I think 'abstain' refers to those who didn't want to offend Microsoft for commercial reasons, but could not in all conscience vote for the pile of shite that OOXML is.
"I have repeatedly made the argument that it is bad logic that leads you to the conclusion that there should be only one document format" And this is Microsoft's policy on things, right? That it is bad logic to conclude that there should be only one of something.
So can we hope to see Microsoft dismantling it's various monopolistic positions in the near future (voluntarily). I look forward to it.
There are many other industries involved in ISO based production (I'm thinking of the petrochemical industry or the building materials industry), which in terms of individual might would be smaller than Microsoft, but in terms of combined industry strength (given that a lot of the software industry is against OOXML) would be far bigger, and capable of exerting far greater pressure.
Is is not possible that these industries have had influences over the ISO process in order to create standards that are inherently unsafe - and I mean in a life threatening way, as opposed to a 'bad document' way? When we see airplane crashes, bridge collapses or levies bursting, should we not be thinking 'ISO (corrupted)' rather than 'freak accident', at least in part?
gives this:
Vim is Charityware. You can use and copy it as much as you like, but you are encouraged to make a donation for needy children in Uganda. Please see |kcc| below or visit the ICCF web site, available at these URLs:
When you look at the blog you see that there are 169 posts (probably more by now).
The first half of the blog basically consists of individuals congratulating Microsoft for getting the service pack out - no indication of how successful they were at installation. Then there are a couple of posts regarding success and then more and more complaints of failures - interspersed with flaming for not reporting to support (response: why should I pay $60 for support for a bug fix?).
So dozens (say 36) out of 90 posts, is not an outstanding success. If that pans out across the entire installation (and remember a lot of these are (a) early adopters and (b) technically proficient enough to post on the blog), that does not bode well at all.
Of course, that's just playing with statistics. I'm sure it will all be fine...
Or do the gods behind/. use a different browser to me.
I'm not really going off-topic: my point is that ads really aren't a problem in these high-bandwidth times - at least they're somewhat targeted and they don't intrude.
The problem is, though, that they do. Sometimes the ads on/. are the banner ones, and they're fine, but sometimes they are those nasty square ones that block off half the story summary and require multiple reloads to get rid of.
I have no problem with ads - but they should be tested to see if they work on the 'most-popular' (depending on point of view) browser. Otherwise, don't be bitchin' at me cos I flashblock your ass.
I shall watch with interest to see who wins out: the large publishers or Audible.com
I tried Audible.com last month - I actually tried to get into Audio books full stop, but on Linux it's a miserable disaster. All the methods I tried failed - for obvious reasons. Audible, however, while having the best site, quality and selection, was the worst experience. Their subscription model is hard to get your head around - especially if you are trying from scratch. And by the time you find out you can't use it on Linux you've paid for your first month, downloaded your first book and tried in vain to get it to play. Canceling the subscription proved equally tricky - to the extent that I'm not altogether sure if I have canceled it.
I think not having support for Linux is a bad idea. Not because of any Linux fanboy nonsense, but because I would imagine that the market share for Linux in the segment of 'People who will download and listen to audio books' is much higher than the normal 'Desktop' market share. Hey, I wanted to do it - and I was willing to pay for it.
I know that my father (committed to Windows) for instance would never do this - he would always prefer to have a physical copy of a book or CD - as would I think most of his generation, and the younger Win-generation (get off my lawn) wouldn't be into audio books (from an opportunity cost perspective).
Anyway, I gave up. Yesterday I bought the CD version of 'Slaughter House 5' - I couldn't find anything else I was interested in. I know, I know - it's better in book form.
I was discussing with a client today about whether to use a service oriented architecture on a Redhat server supported by an Oracle database, but he was much more keen on using a vertical block model with a rotational function that maximized resources by removing redundant full rows, and had pretty colours and a catchy tune.
And absolutely nothing was learned from this that would benefit an anti-satellite missile programme because the word missile means something totally different in the two cases. And when the anti-satellite missile is eventually deployed it will look nothing like this.
It is strange that when you look at the article you referenced, one of its references describe how the Japanese used this missile to shoot down another missile in space. And further the actual fact sheet from Raytheon, who make the missile, point out that later models will have a much greater range - models that will presumably come about as a result of empirical data gained from shooting down this current satellite.
It would seem to me that getting a missile into space would be relatively simple, and the destruction of a satellite wouldn't require much damage to be inflicted in order to render it useless. The trick is to ensure that the guidance system is accurate, and hitting an object in an unpredictable decaying orbit would be a sweet test.
