Bad analogy. The parent is saying that Jake is like building better WWII planes today that run faster than the ORIGINALS. Sure we can but that does not help as much.
> Show me one candidate that gives you a honest and direct yes or no answer to any issue.
Ron Paul. He does not seem to beat around the bush (no pun intended) on anything despite not even being close to election date. Most politicians would attempt to not commit too much at this stage. His name already came up several times in this discussion.
I do. They are especially great with packet writing. A DVD-RW is a cheap replacement for a thumb drive when you happen to have DVD writers at both ends. I basically use UDF CDRWs as modern floppy disks to move moderately large files between home and work. Not as fast as using a hard drive but faster than a network transfer. I once bought a 100 for $10 or something like that. They have and will last me for a long time.
> What they need to focus on is selling a service. Don't sell Dell or Gateway, any asshole can do that. Sell a custom-built box that fits the customer like a glove. Customer wants to surf and do email; build a low-end box. Gamer comes in; build something kick-ass. Help people fix problems and educate people on how to use a computer. Sure, it's a harder job than pushing a boxed copy of WinXP, but there is a lot more money to be made there.
This is exactly what computer shops in India did/do. You tell them what you need to do with your PC and they will order the parts, build the most cost-effective machine that does the job, install the software that caters for it - with pirated software of course. When a customer says, they need something else, they send a guy to your home with the CDs and he will install the stuff for you - for about a dollar. This was a while ago. Things might have changed a bit since.
If MS starts a crackdown, customers WILL choose Linux. $100 is OK to give away for not worrying about the transition from something familiar (assuming quality equivalence) in US but it a "not OK" amount in India. A few years ago, I actually knew some not-too-bright entry level programmers being paid $100 a MONTH (Small town. No tech education and could not find jobs elsewhere. Just built simple GUI front ends. They did it for "experience". And the prices changed since).
That is not to say all software is pirated. Nearly all India software I came across was legally purchased since it came at reasonable prices, was very customerized to their (small business) needs and good support was available.
Also, back then, network was really bad and expensive. Linux is a huge pain to install software without having a good network connection. Now things are different.
Let's say for the sake of argument that Linux needs more management like Bill Gates once said. It may be more expensive in US in TCO terms when the service time is more expensive than software. Not so in India. Techs will gladly spend a couple of hours on your machine for a dollar or two. Not gouge like Geek Squad.
> It _could_, but it doesn't. The core problem in this case, is that the law forbid ANYONE from being armed on that campus. The madman, obviously, violated the law. The law insured that his potential victims would be disarmed.
OK! I am from a country where guns are not freely available. So when some one "loses it", he may throw things or attack with much simpler weapons, not go through elaborate red tape to get a gun. They are usually too impatient in that state. Not to mention, limited availability of ammunition. He may still be able to kill, just not on the scale as the killers in gun rampages can. The more effective non-firearm weapons are harder to conceal and wield. Also the victims in question could have easily carried tasers (much of the shooting seems to have happened at closed range) if they felt they needed to (or were they disallowed too?) or such if the question was about disarming the innocent of firearms. The issue seems to be more or the victims not expecting an attack rather than simply not having guns. Of course, I am also likely being naive about this issue.
I found some content by this author: John R. Lott. Will read.
> Even knowing that his intended victims were allowed to carry if they so chose might have deterred his entire rampage - it was obviously directed at helpless people. If he didn't know his victims were forced by law to be helpless, maybe he wouldn't have started in the first place.
This argument keeps coming up again and again. Isn't US one of the most armed countries in the developed world? And yet we have more gun rampages than any one else. That could mean free availability of guns leads to rampages.
I don't have any numbers for the above. Feel free to correct me.
The only shows I watch now are Comedy Central's political satires. 8 shows per week. $16 dollars per week. $64/month. No thanks. That is way more expensive than cable and Tivo. I am all for paid downloads of ad-free shows. But I am not prepared to pay $2 for a 30 min show. It just adds up very quickly. I would be happy to pay $15/month and be willing to take hosting heat off providers through something like Joost.
PS: I am not on Windows now and am only quoting the price from memory.
They seem to be trying to silence Sweeney with "public" support this time.
If you look at the people who have posted negative comments with regard to Sweeney, a disproportionately large number of them seem to be those with Scientology interests or more interestingly, those who have just signed up after the incident.
