I actually think software patents are a good thing if used properly (what we see here is misuse). Lets say I come up with a great idea. Under disclosure tell my friends, some potential customers, and get some short term investment money. Take time off work to get the patent filed, then look for bigger investors. If a corporation wants to buy or license it, the investors get a return and even if I never make the product I've officially succeeded as an inventor. Or I get more investment money from investors, I can pay for people and assets to make it. And the best part is I'm protected from competitors.
Except this doesn't happen.
Instead we have IBM collecting stupid ones for unknown reasons. Microsoft collecting them because they know they'll be sued broke if they don't. Opportunistic patent whores. Phone companies waiting for their ideas to succeed by others and suing them out of existance (Gif). Or web services preventing competitors from gaining traction in new business models. And yet the funny thing is that if a little guy like me creates a patent and ATT or Vonage implement it without my blessing I'm shit out of luck because I'm too small to fight them.
So, what I propose is to first abolish ALL new patents, terminate all patent lawsuits, eliminate any unreasonable royalties. Basically restart everybody with an even playing field.
Second, make invention a government concern. Every country in the world (well this is a lot to hope for... aka will never happen) work together to manage invention within their borders. When a citizen or business comes up with an idea, they go to their government who dedicates resources to help develop the idea. If this means a small guy like me, they provide experts and investment money who help produce and market the good ideas into the product or service. In return they get a slice of the revenue back. I get my idea out and making money and they get their investment back. If anybody duplicates the idea, even in another country, it is the job of the government to resolve it, and I can continue to do my job.
If a big corporation like IBM or Microsoft comes up with an idea, it's the same thing. They get some investment money to develop it (even if they don't need it), and get a slice of revenue. They and the government win too. The government helps them reduce the risk of trying new ideas and increased R&D will help every country in the long term.
I know nobody will agree with me or say it's possible. I know it's as likely as socialized health care in the United States and people will take advantage and abuse anything they can. But I do believe that ideas must be promoted and brilliant people need to be protected and rewarded. The current system only helps those with money and portfolio and screws the rest.
Technically, IE is not part of the OS. I know what you're thinking. No really, take a look at Windows Embedded. IE and all it's parts are optional components. Same with another product called WinFLP... IE, Media Player and others are all optional.
Now this is very important: IE is an SDK. Let me repeat that so that you understand, and I know this isn't easy: IE is an SDK. Well sure! Lets look at what IE provides:
1) CryptoAPI. Used in driver and file signing, encryption algorithms, certificate such as x509, all of which is easily usable in your applications. 2) Inetlib. Provides high level protocols such as http, ftp, even gopher through URLs. Very easy to implement in your applications, even gives you SSL. Very useful for SOAP. 3) showdocvw. By far the most popular and the most talked/complained about. Provides an easy way to show web content in your application. Of course also a virus target, but that's another story. 4) url.dll. Easy way for your application to parse URLs. Much safer and easier than doing it yourself.
I could go on, however this is why Microsoft couldn't completely remove IE from the OS. While getting rid of the iexplore.exe is easy, getting rid of the above is much harder and has to be done in an embedded deployment.
Now, I ask you this: back to my original statement. If Microsoft gets its ass kicked and Apple takes over, who's going to protect Apple from antitrust claims? After all, Microsoft has clearly defined the offense and its default penalty. Is Apple ready to be told to take these out? Ps: Would Microsoft have maintained IE for Mac if Safari wasn't bundled?
Imagine if Microsoft finally takes a critical blow leaving a vacuum for Apple to dominate. What's Apple shipping for hardware these days? Intel? Sorry AMD. What about wireless chipset? Video cards? Would be great to be vendor their choice but would suck to be the loser. Okay, fine. You'll just say that Apple will suddenly have a change of heart and allow consumers to choose the hardware. Um, ya.
Since MS makes IE for Mac, do they have the right to complain that Apple bundles Safari? What about Real? Do they have a right to complain that Mac bundle QuickTime? What if Apple bundles an office productivity suite? The double standards are staggering.
