He does have a point. I have a version of tetris for my TI-86 calculator. I have no idea how to tell how much RAM it uses, but the calculator only has something like 120K. One 4K version of tetris on that page uses almost 40 MB of RAM after a few minutes, and after playing for a while there's occasional, noticeable pauses for garbage collection (yes, I verified it was from garbage collection), which doesn't happen on the calculator.
Java's great for some tasks, it's almost like a cross-platform VB. But the language, or more likely the way the language is most commonly used, isn't optimal for some things. Games happen to be one of those things.
Best bet is to use Proxomitron. There are a few really good filter sets for it that can block almost all advertisements, even text ads. It takes a little bit of tweaking, but once you have Proxomitron configured to your liking, you can tell IE, Firefox, Konqueror, or any other web browser to use it also. If you're really adventurous, you can even make it do stuff like rewrite search results to have inline previews of the results, but that's a little more difficult.
I'm too lazy to look up the links right now, but a minute on google should turn up all the relevant info.
Oh yeah, it's windows only, but it works under Wine without a problem.
Windows is a critical part of what the average joe considers a computer. Kind of like how you could buy a "radio" that only does shortwave, but when you hand it to a 14 year old and he finds out it doesn't do FM, he won't consider it a real radio.
Surely you're kidding? Or drunk? Or trolling? Just because some ignorant 14 year old thinks all radios should get FM doesn't change the fact that a shortwave radio is still a radio. Likewise, if someone is so ignorant about computers they think Windows is a key component, it doesn't change the fact that a computer without Windows is still a computer.
If they really want to stop online piracy, they need to go after the makers of the software, not the poor people they duped into believing that they had "purchased" music.
Personally, I think going after online piracy is the wrong direction all together. The time and money spent going after online piracy would probably be better spent fighting the people who pirate CDs and DVDs and sell them for 1/4th the price of legit merchandise. Not a big problem in the U.S., but I've heard it's widespread in some countries.
But targetting online piracy is easier, and it makes it look to shareholders like they're trying to protect their interests. Hell, they're still making hundreds of millions of dollars a year, right? So just ignore the real pirates, it's easier that way.
Funny you mention that, considering "canvas" is a non-standard, Firefox only HTML tag. So it's just as portable. Similar to the assembly coded game working for anyone using a particular OS and architecture, the canvas game will work for anyone using Firefox.
In addition to not being portable, the "game" is so slow it's hardly playable. Good luck convincing people their 2 year old Pentium 4 with half a gig of ram is too old to play something with worse graphics than what used to run blazing fast on a 486 with 4 mb of ram.
(please, the idea of the objective news agency that reports nothing but the facts and does not sensationalise or editorialise is long, long dead....hell, I'm not sure that ever actually existed except as an ideal)
Unbiased journalism is an ideal. No article can ever be totally unbiased. But a good journalist is supposed to make it as unbiased as they can. Are you proposing we just say "Fuck it" and let everything pass as journalism?
What matters is that merely expressing your views in Singapore is dangerous, as it is in many countries in the world. I'm glad I don't live in such an evil place.
Singapore is such an evil place, they've managed to have a thriving free market, become one of the richest countries in the world, have one of the least corrupt governments in the world, and have one of the lowest crime rates in the world. How evil.
It's not illegal to express yourself in Singapore, but it is illegal for the media to say whatever it wants. The two things aren't the same. For example, in Singapore, it's illegal to go on tv, in the newspaper, and apparently on a blog, and publish racist material, although it's not illegal to be racist.
That's part of the problem with this. The Slashdot intro to the article makes it sound like the guy is a journalist. Journalists aren't supposed to be expressing their opinions. At least not decent journalists. They're supposed to be reporting on news in an unbiased way, leaving their opinions out of it, so people reading their reports can make their own decisions and form their own opinions.
It's pretty sad that anyone considers "bloggers" journalists.
I wouldn't use Windows if no advertisement is in it, so that doesn't make a big difference for me.
My thoughts exactly. If I'm not using it now, what makes MS think I would use it with advertising?
No, it's just not my kind of system. Also, there is enough adware in windows already after a while spent using the Internet from that kind of operating system, why add more?
No, that's just it. Most windows boxes have so much adware, a little bit more built in will hardly get noticed, and it'll make a ton of cash for microsoft.
This is slightly offtopic, but does anyone know of a site similar to codeproject.com that's less Windows specific or more Linux specific? Code Project has a lot of useful code and interesting articles, but even the OpenGL and Java Programming sections are mostly Windows specific, so they're less useful than they could be. So far the closest I've found is Artima.com.