Because my understanding (as a scientist) has always been that all science was theory - scientific theory and not fact. Some scientific theories, like evolution, have so much evidence that they may as well be fact - but they're still technically not fact.
And like you said gravity is a theory. The fact there is that when I let go of an apple it ends up on the ground, that's the fact - the most sensible theory that explains that fact and other related facts is the theory of gravity. And the theory of evolution is the most sensible theory that explains the fact that there are a wide range of different types of animals and plants on this planet. Creationism and ID are also theories - not scientific theories because they cannot stand up to testing by the scientific method. (And yes FSM is a theory too).
So let baby have his bottle - tell them "Yeah! Evolution is a scientific theory - and a damned good one at that." That'll stump them.
Generally the good coders will use their brains where as the bad coder will copy and paste without any appreciation for what they are doing.
You are right that the bloat comes from quantity over quality - but that is achieved by packing projects with anyone who can use Edit/Copy, Edit/Paste (even Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V would be beyond them). Re-use means copying some crap from one place to another (with a whole new set of bugs). And testing is a waste of time.
So if Wikipedia actually said that it was 12,000ly thick over 4 hours ago, then that would confirm that Wikipedia is actually a reliable source on this subject, requiring you to apologize to them.
Maybe you should check out Wikipedia, about half way down that page, near where it says that center thickness has recently been discovered to be about 12,000ly.
Will there be a correction issuing from your good self soon?
I think you could go further and say that the reason so much bloated garbage is produced is because developers have such a thin understanding of the techniques they are using and have no idea of the consequences of their actions.
For example, data structures such as lists and arrays are used interchangeably without any idea of the pros and cons of each, and the right place to use them. There are plenty more examples of this.
At the very least, the abstract notion that we should aspire to understand what lies beneath our current level of knowledge and how it affects the quality of code is fundamental to good practice.
Slashdot Mirror
I think 'abstain' refers to those who didn't want to offend Microsoft for commercial reasons, but could not in all conscience vote for the pile of shite that OOXML is.
So can we hope to see Microsoft dismantling it's various monopolistic positions in the near future (voluntarily). I look forward to it.
Just thinking out loud - but...
There are many other industries involved in ISO based production (I'm thinking of the petrochemical industry or the building materials industry), which in terms of individual might would be smaller than Microsoft, but in terms of combined industry strength (given that a lot of the software industry is against OOXML) would be far bigger, and capable of exerting far greater pressure.
Is is not possible that these industries have had influences over the ISO process in order to create standards that are inherently unsafe - and I mean in a life threatening way, as opposed to a 'bad document' way? When we see airplane crashes, bridge collapses or levies bursting, should we not be thinking 'ISO (corrupted)' rather than 'freak accident', at least in part?
Get one now on eBay
encouraged to make a donation for needy children in Uganda. Please see |kcc|
below or visit the ICCF web site, available at these URLs:
http://iccf-holland.org/
http://www.vim.org/iccf/
http://www.iccf.nl/ Just in case anyone is interested (and can't use vim).
"Charityware" - can you imagine them mooks in Seattle trying to pronounce that.
When you look at the blog you see that there are 169 posts (probably more by now).
The first half of the blog basically consists of individuals congratulating Microsoft for getting the service pack out - no indication of how successful they were at installation. Then there are a couple of posts regarding success and then more and more complaints of failures - interspersed with flaming for not reporting to support (response: why should I pay $60 for support for a bug fix?).
So dozens (say 36) out of 90 posts, is not an outstanding success. If that pans out across the entire installation (and remember a lot of these are (a) early adopters and (b) technically proficient enough to post on the blog), that does not bode well at all.
Of course, that's just playing with statistics. I'm sure it will all be fine...
Or do the gods behind /. use a different browser to me.
/. are the banner ones, and they're fine, but sometimes they are those nasty square ones that block off half the story summary and require multiple reloads to get rid of.
I'm not really going off-topic: my point is that ads really aren't a problem in these high-bandwidth times - at least they're somewhat targeted and they don't intrude.
The problem is, though, that they do. Sometimes the ads on
I have no problem with ads - but they should be tested to see if they work on the 'most-popular' (depending on point of view) browser. Otherwise, don't be bitchin' at me cos I flashblock your ass.
I shall watch with interest to see who wins out: the large publishers or Audible.com
I tried Audible.com last month - I actually tried to get into Audio books full stop, but on Linux it's a miserable disaster. All the methods I tried failed - for obvious reasons. Audible, however, while having the best site, quality and selection, was the worst experience. Their subscription model is hard to get your head around - especially if you are trying from scratch. And by the time you find out you can't use it on Linux you've paid for your first month, downloaded your first book and tried in vain to get it to play. Canceling the subscription proved equally tricky - to the extent that I'm not altogether sure if I have canceled it.