> Lately I've also thought about why Google has so much beta testing, but then I found out that the write in Python and then it all became clear. Python, as a type-unsafe-programming language requires E X T E N S I V E user testing to iron out the bugs.
Uh-huh! So is JavaScript. And Google being a web company, everything they write is..., you get the drift.
Re:When you step back and consider history
on
Beginning Ruby
·
· Score: 1
> Is Python3000 going to rule the day? It's obviously 500 times better than Perl6
Python 3000 is a cleanup of the inevitable evolutionary accretions that languages accumulate. Nothing ground breaking in this release feature-wise. So Python 3000 and Perl 6 are very different in scope. I (as a Python user), for one am very curious of what will come out of Perl 6.
The ones I am interested are explicit strong typing (Python 3000 - optional interfaces) coroutines (Python 2.5) macros (debate in Python but bigwigs don't like them) user-definable operators
Since Perl and Haskell (Pugs) seem to have been dating for a while now, it is curious to see how the shabby blue collar man that is Perl will be transformed by the dainty, complex and academic girl that is Haskell.
The community always evolves around impractical legislation. I don't listen to much music, so I might be a bit off reality here. Perhaps, the next trend would be multiple personal streaming stations catering to small audience each (fair use in every sense) with a unified search engine to develop a buddy list of those with your tastes?
I am not sure if any Mozilla family browser was ever faster than IE and Opera. Performance was never the reason why Firefox is superior. It is more usable, extensible, has a better safety record and is cross-platform and open source. Opera has most of these advantages except extensibility. My Firefox has the least performance of them all perhaps because I loaded it up with extensions. But the extensions make me very productive.
> I have not done any Java in years. I wonder how this compares to duck typing as in Ruby. Can anyone explain this in terms of Ruby's duck typing and collections?
Generics is a compile time concept. Duck typing is a runtime concept. It's the difference between static vs dynamically typed languages. Both work very differently but effectively save you from redundant type casts.
I doubt that I am raising a point that has not been raised before. I agree that not looking up and down will save time. But that test is significantly biased towards a copy task. Not many of us are document transcribers like classical typists. I type my papers and code. I don't look up and down that much and not being a touch typist never bothered me that much. That said, I do like to touch type. I think it will lower some typos that don't get detected by a spell checker if I am able to look at the screen as I type. I just never enjoyed the practice and it didn't seem to help me much.
How about just use a different browser for private searches etc? One from which, you never log into any service from the said search engine. As far as these sites go, they cannot be sure it is the same person just because the IP info is the same.
I am like you. I never touched alcohol or nicotine or other recreational agents. I even avoided drinking coffee for pleasure (rather than say, before an exam or such) all my life because I did not want to make a habit of it. I just wanted to be what I was. But after 3 years of a recent exacerbation of ADD (I believe I had such episodes throughout my life), after utterly failing with behavioral modifications (wasn't diagnosed at this point), I just started with medication since a couple of months. The difference is startling. I got far more work done on my recent project than my last 9 months combined. It is changing the quality of my life substantially because that is closely tied to accomplishments. Now I think I am back to what I see myself as rather than the downward slide that happened recently. I am still cautious and use it only on days when I need a good attention span although my clinician insists more regular use. Of course, it is your personal choice but trying medication for a month will not permanently scar you.
Now I think of it as wearing glasses (LASIK is perhaps a better analogy). I certainly don't want to see the world with my "natural vision". But then again, glasses don't have systemic implications.
To think, I started programming and actually became quite good at it only because of ADD. It was an escape whenever I could not focus in the last 15 years. But I would much rather have my original profession back.
Grammar checker frequently helps me correct typos as well. Missed commas, plural usages, apostrophes etc are some of my common errors.
Word won't write my text but it sure does catch accidentally repeated words (especially with copy-paste and edit operations), inadvertent long sentences and what not.
The issue here is not of ignorance but inevitable human fallibility. No human can consistently apply every learned rule in every situation the way automations can.
It is not uncommon to finish a paper by the deadline. I often end up without the luxury of a thorough and leisurely language check. I would like to worry more about how the ideas flowed rather than if my language has any minor but distracting language flaws. I find any automated help indispensable.
