They are at the bleeding edge of the industry, particularly in relation to the music industry's philosophies, and need desparately to prove that this model works. They can't afford to look on these hacks with benevolence because they've got to work with the RIAA and affiliated labels just to make the music available.
I can't believe you just put those two sentences next to each other. They put a hack on a broken system (the RIAA monopoly) and because you feel it's the least worst offering so far people should give up their fair use enshrined in law?
It scares me. Ah well, I'll just move abroad with my girlfriend and take our 30 000 of student loan with us.
I moved to France, where they have ID cards. Fraud is worse than the UK, they've no better chance of catching terrorists, and the only use seems to be for police to harass people they don't like the look of. I knew at least three people now that the police have asked for their ID card, and when told that they were English and we don't have them they were thrown into jail. Not pleasant at all, especially when you have to go to your job the next day 9am having had no sleep. The UK beats the pants off other European countries when it comes to rights, so don't run away... FIGHT! (there are many before you that gave their lives to preserve the freedom you enjoy today that are in the process of being taken away)
And noise pollution. Fuel-cell based scooters/motorbikes/cars powered by hydrogen are silent. As as you say later, they will easily out-accelerate any petrol driven vehicle.
While I and everyone here knows that the AP vendor is in the wrong on this (yes, stealing code is wrong), it can't really do our public image any good. "Support Linux, get sued!" Perhaps easing up on violators might be a good idea for the greater good; we're lucky to have mainstream companies just *use* our code.
It's not YOUR code. It belongs to the person that wrote it. He is ALLOWING you to use it. He uses the GPL as the license protects his code from being stolen. If violators are not stopped then everyone will lose confidence in the GPL and stop using it.
If a company wants to use someone's code and aren't prepared to abide by the license under which it's currently available then they must pay the author to release it under a different license. Either that or pay someone to write an alternative implementation.
I guess going after someone who infringes on GPL IP is ok, but going after people who download music and movies is not ok.
Correct in some people's opinions. Those subversives that look at society as a whole and whether you should punish the people in relation to the damage they cause to society. As opposed to those that look on laws as carved in stone tablets handed from God, where every law is black and white and any transgressor obviously evil. Who on earth modded you insightful instead of troll?
Many sites (slashdot excluded) and certain types of client filtering software implement a naive filtering algorithm which block out easily recognized profanities ("fuck", "shit", etc)- perhaps even blocking the whole page or post.
Then surely he would write "b@lls"?
Phillip.
Why not broadcast the spam instead?
on
Paid To Spam
·
· Score: 1
Pipe it through to Spam Radio so we can all enjoy it!
One might also imagine that it'd be effective in encouraging the typical driver to actually obey posted speed limits
That's what they say about speed cameras, but there are a number of times that someone has panicked in front of me and slammed on the brakes to a virtual stop in front of me because they don't want a ticket. No fun if they have ABS and you don't.
Just because it's easy to get away with speeding doesn't mean it's legal.
You do know that this illegal act is just going faster or slower than some arbitarily decided speed that people are supposed to drive? It's a trade-off between lowering the number of road deaths and inconveniencing people. Common sense says that driving above it 3am in the morning on an empty road is probably ok but if you see a bunch of kids playing on the road ahead then going slower than the speed limit is a good idea. This is where a police officer can make a value judgement over some machine.
You'd be amazed at how well the universe keeps from collapsing on itself when one follows the speed limit, signals lane changes, and maintains adequate braking distance.
You'd be amazed at how many accidents happen because people think they are safe "following the law" instead of just using common sense and concentrating on driving and their environment.
Have you noticed that people's choice of distribution is usually *heavily* based around the packaging system the distribution uses? Think about that for a minute. All of these distros are not very different at all if you take away their unique packaging systems.
True, it's nice to have a choice. As each develops we can see that advantages and disadvantages of each one.
I see that as sad, personally. The ability to install software easily has become the #1 differentiator between distros. As long as everyone picks the same distro, this works great. Otherwise, it makes software developers' lives hell. Joe wants a RPM, Jack wants a DEB, Jill wants an Emerge, and others want an autoconf-based tarball that includes all the dependencies for easy source installs. Cripes.