"Locks don't stop theft, they merely keep honest people honest".
A different port increases the effort substantially and will thin out the lazy and stupid bots can be effective. As a long term solution, can routers around the world be updated to detect this obvious behavior? Even better, can't they report it down chain down to the ISP or company's IT?
I see two, apparently unthought-of, outcomes, besides the usual "I hate ____" flames:
1) Someone in the software community takes advantage of this and legal ships commercial code containing GPL. Sure, we don't see that as possible now, but what about someone thinking outside the box to undermine what the GPL fans are protecting? For example, is it possible to wrap another license around GPL code, make it dual license, then rip out the GPL? Just hypothetical of course, but if it's done the other way maybe someone will try.
2) A rift that separates BSD vs GPL. There's already a rift personality wise. What if everybody who's written BSD code updates their (key word "their") code to say "Entire source and derivatives must remain licensable in open source and commercial software".
I don't think either will really happen, but what if?
Wow, I can't believe I'm reading this. This is the equivalent of taking a GPL file, adding another license, then taking away the GPL because "the second license allows it". Of course if anybody did this, there would be 1000 posts in this thread instead of 100.
Okay, lets be clear:
1) Someone wrote some code for OpenBSD, and licensed it with the BSD license. 2) The code is now allowable to be in OpenBSD, Linux, Windows, Solaris, cruise missiles. 3) Now, someone *could* insert their code and license it with anything, including GPL. Note however, the original code is still BSD, just the new GPL code is under GPL, hence dual licensed.
Then it goes to hell.
4) Someone then goes in and deletes the BSD license out of the source file. Now, linking with Linux is still allowed but linking with OpenBSD is shaky, Windows and cruise missiles is not allowed at all.
Here's the thing: DON'T DELETE SOMEONE'S LICENSE!!! Personally, if I was the writer of the file, I'd be much more pissed and would relicense it as commercial. But I'm just evil.
I remember one of the roommates being interviewed the next day:
"Did he ever play any games?" "No" "Did he ever play any violent games?" "Um, no" "Are you sure?" "Um, pretty sure. He mostly surfed the web" "So, no games?"
Then they interviewed another and asked the same questions. Sorry, media, you'll have to stick with the real news.
Actually, it's because Canada is Microsoft's #3 exporter of staff, behind India and Japan (link) and an L visa is obtainable after a year.
Also, Microsoft DOES have R&D in China, India, Ireland, among other places, so opening one in Vancouver is incredibly overdue.
Sorry, I'm just nitpicking and I agree with your post, Mr. Lightning. This message isn't for you. However everybody else who posted trash about Microsoft opening an office in Canada because it's cheaper:
FUCK YOU
You assholes obviously haven't spent much time in Vancouver or Toronto in the last decade or Alberta in the last year. Stop posting shit about nonsense you have no fricking clue about. Have you guys actually sent your resumes to Microsoft? Geez. Sound like the neighbor's barking dogs.
What's funny is that in the end this is all about feeding the American fear with easy short term patches. Soon only the immigrants who mean no harm will accept it while the red necks and terrorist continue to blow shit up. At least according to the article it's acquired Canadian companies supplying the hardware so we should feel a little better.
Ps... as a Canadian, you probably have in your memory the process of getting your passport and remember how difficult it was. Just for shits and giggles, look around in your neighborhood (through walking, not Google) for businesses that do passport photos and get one done. From the same people that want implanted RFID, this is as logical as the Chubacka defense.
Canada did it. It wasn't easy, probably expensive. But the way I remember it was they all switched one day to have 100km/hr in the center and 60 mph in smaller text below. Soon after, the 60 mph was gone.
