Fella, that's slashdot and it's been slashdot for five-odd years now. Back when I had a 4-digit UID, I still never saw a raft of insightful commentary or articles. I occasionally skimmed slashdot when it was still running on Taco's laptop, and it still didn't strike me as a renaissance in geek culture. Go read the archives, they're there for the looking.
There's good posts on slashdot, but you gotta dig them out. I get my serious news and discussions on web boards that are somewhat more specialized, but have WAY more signal to noise than slashdot has EVER had. You're lamenting the decline of a place that never had all that far to go down.
Interestingly, my girlfriend prefers to play The Sims on the PS2 precisely because she hates the mouse interface, and she can lean back in her chair with the wireless controller without precise aim. She said something like "I'm chained to my desk all day at work, clicking on little buttons like George Jetson, the last thing I want is a game to be like that" (ok, I made up the George Jetson part).
Not everyone plays FPS's, and some who played FPS's before (like myself) are bored to death of them.
The PS2 can take an ordinary USB mouse and keyboard. Of course hardly anything uses them.
> Then, bring in a court stenographer and have him or her run the race as well.
stenographers spell everything "fuh net ick lee". There's a key combo for nearly every syllable. That's why the stenographer has to read out the record and not just pass it to the baliff for review.
They're absolutely a dying breed -- every last courtroom I've seen (which is not many) simply uses microphones now.
Speaking of voice dialing, I'd like voice dialing that let you navigate through phonebooks and let you speak numbers, which are pretty hard for most VRU's to actually get wrong (9 and 5 if things are noisy, but that's it). Something like:
Me: "Call Fred"
Phone: "Did you mean ``Call Ted Smith'' (press or say 1), ``Call Fred Jones'' (press or say 2), ``Call Jeb Bush'' (press or say 3)...'
Me: "two"
Phone: Calling Fred Jones...
Add the ability to go to manual dial as well. Mostly I'm thinking this would be useful from a bluetooth headset, from which I can never get voice dial to actually work.
Of course adding this feature will probably add another 20 seconds to my phone's boot time. God I hate having to wait for my phone to boot (it's symbian). I actually miss my old phone that was relatively feature free, but was ready from off to talk in three seconds.
Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?
on
Eclipse 3.1 Released
·
· Score: 1
The logo for the article is IBM -- despite the fact that IBM isn't the only player when it comes to Eclipse (albeit the biggest one). Besides, many people promote everything they can to the front page. Even though it's obvious to me what Eclipse is (having used it off and on, this isn't a Java blog, as I've mentioned before, and a two or three word blurb actually describing the focus of the article is still basic and simple journalism.
A little pride in the work, that's what I look in vain for. Newsforge appears to have it, along with a front page that isn't full of round teal widgets butting up against square widgets on the left on a page that's 95% italic, sprinkled with icons with garish drop shadows. Not enough pride to update the look after more than five years I guess
Actually, you're about half right. Just down the road from Stonehenge is Woodhenge (no link, JFGI). Or what's left of it anyway, which is basically just a bunch of holes with some petrified wood traces in 'em. Stone's the way to go for serious druids.
Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?
on
Eclipse 3.1 Released
·
· Score: 1
This is not a java blog. The fact remains that there should be a minimum of effort, such as a phrase like "Eclipse, the Open Source Java IDE..."
Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin
on
Eclipse 3.1 Released
·
· Score: 1
Who the hell moderated this crap up, and can we just ban those accounts for life from moderating?
Re:So Call Me Old And Cranky
on
Effective C#
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> But do we really need a "programming good C#" book? Isn't good programming all about, well, good programming?
And knowing the language. Sometimes there's idioms in a language that just aren't obvious. Like the use of "explicit" to prevent C++ from surprise autocasts, or what const correctness really means and how to avoid breaking it. Or when to explicitly null references in Java to get them gc'd, and when it hurts performance (this idiom changed when Java's gc algorithm changed).
C# no doubt has all sorts of odd wrinkles with respect to generics and delegates and whatnot, and likely it takes a book to list them all. There's knowing a language's syntax, and there's being really effective with it and working within its limitations. Scott Meyer's Effective C++ is one of the best books on C++ you can get, and it's certainly no introductory text. I've no idea whether this book is on that same plane, but all language books are most certainly not created equal, and if you think you're an expert because you happen to know the syntax, you're only as valuable as the next codemonkey with a training certificate.