Just curious - who made you the arbiter? Why should anyone worry about that? It's just as ridiculous for me to say "As far as I'm concerned, if any application doesn't run on my C-64, it shouldn't be an app." Certain things require a minumum level of capability. That's life.
Okay, I admit I did a poor job of making my point. But the fact of the matter is, if a web app requires IE or Firefox, it's missing the potential for portability. It's easy to say "This software requires a certain minimum level of capability. And that minimum level is IE 6.0.1234 on Windows." But it's not very portable.
It's pretty obvious you're just evincing symptoms of computer-based NIMBYism here. Too bad, you'll miss out on a lot of very cool stuff. It's all good by me, though. I don't really mind if bigoted people lose out.
Yeah, someone is always going to miss out. But the whole point in writing portable code is to have as few people as possible missing out.
and this is why web applications are becoming so popular...
Bullshit. It works great in theory. Too bad so many "web applications" require a specific web browser. As far as I'm concerned, if your web application can't work with Lynks over a 14.4K modem, it shouldn't be a wep application.
Before you say "But that's because the web developers..." you should realize that it's just as possible to write C or C++ code that compiles and runs on multiple platforms as it is to make a web app work in multiple browsers. Fact of the matter is, in both cases, most people just don't put in the effort. In fact, it may even be easier in C and C++ because they're ISO standards, and deviations from the standard tend to be documented somewhere, unlike browser incompatibilities.
Make one that downloads Opera and Proxomitron, then uninstalls Firefox. I'm guessing they want useful extensions, and it doesn't get much beter than that.
A rational and consistent intelectual property law would one be that prevented copyrighted content from using copy prevention technology at all. After all it has the protection of law, then why should people be prevented from making fair use of the content?
I've never understood this about the government. To solve the problem of people breaking the law, they pass more laws. If it's illegal to do something, and people are still doing it, making it a little more illegal isn't going to stop anyone.
Do they really think someone's going to say "If only I had these cassette tapes on CD, I would rip them and post torrents somewhere. But all I have are the cassette tapes, and that would be breaking the 'Analog Hole' law. Damn you MPAA, your law has ruined my plan to illegally share music." Give me a break.
the vast majority of internet users are not idiots -- they are merely undereducated about computers and the internet.
my nice response to your comment is that you should try to appreciate that not everyone has the time, energy or will to learn computers to the extent that you or i have.
Maybe the vast majority of internet users should take the little bit of time to appropriately learn about computers and the internet. I'm not saying everyone who uses a computer should be system admins, but I don't think it's too much to ask that people who are going to use a computer every day have at least a basic understanding of what they're doing.
If someone were to get behind the wheel of a car and start driving, with no drivers license, having never driven before, they'd go to jail. It's the law that people have to have at least a basic knowledge about their car and how to drive. Yet, at the same time, any moron with $400 can bring home a new computer, hop on the interweb, and have their new computer pwned and DDOSing some random website in 2 minutes because they either don't understand or don't care to follow simple advice like "Use a virus checker and firewall". Obviously, computer and internet use shouldn't be regulated as heavily as driving, but if people can't be bothered to take a little time to learn how to use their computers, they deserve everything they get in my opinion.
Am I the only one who filters Google's ads? I have't seen a single ad in Google's search results or adsense anywhere in ages. Yeah, they're text, and unobtrusive, but it still doesn't change the fact I won't buy stuff from them.
Sony and friends correctly identified that (I'll hand-wave here) 90% of processing is taken up in 5% of your code, and that 5% is generally a tiny little loop you can hand optimise and shove on a DSP.
Noooo... It's been well known for decades that 85-90% of time is spent in 5% of code. "Sony and friends" had nothing to do with coming up with that. They might have added DSP to the PS3 in response to it, but they certainly didn't "identify" it.
Dear Slashdot,
I have been tasked with (insert very difficult, very important job). This is very important to my company. I have (insert number much lower than it should be) dollars to do this. I do not want to use (insert company name specializing in this exact thing) because management thinks they are too expensive. I think I can do this (insert better/faster/cheaper/...) than said company, even though they have vastly more experience and have invested much more time and research than I have. My continued and future employment probably rests on this project. Please advise.
Okay - maybe some of you slashdotters are smarter on this than me, but how long can it take to correct a date calculation routine? Unless maybe you don't have one of the dates you need????
I always hate when people say stuff like that. The part that really gets me is that the people who say it never have any idea whatsoever how the system in question works. If it were SO simple, it would've been done right in the first place. It's kind of like saying to a heart surgeon, "Really, how hard can it be to unclog an artery?"