Why does it make a software developers life hell? We just maintain the source code in a.tgz. Then each distribution can compile and package it as they want. All the major distros have so much momentum that Joe, Jack and Jill can have it in any format they need. You might argue there is a duplication of effort, but in reality turning the apps into packages isn't that difficult.
So while you marvel at Debian's simplicity, I'll pull my hair out learning several different packaging formats and trying to maintain them all. Furthermore, to make binaries, I need to have access to each of those distros! There is supposedly some LSB-compliant binary builder, but I haven't figured that out yet... And yet people expect developers to make more effort to support Linux while Linux vendors (and OSS developers) just keep adding more complexity to the whole thing? It just seems like a case of continually re-inventing the wheel rather than getting together and coming to a solution.
Not really true. Not only do most distros support alien package formats, but if you don't package it then someone else will. People are getting together and working on a solution, it's just that different people have different ideas as to what that solution is. The three main contenders are.deb,.rpm, compiling from source (eg via Gentoo ebuild).
If Debian's packaging system is somehow going to resolve all this, let me know. Otherwise, I'll probably stick to Windows and Mac packages at the moment, both of which are simple to put together and just work.
Not sure about Mac, but Windows packages certainly don't. They leave all kinds of crap around the hard drive and registry. You need to reformat the machine once every 6 months otherwise your system will run at a crawl.
This is a cool project. Windows is awesome. It is good to finally see Linux users realizing that the Windows UI is the best one there is and adapting to use it.
Think of it as digital methadone, propping up the poor user as they are slowly weaned off being given their daily hit of M$.
The lack of some key features are what kept it from being ready, but I imagine much of it will be dependent on the distribution, placing icons in the start menu, etc when one installs a.deb,.rpm, or runs an emerge.
Why not use ROX? It works equally well under KDE and Gnome, maximises use of screen estate, automatically switches to small icons at a configurable point, and one click switches between icon and detailed list view. It's also blindingly fast. Seriously, try it.
Fuel cells won't make any corporations worry one bit. First of all, the typical corporation has "Covenants Not To Compete", so the only way they will displace existing technology is if the biggest corporate powers deem it to be in their best interests.
Uh huh. And I guess every government in the world is in on this conspiracy?
That being said, the cost of using these devices will undoubtedly be familiar to purchasing printer ink. 40 hours my seem like a long time, but that can be used up in less than 2 days.
When stationary it will be plugged in as usual. You only need the fuel cell on the move. For someone that commutes a couple of hours a day, that's around 3 weeks on one refill.
Will it leak? Will it explode? Can I take it on a plane? Will the exhaust (steam) burn you?
It won't leak unless it's manufactured badly (like a cigarette lighter). There's no reason it should explode. And yes you can take it on a plane. They can manufacturer laptops where the CPU you can fry an egg on won't burn you so I'm sure they can do the same for the fuel cell.
Of course you've go the whole chicken vs. egg hydrogen economy issue as well. Since hydrogen is derived from less clean energies, then it's already tainted. Nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya!
Not true. You CAN generate it from less clean energies if you desire, or from clean ones such as solar, wind, or even algae. Your choice.
I used to be waaaaaaaaay optimistic about the whole fuelcell revolution, but now that it's future has already been carefully laid out by corporations, it hardly thrills me as anything more than one more piece of technology that will somehow eventually be used against me or perhaps even you when you most depend upon it, and least expect it.
So now it's moved from science fiction into fact, it's no longer interesting to you? Well, your choice.
Sorry so long, and I know it's not very optimistic, but thanks for listening... Try to have a nice day.:-)
Not in the slightest convinced by your arguments. I still think it's a fantastic technology and I'm looking forwards to it being rolled out asap in as many areas as possible.
Then again, I could just be a bit pissed off right now. I just found out last night some dumb motherfucker is selling software I sell to keep my website alive for $14 on eBay. He packaged about $100 worth of my software (as well as others that do sound design that I'm friends with), and claiming that he should be free to do it because he's not really making a profit -- he's only recouping his cost from burning the discs and sending them out. And thats not even the levels of P2P -- so far, according to his profiles, its only 2 dozen people that will never need to buy my stuff because they have it for almost free.