Now the thing about Canada is that it has a lot of roads and a lot of signs. While United States is slightly smaller and has more roads, they really don't use a lot of signs. At least where I've been, most interstate highways only have a speed sign whenever the speed changes. Distances to towns aren't known until you're there. Contrast this to where I'm from there's a distance signs are everywhere and close enough together to make you impatient, speed signs after every major intersection (and immediately before every speed trap).
It can be done. It's not cheap, but bite the bullet. When you're done, calculating how long it will take to drive 525 kms at 100km/h is easier than 315 miles at 60mph.
After reviewing the evidence (as linked above) I have the following conclusions:
- after all these years, some teachers are still loud and annoying - after all these years, some students are still assholes and bitches, especially to subs - teachers' threats are empty - students know that the teachers' threats are empty
Keep in mind, what I'm suggesting is much more calm. No more punishing up front. Punishing for long term, sure. I'm also suggesting that there are good students out there. And a lot of them. Why does their education have to be affected by a the ones that don't care?
Keep in mind there's also a mob mentality involved here too. If a small group of the 'cool' kids are obnoxious, the rest will be too. Separating these from the larger group and into smaller more controlled groups may even help them too but I believe it will help the rest enormously.
Note that I never suggested direct punishment in either of my posts.
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more (although I think my wording might be different).
If I might add, I believe Darwinism has been lost on the human race. Since health care has eliminated physical issues as a variable, I think a new variable should be promoted: motivation. People who are disruptive, angry should be dealt with by lowering their quality of education and they will inevitably be reduced to the crap jobs of society. Those who are bright and motivated should benefit from the best of education giving them the best opportunities.
This isn't hard to do. As others have suggested we can't rely on the parents anymore and teachers are too scared to deal with the problems, however denying troubled kids quality education is not considered unreasonable. Overall they won't care anyway. Even in my time being kicked out of school was considered flattering. All I'm suggesting is to make education more difficult for those who don't want to learn (yet fair to those who improve), reward those who try. Over time, those kids will become adults and society will handle the punishment and rewards.
But to keep it sorta on topic, is there any reason kids can't film others misbehaving and put it on youtube?
By the same logic, websites that show traffic conditions should be shut down too. Well, ya, terrorists can make sure they don't get stuck in parking lot on the I-5.
Slashdot sounds like those hockey commentary people...
"Ballmer's got the CD and he's headed for the RTM... he shoots, OHH! A bug shuts him down!!! Oh that crowd is really upset"
"Well Tim, that was a close one, he's oh for 10 now, he really needs a break"
"Now Gentoo has control, passes it to Fedora, passes it to SuSE, passes it to Ubuntu, passes it back to SuSE... they seem to have their passing game working really well"
"Well Tim, they have heart but only a small group of the audience seems to be cheering for them"
As a lefty, the best kept secret is that we have had the advantage for a long time now. Only we can point and click/drag things on the screen with our right hand while using a pen or typing with the left. Right handed people can't do that. For them, the right hand is the boss. It has to do the mouse, type, write, but can never do all at the same time.
Of course some of those bastards know this. That's why they add the option to swap the mouse buttons around. It's all evil conspiracy to mess with our heads and take away our advantage.
A $40 512MB SD Card from Tiger Direct in a shoebox. Really, an email to replace the catalog and a USPS stamped envelope would have increased their margins 10 fold.
I don't ever remember buying a computer without shit installed. HP and Compaq also were bad for garbage. Dell's always pimped something out, like AOL or shareware antivirus, there's even a page of checkboxes on their wizard that frightens me. Only thing that's changed is that Google has realized they can contribute clutter too.
I swear, the best thing to do is go back to the olden days, buy the pieces, throw it together, say "no! I'll install my own damn OS my way". Can't be worse than a XPS that's almost the size of a bar fridge.