As someone else pointed out in a different thread, the real problem isn't with the software, but that nobody would tell the developers the correct date calculation to use. So before anyone can even attempt to fix the software, somebody has to figure out which calculation it should be using. Then, if they're lucky, some of the original software engineers or developers are around, and will have some idea how to fix the problem. A system like this probably has several hundred thousand lines of code, in hundreds of files. Unless someone already knows the system very well, it could take a couple of weeks just to get acquainted enough to know where to look for the date calculations to fix. It's not simply a matter of opening "prison_system.c" and changing the "calculateReleaseDate()" function on line 15.
Slashdot Mirror
He does have a point. I have a version of tetris for my TI-86 calculator. I have no idea how to tell how much RAM it uses, but the calculator only has something like 120K. One 4K version of tetris on that page uses almost 40 MB of RAM after a few minutes, and after playing for a while there's occasional, noticeable pauses for garbage collection (yes, I verified it was from garbage collection), which doesn't happen on the calculator.
Java's great for some tasks, it's almost like a cross-platform VB. But the language, or more likely the way the language is most commonly used, isn't optimal for some things. Games happen to be one of those things.
Best bet is to use Proxomitron. There are a few really good filter sets for it that can block almost all advertisements, even text ads. It takes a little bit of tweaking, but once you have Proxomitron configured to your liking, you can tell IE, Firefox, Konqueror, or any other web browser to use it also. If you're really adventurous, you can even make it do stuff like rewrite search results to have inline previews of the results, but that's a little more difficult.
I'm too lazy to look up the links right now, but a minute on google should turn up all the relevant info.
Oh yeah, it's windows only, but it works under Wine without a problem.
Surely you're kidding? Or drunk? Or trolling? Just because some ignorant 14 year old thinks all radios should get FM doesn't change the fact that a shortwave radio is still a radio. Likewise, if someone is so ignorant about computers they think Windows is a key component, it doesn't change the fact that a computer without Windows is still a computer.
Personally, I think going after online piracy is the wrong direction all together. The time and money spent going after online piracy would probably be better spent fighting the people who pirate CDs and DVDs and sell them for 1/4th the price of legit merchandise. Not a big problem in the U.S., but I've heard it's widespread in some countries.
But targetting online piracy is easier, and it makes it look to shareholders like they're trying to protect their interests. Hell, they're still making hundreds of millions of dollars a year, right? So just ignore the real pirates, it's easier that way.
That's not to make work more fun, he just has "issues." Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Eh, I'm using Opera 9.0 preview, maybe that's it. I didn't bother running Firefox to try it out.
Agreed. I'm running a 1.5 Ghz Pentium 4 with 512 MB from early 2001, and I don't plan on upgrading any time soon.
Funny you mention that, considering "canvas" is a non-standard, Firefox only HTML tag. So it's just as portable. Similar to the assembly coded game working for anyone using a particular OS and architecture, the canvas game will work for anyone using Firefox.
In addition to not being portable, the "game" is so slow it's hardly playable. Good luck convincing people their 2 year old Pentium 4 with half a gig of ram is too old to play something with worse graphics than what used to run blazing fast on a 486 with 4 mb of ram.
Because you're locked in with non-standard HTML tags?
Funny, I thought Firefox was supposed to solve all that...
Unbiased journalism is an ideal. No article can ever be totally unbiased. But a good journalist is supposed to make it as unbiased as they can. Are you proposing we just say "Fuck it" and let everything pass as journalism?
Singapore is such an evil place, they've managed to have a thriving free market, become one of the richest countries in the world, have one of the least corrupt governments in the world, and have one of the lowest crime rates in the world. How evil.
It's not illegal to express yourself in Singapore, but it is illegal for the media to say whatever it wants. The two things aren't the same. For example, in Singapore, it's illegal to go on tv, in the newspaper, and apparently on a blog, and publish racist material, although it's not illegal to be racist.
Reference
Just because some country is a little different than wherever you live doesn't make it "evil".
That's part of the problem with this. The Slashdot intro to the article makes it sound like the guy is a journalist. Journalists aren't supposed to be expressing their opinions. At least not decent journalists. They're supposed to be reporting on news in an unbiased way, leaving their opinions out of it, so people reading their reports can make their own decisions and form their own opinions.
It's pretty sad that anyone considers "bloggers" journalists.
Good idea. I don't use Firefox, but that approach will ensure that next time I think about switching browsers, I'll have one less option to consider.
My thoughts exactly. If I'm not using it now, what makes MS think I would use it with advertising?