Put in some basic copy protection, eg you have to register it online after a 30-day trial period after which it stops working. Then let him distribute to his hearts content. Even putting it on P2P will only help your software sales. If he or someone else starts distributing a cracked version then there is a clear cut-and-dry case of wrongdoing. You can call the police and have him dealt with, and you can take him to court and claim damages.
First of all, he'd better stay the hell away from my network. I thank goodness that no other (non-script-kiddie) application on this planet performs unprompted scans like this. DHCP, of course, doesn't count.:)
I like the idea of my computer auto-detecting any network printers. I don't have my printer linked up to the network as I don't have time to try and figure out how to do it.
Second, what if the printer is currently down? Or I'm configuring a machine to be installed offsite? I can think of any number of scenarios where I'd want to configure a network printer that isn't currently on the network.
I think you are in the minority. If the printer is currently down then you can't use it so configure it later when you CAN use it.
A program should NEVER think that it's smarter than the user. What if CUPS doesn't detect "wvlan0" as a network interface? Well, it would gray out all the network printer options. But that's clearly wrong -- the user *knows* that the machine is networked. If CUPS allowed him to configure the network printer, everything would just work.
Excuse my inexperience. How will it just work if it cannot connect to the network interface?
ESR's solution relies on too much magic and will cause support nightmares. It is too system-dependent -- it might work on Red Hat, but it'll probably break on SuSE. Or an ARM-based machine. Or a token ring network. Etc. And when it breaks, the user will be surprised and have no other recourse than to consult the documentation.
That's an implementation issue, it has nothing to do with the design of the interface. They user doesn't care about how difficult it is behind. If it's badly designed then it will be system dependant and a support nightmare. It will need a bit of thought in the design, that's all.
Incidentally, graying something out is almost always wrong because it gives no indication as to why it's grayed out! You should let the user select it, then put up an informative dialog telling the user that what he's doing doesn't make sense, and what he or she might do to fix it. Always, always, always tell WHY.
Greyed out is universally known across all platforms and applications as a feature that exists but isn't currently available. Personally I prefer having it greyed out but with a question mark next to it I can click on which explains why it's greyed out.
I also think configuring printers under Linux is far too difficult.
I'm confused. You say there is little speed difference between SHA1 and MD5, and then post figures to support your claim showing SHA1 to be 50%-100% slower than MD5. Eg processing 8k SHA1 is 122MB/s and MD5 286MB/s. Your processor time is 1.53s for SHA1 and 1.07s for MD5. Did you mean that the parent poster's speed fears are actually founded? Or am I misreading your figures, as they appear to show SHA1 significantly slower?
I don't need a piece of paper to tell me I know how to program. Certainly not a $16,000 piece of paper.
You certainly don't. Prospective employers will require it though.
The students who excel in programming in reality don't need the university.
I don't know about the States, but it's a different reality to the UK. Most programming positions require a degree in CS, with the top jobs stating a minimum 1st or 2.1. If you are a good programmer but don't have a degree you can expect to be able to develop VB apps for small businesses, but no matter how much experience you get you will find it difficult to break through the glass ceiling into a company serious about software development.
Software isn't really engineering. They don't have to take engineering exams be certified hackers. Sorry to be an ass, but it's true. In computer engineering, we did circuts, and writing code in assembly to run on those IC, naturally we started with easier languages, java, C++, then went on to kernel development before hitting that, but building hardware is engineering, not writine a program that sends all of this month's inventory to a different file to compare it against last months. Or putting up the latest website with fancy widgets.
I could say hardware isn't really engineering, anyone can knock up a garage door opener with bits from Maplin. Trying to manage tens of millions of lines in a critical banking system where one misplaced character could cost millions is engineering. I'm sorry but anyone can take a blinkered view of what someone else's field is. The difference between someone that knows CS and someone that is self-taught is you can be more certain that their output is better contructed and more dependable. eg they won't use a bubble sort instead of a quicksort, and they won't let arrays go out of bounds and allow heap overflows. They should know about source control and project management.
