Are you kidding? I litterally *never* even pick up the mouse with Emacs. In fact, most of the commands I use are not even listed in the menus. And ask any of my coworkers -- I can *fly* through a document.
Can you honestly tell me you've ever witnessed a power user pausing their input for two seconds before hitting a key combination they're familiar with
Exactly. Just ask any long term Emacs user (like myself). Sure there's a lot of cryptic commands to learn, but man, I can *fly* through a text document.
With a program with as many options as Emacs, tell me: does it take longer to type "C-u 4 M-j" (yes I know that is a bogus command for you nitpickers), or in a worst case senario "M-x foo-bar-function", or to move my hand.3m to the mouse, locate the cursor on the screen, and then wade through 3 levels of nested menus?
People might argue that the solution is to simply not make a program so complicated that those 3 levels of menus are necessary. But just look at any, say, professional 3D modeller, C IDE, or the GIMP or Photoshop. Large applications are impossible to simplify to that point, and keyboard shortcuts *drastically* save time for commonly used commands versus wading through all those menus.
While I agree entirely with your post, I want to point out that a keyboard is not really "simpler". The mouse (especially Mac mice with only one button) is far simpler. But (in agreement with your post), simpler is not always better. Imagine if your car stereo only had one button: you select the function you want by pressing the button to cycle through a menu. It would be very simple to use, but extremely inefficient. (I've actually seen car stereos like this - I guess they're designed to not have as many buttons to worry about while you're driving. But if you have to look down to watch the prety little LCD menu all the time...) Anyway, yes a mouse is simpler, but a keyboard allows infinitely more complex actions with much less movement and/or fewer steps.
If you're going to make that argument, then there is a whole host of software written for *nix that isn't "cross-platform". Sure, it may run under different flavors of *nix, but how is that different from different flavors of Windows? There are a lot fewer differences between BSD, Linux, and Solaris than there are between Windows 98 and Windows 2000.
Still, Windowx2000 was designed to run Win98 programs, without even recompiling! I guess system-level stuff might be a little more difficult, but still, on Unix you at least have to recompile programs to get them to run on different flavors. And many don't. But I've yet to see a user-level WinXXX program that won't run on any of those.
Since you're obviously one of the open source advocates who hang's out on/. (I'm not really complaining, often I am too), I just have to point out that Java and/or Sun is not open source. Sure, I can look at the source for the API, and I can file a request for enhancement, or if I'm a big company I can even have some input on the language itself. And many Java projects also happen to be Open Source. But Java is not open source. I think at least some of its appeal, however, is that it is also not Microsoft.
Re:mod original article downto 'troll'
on
C# To Crush Java?
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· Score: 1
The _average_ "Java programmer" already acts like a brain-washed zombie posessing no problem-solving skills other than using existing Java APIs.
That's why we all need Perl.
Just kidding (I don't even code Perl usually). And I love Java, but only because it is clean and simple. If you want, you can ignore the rest of this post because I'm aware that you were only talking about the _average_ Java developer. But anyways...
I don't love Java for most of its existing API's. Swing sucks. The Collections API sucks. In fact, most of java.util is bloated and wasteful. But that's why I code my own collections. But these are not faults of the language. Java itself is simple enough that I can write out my thoughts without pollution, worrying about pointers (although sometimes pointers are useful), or anything else.
Say I come up with some new custom tree traversal algorithm. I write it down on paper. I code a simple object-oriented design (but I also don't waste objects - that's why many Java programs are slow). And I can even use reflection and write test cases like nobody's business. Don't even get me started on how cool it is to get my app working on the server-side.
But mostly I'm just pointing out my own preferences here. In the long run, *every* language has its niche. Java is easy, and maybe it is a great entry point for many developers who either are tired of VB or don't want to deal with the complexity of Perl. But Perl also is incredibly useful in many cases (although I can't say the same about VB), C/C++ is also useful, and C# is probably the merging point for all of these. That's where it is attractive: integrating old modules written in different languages. But as a tool for developing an application from scratch, I can't see many people who would write something entirely in C#.
