Its interesting that a lot of the automatically generated code in C# uses 1 letter class and argument names. This is also for short scripts, where maintainability shouldn't really be an issue (if its broke, you should be able to write a new one fast enough)
The attitude that you can't improve the underlying layers leads to the feeling that inspecting how they work is pointless. Sure, HLL's presently compile things really efficiently, but without seeing how they work you can't make a logical progression upward; you can only guess at how the next stage is to be made. You don't need to be able to write it; you just need to be able to explain to yourself how it works in general terms, to see how the next step continues out from it.
While I was looking for a linux distribution, it seemed to fall into two catagories: 50MB distros that don't even include GCC, or 2-4GB distros that include 3 apps for any given task (if I knew enough to choose between the 3 window managers they offered, I'd probably just install the one I wanted myself). There doesn't seem to be anything in the middle, where out of the box Windows sits (that is, a fairly-non-intensive GUI (at least if you change back to Classic), networking stuff, a browser, and the ability to install most anything). The closest thing I could find was Damn Small Linux, which while it doesn't have GCC installed (I've found GCC to be pretty much like any of the Windows install engines in terms of needing it to install anything) but has a capability to download it (in runnable form no less; what exactly are you supposed to do with the source to your compiler?)
I think that the key to defeating this treaty, if its enacted and enforced at all, is to push for it to be enforced to the letter. Flood the powers that be with anonymous tips about people trafficing in pencils and paper. If you see someone doing math, turn him in! The only way to make people see how absurd something like this is to make it affect them.
Actually the breathing hole in the hard drive is critical to maintaining the cushion of air that the drive heads use to float the couple of microns over the platter surface that they need. If you plug the hole, you've got a good chance of having a hard drive crash in the most literal sense of the phrase when the heads dig into the platters on boot.
What MS could try to do is force updates on the pirate users as kind of a 'test group' to work out those problems that sometimes cause Windows updates to completely bork a machine. The benefit to registering would be to opt out of unauthorized experiments. Not as though there aren't ways to force pretty much anything to happen remotely on a Windows machine anyway...
At least in Connecticut, the state pays for the roads, and the neighboring towns cover the schools and the extra police to keep their out-of-control gangster children from killing people (they actually beat someone nearly to death outside a school, and assaulted a police officer on the grounds of a school). The millions that they roll in each day pretty much go to the weekly pair of hundred-dollar Nikes for the aforementioned kids, and of course the large number of congresspersons that it takes to keep such an operation tax free.
The idea isn't to fine you for trying to patent something you think is original; the idea is to make you ask around to see if people already do it. Is it really that big a deal to make a two-second check to see if your idea is actually original?
What we really need is massive fines for failed patent applications. If you had to sink say 10K into every frivolous attempt that you tried, I think there'd be a lot less of it.
It still gets me how the people who are participating in the nigritude ultramarine thing don't see anything wrong with what they're doing. This line particularly got me:
"Without, as opposed to guestbook spamming, being evil it's a sandbox after all."
Yes its a sandbox, no its not your personal playground.
What exactly does a multitude of wacky motherboard shaped do for making better machines? It just means that you need to buy new parts more often. My PCs, on the other hand, have been cycling through the same few cases for the past 10 years. Smaller mobos don't mean laptops; did you see the height of the heatsink assemblies? That's big by even early 90's 'portable' standards.
I've used large bills (50 & 100) for purchases several times. People trust cash more than checks, and you can't get a credit card reader or other electronic transfer means accessible just anywhere (plus there are usually fees associated with electronic transfers)
If everyone agreed to a standard thumbprint to put on latex thumbs, and everyone used a latex thumb to buy their music... wouldn't the system be useless, as the thumbprint isn't unique to the user anymore? We need an OpenThumbprint project...
MS seems to have this thing where all Joe User software requires a new window for everything (note that Office somehow went from MDI to SDI with Office 2K) and the developer software gets a more friendly interface (the VS.Net IDE is tabbed, the VS6 IDE was simply MDI). That the VS.Net IDE is essentially a web browser and with a few simple interface changes could be usable for general purpose stuff (with the side effect of an OK syntax highlighter) seems to escape them...
Perhaps its all leading up to licensing the RIAA's lawsuit factory technology, after all if they sue every pirated XP install for $1000 or so, that's more then they'd make off actually selling XP to that user.
And I can't wait for my UHDV camcorder, just have to run a cable to massive RAID array in the truck... of course, by then we might have 100Gbit wireless, and be more stealth about it.