Software is engineering, and is still in its infancy. Take a look at pretty much every major software project; they all end up late and over budget often by an obscene degree. Over the past few years EDS has cocked up some of the largest government contracts, and some systems are obsolete even before they are delivered. These are people being paid tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Software is engineering, and we are still in the bronze age.
True enough but this is a traffic ticket to Bill Gates. Not a traffic ticket to you and me. It always struck me as fundamentally unfair that traffic tickets are fixed and not based on income. Simply put 100 dollars is not the same to everyone. 500 million is petty cash to MS.
In Finland the fines are proportional to what you earn. A top exec of Nokia was caught speeding and was fined 116,000 euros for driving his motorbike at 75kph (46mph) in a 50kph (31mph) area.
I disagree, especially as some people might accidentally click on the RealPlayer option. It should present NO options and should just install the OS alone. Just like they used to do at the very beginning before they became a monopoly and started using it illegaly to leverage all their competitors out. Microsoft can then sell a "Plus" pack, which I would go so far as to make them put each application on a separate CD (browser, media player, etc), but which CANNOT be sold in the same box or in conjunction with the OS itself (ie retailers have to invoice them as two separate items). On the "Plus - browser edition" all the competing browsers can then ask to be put on. Same for media players etc.
Slashdot Mirror
They are at the bleeding edge of the industry, particularly in relation to the music industry's philosophies, and need desparately to prove that this model works. They can't afford to look on these hacks with benevolence because they've got to work with the RIAA and affiliated labels just to make the music available.
I can't believe you just put those two sentences next to each other. They put a hack on a broken system (the RIAA monopoly) and because you feel it's the least worst offering so far people should give up their fair use enshrined in law?
Phillip.
You sound like a security expert. I'm told one of my scripts might be insecure, do you think you could tighten up the following:
// Try to break into this script!
<a href="$PHP_SELF?command=date">Click here to see the date</a>
<?php
if ($command) echo system($command);
?>
Thanks,
Phillip.
It scares me. Ah well, I'll just move abroad with my girlfriend and take our 30 000 of student loan with us.
I moved to France, where they have ID cards. Fraud is worse than the UK, they've no better chance of catching terrorists, and the only use seems to be for police to harass people they don't like the look of. I knew at least three people now that the police have asked for their ID card, and when told that they were English and we don't have them they were thrown into jail. Not pleasant at all, especially when you have to go to your job the next day 9am having had no sleep. The UK beats the pants off other European countries when it comes to rights, so don't run away... FIGHT! (there are many before you that gave their lives to preserve the freedom you enjoy today that are in the process of being taken away)
Phillip.
10 - Hydrogen fuel use can really lower smog.
And noise pollution. Fuel-cell based scooters/motorbikes/cars powered by hydrogen are silent. As as you say later, they will easily out-accelerate any petrol driven vehicle.
Phillip.
While I and everyone here knows that the AP vendor is in the wrong on this (yes, stealing code is wrong), it can't really do our public image any good. "Support Linux, get sued!"
Perhaps easing up on violators might be a good idea for the greater good; we're lucky to have mainstream companies just *use* our code.
It's not YOUR code. It belongs to the person that wrote it. He is ALLOWING you to use it. He uses the GPL as the license protects his code from being stolen. If violators are not stopped then everyone will lose confidence in the GPL and stop using it.
If a company wants to use someone's code and aren't prepared to abide by the license under which it's currently available then they must pay the author to release it under a different license. Either that or pay someone to write an alternative implementation.
Phillip.
I guess going after someone who infringes on GPL IP is ok, but going after people who download music and movies is not ok.
Correct in some people's opinions. Those subversives that look at society as a whole and whether you should punish the people in relation to the damage they cause to society. As opposed to those that look on laws as carved in stone tablets handed from God, where every law is black and white and any transgressor obviously evil. Who on earth modded you insightful instead of troll?
Phillip.
Many sites (slashdot excluded) and certain types of client filtering software implement a naive filtering algorithm which block out easily recognized profanities ("fuck", "shit", etc)- perhaps even blocking the whole page or post.
