I'm surprised not more news have picked up on this story.
Perhaps this was an accident and an isolated incident. However, considering how close the election was the last time, and the numerous shady things going on in Florida that time, my jaw dropped at how quickly Kerry folded this time. Before even all votes had been counted even ONCE, not to mention a very careful recount to see that everything was completely kosher. So the republicans were right... he really was spineless. What an incredible disappointment.
If Bush won fair and square, (and I'm not ruling out that he did, mind you), ok. But as the election result stands now, and the lack of interest from the public and investigative reporting from the media, I find the last US election a dark day for democracy. I feel sorry for all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. The democratic process in the most powerful democracy (economically and militarily speaking) in the world has been weakened.
.. if you want an FPS which will make you laugh check out Giants: Citizen Kabuto. Absolutely hilarious plot as a bunch of Cockney Aliens end up on a planet with a magic using race of merfolk and a 300 foot tall beast.
SPOILER---
I loved the end scene. You are getting ready for the epic final fight, but the end of game monster dies after the first blow. The credits start to roll as you are sitting there thinking "What the hell!? A bug at the final fight, what idiots!". Then suddenly, the cockney aliens go "Aaah! He's not dead yet!" and the credits zip off the screen and the REAL final fight starts. Great game meta-humour.
I never did get hold of the Thief series or System Shock, so I can't comment on those...I'm resisting playing them now because I suspect I've been spoiled by 'Deus Ex'.
The Thief series is excellent. Please support intelligent games by buying them, that will increase the chances of another game of Deus Ex quality being made. At least download the demo.
American chopper was *never* good. I even hate the trailers, they are just monkeying around. It seems the show is not about technology or building things, it's about hitting people, screaming a lot, throwing stuff around, pretending to use a battleaxe to do some tinkering on a machine...
Scrapheap Challenge was a good show. Junkyard Wars significantly less so. Dumbing down, macho-ing it up for the US market. They didn't dumb down the competition, they dumbed down the presentation in order not to scare away Joe Sixpack. The British teams were laid-back, joking around, sometimes helping each other. Now we have high strung trash talking teams who (according to the hosts) sometimes burst into tears when losing and start to accuse the other team members of screwing up. Even the fucking title. We have to have a *war*, we have to have enemies. Wars are cool. *drool*
Myth busters just started showing in Europe, I haven't seen a whole episode yet, so I'll wait to give any judgement.
Time Team and River Cottege Forever are two other excellent shows they should show more of.
I don't like the changes, but honestly its his movie, not yours.
You are utterly wrong. A released work belongs just as much to the audience as it does to the creators. I started a long reply, then I found that this guy said it before me.
The fact that you can still see the original movie if you want is what takes my sympathy away from the whiners.
Today perhaps, but with the centralized DRM of tomorrow promised to us, who knows?
Willing to take a karma hit to get a clean swipe at the whiners.
Yeah yeah... poor little predictable rebel.
Re:Distorted views of the "Nature" of politics
on
Bush vs. Kerry on Science
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So, you are telling us that among the biggest group of people who dedicate their lives to the persuit and spread of knowledge, most people are Democrat.
And the same for this science magazine.
Perhaps this should tell you something?
"republicans ask for accountability" - hehe... lamest rationalisation I've heard. "and aren't necessarily for higher teacher pay" - oh yeah, cause as everyone knows, teachers are rolling in the dough!
And what would either of those questions have proved?
I didn't say it would prove anything, I said it would be funnier.:-)
Though as the other answer to my post pointed out, it would perhaps be more illuminating to see if they could answer questions on general knowledge, stuff you would expect a person with 9 or 12 years of school to know. Guess why I would like to see that in this particular election.
Why the hell did they need to make this into Flash? There are no animations, no images, just hyperlinked text which is rendered too small... or not at all at first actually, as I normally use Firefox with adblocker.
With regards to the questions, wouldn't it have been more fun if they had asked B and K unprepared questions on science directly in person, without any speechwriters to hide behind?
"The HIV virus is a retrovirus. Can either of you tell us what that means?"
"Give us the strongest arguments pro and con for the existance of man-made global warming."
Yes... reminds me of a slightly silly and probably totally unoriginal idea I had way back (even before the Matrix or Dance Dance Revolution). I was thinking of having the player strapped into a full body feedback suit and VR goggles, hanging in one of those astronaut training things with three rings, so they could turn in three dimensions.