All my Windows programs run on 98, ME, NT4, 2K, and XP. Why is this a big deal? You make it sound as though that is "cross platform".
Also, your argument that just because WinXXX runs some huge percentage of all computers is exactly what keeps it that way. As a user/consumer, I prefer Windows. But as a developer, I believe that I should be able to use whatever platform/language/architecture that is best for the job. Windows is *not* always the best for the job (although often it is, but often it also isn't). If Windows had 100% domination, would we all be happy?
Re:At the risk of stating the obvious....
on
C# To Crush Java?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Visual Basic is ugly, and always has been. But there are already millions of Java programmers, most of whom took up Java because a) it's an easy language and they wanted to move away from VB, b) they like its cross platform capabilities, or c) they like its cross platform capabilities because they don't like Microsoft (see (a)).
I remember reading another/. article saying that Java was poised to become even more dominant than C/C++. Many of these Java developers probably took it up so that they could program web-based applets and such. And the reason why Java is a great web/applet platform is because of its cross platform nature. Are these people going to switch to C# all of a sudden? It defeats the original purpose of applets and Java.
So how is Microsoft going to switch all of these people? Mostly, I think it will be people who say "I like Microsoft, I like Java, and I like VB (ant want to re-use my old code); let's combine them all." But the number of people who want this, is, from my viewpoint, much less than the number of people who want to stay away from old buggy VB code and proprietary solutions.
So in summary, I think C# is the one that will have a "niche" market, and Java will be (and already is) far more mainstream.
Right. All it's saying is that it was someone else's fault, not theirs. That's something else those of us from the US should recognize - passing the blame:)
As the post says, you do not have to prove your child was harmed in order to sue. I guess that means you don't even have to have a child. But it does say that you have to prove that the material was severe enough to require a label. Even if it "harmed" your child, no reasonable judge would agree that your examples would warrant a label.
When I was hired to my current job (and I'm pretty sure this applies to most everyone working as a programmer for someone), my contract basically says that whatever I produce on company time belongs to the company. Same with a patent that was recently filed for an invention created during my time with this company -- I am still one of the (co-) inventors, but the patent belongs to the company.
On the other hand, if I had developed these projects on my own time, then I certainly would be the owner and sole and complete controller of what happens to them.
I"m sure the same thing could happen to professional photographers as well -- whoever they work for could easily require in their contract that any photos taken on company time would belong to the company. Because of groups such as the ASMP, however, photographers have at least some other job options should they choose not to accept that contract. In the computer industry, such contracts are pretty standard, and (especially in today's job market) you wouldn't have much choice but to sign.
When you get into storage like this, only having to drag and drop one file from a folder on your hard drive into another folder is just not an issue. Things would have to be done automatically. Sure, that's a great solution if you have only a few cameras and you still want to have to manipulate the data manually.
I'm probably just feeding the trolls because you obviously have no idea what you're talking about. First of all, companies always keep changelogs (at least companies that plan on being around next year do). But more importantly, if you're hired on contract (as this guy apparantly was), if they don't pay you then you have no reason to turn over your work, whether or not it would have ended up being proprietary. The non-disclosure agreement they would have made you sign might prevent you from turning it into open source, though.
And most importantly, how is this an open source problem? This case is only a matter of where the software ended up after FT broke their contract. Contracts get broken every day - just only this one made it on Slashdot.
I think the whole point of Tom's test was to show what would happen if, for example, you were to kick or knock over your box and jar the heatsink from its retainer. Tom says that many motherboards do not have adequate attachments to hold the sink down tight, and that the sink can fall off easily during shipping. Plus, Tom's tests did not apply when only the fan was disabled (in which case I'm sure you would have adequate time to realize the failure and turn off your system). If the whole heatsink falls off, then your sensors had better be damn good.