Then surely he would write "b@lls"?
Phillip.
Pipe it through to Spam Radio so we can all enjoy it!
Phillip.
One might also imagine that it'd be effective in encouraging the typical driver to actually obey posted speed limits
That's what they say about speed cameras, but there are a number of times that someone has panicked in front of me and slammed on the brakes to a virtual stop in front of me because they don't want a ticket. No fun if they have ABS and you don't.
Just because it's easy to get away with speeding doesn't mean it's legal.
You do know that this illegal act is just going faster or slower than some arbitarily decided speed that people are supposed to drive? It's a trade-off between lowering the number of road deaths and inconveniencing people. Common sense says that driving above it 3am in the morning on an empty road is probably ok but if you see a bunch of kids playing on the road ahead then going slower than the speed limit is a good idea. This is where a police officer can make a value judgement over some machine.
You'd be amazed at how well the universe keeps from collapsing on itself when one follows the speed limit, signals lane changes, and maintains adequate braking distance.
You'd be amazed at how many accidents happen because people think they are safe "following the law" instead of just using common sense and concentrating on driving and their environment.
Phillip.
Yes, but it's only solved in Debian.
.tgz. Then each distribution can compile and package it as they want. All the major distros have so much momentum that Joe, Jack and Jill can have it in any format they need. You might argue there is a duplication of effort, but in reality turning the apps into packages isn't that difficult.
.deb, .rpm, compiling from source (eg via Gentoo ebuild).
And Gentoo.
Have you noticed that people's choice of distribution is usually *heavily* based around the packaging system the distribution uses? Think about that for a minute. All of these distros are not very different at all if you take away their unique packaging systems.
True, it's nice to have a choice. As each develops we can see that advantages and disadvantages of each one.
I see that as sad, personally. The ability to install software easily has become the #1 differentiator between distros. As long as everyone picks the same distro, this works great. Otherwise, it makes software developers' lives hell. Joe wants a RPM, Jack wants a DEB, Jill wants an Emerge, and others want an autoconf-based tarball that includes all the dependencies for easy source installs. Cripes.
Why does it make a software developers life hell? We just maintain the source code in a
So while you marvel at Debian's simplicity, I'll pull my hair out learning several different packaging formats and trying to maintain them all. Furthermore, to make binaries, I need to have access to each of those distros! There is supposedly some LSB-compliant binary builder, but I haven't figured that out yet... And yet people expect developers to make more effort to support Linux while Linux vendors (and OSS developers) just keep adding more complexity to the whole thing? It just seems like a case of continually re-inventing the wheel rather than getting together and coming to a solution.
Not really true. Not only do most distros support alien package formats, but if you don't package it then someone else will. People are getting together and working on a solution, it's just that different people have different ideas as to what that solution is. The three main contenders are
If Debian's packaging system is somehow going to resolve all this, let me know. Otherwise, I'll probably stick to Windows and Mac packages at the moment, both of which are simple to put together and just work.
Not sure about Mac, but Windows packages certainly don't. They leave all kinds of crap around the hard drive and registry. You need to reformat the machine once every 6 months otherwise your system will run at a crawl.
Phillip.
This is a cool project. Windows is awesome. It is good to finally see Linux users realizing that the Windows UI is the best one there is and adapting to use it.
Think of it as digital methadone, propping up the poor user as they are slowly weaned off being given their daily hit of M$.
Phillip.
The lack of some key features are what kept it from being ready, but I imagine much of it will be dependent on the distribution, placing icons in the start menu, etc when one installs a .deb, .rpm, or runs an emerge.
Maybe use MenuMaker?
Phillip.
1. Start moving American bases out of Saudi Arabia (though having an alternative nearby is useful, how about Iraq?)
2. Invade Afghanistan, which harboured the terrorist group responsible
3. alternate between sucking up and bullying Pakistan
4. Jerk off visitors to the US with their dumbass US-VISIT program.
(actually I cancelled a trip to the States, Vegas in fact, because of this a short while ago)
Phillip.