No, that's just it. Most windows boxes have so much adware, a little bit more built in will hardly get noticed, and it'll make a ton of cash for microsoft.
This is slightly offtopic, but does anyone know of a site similar to codeproject.com that's less Windows specific or more Linux specific? Code Project has a lot of useful code and interesting articles, but even the OpenGL and Java Programming sections are mostly Windows specific, so they're less useful than they could be. So far the closest I've found is Artima.com.
Okay, I admit I did a poor job of making my point. But the fact of the matter is, if a web app requires IE or Firefox, it's missing the potential for portability. It's easy to say "This software requires a certain minimum level of capability. And that minimum level is IE 6.0.1234 on Windows." But it's not very portable.
Yeah, someone is always going to miss out. But the whole point in writing portable code is to have as few people as possible missing out.
Bullshit. It works great in theory. Too bad so many "web applications" require a specific web browser. As far as I'm concerned, if your web application can't work with Lynks over a 14.4K modem, it shouldn't be a wep application.
Before you say "But that's because the web developers..." you should realize that it's just as possible to write C or C++ code that compiles and runs on multiple platforms as it is to make a web app work in multiple browsers. Fact of the matter is, in both cases, most people just don't put in the effort. In fact, it may even be easier in C and C++ because they're ISO standards, and deviations from the standard tend to be documented somewhere, unlike browser incompatibilities.
Make one that downloads Opera and Proxomitron, then uninstalls Firefox. I'm guessing they want useful extensions, and it doesn't get much beter than that.
I've never understood this about the government. To solve the problem of people breaking the law, they pass more laws. If it's illegal to do something, and people are still doing it, making it a little more illegal isn't going to stop anyone.
Do they really think someone's going to say "If only I had these cassette tapes on CD, I would rip them and post torrents somewhere. But all I have are the cassette tapes, and that would be breaking the 'Analog Hole' law. Damn you MPAA, your law has ruined my plan to illegally share music." Give me a break.
Maybe the vast majority of internet users should take the little bit of time to appropriately learn about computers and the internet. I'm not saying everyone who uses a computer should be system admins, but I don't think it's too much to ask that people who are going to use a computer every day have at least a basic understanding of what they're doing.
If someone were to get behind the wheel of a car and start driving, with no drivers license, having never driven before, they'd go to jail. It's the law that people have to have at least a basic knowledge about their car and how to drive. Yet, at the same time, any moron with $400 can bring home a new computer, hop on the interweb, and have their new computer pwned and DDOSing some random website in 2 minutes because they either don't understand or don't care to follow simple advice like "Use a virus checker and firewall". Obviously, computer and internet use shouldn't be regulated as heavily as driving, but if people can't be bothered to take a little time to learn how to use their computers, they deserve everything they get in my opinion.
Am I the only one who filters Google's ads? I have't seen a single ad in Google's search results or adsense anywhere in ages. Yeah, they're text, and unobtrusive, but it still doesn't change the fact I won't buy stuff from them.
Noooo... It's been well known for decades that 85-90% of time is spent in 5% of code. "Sony and friends" had nothing to do with coming up with that. They might have added DSP to the PS3 in response to it, but they certainly didn't "identify" it.
Well, as someone else said about Microsoft, how do you know Google isn't blocking other stuff also? This for example
Yes, because we all know Google never blocks anyone. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963132.html
Dear Slashdot,
I have been tasked with (insert very difficult, very important job). This is very important to my company. I have (insert number much lower than it should be) dollars to do this. I do not want to use (insert company name specializing in this exact thing) because management thinks they are too expensive. I think I can do this (insert better/faster/cheaper/...) than said company, even though they have vastly more experience and have invested much more time and research than I have. My continued and future employment probably rests on this project. Please advise.
I always hate when people say stuff like that. The part that really gets me is that the people who say it never have any idea whatsoever how the system in question works. If it were SO simple, it would've been done right in the first place. It's kind of like saying to a heart surgeon, "Really, how hard can it be to unclog an artery?"
As someone else pointed out in a different thread, the real problem isn't with the software, but that nobody would tell the developers the correct date calculation to use. So before anyone can even attempt to fix the software, somebody has to figure out which calculation it should be using. Then, if they're lucky, some of the original software engineers or developers are around, and will have some idea how to fix the problem. A system like this probably has several hundred thousand lines of code, in hundreds of files. Unless someone already knows the system very well, it could take a couple of weeks just to get acquainted enough to know where to look for the date calculations to fix. It's not simply a matter of opening "prison_system.c" and changing the "calculateReleaseDate()" function on line 15.
Those commercials give me the creeps.