Re:Put the frickin' Home button back on the ...
on
Mozilla Bug Week
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· Score: 1
Really, how often do you need to press the "home" button? I think it's fine where it is - I don't want it polluting the rest of the toolbar with its un-usefulness.
Current Hard Drive technology can store even more than this, so it's not really a matter of how many beautiful icons I can fit onto my screen. The problem is avoiding bloat so that I don't need 100 GB of RAM to go along with it.
When I got my new Seagate Baracuda ST340824A 40GB drives, it turns out that the sector translation or LBA clipping or something like that is messed up on those drives. So LILO and Grub wouldn't work and I had to boot from a floppy. Later the problem magically fixed itself, so I'm back to LILO. Either way, if it weren't for a recent power outage, I had an uptime of 78 days so it's not like I had to boot very much anyway.
Re:Tooltips are good, but...
on
GNU Emacs 21
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· Score: 1
I've learned not to use the mouse at all when using Emacs. That's one of the great things about it - you can define a keybinding to *anything* (and even write your own functions to do what isn't already defined).
Re:Did anyone else read the WHOLE page?
on
Magnetic Fluids
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· Score: 1
We had a big debate at my office on whether that was real or not (before I read this post:). Most of us believed it, simply because we've all seen guys (and girls) with very messed up things done to their bodies. Implants, mostly. And of course, there's the weirdos who amputate themselves.
So if people amputate arms and legs and fingers on themselves, I don't think there's any reason why this wouldn't really happen some day. I think it would be kinda cool to have an extra limb hanging out of my stomach:)
And of course, that "alien finger" would just kick some serious ass! (I know a dude who had one of his fingers taken out all the way to the wrist - it almost looks normal, except you have to do a double take because he only has three fingers:)
But there's one thing I've always liked about message boards - typing things out forces you to think about what you have to say. Sure, face-to-face is much better for brainstorming, or any other rapid-fire conversation, but once you have your general ideas for the project and the architecture, message boards force more thought into the actual implementation.
Slashdot Mirror
For my desktop, I've got a Gig of cheap ram and I've never used swap.
Emacs without a mouse is horribly, horribly slow.
Are you kidding? I litterally *never* even pick up the mouse with Emacs. In fact, most of the commands I use are not even listed in the menus. And ask any of my coworkers -- I can *fly* through a document.
Can you honestly tell me you've ever witnessed a power user pausing their input for two seconds before hitting a key combination they're familiar with
.3m to the mouse, locate the cursor on the screen, and then wade through 3 levels of nested menus?
Exactly. Just ask any long term Emacs user (like myself). Sure there's a lot of cryptic commands to learn, but man, I can *fly* through a text document.
With a program with as many options as Emacs, tell me: does it take longer to type "C-u 4 M-j" (yes I know that is a bogus command for you nitpickers), or in a worst case senario "M-x foo-bar-function", or to move my hand
People might argue that the solution is to simply not make a program so complicated that those 3 levels of menus are necessary. But just look at any, say, professional 3D modeller, C IDE, or the GIMP or Photoshop. Large applications are impossible to simplify to that point, and keyboard shortcuts *drastically* save time for commonly used commands versus wading through all those menus.
While I agree entirely with your post, I want to point out that a keyboard is not really "simpler". The mouse (especially Mac mice with only one button) is far simpler. But (in agreement with your post), simpler is not always better. Imagine if your car stereo only had one button: you select the function you want by pressing the button to cycle through a menu. It would be very simple to use, but extremely inefficient. (I've actually seen car stereos like this - I guess they're designed to not have as many buttons to worry about while you're driving. But if you have to look down to watch the prety little LCD menu all the time...) Anyway, yes a mouse is simpler, but a keyboard allows infinitely more complex actions with much less movement and/or fewer steps.
If you're going to make that argument, then there is a whole host of software written for *nix that isn't "cross-platform". Sure, it may run under different flavors of *nix, but how is that different from different flavors of Windows? There are a lot fewer differences between BSD, Linux, and Solaris than there are between Windows 98 and Windows 2000.