> vs. using the wrong design pattern or algorithm in coding
That's too high level to compare. Design patterns are more comparable to arguments in writing. A more apt comparison would be to a buggy but compiling implementation. As it goes, there are tools for those kinds of errors as well (static code analysis tools). Like Word's grammar check, they are neither perfect nor complete. But one is certainly better off with them than not.
> For me an ability to express oneself in writing is such a basic skill that using a grammar checker feels like cheating. The more one "augments" oneself that way, the more the native ability degenerates over time...
So I assume you don't care for a spell checker either?
That's like saying we shouldn't warn doctors of drug interactions in software because that's what medical school is for. The core theorem of informatics is that machine augmented humans could be more effective than those that are not. And finally, not everyone who has to use English has learned it as a primary language.
> If you want your grammar checked, hire a trained proofreader.
Suit yourself. I found Word grammar checker to be quite effective. But then again, I seem to be the only person so far who found the Paper Clip useful. (Of course, I am talking about their answer engine over the usual FTS.)
> If you want your grammar checked, hire a trained proofreader. There are plenty of them around, their rates are very reasonable, and unlike Word they actually understand the English language - and they're also capable of spotting stuff that Word completely misses (like incorrect use of homophones).
That's impractical and apologetic advise for a student who wants to make make sure that he has not missed anything obvious before he submits a paper after a sleepless night. Sure, a human might do better but I am far more likely to use an automated service that I don't have to pay over and over.
I have no idea about what you are saying. The Wine web site still says it is NOT an emulator. http://www.winehq.com/site/myths Perhaps you can point to where they did say it was an emulator.
But you right about the Irony. I ranted needlessly when I saw the Wine myths and did not read carefully enough when the parent was in fact debunking those very myths. For that I apologize.
Slashdot Mirror
Bad analogy. The parent is saying that Jake is like building better WWII planes today that run faster than the ORIGINALS. Sure we can but that does not help as much.
> Show me one candidate that gives you a honest and direct yes or no answer to any issue.
Ron Paul. He does not seem to beat around the bush (no pun intended) on anything despite not even being close to election date. Most politicians would attempt to not commit too much at this stage. His name already came up several times in this discussion.
I do. They are especially great with packet writing. A DVD-RW is a cheap replacement for a thumb drive when you happen to have DVD writers at both ends. I basically use UDF CDRWs as modern floppy disks to move moderately large files between home and work. Not as fast as using a hard drive but faster than a network transfer. I once bought a 100 for $10 or something like that. They have and will last me for a long time.
> What they need to focus on is selling a service. Don't sell Dell or Gateway, any asshole can do that. Sell a custom-built box that fits the customer like a glove. Customer wants to surf and do email; build a low-end box. Gamer comes in; build something kick-ass. Help people fix problems and educate people on how to use a computer. Sure, it's a harder job than pushing a boxed copy of WinXP, but there is a lot more money to be made there.
This is exactly what computer shops in India did/do. You tell them what you need to do with your PC and they will order the parts, build the most cost-effective machine that does the job, install the software that caters for it - with pirated software of course. When a customer says, they need something else, they send a guy to your home with the CDs and he will install the stuff for you - for about a dollar. This was a while ago. Things might have changed a bit since.
If MS starts a crackdown, customers WILL choose Linux. $100 is OK to give away for not worrying about the transition from something familiar (assuming quality equivalence) in US but it a "not OK" amount in India. A few years ago, I actually knew some not-too-bright entry level programmers being paid $100 a MONTH (Small town. No tech education and could not find jobs elsewhere. Just built simple GUI front ends. They did it for "experience". And the prices changed since).
That is not to say all software is pirated. Nearly all India software I came across was legally purchased since it came at reasonable prices, was very customerized to their (small business) needs and good support was available.
Also, back then, network was really bad and expensive. Linux is a huge pain to install software without having a good network connection. Now things are different.
Let's say for the sake of argument that Linux needs more management like Bill Gates once said. It may be more expensive in US in TCO terms when the service time is more expensive than software. Not so in India. Techs will gladly spend a couple of hours on your machine for a dollar or two. Not gouge like Geek Squad.
> It _could_, but it doesn't. The core problem in this case, is that the law forbid ANYONE from being armed on that campus. The madman, obviously, violated the law. The law insured that his potential victims would be disarmed.
