the level of the lowest common denominator.
Just wanted you to know that at least one person acknowledges the quality of your post and agrees with your argument. Maybe I'll get to see you over at the other, better discussion boards...
--
Are you so sure? It seems to me that the DVD player manufacturers are held liable for cocking up the decryption code. Photocopy manufacturers universally implement anti-counterfeit technology into their high-end colour copiers--they must do so out of liability, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
--
CNRI seems to be doing RMS a biiiiig favour. It's bought to the front an important potential flaw in the GPL. CNRI's motivations are suspect (what with the UCITA issue), but the outcome may be an overall Very Good Thing for GPL.
'cause it seems to me that if the GPL doesn't stipulate the choice of law that will be used in taking GPL to court, then it could easily be taken to court in Bermuda... and I'm fairly sure that the Bermuda government wouldn't be shy about making anti-GPL laws should a big business promise to bring big money into the country.
CNRI's actions may force RMS to specify choice of law, which will in turn make the GPL more secure.
Perhaps the geek community can even influence a State into passing GPL-friendly law, instead of UCITA. That'd really help the software community.
--
And is it really so different than the hoops we adults have to jump through to get certain things?
Try getting into the bar the day you turn legal. There's every chance you'll be carded -- even through you're an adult! (Hell, I was carded until I was in my mid-twenties -- I'm nevah gonna look my age!)
Try getting something as innocuous as telephone service. If you haven't been a customer before, chances are they're going to want a background check and a sizeable deposit. And you haven't even proved yourself untrustworthy -- you're considered guilty until proven innocent!
What's most amusing, though, are the knuckleheads who are crying out about how KMart is repressing the freedom of the individual. What about the freedom of the company to set its own policies?
Their fallback argument is always that it's not the government's job to raise our children.
By that same token, then, it's not the government's job to school our children -- what is schooling if not inculcating our cultural norms and values in our children... in other words, raising them?
In summary: get over it already. KMart isn't keeping parents from allowing your children to play with violent video games. Go in there with your kid, buy whatever violent and pornographic materials you care to, and hand it over to your nosepickers. It is, after all, a free country... for better or worse.
--
Right on.
I was educated very little by the University I attended. Oh, sure, I *learned* lots -- organic chemistry, political history, all sorts of shit -- but those were just boring facts, that I could have picked up on my own.
What *educated* me was life on campus.
Living in a dormitory with forty people, most of whom I'd never ordinarily wish to eat dinner with, let alone live with.
Living in a community of 30 000 people of varied backgrounds, from all over the country. Completely different folk than in my hometown, or any town I've ever lived in. People who were there to expand their education, not to hold down a job and raise a family.
Working in teams with people who are learning on-the-fly. People who are excited and aggressive about defending their ideas in the face of competing ideas. Who introduce ideas that are completely off-the-map -- but end up being relevent, and were available only because they took an obscure course and happened to put two-and-two together.
Do I get educated in "real life"? Sure. But it's not as cutting-edge. Everyone's more grown-up about it: we've all come to realize that maybe we don't know everything already, so we listen more easily and don't get so pumped about forcing others to understand and accept us.
It's a different pace, now. It's not a highly accelerated education curve. And there is definitely not the variety: most of us are just trying to keep ahead of taxes, children and skyrocketing gas prices.
--
Not true! I'm in Canada, and I've written missives to Australian and American government peons and representatives.
:*)
I never expect them to my voice in drawing up their stats, but I'm sure it must have some influence. After all, if someone half the world away has noticed that you're doing something stupid, you've got to start wondering if everyone has noticed...
--
Ah. That could well be. There's certainly some suspicions about CNRI and its bid to trademark the name Python.
CNRI may be innocuous. Or they may be set to really shit all over the Python world. It's impossible to tell from way over here.
[sigh]
--
Socket 7, K62-400, no fans. Not even on the power supply. Only noise is from the hard drive.
:)
--
Not shit, Sherlock!
Python is *interpreted*.
C is *compiled*.
And any halfwit knows that the key to having blazingly fast Python apps is to write them in Python (blazingly fast development), profile them, and then rewrite the slow bits in C (blazingly fast execution).
I suppose your next trick will be to test Javascript against assembly code!
--
Python r2.0 is on its way, coming soon to a [BeOpen] site near you.
Among its other features, as listed in a [What's New] doc, are:
Unicode.
List comprehensions (automagic list looping).
