I doubt that these guys are obtaining and distributing files that couldn't be obtained for free using a good BitTorrent client (albeit also illegally). I mean, sure, most managerial types agree that you shouldn't do that stuff at work, but aside from the misuse of on-the-clock time, is it much different than a bunch of college roommates using a shared network directory for their downloads?
Stealing homemade sex videos and that sort of thing from customers' computers is another matter. That would be a pretty major invasion of privacy and should be grounds for substantial, per-case lawsuits. I suppose it would be hard for a corporate overseer to distinguish between "legit" and privately owned media in that situation.
Home videos? Private diaries? Love letters? Stay out, Geek. But "media" . . . as a customer, what have I lost, exactly? To be honest, I'd rather have a competent technician solve my configuration problems and help himself to my MP3 directory than have to waste time with ignorant first-level servicepeople in a tightly overseen, "theft-free" big-box environment.
I've never understood the appeal of these pirated works. I'm very skeptical that, as a consumer of such a bootleg, I could find the viewing experience enjoyable with the quality levels rendered by a homemade video of a movie--especially one that I could experience in a theater at a matinee showing for five to seven bucks.
More than fifteen days of jail time seems excessive to me.
I love going back to read Slashdot's initial skepticism (if not outright indignation) about the Wii's name change. It's funny how quickly we've adapted to the new name (and how brilliant the switch seems in retrospect).
That sounds like an awesome capability (media streaming). I'm jealous!
The only next-gen system I own is a Wii. It has the capacity to make additional "channels" (ie, functions) available for purchase. I would be very surprised if they don't add media streaming sometime in the future. The hardware has all the support it needs--they're in a position to offer the capability through a paid software update with nearly zero distribution costs. So I'm really hoping that the Wii offers this.
I'm also very tempted to see how the browsing experience would feel with the Wii's nifty pointer (Wiimote) capabilities--I think it could be a little less cumbersome than using a standard controller.
Just some thoughts!
Hospitals? Not the first application that would have come to mind, but a little extra hygiene never hurt anyone. (Cue jokes about Slashdotters)
I'm more interested in the portable computing applications. Does this mean that we could sit down at Starbucks, whip out a PDA equipped with this device, and have the table surface become a full-sized keyboard/mouse arrangement? That would be sweet!
Actually, we are running Oracle--we're a software shop and we have to support both MS-SQL and Oracle installations. Oracle just sucks, in the opinions of myself and my colleagues. Sucks in terms of the amount of workarounds to do things that MS-SQL just does automatically.
I'm not afraid of command-line work, but I am afraid of wasting time. That spells death for our company and threatens what we're trying to accomplish. After years of MS-SQL use, and about one year or so of trying to mirror the same tasks on Oracle, I've come to hate the product . . .
I just don't get it. TCO and tool support are tightly linked. Most open source database products, including MySQL, seem to require quite a bit of digging and cobbling together to set up and maintain. Microsoft SQL Server has fantastic tool support, no command line experimentation required. An experienced DBA can set up a new installation in a couple of minutes. And there's even a free Express Edition available for entry-level dabbling.
The cost of a database license is pretty minimal over the long haul (referring to SQL Server, not the abominable Oracle). The real cost is in the time spent compensating for whatever your database platform's tool support shortcomings are. I love Microsoft SQL Server for this reason: I rarely have to reinvent anything.
I doubt that a historian would see it your way. How many records, judged by their contemporaries as irrelevant, have helped historians piece together valuable perspectives about times past! Like the monks who deemed it appropriate to copy over Bach manuscripts, isn't there hubris when we declare with certainty what is and is not worth preserving? Perhaps we don't have enough perspective to reliably do that.
I wouldn't really consider small-ticket items like CDs as a valid comparison (and even when I do buy CDs, I buy them used and often sell them again for almost the same price I paid for them). I also don't think concert tickets really count, either - you're paying for a one-time experience, which you receive fully - I wouldn't consider that depreciation.
I do agree that it's not unheard of to buy big-ticket items with the full knowledge that they will lose some value. Usually it's amortized over a matter of years, though, not weeks! I bet in a month and a half these people are going to feel silly when they wake up and realized they pissed away $1500+ by paying several times retail just to get a video game console a little earlier.
I agree that that price is idiotic. Remember, though, that 37 bids doesn't necessarily constitute 37 bidders. Two or three idiots can easily bid themselves into a frantic bidding war.
I wonder how many of these people are going to get ripped off.