This is a common tactic by consulting companies. It always follows the same flow, never fail:
1) consulting company hires a lot of junior/intermediate coders for his company that only learned Java or C#. C++ skills and experience avoided in favor of knowing the latest.NET/Java technologies. 2) an expensive consultant comes in to analyze an imperfect system 3) this person makes all kinds of suggestions, says nice things about management, says "use lots of UML" 4) says his devs are really good C++ 5) brings in his coders to help fix bugs, charges lots of money for diagrams never used 6) consultant coders fail at fixing bugs, claim that code base is too fubar'ed to maintain 7) convince management to "port" code to Java/C#. 8) consultant coders soon have more knowledge of the system than the old devs because knowledge isn't shared properly (no more UML) 9) management becomes too afraid to let go consultant coders because they know more about the system than the devs (despite costing atleast twice as much)
I can't count how many times I've seen this because the city I used to live in had atleast 2 massive consulting companies that made this their business model. I imagine it's even worse when it goes off shore to India because all the knowledge is looked away in peoples' minds thousands of miles away. Such a huge mistake for management to lose all they paid for for nothing.
Why is everybody say "it works on my version of Linux"? What about the BSDs? Smart phones? Embedded devices? My own crackpot system using vacuum tubes? We don't want it all open source, all we want is the C code opened, changable, and distributable. The stuff that's platform dependant. Give me this, and I'll know that your JSP web page will work on my server (which it doesn't).
Sun: You said you had a write-once-run-everywhere platform. Well? Where the hell is it? Do you really think we want the source so we can screw it up? We want what you promised, write once, run on my platform. And as long as I cannot build it for my platform, then it's of no friggen use. And no, you can't make OSS and third parties fill in the gaps, that's when you get the write-once-test-everywhere/lowest common demoninator fiasco that we have now.
Dude, free education is today. Sure, not here, but just a short raft ride from Forida and you don't pay a cent! No tuition! Free books! Even living is cheap, just pennies a day!
The thread is insane. It's like that spouse swap where they take two disfunctional families and swap the mother. Both families are screwed up but somewhere in the center is a happy median that's not so bad. But if you think that publishers will eventually say "you're right, we should give it away for free", you're absolutely mad. If writers had to work for free, I'm sure they'd prefer fishing.
On the other side of disfunctional is the professors who insist we buy $100 books that they don't even use. The first couple years of school is always about learning to wait a week to find out what books are actually required and hunt the used book store when they are. But telling the poorest population of a school to squeeze out that extra couple hundred bucks for crap is just cruel.
In the middle is somewhere normal. That's the key to this problem, not the overgeneralized ignorant comments like above.
Um, that's an awefully negative statement without any actual reason. Do you have any actual Informative (moderators, you suck) information that can tell me that this technology will fail? From the article it sounds like the next big thing after hydrocarbons, hell, I would love to see it either to be a proven success or failure. If it succeeds, well then HOLY SHIT! If not, oh well.
But to say some dumb post that says it's a dumb idea and gets moderated to informative? Sigh, it's slashdot.
Huh? Are you serious? Moderators +3 insightful? A good snow storm will put more frozen water vapor on the ground than we're capable of. Besides, if we are burning gas, deisel, or water, there's still water vapor coming out the back end. Ever seen freezing rain? Fog roll in from the ocean?
If you are going to beg for a problem to bitch about, say it's going to be about the reservour freezing, or in the case of this car, filtering out water vapor (recycled) from the nitrogen which TFA neglects mention.
I always found that Java was completely unportable. I know it's supposed to be but trying to get JSP stuff working on different platforms made me regret ever choosing it. There are just too many implementations and patchwork tools to get JSP running and worse yet if you want more advanced stuff like SOAP.
PHP on the other hand is a few second installer on Windows (for IIS and Apache) and on non mainstream OSs like OpenBSD a small command line. To get JSP working on Windows seems like a day's work and is hopeless on anything non Redhat.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually think software patents are a good thing if used properly (what we see here is misuse). Lets say I come up with a great idea. Under disclosure tell my friends, some potential customers, and get some short term investment money. Take time off work to get the patent filed, then look for bigger investors. If a corporation wants to buy or license it, the investors get a return and even if I never make the product I've officially succeeded as an inventor. Or I get more investment money from investors, I can pay for people and assets to make it. And the best part is I'm protected from competitors.