It's an attempt to put a respectable name to "Anarchism". Much of it is silly, but there's something to be said about people wanting to eliminate most or all government without handing over governance to a corporate system. Of course corporations operate under the auspices of the state, so theoretically getting rid of one should take out the other. Of course, lots of stuff works in theory...
You won't get a working JDK with Ubuntu, but you can always just download the JDK, install it, and you can either write an equiv for java-virtual-machine or install one of the other ones just to meet the dependency.
There's also java-package, which is this ridiculously overengineered shell script that no one has bothered to update to JDK1.5.
As for ideology, Ubuntu's base distribution is all DFSG "free" software, but you can enable the restricted (official, non-free), universe (unnofficial, free) and multiverse (unofficial, non-free) repositories. What does get ridiculous is the fact that every release is a feature freeze except for security updates, to the point where they won't release a new version of firefox even though they've backported every fix, and that new version amounts to the new firefox version. The most annoying aspect of that is that they won't change the vendor_sub string to make it work with firefox updates, making firefox and ubuntu effectively useless for non-technical users. All so they can maintain some precious ideological commitment to "stability".
I use Ubuntu, and I like many others manually fixed the firefox issue. Largely the only reason I stick with it is that everything else tends to suck worse.
That would be the definition of compatible for just about any license though, wouldn't it?
You certainly can't merge two licenses together and produce a hybrid, no. At least not without negotiating with the original licensor. However, licenses like the LGPL have fairly specific exemptions, limiting their protections to the actual code being licensed. RMS has time and again shown his contempt for this "Lesser" license, but he's at least been pragmatic enough to not withdraw it from the GNU license choices.
Cygwin is another example, with a modified GPL that won't cause relicensing of any open source license. Essentially, you can't link proprietary software to it, but it won't relicense other open source software. Of course, the idea that the GPL can somehow "taint" another program such that the author unwittingly ends up relicensing all his work to the GPL is actually a bit ridiculous -- the GPL simply can't assert rights over someone else's work. However, since you have no rights distribute the GPL'd code any other way, distributing it and leaving it that way for years could be considered tacit agreement to the terms of the GPL. And most authors simply take the path of least resistance and choose GPL for that reason.
So while the GPL technically isn't so virulent a virus as some would have it, it still tends that way. And this is probably just the way RMS wants it. It may have been necessary back in the days of 100% proprietary platforms, or even the old shareware days when software was becoming "free", but with obnoxious strings attached. The culture had to be shifted toward completely free, and building a software culture around a single license was a means to that end. I'm not so sure it's the best fit to modern times, but then again, each new platform has brought a resurgence of both proprietary lock-ins and annoying crappy shareware, so there's cause for the FSF to dig in its heels to this day.
Of those licenses, show me which ones do not simply become the GPL when mixed with the GPL. The GPL's definition of "compatible" is "able to be relicensed perpetually under the GPL".
"Next time some hot chick asks you, is that your iPod, YOU SAY YES!"
(Apologies to Winston, the lesser-known Ghostbuster)
So basically, either he deflected some shallow and vapid chick, or she sensed he was about to launch into some babble about his product choices. I think that Rio did someone a favor, I just don't know who.
Come to San Francisco. Most places in the city are two blocks from a bus stop. About the only place where a bus stop is any significant distance away is Lake Merced in the southwest part (and even then it's not too far to the the metro rail line). Buses run every 10-20 minutes... so frequent that I've never consulted a schedule, I just walk outside and hop on. The buses using the overhead electric wires are nice and quiet too, nothing like the roaring diesels.
Of course it's a huge money hole for the city. And you still get to meet "interesting" people on the bus of course.
Show me one single license that IS compatible with the GPL, where "compatible" doesn't mean "relicensed under the GPL".
Additionally, the GPL is based on copyright, which is an "intellectual property" mechanism. I bet I could find plenty of "unfortunate" terms in the GPL to pick on as well.
Maybe the problem doesn't lie with all the other licenses.
Slashdot Mirror
My legal schooling isn't really up to snuff, but I don't believe it's actionable blackmail to issue a threat of going to the proper authorities.
HMS is screwed. They'll never get another contract again. They're just going to screw Chip and his family along with them.
Fella, that's slashdot and it's been slashdot for five-odd years now. Back when I had a 4-digit UID, I still never saw a raft of insightful commentary or articles. I occasionally skimmed slashdot when it was still running on Taco's laptop, and it still didn't strike me as a renaissance in geek culture. Go read the archives, they're there for the looking.