I've had a few people who I was only in contact with via the internet, whose activity levels dropped from normal to vanished with no transition. Odd thought that it might have been due to their untimely demise...
Precisely. Whoever comes up with this miracle anti-aging system had better engineer in some kind of sterilizing side effect. If we're going to stay away from manned space exploration, but work towards making it so that people can't die except by accident or malicious intent, we need some kind of a check on population growth.
My school 'strongly suggests' getting an IBM notebook, but it makes sense since you can bulk buy with the other thousand people who need to buy one, and there's enough IBM machines in operation to get us an on-site IBM repair facility. Of course, any machine (within reason) will work with the network, its just that for the purposes of getting a machine and having it maintained that sticking to the standard is better for you.
Single frames that are radically different from the surrounding frames are highly visible. We made a RotK trailer by drawing the movie time and date on some clear film (because we hadn't gotten a real one) and you could clearly see where the guy who drew it wrote his name on a single frame (in that you could actually read it). Also, a single frame might get missed by the framerate of the movie and the framerate of the capturing device getting out of phase (though at 30fps interlaced on an NTSC camcorder, its unlikely)
Most of the retorts that this guy is making seem to assume that we're using nucelar *weapons* as a power source, rather than a stable nuclear reactor. Particularly this line:
As opposed to betting our lives on nukes; cuddly objects which have never threatened human survival before.
I mean, human survival was (and is) threatened by the huge number of weapons produced during the Cold War, but modern nuclear plants have zero chance of damaging humanity, and an infintesimal chance of killing those in the immediate vicinity.
I would say that I do most things with my right hand because thats the hand I use more frequently. Don't really know why I always start doing things right-handed, though. I know there are a few things, like swinging a baseball bat, that I started so clueless that I wound up doing them left-handed and not knowing it. So, handedness might be a cultural thing... the more you observe something, the more you're likely to adopt the handedness that you observe.
I think that the general case is mostly correct... you have to allow for some deviation from the norm, especially with a politician as... unique... as the one in question.
MS isn't actually that bad in the hardware department; sure, they have a lot of junk stuff, but their rebranded mice and keyboards are pretty good, and the XBox (lets call it a PS2 ripoff) speaks for itself (especially if you void the warranty). If they manage to find a good product to put their name on, it might actually be a success.
Really, of all else fails, they just need to do as follows:
1) Break ipod compatibility in Longhorn 2) Make WinPod DRMed to the point that even the RIAA wants some 3) Profit
Slashdot Mirror
Its interesting that a lot of the automatically generated code in C# uses 1 letter class and argument names. This is also for short scripts, where maintainability shouldn't really be an issue (if its broke, you should be able to write a new one fast enough)
The attitude that you can't improve the underlying layers leads to the feeling that inspecting how they work is pointless. Sure, HLL's presently compile things really efficiently, but without seeing how they work you can't make a logical progression upward; you can only guess at how the next stage is to be made. You don't need to be able to write it; you just need to be able to explain to yourself how it works in general terms, to see how the next step continues out from it.
While I was looking for a linux distribution, it seemed to fall into two catagories: 50MB distros that don't even include GCC, or 2-4GB distros that include 3 apps for any given task (if I knew enough to choose between the 3 window managers they offered, I'd probably just install the one I wanted myself). There doesn't seem to be anything in the middle, where out of the box Windows sits (that is, a fairly-non-intensive GUI (at least if you change back to Classic), networking stuff, a browser, and the ability to install most anything). The closest thing I could find was Damn Small Linux, which while it doesn't have GCC installed (I've found GCC to be pretty much like any of the Windows install engines in terms of needing it to install anything) but has a capability to download it (in runnable form no less; what exactly are you supposed to do with the source to your compiler?)
I think that the key to defeating this treaty, if its enacted and enforced at all, is to push for it to be enforced to the letter. Flood the powers that be with anonymous tips about people trafficing in pencils and paper. If you see someone doing math, turn him in! The only way to make people see how absurd something like this is to make it affect them.
Actually the breathing hole in the hard drive is critical to maintaining the cushion of air that the drive heads use to float the couple of microns over the platter surface that they need. If you plug the hole, you've got a good chance of having a hard drive crash in the most literal sense of the phrase when the heads dig into the platters on boot.
What MS could try to do is force updates on the pirate users as kind of a 'test group' to work out those problems that sometimes cause Windows updates to completely bork a machine. The benefit to registering would be to opt out of unauthorized experiments. Not as though there aren't ways to force pretty much anything to happen remotely on a Windows machine anyway ...