Unfortunately, I'm not making it up! A friend who works in finance tells me he sees more and more of this, along with those who live upscale lifestyles but maintain tens and tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. It's interesting that in today's society you can't tell much about someone's true net worth by the lifestyle they appear to lead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest-only_mortgag e
I can't imagine being foolish enough to buy something that is GUARANTEED to depreciate 5-10x within several months. That anyone would pay a price so much higher than retail just to buy something a few weeks sooner . . . man. It's the same lack of financial education that leads to credit card problems, interest-only mortgages, personal bankruptcies, etc.
Screw this negative spin! I think this idea is simply cool. I'm getting tired of naysaying "privacy advocates" painting progress in such dire colors. I'm personally excited to read this story. Our lives could be so much cooler if not for all the worriers and heeldraggers . . .
That may be changing. Check out their recent webcast on the upcoming "ADO Entity Objects Framework," which looks like it's shaping up to be a formal ORM product.
I read Slashdot because there are many really, really smart posters out there. I like how a smart and balanced set of comments, presenting multiple well-argued sides of any issue, tends to emerge around an article submission. I agree that the initial posts are often poorly edited and sometimes ill-chosen. Sometimes I wish Slashdot wasn't even confined to "news for nerds" because I couldn't care less about the latest OpenBSD release or whatever.
I value Slashdot less for the technical niche it tries to occupy and more for the body of intelligent, articulate posters it has accumulated (along with some less adept ones, but that's what the comment system is for) . . .
Another example I've seen a couple of times is when someone is attempting to transfer funds (usually under intense time pressure, of course) and the computer screen shows a progress bar moving across the screen with a quickly changing counter showing how many dollars have been transferred! As if an electronic wire transfer sends one dollars at a time and your status could be at $748,282 of $1,000,000.
Atomic transactions, anyone?
Yeah, I was dumbfounded at first, too. Then I went to YouTube and watched this video (still with the Revolution name) and realized that something truly innovative is going on at Nintendo.
I'm already used to the name "Wii" . . . it's got that element of WTF? to it, but it does genuinely differentiate itself. It's cute and unique. If it succeeds, it will create an entirely new niche (partygame/lifestyle toy) and leave the other consoles in the dust.
The premier example being MySpace. With its interruptive, garish UI paradigm and its numerous design flaws (both functional and aesthetic), it appears to be attempting to singlehandedly dumb down the web. Personally, this concerns me a lot more than the occasional, fixable hacks: the overall missed opportunity when millions of users settle for a low-quality, repetitious, limiting experience, as MySpace provides.
Re:Freedom is the key!
on
Beyond Java
·
· Score: 1
There are also ethics involved in earning one's paycheck in a competent and productive manner. If one development environment is orders of magnitude more efficient than another, I owe it to my employer to balance my idealism about free software with the pragmatism to choose the right tools to help me deliver the value for which I'm being paid. I don't consider my dependence on Microsoft tools as slavery; their relative reliability and testedness liberate me from spending my time trying to figure out how to tweak the configuration options in some open source environment to get things working AT ALL.
Open source languages and standards may rival those of proprietary companies, but the tool support is just not there yet, IMHO.
I certainly wouldn't claim that there aren't certain contexts in which Java (or any other language) doesn't make things easier. I do agree that threading in Windows Forms is one of.NET's weak points (although one could argue that the C# language specification offloads most of its threading capability onto the.NET framework, and that the deficiency is in the framework, not in C#, but that's probably splitting hairs).
I personally haven't needed to do much graphical multithreading work with C#. I primarily work with middleware and with data-intensive applications, and while that includes some non-trivial user interface development to provide access and analysis services, I haven't encountered many situations where I need to use multithreading to provide responsiveness. In most cases it seems to me that introducing threading incurs a penalty in terms of the complexity of debugging. So, while I'm sympathetic to the frustration you encountered in the sample you posted, my response to your question would be this:
Is there a better way to create a new thread from a button click handler and display Hello, world? Not that I know of. But why not just display Hello, world from the button click handler directly without creating the frivolous thread? C# seems up to the task of handling most real-world business requirements and I've found my development efficiency and its runtime efficiency preferable to what I experienced with Java: that's all I'm saying.
I find C# to be far and away the most productive and efficient language I've ever worked with. This is, of course, due in large part to the robustness of the.NET class framework and the top-notch development environment. To me, it was a significant step up from Java (although I understand that that's a subjective statement). As someone who has been working professionally with C# for years, and who has found it to be a much faster way to deliver quality production code, I contend that C# is the true benchmark: Java has already been superceded.
Slashdot Mirror
It's hard for me to get worked up about this.