There's good posts on slashdot, but you gotta dig them out. I get my serious news and discussions on web boards that are somewhat more specialized, but have WAY more signal to noise than slashdot has EVER had. You're lamenting the decline of a place that never had all that far to go down.
> For example www.cdrbstore.net is obivously a website selling pirated software. They are still up and doing business.
Complain to the registrar. Most are quite unwilling to be the registrar for blatantly illegal material. Oh wait, they're hosted by enom. Never mind.
Anyway, they appear to be Russian, which is pretty much a haven for this sort of thing. There ain't squat that US companies can really do about it.
> I'm sure if OBL regularly seeded jihad material it would be much easier to find him.
Actually, he DOES. He just uses cassettes. Very old-skool.
Interestingly, my girlfriend prefers to play The Sims on the PS2 precisely because she hates the mouse interface, and she can lean back in her chair with the wireless controller without precise aim. She said something like "I'm chained to my desk all day at work, clicking on little buttons like George Jetson, the last thing I want is a game to be like that" (ok, I made up the George Jetson part).
Not everyone plays FPS's, and some who played FPS's before (like myself) are bored to death of them.
The PS2 can take an ordinary USB mouse and keyboard. Of course hardly anything uses them.
> Then, bring in a court stenographer and have him or her run the race as well.
stenographers spell everything "fuh net ick lee". There's a key combo for nearly every syllable. That's why the stenographer has to read out the record and not just pass it to the baliff for review.
They're absolutely a dying breed -- every last courtroom I've seen (which is not many) simply uses microphones now.
This got an insightful mod?
I think moderator names need to be made public.
> Kinda shows that they're listening to the customers.
Can you replace the battery? Especially now that there's a color screen to drain even more of it?
Speaking of voice dialing, I'd like voice dialing that let you navigate through phonebooks and let you speak numbers, which are pretty hard for most VRU's to actually get wrong (9 and 5 if things are noisy, but that's it). Something like:
...'
Me: "Call Fred"
Phone: "Did you mean ``Call Ted Smith'' (press or say 1), ``Call Fred Jones'' (press or say 2), ``Call Jeb Bush'' (press or say 3)
Me: "two"
Phone: Calling Fred Jones...
Add the ability to go to manual dial as well. Mostly I'm thinking this would be useful from a bluetooth headset, from which I can never get voice dial to actually work.
Of course adding this feature will probably add another 20 seconds to my phone's boot time. God I hate having to wait for my phone to boot (it's symbian). I actually miss my old phone that was relatively feature free, but was ready from off to talk in three seconds.
The logo for the article is IBM -- despite the fact that IBM isn't the only player when it comes to Eclipse (albeit the biggest one). Besides, many people promote everything they can to the front page. Even though it's obvious to me what Eclipse is (having used it off and on, this isn't a Java blog, as I've mentioned before, and a two or three word blurb actually describing the focus of the article is still basic and simple journalism.
A little pride in the work, that's what I look in vain for. Newsforge appears to have it, along with a front page that isn't full of round teal widgets butting up against square widgets on the left on a page that's 95% italic, sprinkled with icons with garish drop shadows. Not enough pride to update the look after more than five years I guess
Actually, you're about half right. Just down the road from Stonehenge is Woodhenge (no link, JFGI). Or what's left of it anyway, which is basically just a bunch of holes with some petrified wood traces in 'em. Stone's the way to go for serious druids.
This is not a java blog. The fact remains that there should be a minimum of effort, such as a phrase like "Eclipse, the Open Source Java IDE ..."
Really, it's just basic journalism. Something slashdot clearly knows absolutely bupkus about.
Who the hell moderated this crap up, and can we just ban those accounts for life from moderating?
> But do we really need a "programming good C#" book? Isn't good programming all about, well, good programming?
And knowing the language. Sometimes there's idioms in a language that just aren't obvious. Like the use of "explicit" to prevent C++ from surprise autocasts, or what const correctness really means and how to avoid breaking it. Or when to explicitly null references in Java to get them gc'd, and when it hurts performance (this idiom changed when Java's gc algorithm changed).
C# no doubt has all sorts of odd wrinkles with respect to generics and delegates and whatnot, and likely it takes a book to list them all. There's knowing a language's syntax, and there's being really effective with it and working within its limitations. Scott Meyer's Effective C++ is one of the best books on C++ you can get, and it's certainly no introductory text. I've no idea whether this book is on that same plane, but all language books are most certainly not created equal, and if you think you're an expert because you happen to know the syntax, you're only as valuable as the next codemonkey with a training certificate.