At least in Connecticut, the state pays for the roads, and the neighboring towns cover the schools and the extra police to keep their out-of-control gangster children from killing people (they actually beat someone nearly to death outside a school, and assaulted a police officer on the grounds of a school). The millions that they roll in each day pretty much go to the weekly pair of hundred-dollar Nikes for the aforementioned kids, and of course the large number of congresspersons that it takes to keep such an operation tax free.
The idea isn't to fine you for trying to patent something you think is original; the idea is to make you ask around to see if people already do it. Is it really that big a deal to make a two-second check to see if your idea is actually original?
What we really need is massive fines for failed patent applications. If you had to sink say 10K into every frivolous attempt that you tried, I think there'd be a lot less of it.
Yes its a sandbox, no its not your personal playground.
What exactly does a multitude of wacky motherboard shaped do for making better machines? It just means that you need to buy new parts more often. My PCs, on the other hand, have been cycling through the same few cases for the past 10 years. Smaller mobos don't mean laptops; did you see the height of the heatsink assemblies? That's big by even early 90's 'portable' standards.
I've used large bills (50 & 100) for purchases several times. People trust cash more than checks, and you can't get a credit card reader or other electronic transfer means accessible just anywhere (plus there are usually fees associated with electronic transfers)
If everyone agreed to a standard thumbprint to put on latex thumbs, and everyone used a latex thumb to buy their music ... wouldn't the system be useless, as the thumbprint isn't unique to the user anymore? We need an OpenThumbprint project ...
MS seems to have this thing where all Joe User software requires a new window for everything (note that Office somehow went from MDI to SDI with Office 2K) and the developer software gets a more friendly interface (the VS.Net IDE is tabbed, the VS6 IDE was simply MDI). That the VS.Net IDE is essentially a web browser and with a few simple interface changes could be usable for general purpose stuff (with the side effect of an OK syntax highlighter) seems to escape them ...
Perhaps its all leading up to licensing the RIAA's lawsuit factory technology, after all if they sue every pirated XP install for $1000 or so, that's more then they'd make off actually selling XP to that user.
And I can't wait for my UHDV camcorder, just have to run a cable to massive RAID array in the truck ... of course, by then we might have 100Gbit wireless, and be more stealth about it.
I've had a few people who I was only in contact with via the internet, whose activity levels dropped from normal to vanished with no transition. Odd thought that it might have been due to their untimely demise ...
Precisely. Whoever comes up with this miracle anti-aging system had better engineer in some kind of sterilizing side effect. If we're going to stay away from manned space exploration, but work towards making it so that people can't die except by accident or malicious intent, we need some kind of a check on population growth.
My school 'strongly suggests' getting an IBM notebook, but it makes sense since you can bulk buy with the other thousand people who need to buy one, and there's enough IBM machines in operation to get us an on-site IBM repair facility. Of course, any machine (within reason) will work with the network, its just that for the purposes of getting a machine and having it maintained that sticking to the standard is better for you.
Single frames that are radically different from the surrounding frames are highly visible. We made a RotK trailer by drawing the movie time and date on some clear film (because we hadn't gotten a real one) and you could clearly see where the guy who drew it wrote his name on a single frame (in that you could actually read it). Also, a single frame might get missed by the framerate of the movie and the framerate of the capturing device getting out of phase (though at 30fps interlaced on an NTSC camcorder, its unlikely)
And then how long after that before it becomes a felony to run Linux on your Zen, for fear that you might watch a TV show a second time!
I would say that I do most things with my right hand because thats the hand I use more frequently. Don't really know why I always start doing things right-handed, though. I know there are a few things, like swinging a baseball bat, that I started so clueless that I wound up doing them left-handed and not knowing it. So, handedness might be a cultural thing ... the more you observe something, the more you're likely to adopt the handedness that you observe.
I think that the general case is mostly correct ... you have to allow for some deviation from the norm, especially with a politician as ... unique ... as the one in question.
MS isn't actually that bad in the hardware department; sure, they have a lot of junk stuff, but their rebranded mice and keyboards are pretty good, and the XBox (lets call it a PS2 ripoff) speaks for itself (especially if you void the warranty). If they manage to find a good product to put their name on, it might actually be a success.
Really, of all else fails, they just need to do as follows:
1) Break ipod compatibility in Longhorn
2) Make WinPod DRMed to the point that even the RIAA wants some
3) Profit