Then you could have the stats and behaviour of your characters in a MMRPG dependent on your own physique. Like paintball, only you could have more fantastic environments and far out plots. Trying to outrun the T-rex or that fireball? Then instead of pressing a button, start running! (Or at least wave your legs around in the air and hope no one is looking...). Since you are playing a hero, their speed would probably be two or three times your "real" speed, but still dependent on it. If it was possible to have resistance in the suit somehow without cables that the player would get tangled in, you could measure strenght as well. If you were in a swordfight with a pker, stamina, strength and actuall skill at something like fencing, kendo or iaido would matter. The reverse of today, where the best players only show their amazing ability to sit on their fat asses spawn camping and doing the level grind all day and nights.
Drawbacks - impossible or at least prohibitively expensive technology. A few gamers might start to exercise fanatically, but many more would just be uncomfortably reminded of why they are escaping into a fantasy world. All want to be sexy heroes, and most wouldn't want to play a game where they could be beaten up by a jock again, albeit in a virtual world.
No, it's the name of the two-faced Roman god of the middle ground, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings (since he is looking in two directions at once).:-) His face was often above the entrance to Roman houses, as he could look to the safety of both the people of the house, and to approaching guests. Kind of a well chosen name by Microsoft, as they are keeping a big-brotherly eye on the user himself and any potential "guests" to the system.
Not a bad name for anything "interface" related actually.
Silly anecdote - I was for a short while involved with an internal Java project at a company designed to evaluate and teach eXtreme Programming to the staff. The head developer said he had chosen Janus (he pronounced it "djanuss" of course) as the project name, since two teams were doing to the same thing in two different ways, and it was a new beginning and bla bla.
The boss, who is a big loud funny bear of a man, looked around for a few seconds and said - "Hang on, if JUnit is pronounced 'djay-junit', musn't this be pronounce 'djay-anus?!'. Haha, it's perfect!" The head developer looked flustered, but from then some people kept referring to the project as J-Anus until he changed the name.:-)
Oh the joy of baseless assertions, straw-men arguments, and ad hominem attacks.
Perhaps my sarcastic tone could be seen as an ad hominem, but I was truly trying to explain why. You asked for an explanation, remember? Please explain how the arguments in my post ware a strawman or a baseless assertion.
I love this place.
Well, posts on Slashdot often annoys me too if that makes you feel better.
Someday, the people of Slashdotworld will realize the Microsoft wars ended years ago.
Depends, define Microsoft wars. If you mean against Linux, Bill Gates himself disagrees since he has in some speeches labled Linux as their #1 threat and that they would fight to keep it off every single server. IBM, Novell and other technology giants also disagree considering how much money they are spending on Linux.
Slashdotters hate.NET because it's from Microsoft ("...unwillingness to throw any additional support towards the already-unmanageable 800 pound gorilla..."), and rather than saying so, they spew absurd "technical" arguments which merely serve to prove that they are completely unfamiliar with.NET.
Ok then, here is one datapoint to support him. I think Windows from W2K and onwards are generally good operating systems. I think.Net is probably a good framework, though I also think that from where I'm standing both the concept and most of the implementation looks like a straight ripoff of Java. I STILL won't use them unless forced by employers, because I dislike the proverbial 800 pound gorilla.
The dislike goes back to around 1994 when I got my first PCs. I upgraded often in those days, and every time I had to pay for a new Windows 95 or 98 copy though I already had several legal copies. They also kept forcing things like IE down my throat though I wanted to use Netscape. They also killed off several companies and technologies I liked through methods I thought were unfair. For some reason, companies that try to treat me like their bitch though I have given them money pisses me off. They might be better these days, but I'm childish and carry very long grudges.
So, there you go. A Slashdot poster who admits being prejudiced against the company itself but admits the products are pretty good.
The parent also made the brain-dead comment that.NET is ripped off by Mono.
No, the *grandparent* made that "braindead" comment, the one who was also a.Net supporter. You are so eager to flame you are attacking the wrong person.
Re:Why not "palatable" to have a .NET environment?
on
.Net On Lego Mindstorm
·
· Score: 1
Please elaborate why it would be a negative to provide the very robust.NET Framekwork to Lego Mindstorms.