OK! I am from a country where guns are not freely available. So when some one "loses it", he may throw things or attack with much simpler weapons, not go through elaborate red tape to get a gun. They are usually too impatient in that state. Not to mention, limited availability of ammunition. He may still be able to kill, just not on the scale as the killers in gun rampages can. The more effective non-firearm weapons are harder to conceal and wield. Also the victims in question could have easily carried tasers (much of the shooting seems to have happened at closed range) if they felt they needed to (or were they disallowed too?) or such if the question was about disarming the innocent of firearms. The issue seems to be more or the victims not expecting an attack rather than simply not having guns. Of course, I am also likely being naive about this issue.
I found some content by this author: John R. Lott. Will read.
> Even knowing that his intended victims were allowed to carry if they so chose might have deterred his entire rampage - it was obviously directed at helpless people. If he didn't know his victims were forced by law to be helpless, maybe he wouldn't have started in the first place.
This argument keeps coming up again and again. Isn't US one of the most armed countries in the developed world? And yet we have more gun rampages than any one else. That could mean free availability of guns leads to rampages.
I don't have any numbers for the above. Feel free to correct me.
OK! Obligatory question. Was Donkey Kong revolutionary?
The only shows I watch now are Comedy Central's political satires. 8 shows per week. $16 dollars per week. $64/month. No thanks. That is way more expensive than cable and Tivo. I am all for paid downloads of ad-free shows. But I am not prepared to pay $2 for a 30 min show. It just adds up very quickly. I would be happy to pay $15/month and be willing to take hosting heat off providers through something like Joost.
PS: I am not on Windows now and am only quoting the price from memory.
They seem to be trying to silence Sweeney with "public" support this time.
If you look at the people who have posted negative comments with regard to Sweeney, a disproportionately large number of them seem to be those with Scientology interests or more interestingly, those who have just signed up after the incident.
> Lately I've also thought about why Google has so much beta testing, but then I found out that the write in Python and then it all became clear. Python, as a type-unsafe-programming language requires E X T E N S I V E user testing to iron out the bugs.
..., you get the drift.
Uh-huh! So is JavaScript. And Google being a web company, everything they write is
> Is Python3000 going to rule the day? It's obviously 500 times better than Perl6
Python 3000 is a cleanup of the inevitable evolutionary accretions that languages accumulate. Nothing ground breaking in this release feature-wise. So Python 3000 and Perl 6 are very different in scope. I (as a Python user), for one am very curious of what will come out of Perl 6.
There is a big list at
http://dev.perl.org/perl6/faq.html
The ones I am interested are
explicit strong typing (Python 3000 - optional interfaces)
coroutines (Python 2.5)
macros (debate in Python but bigwigs don't like them)
user-definable operators
Since Perl and Haskell (Pugs) seem to have been dating for a while now, it is curious to see how the shabby blue collar man that is Perl will be transformed by the dainty, complex and academic girl that is Haskell.
Edsger Dijkstra
The community always evolves around impractical legislation. I don't listen to much music, so I might be a bit off reality here. Perhaps, the next trend would be multiple personal streaming stations catering to small audience each (fair use in every sense) with a unified search engine to develop a buddy list of those with your tastes?
I am not sure if any Mozilla family browser was ever faster than IE and Opera. Performance was never the reason why Firefox is superior. It is more usable, extensible, has a better safety record and is cross-platform and open source. Opera has most of these advantages except extensibility. My Firefox has the least performance of them all perhaps because I loaded it up with extensions. But the extensions make me very productive.
> I have not done any Java in years. I wonder how this compares to duck typing as in Ruby. Can anyone explain this in terms of Ruby's duck typing and collections?
Generics is a compile time concept. Duck typing is a runtime concept. It's the difference between static vs dynamically typed languages. Both work very differently but effectively save you from redundant type casts.
I doubt that I am raising a point that has not been raised before. I agree that not looking up and down will save time. But that test is significantly biased towards a copy task. Not many of us are document transcribers like classical typists. I type my papers and code. I don't look up and down that much and not being a touch typist never bothered me that much. That said, I do like to touch type. I think it will lower some typos that don't get detected by a spell checker if I am able to look at the screen as I type. I just never enjoyed the practice and it didn't seem to help me much.