It's an attempt to put a respectable name to "Anarchism". Much of it is silly, but there's something to be said about people wanting to eliminate most or all government without handing over governance to a corporate system. Of course corporations operate under the auspices of the state, so theoretically getting rid of one should take out the other. Of course, lots of stuff works in theory...
This is getting a little off topic, no?
You won't get a working JDK with Ubuntu, but you can always just download the JDK, install it, and you can either write an equiv for java-virtual-machine or install one of the other ones just to meet the dependency.
There's also java-package, which is this ridiculously overengineered shell script that no one has bothered to update to JDK1.5.
As for ideology, Ubuntu's base distribution is all DFSG "free" software, but you can enable the restricted (official, non-free), universe (unnofficial, free) and multiverse (unofficial, non-free) repositories. What does get ridiculous is the fact that every release is a feature freeze except for security updates, to the point where they won't release a new version of firefox even though they've backported every fix, and that new version amounts to the new firefox version. The most annoying aspect of that is that they won't change the vendor_sub string to make it work with firefox updates, making firefox and ubuntu effectively useless for non-technical users. All so they can maintain some precious ideological commitment to "stability".
I use Ubuntu, and I like many others manually fixed the firefox issue. Largely the only reason I stick with it is that everything else tends to suck worse.
That would be the definition of compatible for just about any license though, wouldn't it?
You certainly can't merge two licenses together and produce a hybrid, no. At least not without negotiating with the original licensor. However, licenses like the LGPL have fairly specific exemptions, limiting their protections to the actual code being licensed. RMS has time and again shown his contempt for this "Lesser" license, but he's at least been pragmatic enough to not withdraw it from the GNU license choices.
Cygwin is another example, with a modified GPL that won't cause relicensing of any open source license. Essentially, you can't link proprietary software to it, but it won't relicense other open source software. Of course, the idea that the GPL can somehow "taint" another program such that the author unwittingly ends up relicensing all his work to the GPL is actually a bit ridiculous -- the GPL simply can't assert rights over someone else's work. However, since you have no rights distribute the GPL'd code any other way, distributing it and leaving it that way for years could be considered tacit agreement to the terms of the GPL. And most authors simply take the path of least resistance and choose GPL for that reason.
So while the GPL technically isn't so virulent a virus as some would have it, it still tends that way. And this is probably just the way RMS wants it. It may have been necessary back in the days of 100% proprietary platforms, or even the old shareware days when software was becoming "free", but with obnoxious strings attached. The culture had to be shifted toward completely free, and building a software culture around a single license was a means to that end. I'm not so sure it's the best fit to modern times, but then again, each new platform has brought a resurgence of both proprietary lock-ins and annoying crappy shareware, so there's cause for the FSF to dig in its heels to this day.
There was a young man from Peru
Whose limericks stopped at line two
> Thanks to treaties signed by some nancy pants presidents of the past we are only down to a measly 4,000 or so ICBMs.
Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush? Yeah, what pansies.
Of those licenses, show me which ones do not simply become the GPL when mixed with the GPL. The GPL's definition of "compatible" is "able to be relicensed perpetually under the GPL".
pimp is a verb. bling is a noun. you pimp with bling. see how simple that is?
"Next time some hot chick asks you, is that your iPod, YOU SAY YES!"
(Apologies to Winston, the lesser-known Ghostbuster)
So basically, either he deflected some shallow and vapid chick, or she sensed he was about to launch into some babble about his product choices. I think that Rio did someone a favor, I just don't know who.
Come to San Francisco. Most places in the city are two blocks from a bus stop. About the only place where a bus stop is any significant distance away is Lake Merced in the southwest part (and even then it's not too far to the the metro rail line). Buses run every 10-20 minutes ... so frequent that I've never consulted a schedule, I just walk outside and hop on. The buses using the overhead electric wires are nice and quiet too, nothing like the roaring diesels.
Of course it's a huge money hole for the city. And you still get to meet "interesting" people on the bus of course.
Show me one single license that IS compatible with the GPL, where "compatible" doesn't mean "relicensed under the GPL".
Additionally, the GPL is based on copyright, which is an "intellectual property" mechanism. I bet I could find plenty of "unfortunate" terms in the GPL to pick on as well.
Maybe the problem doesn't lie with all the other licenses.
> And what the hell does "Security + Availability = Information Integrity" mean? (Does Integrity - Availability = Security?)
It is awful hard to hack a system that ain't plugged in...