I hate to surprise you, but some of us don't like Microsoft. Shocking news, I know. You can talk all about standards and robustness all you want, but Microsoft is the company behind it. To me it is therefore not palatable, and therefore the comment, "may not be palatable", was correct.
If you didn't like our exams, then you're probably not going to like Linux+ at all. Linux+ is, or was, targeted at entry level Linux users and not system administrators. We actually recommend it as a starting point for people who are completely unfamiliar with Linux prior to moving onto our exams.
Actually I liked the 102 test better, though it was much more difficult than I expected (failed... first test ever I think). I'm not happy with all questions, but I can't go into specifics of course.:-)
Yep, talked to a friend who had done a course in Linux+, she was very disappointed, said it was not what she had expected. More Linux user than administrator knowledge, as you said.
Do the LPI goals have to be standardised on Open Source products and languages? Otherwise I miss questions on running Tomcat and/or JBoss, something I've been required to do on all my sysadmin jobs.
Also ssh key management... but I should probably take this to the website.
I've passed the 101 test for LPI Level 1 certification, and in one hour I'm going to take the 102 test. The LPI certificate is a good general indicator of how much you know of Linux, but I must say I'm a bit disappointed in the tests. There is quite a lot of "sausage stuffing" knowledge, such as memorizing standard ports, location of files, lots of command line commands and worst of all, command line parameters.
Try to memorize what -d, -w, or -f means for 50 different commands. -f could mean first, force, fake (simulate), file.... You might be able to force it in your brain, but it will fall out again two days after the test unless you are constantly using the commands.
I don't regret paying for the certification and the LPI certainly fills its place, but if I would chose today, I think I would rather go for CompTIA Linux+ certification (which I believe is more up to date), or maybe RedHat Certified Engineer. Does anyone have any opinions on those certificates?
Just some random musings, don't try to find a coherent train of thought...
Some research suggests that people can't really concentrate well more than 6 hours a day (three hours in the morning, and three hours in the afternoon after a lunch break), if even that. Even so, try getting companies to let their employees off that easy.
Among my friends are some people who work or worked for international companies such as Ericsson, Volvo or Saab-Scania. They said when they came to the US they thought it striking how most companies either didn't allow proper lunch breaks, or had employess who were eager to show how efficient they were. Instead of 40min-1 hour time to go to a resturant, most of the employees remained in their cubicles and ate some sandwiches while continuing their work.
Also, while American workers stayed long, perhaps until 5-6 pm, there was a noticing slacking of pace in the afternoon. People pent more time talking around the water cooler, killing time by surfing or just staring into space. They were just mentally exhausted and couldn't do much efficient work, but they were still required to stay for several hours.
One of my friends held a presentation about Swedish working conditions. When he talked about the generous working laws and vacations, such as 4-6 hours paid vacation per year minimum (even with "vacation bonus" to your salary, since you spend more when you are on vacation), the workers were amazed and the managers started to fidget and make unhappy faces. He wasn't allowed to do that presentation ever again.:-)
I really liked a recent article in the Economist, that suggested that European and American productivity was about equal, Europeans just choose to sacrifice income in favour of more free times, and Americans were willing to sacrifice free time in favour of more money. Perhaps the old joke that Europeans work to live, and Americans live to work has some truth in it. I'm not looking down on people in the US, but I think I prefer our system.
That's assuming that people wash their hands when they're done. If you've ever watched the people that finish up and leave, you'd know better.
As a Swede who have been an exchange student in Australia, I'd say my experience is that 95% of Swedish men wash their hands after taking a piss, compared to 50% of Australian men.
When I read the CS Lewis books as a kid, I loved them all up to the last one (don't remember the name of it). I was six or seven, but even at that age I reacted against the judgemental mean-spiritedness of it. Here the preceding books had showed the endless fatherly love of the Lion, and here he let the world end, and a huge number of living beings die. If I remember correctly, all living beings passed by him, and those who passed into his shadow faded away forever.
When I got older, I read that it was basically the End of Days/Second coming of Christ, for kids. The two evil and foolish characters the Monkey and the Donkey represented scientists (evolution, get it?) and disbelievers. This didn't make me like the book any better.
Indeed... I was browsing some eyecandy at kde-look.org and suddently things started going slow as molasses. Eventually I gave up and went over to Slashdot instead, and I found the reason straight away.:-)
People are doing some fantastic things with KDE themes and especially Superkaramba. There are Os X themes, Lain themes and more. Superkaramba is a nice way of learning Python too. I'm looking forward to seeing what is new once the Slashdotting is over...