I doubt that these guys are obtaining and distributing files that couldn't be obtained for free using a good BitTorrent client (albeit also illegally). I mean, sure, most managerial types agree that you shouldn't do that stuff at work, but aside from the misuse of on-the-clock time, is it much different than a bunch of college roommates using a shared network directory for their downloads?
Stealing homemade sex videos and that sort of thing from customers' computers is another matter. That would be a pretty major invasion of privacy and should be grounds for substantial, per-case lawsuits. I suppose it would be hard for a corporate overseer to distinguish between "legit" and privately owned media in that situation.
Home videos? Private diaries? Love letters? Stay out, Geek. But "media" . . . as a customer, what have I lost, exactly? To be honest, I'd rather have a competent technician solve my configuration problems and help himself to my MP3 directory than have to waste time with ignorant first-level servicepeople in a tightly overseen, "theft-free" big-box environment.
I've never understood the appeal of these pirated works. I'm very skeptical that, as a consumer of such a bootleg, I could find the viewing experience enjoyable with the quality levels rendered by a homemade video of a movie--especially one that I could experience in a theater at a matinee showing for five to seven bucks. More than fifteen days of jail time seems excessive to me.
Does this imply that buying gas at a certain time of day (ie, early morning, or before it starts warming up again) could be beneficial?
I loved Zelda 2.
www.spreeder.com
Link?
Or are you projecting your own opinion onto "most people" . . . ?
I love going back to read Slashdot's initial skepticism (if not outright indignation) about the Wii's name change. It's funny how quickly we've adapted to the new name (and how brilliant the switch seems in retrospect).
That sounds like an awesome capability (media streaming). I'm jealous! The only next-gen system I own is a Wii. It has the capacity to make additional "channels" (ie, functions) available for purchase. I would be very surprised if they don't add media streaming sometime in the future. The hardware has all the support it needs--they're in a position to offer the capability through a paid software update with nearly zero distribution costs. So I'm really hoping that the Wii offers this. I'm also very tempted to see how the browsing experience would feel with the Wii's nifty pointer (Wiimote) capabilities--I think it could be a little less cumbersome than using a standard controller. Just some thoughts!
Hospitals? Not the first application that would have come to mind, but a little extra hygiene never hurt anyone. (Cue jokes about Slashdotters) I'm more interested in the portable computing applications. Does this mean that we could sit down at Starbucks, whip out a PDA equipped with this device, and have the table surface become a full-sized keyboard/mouse arrangement? That would be sweet!
Actually, we are running Oracle--we're a software shop and we have to support both MS-SQL and Oracle installations. Oracle just sucks, in the opinions of myself and my colleagues. Sucks in terms of the amount of workarounds to do things that MS-SQL just does automatically. I'm not afraid of command-line work, but I am afraid of wasting time. That spells death for our company and threatens what we're trying to accomplish. After years of MS-SQL use, and about one year or so of trying to mirror the same tasks on Oracle, I've come to hate the product . . .
I just don't get it. TCO and tool support are tightly linked. Most open source database products, including MySQL, seem to require quite a bit of digging and cobbling together to set up and maintain. Microsoft SQL Server has fantastic tool support, no command line experimentation required. An experienced DBA can set up a new installation in a couple of minutes. And there's even a free Express Edition available for entry-level dabbling. The cost of a database license is pretty minimal over the long haul (referring to SQL Server, not the abominable Oracle). The real cost is in the time spent compensating for whatever your database platform's tool support shortcomings are. I love Microsoft SQL Server for this reason: I rarely have to reinvent anything.
I doubt that a historian would see it your way. How many records, judged by their contemporaries as irrelevant, have helped historians piece together valuable perspectives about times past! Like the monks who deemed it appropriate to copy over Bach manuscripts, isn't there hubris when we declare with certainty what is and is not worth preserving? Perhaps we don't have enough perspective to reliably do that.
I wouldn't really consider small-ticket items like CDs as a valid comparison (and even when I do buy CDs, I buy them used and often sell them again for almost the same price I paid for them). I also don't think concert tickets really count, either - you're paying for a one-time experience, which you receive fully - I wouldn't consider that depreciation. I do agree that it's not unheard of to buy big-ticket items with the full knowledge that they will lose some value. Usually it's amortized over a matter of years, though, not weeks! I bet in a month and a half these people are going to feel silly when they wake up and realized they pissed away $1500+ by paying several times retail just to get a video game console a little earlier.
I agree that that price is idiotic. Remember, though, that 37 bids doesn't necessarily constitute 37 bidders. Two or three idiots can easily bid themselves into a frantic bidding war. I wonder how many of these people are going to get ripped off.