Except this doesn't happen.
Instead we have IBM collecting stupid ones for unknown reasons. Microsoft collecting them because they know they'll be sued broke if they don't. Opportunistic patent whores. Phone companies waiting for their ideas to succeed by others and suing them out of existance (Gif). Or web services preventing competitors from gaining traction in new business models. And yet the funny thing is that if a little guy like me creates a patent and ATT or Vonage implement it without my blessing I'm shit out of luck because I'm too small to fight them.
So, what I propose is to first abolish ALL new patents, terminate all patent lawsuits, eliminate any unreasonable royalties. Basically restart everybody with an even playing field.
Second, make invention a government concern. Every country in the world (well this is a lot to hope for... aka will never happen) work together to manage invention within their borders. When a citizen or business comes up with an idea, they go to their government who dedicates resources to help develop the idea. If this means a small guy like me, they provide experts and investment money who help produce and market the good ideas into the product or service. In return they get a slice of the revenue back. I get my idea out and making money and they get their investment back. If anybody duplicates the idea, even in another country, it is the job of the government to resolve it, and I can continue to do my job.
If a big corporation like IBM or Microsoft comes up with an idea, it's the same thing. They get some investment money to develop it (even if they don't need it), and get a slice of revenue. They and the government win too. The government helps them reduce the risk of trying new ideas and increased R&D will help every country in the long term.
I know nobody will agree with me or say it's possible. I know it's as likely as socialized health care in the United States and people will take advantage and abuse anything they can. But I do believe that ideas must be promoted and brilliant people need to be protected and rewarded. The current system only helps those with money and portfolio and screws the rest.
Oz
Technically, IE is not part of the OS. I know what you're thinking. No really, take a look at Windows Embedded. IE and all it's parts are optional components. Same with another product called WinFLP... IE, Media Player and others are all optional.
Now this is very important: IE is an SDK. Let me repeat that so that you understand, and I know this isn't easy: IE is an SDK. Well sure! Lets look at what IE provides:
1) CryptoAPI. Used in driver and file signing, encryption algorithms, certificate such as x509, all of which is easily usable in your applications.
2) Inetlib. Provides high level protocols such as http, ftp, even gopher through URLs. Very easy to implement in your applications, even gives you SSL. Very useful for SOAP.
3) showdocvw. By far the most popular and the most talked/complained about. Provides an easy way to show web content in your application. Of course also a virus target, but that's another story.
4) url.dll. Easy way for your application to parse URLs. Much safer and easier than doing it yourself.
I could go on, however this is why Microsoft couldn't completely remove IE from the OS. While getting rid of the iexplore.exe is easy, getting rid of the above is much harder and has to be done in an embedded deployment.
Now, I ask you this: back to my original statement. If Microsoft gets its ass kicked and Apple takes over, who's going to protect Apple from antitrust claims? After all, Microsoft has clearly defined the offense and its default penalty. Is Apple ready to be told to take these out? Ps: Would Microsoft have maintained IE for Mac if Safari wasn't bundled?
Oz
Imagine if Microsoft finally takes a critical blow leaving a vacuum for Apple to dominate. What's Apple shipping for hardware these days? Intel? Sorry AMD. What about wireless chipset? Video cards? Would be great to be vendor their choice but would suck to be the loser. Okay, fine. You'll just say that Apple will suddenly have a change of heart and allow consumers to choose the hardware. Um, ya.
Since MS makes IE for Mac, do they have the right to complain that Apple bundles Safari? What about Real? Do they have a right to complain that Mac bundle QuickTime? What if Apple bundles an office productivity suite? The double standards are staggering.
Oz
"Locks don't stop theft, they merely keep honest people honest".