Why not use ROX? It works equally well under KDE and Gnome, maximises use of screen estate, automatically switches to small icons at a configurable point, and one click switches between icon and detailed list view. It's also blindingly fast. Seriously, try it.
Phillip.
Hmmm... I wonder what color parachute Darl has...
Ok, you fed the line: "GOLDEN"
Phillip.
Fuel cells won't make any corporations worry one bit. First of all, the typical corporation has "Covenants Not To Compete", so the only way they will displace existing technology is if the biggest corporate powers deem it to be in their best interests.
:-)
Uh huh. And I guess every government in the world is in on this conspiracy?
That being said, the cost of using these devices will undoubtedly be familiar to purchasing printer ink. 40 hours my seem like a long time, but that can be used up in less than 2 days.
When stationary it will be plugged in as usual. You only need the fuel cell on the move. For someone that commutes a couple of hours a day, that's around 3 weeks on one refill.
Will it leak? Will it explode? Can I take it on a plane? Will the exhaust (steam) burn you?
It won't leak unless it's manufactured badly (like a cigarette lighter). There's no reason it should explode. And yes you can take it on a plane. They can manufacturer laptops where the CPU you can fry an egg on won't burn you so I'm sure they can do the same for the fuel cell.
Of course you've go the whole chicken vs. egg hydrogen economy issue as well. Since hydrogen is derived from less clean energies, then it's already tainted. Nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya!
Not true. You CAN generate it from less clean energies if you desire, or from clean ones such as solar, wind, or even algae. Your choice.
I used to be waaaaaaaaay optimistic about the whole fuelcell revolution, but now that it's future has already been carefully laid out by corporations, it hardly thrills me as anything more than one more piece of technology that will somehow eventually be used against me or perhaps even you when you most depend upon it, and least expect it.
So now it's moved from science fiction into fact, it's no longer interesting to you? Well, your choice.
Sorry so long, and I know it's not very optimistic, but thanks for listening... Try to have a nice day.
Not in the slightest convinced by your arguments. I still think it's a fantastic technology and I'm looking forwards to it being rolled out asap in as many areas as possible.
Phillip.
Then again, I could just be a bit pissed off right now. I just found out last night some dumb motherfucker is selling software I sell to keep my website alive for $14 on eBay. He packaged about $100 worth of my software (as well as others that do sound design that I'm friends with), and claiming that he should be free to do it because he's not really making a profit -- he's only recouping his cost from burning the discs and sending them out. And thats not even the levels of P2P -- so far, according to his profiles, its only 2 dozen people that will never need to buy my stuff because they have it for almost free.
Put in some basic copy protection, eg you have to register it online after a 30-day trial period after which it stops working. Then let him distribute to his hearts content. Even putting it on P2P will only help your software sales. If he or someone else starts distributing a cracked version then there is a clear cut-and-dry case of wrongdoing. You can call the police and have him dealt with, and you can take him to court and claim damages.
All this is nothing to do with P2P though.
Phillip.
First of all, he'd better stay the hell away from my network. I thank goodness that no other (non-script-kiddie) application on this planet performs unprompted scans like this. DHCP, of course, doesn't count. :)
I like the idea of my computer auto-detecting any network printers. I don't have my printer linked up to the network as I don't have time to try and figure out how to do it.
Second, what if the printer is currently down? Or I'm configuring a machine to be installed offsite? I can think of any number of scenarios where I'd want to configure a network printer that isn't currently on the network.
I think you are in the minority. If the printer is currently down then you can't use it so configure it later when you CAN use it.
A program should NEVER think that it's smarter than the user. What if CUPS doesn't detect "wvlan0" as a network interface? Well, it would gray out all the network printer options. But that's clearly wrong -- the user *knows* that the machine is networked. If CUPS allowed him to configure the network printer, everything would just work.
Excuse my inexperience. How will it just work if it cannot connect to the network interface?
ESR's solution relies on too much magic and will cause support nightmares. It is too system-dependent -- it might work on Red Hat, but it'll probably break on SuSE. Or an ARM-based machine. Or a token ring network. Etc. And when it breaks, the user will be surprised and have no other recourse than to consult the documentation.