Augmented assignment (+= syntactic sugar).
New string methods.
Improved GC.
Several new functions.
Comprehensive XML libraries.
HTTP1.1 support.
Improved curses support.
SSL support.
A new regular expression parser (Unicode-compatible).
Improved IDE.
And other things you can go [read for yourself].
--
One can get "develop an OO application really really fast" and "get a really really fast OO application" *AT THE SAME TIME*!
Code the app in Python. You'll get the fast development.
Profile the app. Rewrite the slow bits in C. You'll get the fast app.
In the end, you get 90% of the speed with 1/3rd the effort. Not a bad deal a'tall.
--
The root of the problem, currently, is that the license defines the legal domain it must be challenged in.
Which is to say that if there is going to be legal action taken, it must be taken in the state of Virginia, as defined by the CNRI Python license. You can't challenge it without going to Virginia, and if you are challenged, it will by by the laws of Virginia.
*THE REASONING* behind this is that without specifying who's laws apply, inevitably someone will challenge it in the least restrictive venue possible: ie. a venue in which the GPL can't be enforced *at all*.
CNRI makes a good point, and RMS will probably be forced to finally admit that he's made a mistake.
--
Barcodes are designed to be read left-to-right OR right-to-left. You obviously can't read them top-to-bottom!
The reading is based on the timing of white-and-black, and assumed that the bars are passing by the reader at a reasonably consistent speed. Thus, it doesn't make a lot of difference how fast or slow you scan, as long as you're within the limits of the scanning device's tolerance.
I really doubt there's a whole lot of innovation in the scanner itself. Barcode-reading technology is pretty advanced, with a lot of much bigger fish looking for an edge: NCR is far more likely to have the next big advance than some backwaters wannabe startup.
--
Colour me odd, but by far most of my computer time is spent staring at text on the screen: word processing, graphics creation, page layout and web browsing.
My impression of Slashdot folk is that a good number of them spend most of their time coding software or creating web pages.
In other words, our machines are our tools for creating products, which we get paid for.
For all of us (with the exception of the 3D modeling folk), shouldn't our primary concern then be to obtain the absolute best *2D* card? The one that produces the sharpest, stable-est output?
By all indications, that'd be either a Matrox or an ATi card... not a card that cares more for 3D performance than 2D quality.
Just my opinion and, like I said, maybe I'm the odd one out on this sort of product choice...
--
But the $70 Celeron boards are crap compared to the Socket A boards.
What sort of loon would take a good, fast 750MHz processor and bottleneck it with a junk mobo? I suppose that question answers itself, of course: the sort of loon that'd buy a Celeron in the first place, when he could get a Duron instead...
Point is, not only are the AMD CPUs a good bit better than the Celerons, the motherboards are better as well. Your AMD+good mobo is going to be a good byte (ooh, a pun!) better than the Intel+cheap mobo.
(Think I'll mention in an aside here that Abit has a RAID-supporting Socket-A mobo. Sounds awful cool!)
--
(A great programmer, on the other hand, uses a very high-level-language (ie. Python), and then profiles the code and rewrites the bits that really need the speed in a lower level language (ie. C/C++). The programmer thus achieves far greater productivity. The time saved can be dedicated to improving the code even more, or adding additional functionality, or performing very extended fault/bug testing, or moving onto another project.)
<snark mode off>
Erm. Ah, did anyone hear anything?
Oh. I thought not. Nevermind, it must have just been my imagination. Sorry.
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Might as well continue the Pascal thread, by mentioning that Wirth then went on to address Pascal's deficiencies by creating Modula, and then Oberon.
Modula is fully capable of support systems programming: you can write OSes, drivers, whatever. In that regard, it is as powerful as C. Unlike C, it has an excellent syntax and superlative large-project structures. You haven't experienced wonderful programming until you've experienced interface modules that are kept completely seperate from the corresponding code modules.
Oberon is an OS and language, combined. I don't know enough about it to provide any greater detail.
Modula-3 is a DEC initiative to develop the best p ossible large-project/team-project programming language. There are a *lot* of ideas and tools in the Modula-3 world that should be liberally stolen and redeployed in other languages.
I might also mention that Turbo Pascal is, in most ways, just a Borland interpretation of Modula-2. Indeed, it was originally suppposed to be named for Modula, but the marketing 'droids realized that pretending it was Pascal was a wise and politic move.
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