> why does the Chinese government want children to spend their time in reality rather than virtual reality ?
As of now, Chinese govt is more capable of controlling reality as perceived by it's citizens than the content details of the games they play.
How about just use a different browser for private searches etc? One from which, you never log into any service from the said search engine. As far as these sites go, they cannot be sure it is the same person just because the IP info is the same.
I am like you. I never touched alcohol or nicotine or other recreational agents. I even avoided drinking coffee for pleasure (rather than say, before an exam or such) all my life because I did not want to make a habit of it. I just wanted to be what I was. But after 3 years of a recent exacerbation of ADD (I believe I had such episodes throughout my life), after utterly failing with behavioral modifications (wasn't diagnosed at this point), I just started with medication since a couple of months. The difference is startling. I got far more work done on my recent project than my last 9 months combined. It is changing the quality of my life substantially because that is closely tied to accomplishments. Now I think I am back to what I see myself as rather than the downward slide that happened recently. I am still cautious and use it only on days when I need a good attention span although my clinician insists more regular use. Of course, it is your personal choice but trying medication for a month will not permanently scar you.
9 /19/diary-of-an-add-drug-holiday/
Now I think of it as wearing glasses (LASIK is perhaps a better analogy). I certainly don't want to see the world with my "natural vision". But then again, glasses don't have systemic implications.
My case was a bit like this blogger.
"For me, the best way for me to describe ADD is that I know what I need to be doing, and I can do anything but that. I am productive, just on everything that I'm not eager to be productive on"
http://justin.everett-church.com/index.php/2005/0
To think, I started programming and actually became quite good at it only because of ADD. It was an escape whenever I could not focus in the last 15 years. But I would much rather have my original profession back.
Grammar checker frequently helps me correct typos as well. Missed commas, plural usages, apostrophes etc are some of my common errors.
Word won't write my text but it sure does catch accidentally repeated words (especially with copy-paste and edit operations), inadvertent long sentences and what not.
The issue here is not of ignorance but inevitable human fallibility. No human can consistently apply every learned rule in every situation the way automations can.
It is not uncommon to finish a paper by the deadline. I often end up without the luxury of a thorough and leisurely language check. I would like to worry more about how the ideas flowed rather than if my language has any minor but distracting language flaws. I find any automated help indispensable.
> vs. using the wrong design pattern or algorithm in coding
That's too high level to compare. Design patterns are more comparable to arguments in writing. A more apt comparison would be to a buggy but compiling implementation. As it goes, there are tools for those kinds of errors as well (static code analysis tools). Like Word's grammar check, they are neither perfect nor complete. But one is certainly better off with them than not.
> Yeah, like me ;-)
Likewise.
> For me an ability to express oneself in writing is such a basic skill that using a grammar checker feels like cheating. The more one "augments" oneself that way, the more the native ability degenerates over time...
So I assume you don't care for a spell checker either?
> That's what school was for, you know.
That's like saying we shouldn't warn doctors of drug interactions in software because that's what medical school is for. The core theorem of informatics is that machine augmented humans could be more effective than those that are not. And finally, not everyone who has to use English has learned it as a primary language.
> If you want your grammar checked, hire a trained proofreader.
Suit yourself. I found Word grammar checker to be quite effective. But then again, I seem to be the only person so far who found the Paper Clip useful. (Of course, I am talking about their answer engine over the usual FTS.)
> If you want your grammar checked, hire a trained proofreader. There are plenty of them around, their rates are very reasonable, and unlike Word they actually understand the English language - and they're also capable of spotting stuff that Word completely misses (like incorrect use of homophones).
That's impractical and apologetic advise for a student who wants to make make sure that he has not missed anything obvious before he submits a paper after a sleepless night. Sure, a human might do better but I am far more likely to use an automated service that I don't have to pay over and over.
Lack of an integrated Grammar checker. Startup speed does not both me when I use the QuickStart.
I have no idea about what you are saying. The Wine web site still says it is NOT an emulator.
http://www.winehq.com/site/myths
Perhaps you can point to where they did say it was an emulator.
But you right about the Irony. I ranted needlessly when I saw the Wine myths and did not read carefully enough when the parent was in fact debunking those very myths. For that I apologize.