Still, Windowx2000 was designed to run Win98 programs, without even recompiling! I guess system-level stuff might be a little more difficult, but still, on Unix you at least have to recompile programs to get them to run on different flavors. And many don't. But I've yet to see a user-level WinXXX program that won't run on any of those.
Since you're obviously one of the open source advocates who hang's out on /. (I'm not really complaining, often I am too), I just have to point out that Java and/or Sun is not open source. Sure, I can look at the source for the API, and I can file a request for enhancement, or if I'm a big company I can even have some input on the language itself. And many Java projects also happen to be Open Source. But Java is not open source. I think at least some of its appeal, however, is that it is also not Microsoft.
The _average_ "Java programmer" already acts like a brain-washed zombie posessing no problem-solving skills other than using existing Java APIs.
That's why we all need Perl.
Just kidding (I don't even code Perl usually). And I love Java, but only because it is clean and simple. If you want, you can ignore the rest of this post because I'm aware that you were only talking about the _average_ Java developer. But anyways...
I don't love Java for most of its existing API's. Swing sucks. The Collections API sucks. In fact, most of java.util is bloated and wasteful. But that's why I code my own collections. But these are not faults of the language. Java itself is simple enough that I can write out my thoughts without pollution, worrying about pointers (although sometimes pointers are useful), or anything else.
Say I come up with some new custom tree traversal algorithm. I write it down on paper. I code a simple object-oriented design (but I also don't waste objects - that's why many Java programs are slow). And I can even use reflection and write test cases like nobody's business. Don't even get me started on how cool it is to get my app working on the server-side.
But mostly I'm just pointing out my own preferences here. In the long run, *every* language has its niche. Java is easy, and maybe it is a great entry point for many developers who either are tired of VB or don't want to deal with the complexity of Perl. But Perl also is incredibly useful in many cases (although I can't say the same about VB), C/C++ is also useful, and C# is probably the merging point for all of these. That's where it is attractive: integrating old modules written in different languages. But as a tool for developing an application from scratch, I can't see many people who would write something entirely in C#.
All my Windows programs run on 98, ME, NT4, 2K, and XP. Why is this a big deal? You make it sound as though that is "cross platform".
Also, your argument that just because WinXXX runs some huge percentage of all computers is exactly what keeps it that way. As a user/consumer, I prefer Windows. But as a developer, I believe that I should be able to use whatever platform/language/architecture that is best for the job. Windows is *not* always the best for the job (although often it is, but often it also isn't). If Windows had 100% domination, would we all be happy?
Visual Basic is ugly, and always has been. But there are already millions of Java programmers, most of whom took up Java because a) it's an easy language and they wanted to move away from VB, b) they like its cross platform capabilities, or c) they like its cross platform capabilities because they don't like Microsoft (see (a)).
/. article saying that Java was poised to become even more dominant than C/C++. Many of these Java developers probably took it up so that they could program web-based applets and such. And the reason why Java is a great web/applet platform is because of its cross platform nature. Are these people going to switch to C# all of a sudden? It defeats the original purpose of applets and Java.
I remember reading another
So how is Microsoft going to switch all of these people? Mostly, I think it will be people who say "I like Microsoft, I like Java, and I like VB (ant want to re-use my old code); let's combine them all." But the number of people who want this, is, from my viewpoint, much less than the number of people who want to stay away from old buggy VB code and proprietary solutions.
So in summary, I think C# is the one that will have a "niche" market, and Java will be (and already is) far more mainstream.
Right. All it's saying is that it was someone else's fault, not theirs. That's something else those of us from the US should recognize - passing the blame :)
(just to nitpick) Actually Freshmeat has comments too, just nobody uses them :)
As the post says, you do not have to prove your child was harmed in order to sue. I guess that means you don't even have to have a child. But it does say that you have to prove that the material was severe enough to require a label. Even if it "harmed" your child, no reasonable judge would agree that your examples would warrant a label.