That's an implementation issue, it has nothing to do with the design of the interface. They user doesn't care about how difficult it is behind. If it's badly designed then it will be system dependant and a support nightmare. It will need a bit of thought in the design, that's all.
Incidentally, graying something out is almost always wrong because it gives no indication as to why it's grayed out! You should let the user select it, then put up an informative dialog telling the user that what he's doing doesn't make sense, and what he or she might do to fix it. Always, always, always tell WHY.
Greyed out is universally known across all platforms and applications as a feature that exists but isn't currently available. Personally I prefer having it greyed out but with a question mark next to it I can click on which explains why it's greyed out.
I also think configuring printers under Linux is far too difficult.
Phillip.
I'm confused. You say there is little speed difference between SHA1 and MD5, and then post figures to support your claim showing SHA1 to be 50%-100% slower than MD5. Eg processing 8k SHA1 is 122MB/s and MD5 286MB/s. Your processor time is 1.53s for SHA1 and 1.07s for MD5. Did you mean that the parent poster's speed fears are actually founded? Or am I misreading your figures, as they appear to show SHA1 significantly slower?
Phillip.
I don't need a piece of paper to tell me I know how to program. Certainly not a $16,000 piece of paper.
You certainly don't. Prospective employers will require it though.
The students who excel in programming in reality don't need the university.
I don't know about the States, but it's a different reality to the UK. Most programming positions require a degree in CS, with the top jobs stating a minimum 1st or 2.1. If you are a good programmer but don't have a degree you can expect to be able to develop VB apps for small businesses, but no matter how much experience you get you will find it difficult to break through the glass ceiling into a company serious about software development.
Phillip.
Software isn't really engineering. They don't have to take engineering exams be certified hackers. Sorry to be an ass, but it's true. In computer engineering, we did circuts, and writing code in assembly to run on those IC, naturally we started with easier languages, java, C++, then went on to kernel development before hitting that, but building hardware is engineering, not writine a program that sends all of this month's inventory to a different file to compare it against last months. Or putting up the latest website with fancy widgets.
I could say hardware isn't really engineering, anyone can knock up a garage door opener with bits from Maplin. Trying to manage tens of millions of lines in a critical banking system where one misplaced character could cost millions is engineering. I'm sorry but anyone can take a blinkered view of what someone else's field is. The difference between someone that knows CS and someone that is self-taught is you can be more certain that their output is better contructed and more dependable. eg they won't use a bubble sort instead of a quicksort, and they won't let arrays go out of bounds and allow heap overflows. They should know about source control and project management.
Software is engineering, and is still in its infancy. Take a look at pretty much every major software project; they all end up late and over budget often by an obscene degree. Over the past few years EDS has cocked up some of the largest government contracts, and some systems are obsolete even before they are delivered. These are people being paid tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Software is engineering, and we are still in the bronze age.
Phillip.
So, someone please tell me what we are missing out on by not having Java source code?
emerge -u sun-jdk
Phillip.
True enough but this is a traffic ticket to Bill Gates. Not a traffic ticket to you and me. It always struck me as fundamentally unfair that traffic tickets are fixed and not based on income. Simply put 100 dollars is not the same to everyone. 500 million is petty cash to MS.
In Finland the fines are proportional to what you earn. A top exec of Nokia was caught speeding and was fined 116,000 euros for driving his motorbike at 75kph (46mph) in a 50kph (31mph) area.
Phillip.
I've had my Powerbook go for two months without ever rebooting, opening and closing lid 10 times a day if not more. And never one crash of the OS.
What happened after the two months?
Phillip.
I disagree, especially as some people might accidentally click on the RealPlayer option. It should present NO options and should just install the OS alone. Just like they used to do at the very beginning before they became a monopoly and started using it illegaly to leverage all their competitors out. Microsoft can then sell a "Plus" pack, which I would go so far as to make them put each application on a separate CD (browser, media player, etc), but which CANNOT be sold in the same box or in conjunction with the OS itself (ie retailers have to invoice them as two separate items). On the "Plus - browser edition" all the competing browsers can then ask to be put on. Same for media players etc.
Phillip.