A different port increases the effort substantially and will thin out the lazy and stupid bots can be effective. As a long term solution, can routers around the world be updated to detect this obvious behavior? Even better, can't they report it down chain down to the ISP or company's IT?
Oz
I would like to have a Mac laptop, but with XP. Can I have that?
Oz
I see two, apparently unthought-of, outcomes, besides the usual "I hate ____" flames:
1) Someone in the software community takes advantage of this and legal ships commercial code containing GPL. Sure, we don't see that as possible now, but what about someone thinking outside the box to undermine what the GPL fans are protecting? For example, is it possible to wrap another license around GPL code, make it dual license, then rip out the GPL? Just hypothetical of course, but if it's done the other way maybe someone will try.
2) A rift that separates BSD vs GPL. There's already a rift personality wise. What if everybody who's written BSD code updates their (key word "their") code to say "Entire source and derivatives must remain licensable in open source and commercial software".
I don't think either will really happen, but what if?
Oz
Strange considering there's coupons out there for Vista laptops for $450. Won't that be spooky if the gap closes any more.
Oz
Wow, I can't believe I'm reading this. This is the equivalent of taking a GPL file, adding another license, then taking away the GPL because "the second license allows it". Of course if anybody did this, there would be 1000 posts in this thread instead of 100.
Okay, lets be clear:
1) Someone wrote some code for OpenBSD, and licensed it with the BSD license.
2) The code is now allowable to be in OpenBSD, Linux, Windows, Solaris, cruise missiles.
3) Now, someone *could* insert their code and license it with anything, including GPL. Note however, the original code is still BSD, just the new GPL code is under GPL, hence dual licensed.
Then it goes to hell.
4) Someone then goes in and deletes the BSD license out of the source file. Now, linking with Linux is still allowed but linking with OpenBSD is shaky, Windows and cruise missiles is not allowed at all.
Here's the thing: DON'T DELETE SOMEONE'S LICENSE!!! Personally, if I was the writer of the file, I'd be much more pissed and would relicense it as commercial. But I'm just evil.
Oz
I remember one of the roommates being interviewed the next day:
"Did he ever play any games?"
"No"
"Did he ever play any violent games?"
"Um, no"
"Are you sure?"
"Um, pretty sure. He mostly surfed the web"
"So, no games?"
Then they interviewed another and asked the same questions. Sorry, media, you'll have to stick with the real news.
Oz
Actually, it's because Canada is Microsoft's #3 exporter of staff, behind India and Japan (link) and an L visa is obtainable after a year.
Also, Microsoft DOES have R&D in China, India, Ireland, among other places, so opening one in Vancouver is incredibly overdue.
Sorry, I'm just nitpicking and I agree with your post, Mr. Lightning. This message isn't for you. However everybody else who posted trash about Microsoft opening an office in Canada because it's cheaper:
FUCK YOU
You assholes obviously haven't spent much time in Vancouver or Toronto in the last decade or Alberta in the last year. Stop posting shit about nonsense you have no fricking clue about. Have you guys actually sent your resumes to Microsoft? Geez. Sound like the neighbor's barking dogs.
Oz
Ditto on all counts.
What's funny is that in the end this is all about feeding the American fear with easy short term patches. Soon only the immigrants who mean no harm will accept it while the red necks and terrorist continue to blow shit up. At least according to the article it's acquired Canadian companies supplying the hardware so we should feel a little better.
Ps... as a Canadian, you probably have in your memory the process of getting your passport and remember how difficult it was. Just for shits and giggles, look around in your neighborhood (through walking, not Google) for businesses that do passport photos and get one done. From the same people that want implanted RFID, this is as logical as the Chubacka defense.
Oz
Canada did it. It wasn't easy, probably expensive. But the way I remember it was they all switched one day to have 100km/hr in the center and 60 mph in smaller text below. Soon after, the 60 mph was gone.