When I was hired to my current job (and I'm pretty sure this applies to most everyone working as a programmer for someone), my contract basically says that whatever I produce on company time belongs to the company. Same with a patent that was recently filed for an invention created during my time with this company -- I am still one of the (co-) inventors, but the patent belongs to the company.
On the other hand, if I had developed these projects on my own time, then I certainly would be the owner and sole and complete controller of what happens to them.
I"m sure the same thing could happen to professional photographers as well -- whoever they work for could easily require in their contract that any photos taken on company time would belong to the company. Because of groups such as the ASMP, however, photographers have at least some other job options should they choose not to accept that contract. In the computer industry, such contracts are pretty standard, and (especially in today's job market) you wouldn't have much choice but to sign.
Well, 90MB/sec is not 324MB/hour is it?
When you get into storage like this, only having to drag and drop one file from a folder on your hard drive into another folder is just not an issue. Things would have to be done automatically. Sure, that's a great solution if you have only a few cameras and you still want to have to manipulate the data manually.
I'm probably just feeding the trolls because you obviously have no idea what you're talking about. First of all, companies always keep changelogs (at least companies that plan on being around next year do). But more importantly, if you're hired on contract (as this guy apparantly was), if they don't pay you then you have no reason to turn over your work, whether or not it would have ended up being proprietary. The non-disclosure agreement they would have made you sign might prevent you from turning it into open source, though.
And most importantly, how is this an open source problem? This case is only a matter of where the software ended up after FT broke their contract. Contracts get broken every day - just only this one made it on Slashdot.
Does this apply to Ext3 as well? IIRC, Ext3 is just Ext2 with a journal added.
I think the whole point of Tom's test was to show what would happen if, for example, you were to kick or knock over your box and jar the heatsink from its retainer. Tom says that many motherboards do not have adequate attachments to hold the sink down tight, and that the sink can fall off easily during shipping. Plus, Tom's tests did not apply when only the fan was disabled (in which case I'm sure you would have adequate time to realize the failure and turn off your system). If the whole heatsink falls off, then your sensors had better be damn good.
How 'bout a beowulf cluster of these? :)
Really, how often do you need to press the "home" button? I think it's fine where it is - I don't want it polluting the rest of the toolbar with its un-usefulness.
Current Hard Drive technology can store even more than this, so it's not really a matter of how many beautiful icons I can fit onto my screen. The problem is avoiding bloat so that I don't need 100 GB of RAM to go along with it.
When I got my new Seagate Baracuda ST340824A 40GB drives, it turns out that the sector translation or LBA clipping or something like that is messed up on those drives. So LILO and Grub wouldn't work and I had to boot from a floppy. Later the problem magically fixed itself, so I'm back to LILO. Either way, if it weren't for a recent power outage, I had an uptime of 78 days so it's not like I had to boot very much anyway.
I've learned not to use the mouse at all when using Emacs. That's one of the great things about it - you can define a keybinding to *anything* (and even write your own functions to do what isn't already defined).
We had a big debate at my office on whether that was real or not (before I read this post :). Most of us believed it, simply because we've all seen guys (and girls) with very messed up things done to their bodies. Implants, mostly. And of course, there's the weirdos who amputate themselves.
:)
:)
So if people amputate arms and legs and fingers on themselves, I don't think there's any reason why this wouldn't really happen some day. I think it would be kinda cool to have an extra limb hanging out of my stomach
And of course, that "alien finger" would just kick some serious ass! (I know a dude who had one of his fingers taken out all the way to the wrist - it almost looks normal, except you have to do a double take because he only has three fingers
But there's one thing I've always liked about message boards - typing things out forces you to think about what you have to say. Sure, face-to-face is much better for brainstorming, or any other rapid-fire conversation, but once you have your general ideas for the project and the architecture, message boards force more thought into the actual implementation.