I think not having support for Linux is a bad idea. Not because of any Linux fanboy nonsense, but because I would imagine that the market share for Linux in the segment of 'People who will download and listen to audio books' is much higher than the normal 'Desktop' market share. Hey, I wanted to do it - and I was willing to pay for it.
I know that my father (committed to Windows) for instance would never do this - he would always prefer to have a physical copy of a book or CD - as would I think most of his generation, and the younger Win-generation (get off my lawn) wouldn't be into audio books (from an opportunity cost perspective).
Anyway, I gave up. Yesterday I bought the CD version of 'Slaughter House 5' - I couldn't find anything else I was interested in. I know, I know - it's better in book form.
http://qtv.mobitv.com/sprintTVlive.mcd
OK maybe they're not, but they should be...
If anything does get sucked up by this thing, do that mean that our thing is then also open source?
This GPL business will get out of hand, and we'll find all our things published on the Internet for anyone to use.
You have been warned.
I, for one, will not miss that imaginary numbers twaddle.
(Light blue touch paper and retire to a safe distance.)
...for another Mars mission, eh?
It had to be said - even if it is terribly trolly.
I was discussing with a client today about whether to use a service oriented architecture on a Redhat server supported by an Oracle database, but he was much more keen on using a vertical block model with a rotational function that maximized resources by removing redundant full rows, and had pretty colours and a catchy tune.
And absolutely nothing was learned from this that would benefit an anti-satellite missile programme because the word missile means something totally different in the two cases. And when the anti-satellite missile is eventually deployed it will look nothing like this.
It is strange that when you look at the article you referenced, one of its references describe how the Japanese used this missile to shoot down another missile in space. And further the actual fact sheet from Raytheon, who make the missile, point out that later models will have a much greater range - models that will presumably come about as a result of empirical data gained from shooting down this current satellite.
It would seem to me that getting a missile into space would be relatively simple, and the destruction of a satellite wouldn't require much damage to be inflicted in order to render it useless. The trick is to ensure that the guidance system is accurate, and hitting an object in an unpredictable decaying orbit would be a sweet test.
I think I smell hydrazine.
Now I'm going to get myself into trouble.
Because my understanding (as a scientist) has always been that all science was theory - scientific theory and not fact. Some scientific theories, like evolution, have so much evidence that they may as well be fact - but they're still technically not fact.
And like you said gravity is a theory. The fact there is that when I let go of an apple it ends up on the ground, that's the fact - the most sensible theory that explains that fact and other related facts is the theory of gravity. And the theory of evolution is the most sensible theory that explains the fact that there are a wide range of different types of animals and plants on this planet. Creationism and ID are also theories - not scientific theories because they cannot stand up to testing by the scientific method. (And yes FSM is a theory too).
So let baby have his bottle - tell them "Yeah! Evolution is a scientific theory - and a damned good one at that." That'll stump them.
Generally the good coders will use their brains where as the bad coder will copy and paste without any appreciation for what they are doing.
You are right that the bloat comes from quantity over quality - but that is achieved by packing projects with anyone who can use Edit/Copy, Edit/Paste (even Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V would be beyond them). Re-use means copying some crap from one place to another (with a whole new set of bugs). And testing is a waste of time.
So if Wikipedia actually said that it was 12,000ly thick over 4 hours ago, then that would confirm that Wikipedia is actually a reliable source on this subject, requiring you to apologize to them.
Maybe you should check out Wikipedia, about half way down that page, near where it says that center thickness has recently been discovered to be about 12,000ly.
Will there be a correction issuing from your good self soon?
I think you could go further and say that the reason so much bloated garbage is produced is because developers have such a thin understanding of the techniques they are using and have no idea of the consequences of their actions.
For example, data structures such as lists and arrays are used interchangeably without any idea of the pros and cons of each, and the right place to use them. There are plenty more examples of this.
At the very least, the abstract notion that we should aspire to understand what lies beneath our current level of knowledge and how it affects the quality of code is fundamental to good practice.
You are remiss in your child's education: Phone
Throw in your 8-track player and we've got a deal.
1 HD-DVD Player, never used. Best offer accepted.
(Please...)
"The year of Windows on the Desktop."
Trolly, but true.
And in a damning indictment of the US patent office, prior art will be established in 1000 years.