Go to Garage Games and check out Bridge Construction Set, available both for Windows and Linux.
With many Linux distros that use KDE, you can get several "edutainment" games such as Kiten (Japanese), KVerbos, Klettres, Ktouch, KFlashcard, Kstars.... They are OK, but rather limited. I hope they will become better, one day perhaps KPercentage will have grown enough to teach (for instance) 9 years of basic school math to anyone.
The best educational game I have played though was back in Windows 95 days, a Swedish game developer from my home town Uppsala had made a geography game that fit on one floppy. You could learn names and locations of continents, countries, states, capitols etc, the quiz was usually by pointing and clicking on maps when presented by a name.
I believe they later went on to make the Backpacker series. I have never played any of them, but appearently they are great successes. The sort of game parents can pick up at any supermarket for their kids and not worry about voilent content and so on...
if I ever get the time I hope to do a similar geography game in Java on Sourceforge.
Notice, 1.2,1.3 and 1.4 only have different libraries and different JVM implementations. That's not what we call language development.
That is absurd... you seem to be arguing that increasing the syntax of a language is the only acceptable improvement. Why is that, adding to the language or adding to the libraries are both just ways to make it easier for programmers to accomplish things.
There are drawbacks to increasing syntax, though you get increased power, the language will take longer time to learn and programs risk being harder to read and harder to maintain, especially for junior programmers. Also, if you add new symbols to a language you risk breaking old user code. That is why Sun have been very reluctant to add to the syntax of Java; and did not use foreach or for x in y, but rather for (String x: Collection y). People might have variables called foreach, but there is no variable called : anywhere.
You are correct in that improving the libraries and virtual machines is changing the Java platform rather than the language. However, that is no small feat in my opinion. If they improve the VM so that my program runs faster and becomes more secure without me having to change a line of code, that is an enormous increase in my productivity as a programmer. I take that before an increased syntax any day. I know, I'm lazy, I'm not hardcore, I don't have the hacker mentality, but I happen to think life is too short to be spending more time than necessary in front of a computer.
And J2SE 1.5 is just a frantic attempt to add some sugar into Java language.
Oh, so now increasing the syntax of a language is "just" syntactic sugar suddenly? I am very happy with the new improvements, since they finally get rid of many of the most annoying verbose things in Java that people have been complaining about for a long time. For instance, foreach and generics turns this:
void cancelAll(Collection c) {
for (Iterator i = c.iterator(); i.hasNext(); ) {
TimerTask tt = (TimerTask) i.next();
tt.cancel();
} }
into this:
void cancelAll(Collection<TimerTask> c) {
for (TimerTask task : c)
task.cancel(); }
Easier to read, and also removes a possible class cast bug since it prevents anyone at compile time from accidentally adding something other than TimerTasks to the collection.
1.5 has also taken the first steps to having one JVM for all java programs like in the MacOS JVM done by Apple. This will decrease loading times and memory footprints (for all programs except the first loaded) greatly. If they succeed in adding it to the platform that is....;-)
Java language has stagnated in about 1999 with the release of J2SE 1.2 (dubbed Java 2)
Oh, what BS. Like that is the only thing that has changed.Java has become big enough to come in three different version, enterprise, standard and micro edition. The micro edition is extremely common in mobile phones, enterprise very common in banking etc.
Some of the new things in Java 1.3: Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI), 20% faster RMI serialization, improvements in AWT/Swing/JavaSound, security enhancements, HotSpot optimization of client and server VMs.
In Java 1.4: Secure Sockets and HTTPS, IPv6, cryptography extensions, LinkedHashMap, NIO (FileChannel, Non blocking IO), builtin regexp and logging (though there are even better open source libraries for those), assertions, XML processing, hardware acceleration of Java2D, image I/O framework, java Web start, Unicode 3.0 Support, Currency class, Accessibility improvements, Math improvments, Itanium support
In Java 1.5: Generics, enhanced for Loop (for each), autoboxing/unboxing, typesafe enums, varargs, metadata annotations, class data sharing (improved VM startup time), launching apps under inetd in unix/linux, loads of security enhancements, Unicode 4 support, hyperbolic transcendental functions (sinh, cosh, tanh), cube root, base 10 logarithm, AMD Opteron support....