Now the thing about Canada is that it has a lot of roads and a lot of signs. While United States is slightly smaller and has more roads, they really don't use a lot of signs. At least where I've been, most interstate highways only have a speed sign whenever the speed changes. Distances to towns aren't known until you're there. Contrast this to where I'm from there's a distance signs are everywhere and close enough together to make you impatient, speed signs after every major intersection (and immediately before every speed trap).
It can be done. It's not cheap, but bite the bullet. When you're done, calculating how long it will take to drive 525 kms at 100km/h is easier than 315 miles at 60mph.
--
Oz
After reviewing the evidence (as linked above) I have the following conclusions:
- after all these years, some teachers are still loud and annoying
- after all these years, some students are still assholes and bitches, especially to subs
- teachers' threats are empty
- students know that the teachers' threats are empty
Keep in mind, what I'm suggesting is much more calm. No more punishing up front. Punishing for long term, sure. I'm also suggesting that there are good students out there. And a lot of them. Why does their education have to be affected by a the ones that don't care?
Keep in mind there's also a mob mentality involved here too. If a small group of the 'cool' kids are obnoxious, the rest will be too. Separating these from the larger group and into smaller more controlled groups may even help them too but I believe it will help the rest enormously.
Note that I never suggested direct punishment in either of my posts.
Oz
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more (although I think my wording might be different).
If I might add, I believe Darwinism has been lost on the human race. Since health care has eliminated physical issues as a variable, I think a new variable should be promoted: motivation. People who are disruptive, angry should be dealt with by lowering their quality of education and they will inevitably be reduced to the crap jobs of society. Those who are bright and motivated should benefit from the best of education giving them the best opportunities.
This isn't hard to do. As others have suggested we can't rely on the parents anymore and teachers are too scared to deal with the problems, however denying troubled kids quality education is not considered unreasonable. Overall they won't care anyway. Even in my time being kicked out of school was considered flattering. All I'm suggesting is to make education more difficult for those who don't want to learn (yet fair to those who improve), reward those who try. Over time, those kids will become adults and society will handle the punishment and rewards.
But to keep it sorta on topic, is there any reason kids can't film others misbehaving and put it on youtube?
Oz
By the same logic, websites that show traffic conditions should be shut down too. Well, ya, terrorists can make sure they don't get stuck in parking lot on the I-5.
Oz
Slashdot sounds like those hockey commentary people...
"Ballmer's got the CD and he's headed for the RTM... he shoots, OHH! A bug shuts him down!!! Oh that crowd is really upset"
"Well Tim, that was a close one, he's oh for 10 now, he really needs a break"
"Now Gentoo has control, passes it to Fedora, passes it to SuSE, passes it to Ubuntu, passes it back to SuSE... they seem to have their passing game working really well"
"Well Tim, they have heart but only a small group of the audience seems to be cheering for them"
Sorry.
Oz
As a lefty, the best kept secret is that we have had the advantage for a long time now. Only we can point and click/drag things on the screen with our right hand while using a pen or typing with the left. Right handed people can't do that. For them, the right hand is the boss. It has to do the mouse, type, write, but can never do all at the same time.
Of course some of those bastards know this. That's why they add the option to swap the mouse buttons around. It's all evil conspiracy to mess with our heads and take away our advantage.
Oz
A $40 512MB SD Card from Tiger Direct in a shoebox. Really, an email to replace the catalog and a USPS stamped envelope would have increased their margins 10 fold.
Oz
I don't ever remember buying a computer without shit installed. HP and Compaq also were bad for garbage. Dell's always pimped something out, like AOL or shareware antivirus, there's even a page of checkboxes on their wizard that frightens me. Only thing that's changed is that Google has realized they can contribute clutter too.
I swear, the best thing to do is go back to the olden days, buy the pieces, throw it together, say "no! I'll install my own damn OS my way". Can't be worse than a XPS that's almost the size of a bar fridge.
Oz
This is a common tactic by consulting companies. It always follows the same flow, never fail:
.NET/Java technologies.