Unfortunately, I'm not making it up! A friend who works in finance tells me he sees more and more of this, along with those who live upscale lifestyles but maintain tens and tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. It's interesting that in today's society you can't tell much about someone's true net worth by the lifestyle they appear to lead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest-only_mortgag e
I can't imagine being foolish enough to buy something that is GUARANTEED to depreciate 5-10x within several months. That anyone would pay a price so much higher than retail just to buy something a few weeks sooner . . . man. It's the same lack of financial education that leads to credit card problems, interest-only mortgages, personal bankruptcies, etc.
Screw this negative spin! I think this idea is simply cool. I'm getting tired of naysaying "privacy advocates" painting progress in such dire colors. I'm personally excited to read this story. Our lives could be so much cooler if not for all the worriers and heeldraggers . . .
That may be changing. Check out their recent webcast on the upcoming "ADO Entity Objects Framework," which looks like it's shaping up to be a formal ORM product.
I read Slashdot because there are many really, really smart posters out there. I like how a smart and balanced set of comments, presenting multiple well-argued sides of any issue, tends to emerge around an article submission. I agree that the initial posts are often poorly edited and sometimes ill-chosen. Sometimes I wish Slashdot wasn't even confined to "news for nerds" because I couldn't care less about the latest OpenBSD release or whatever. I value Slashdot less for the technical niche it tries to occupy and more for the body of intelligent, articulate posters it has accumulated (along with some less adept ones, but that's what the comment system is for) . . .
Another example I've seen a couple of times is when someone is attempting to transfer funds (usually under intense time pressure, of course) and the computer screen shows a progress bar moving across the screen with a quickly changing counter showing how many dollars have been transferred! As if an electronic wire transfer sends one dollars at a time and your status could be at $748,282 of $1,000,000. Atomic transactions, anyone?
Yeah, I was dumbfounded at first, too. Then I went to YouTube and watched this video (still with the Revolution name) and realized that something truly innovative is going on at Nintendo. I'm already used to the name "Wii" . . . it's got that element of WTF? to it, but it does genuinely differentiate itself. It's cute and unique. If it succeeds, it will create an entirely new niche (partygame/lifestyle toy) and leave the other consoles in the dust.
The premier example being MySpace. With its interruptive, garish UI paradigm and its numerous design flaws (both functional and aesthetic), it appears to be attempting to singlehandedly dumb down the web. Personally, this concerns me a lot more than the occasional, fixable hacks: the overall missed opportunity when millions of users settle for a low-quality, repetitious, limiting experience, as MySpace provides.
There are also ethics involved in earning one's paycheck in a competent and productive manner. If one development environment is orders of magnitude more efficient than another, I owe it to my employer to balance my idealism about free software with the pragmatism to choose the right tools to help me deliver the value for which I'm being paid. I don't consider my dependence on Microsoft tools as slavery; their relative reliability and testedness liberate me from spending my time trying to figure out how to tweak the configuration options in some open source environment to get things working AT ALL. Open source languages and standards may rival those of proprietary companies, but the tool support is just not there yet, IMHO.
I certainly wouldn't claim that there aren't certain contexts in which Java (or any other language) doesn't make things easier. I do agree that threading in Windows Forms is one of .NET's weak points (although one could argue that the C# language specification offloads most of its threading capability onto the .NET framework, and that the deficiency is in the framework, not in C#, but that's probably splitting hairs).
I personally haven't needed to do much graphical multithreading work with C#. I primarily work with middleware and with data-intensive applications, and while that includes some non-trivial user interface development to provide access and analysis services, I haven't encountered many situations where I need to use multithreading to provide responsiveness. In most cases it seems to me that introducing threading incurs a penalty in terms of the complexity of debugging. So, while I'm sympathetic to the frustration you encountered in the sample you posted, my response to your question would be this:
Is there a better way to create a new thread from a button click handler and display Hello, world? Not that I know of. But why not just display Hello, world from the button click handler directly without creating the frivolous thread? C# seems up to the task of handling most real-world business requirements and I've found my development efficiency and its runtime efficiency preferable to what I experienced with Java: that's all I'm saying.
I find C# to be far and away the most productive and efficient language I've ever worked with. This is, of course, due in large part to the robustness of the .NET class framework and the top-notch development environment. To me, it was a significant step up from Java (although I understand that that's a subjective statement). As someone who has been working professionally with C# for years, and who has found it to be a much faster way to deliver quality production code, I contend that C# is the true benchmark: Java has already been superceded.