1) consulting company hires a lot of junior/intermediate coders for his company that only learned Java or C#. C++ skills and experience avoided in favor of knowing the latest
2) an expensive consultant comes in to analyze an imperfect system
3) this person makes all kinds of suggestions, says nice things about management, says "use lots of UML"
4) says his devs are really good C++
5) brings in his coders to help fix bugs, charges lots of money for diagrams never used
6) consultant coders fail at fixing bugs, claim that code base is too fubar'ed to maintain
7) convince management to "port" code to Java/C#.
8) consultant coders soon have more knowledge of the system than the old devs because knowledge isn't shared properly (no more UML)
9) management becomes too afraid to let go consultant coders because they know more about the system than the devs (despite costing atleast twice as much)
I can't count how many times I've seen this because the city I used to live in had atleast 2 massive consulting companies that made this their business model. I imagine it's even worse when it goes off shore to India because all the knowledge is looked away in peoples' minds thousands of miles away. Such a huge mistake for management to lose all they paid for for nothing.
Oz
Clearly you're as clueless as Sun.
Why is everybody say "it works on my version of Linux"? What about the BSDs? Smart phones? Embedded devices? My own crackpot system using vacuum tubes? We don't want it all open source, all we want is the C code opened, changable, and distributable. The stuff that's platform dependant. Give me this, and I'll know that your JSP web page will work on my server (which it doesn't).
Sun: You said you had a write-once-run-everywhere platform. Well? Where the hell is it? Do you really think we want the source so we can screw it up? We want what you promised, write once, run on my platform. And as long as I cannot build it for my platform, then it's of no friggen use. And no, you can't make OSS and third parties fill in the gaps, that's when you get the write-once-test-everywhere/lowest common demoninator fiasco that we have now.
Oz
Dude, free education is today. Sure, not here, but just a short raft ride from Forida and you don't pay a cent! No tuition! Free books! Even living is cheap, just pennies a day!
The thread is insane. It's like that spouse swap where they take two disfunctional families and swap the mother. Both families are screwed up but somewhere in the center is a happy median that's not so bad. But if you think that publishers will eventually say "you're right, we should give it away for free", you're absolutely mad. If writers had to work for free, I'm sure they'd prefer fishing.
On the other side of disfunctional is the professors who insist we buy $100 books that they don't even use. The first couple years of school is always about learning to wait a week to find out what books are actually required and hunt the used book store when they are. But telling the poorest population of a school to squeeze out that extra couple hundred bucks for crap is just cruel.
In the middle is somewhere normal. That's the key to this problem, not the overgeneralized ignorant comments like above.
Um, that's an awefully negative statement without any actual reason. Do you have any actual Informative (moderators, you suck) information that can tell me that this technology will fail? From the article it sounds like the next big thing after hydrocarbons, hell, I would love to see it either to be a proven success or failure. If it succeeds, well then HOLY SHIT! If not, oh well.
But to say some dumb post that says it's a dumb idea and gets moderated to informative? Sigh, it's slashdot.
Oz
Huh? Are you serious? Moderators +3 insightful? A good snow storm will put more frozen water vapor on the ground than we're capable of. Besides, if we are burning gas, deisel, or water, there's still water vapor coming out the back end. Ever seen freezing rain? Fog roll in from the ocean?
If you are going to beg for a problem to bitch about, say it's going to be about the reservour freezing, or in the case of this car, filtering out water vapor (recycled) from the nitrogen which TFA neglects mention.
Oz
I always found that Java was completely unportable. I know it's supposed to be but trying to get JSP stuff working on different platforms made me regret ever choosing it. There are just too many implementations and patchwork tools to get JSP running and worse yet if you want more advanced stuff like SOAP.
PHP on the other hand is a few second installer on Windows (for IIS and Apache) and on non mainstream OSs like OpenBSD a small command line. To get JSP working on Windows seems like a day's work and is hopeless on anything non Redhat.
Oz