It's strange how so many people say "Java is dying" or now that it patently isn't, they're saying "Java's back".
I think a lot of the people who keep saying that Java is dying say it because they wish it was true.
And of course, if you keep repeating a lie often enough, the sheep begin to believe it. Just like on CNN, turn it on and watch a "reporter" frown in mock gravitas and ask things like "A lot of people are saying that the Kerry campaign is floundering and the Democrats are beginning to feel desperate, we ask the experts 'can anything be done, or is it already too late?'"
No one had said any of those things, but since CNN keeps saying that people say it, it becomes truth...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm surprised not more news have picked up on this story.
Perhaps this was an accident and an isolated incident. However, considering how close the election was the last time, and the numerous shady things going on in Florida that time, my jaw dropped at how quickly Kerry folded this time. Before even all votes had been counted even ONCE, not to mention a very careful recount to see that everything was completely kosher. So the republicans were right... he really was spineless. What an incredible disappointment.
If Bush won fair and square, (and I'm not ruling out that he did, mind you), ok. But as the election result stands now, and the lack of interest from the public and investigative reporting from the media, I find the last US election a dark day for democracy. I feel sorry for all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. The democratic process in the most powerful democracy (economically and militarily speaking) in the world has been weakened.
I feel sorry for the whole world.
.. if you want an FPS which will make you laugh check out Giants: Citizen Kabuto. Absolutely hilarious plot as a bunch of Cockney Aliens end up on a planet with a magic using race of merfolk and a 300 foot tall beast.
SPOILER---
I loved the end scene. You are getting ready for the epic final fight, but the end of game monster dies after the first blow. The credits start to roll as you are sitting there thinking "What the hell!? A bug at the final fight, what idiots!". Then suddenly, the cockney aliens go "Aaah! He's not dead yet!" and the credits zip off the screen and the REAL final fight starts. Great game meta-humour.
---SPOILER
I never did get hold of the Thief series or System Shock, so I can't comment on those...I'm resisting playing them now because I suspect I've been spoiled by 'Deus Ex'.
The Thief series is excellent. Please support intelligent games by buying them, that will increase the chances of another game of Deus Ex quality being made. At least download the demo.
American chopper was *never* good. I even hate the trailers, they are just monkeying around. It seems the show is not about technology or building things, it's about hitting people, screaming a lot, throwing stuff around, pretending to use a battleaxe to do some tinkering on a machine...
Scrapheap Challenge was a good show. Junkyard Wars significantly less so. Dumbing down, macho-ing it up for the US market. They didn't dumb down the competition, they dumbed down the presentation in order not to scare away Joe Sixpack. The British teams were laid-back, joking around, sometimes helping each other. Now we have high strung trash talking teams who (according to the hosts) sometimes burst into tears when losing and start to accuse the other team members of screwing up. Even the fucking title. We have to have a *war*, we have to have enemies. Wars are cool. *drool*
Myth busters just started showing in Europe, I haven't seen a whole episode yet, so I'll wait to give any judgement.
Time Team and River Cottege Forever are two other excellent shows they should show more of.
I don't like the changes, but honestly its his movie, not yours.
You are utterly wrong. A released work belongs just as much to the audience as it does to the creators. I started a long reply, then I found that this guy said it before me.
The fact that you can still see the original movie if you want is what takes my sympathy away from the whiners.
Today perhaps, but with the centralized DRM of tomorrow promised to us, who knows?
Willing to take a karma hit to get a clean swipe at the whiners.
Yeah yeah... poor little predictable rebel.
So, you are telling us that among the biggest group of people who dedicate their lives to the persuit and spread of knowledge, most people are Democrat.
And the same for this science magazine.
Perhaps this should tell you something?
"republicans ask for accountability" - hehe... lamest rationalisation I've heard.
"and aren't necessarily for higher teacher pay" - oh yeah, cause as everyone knows, teachers are rolling in the dough!
And what would either of those questions have proved?
:-)
I didn't say it would prove anything, I said it would be funnier.
Though as the other answer to my post pointed out, it would perhaps be more illuminating to see if they could answer questions on general knowledge, stuff you would expect a person with 9 or 12 years of school to know. Guess why I would like to see that in this particular election.
Why the hell did they need to make this into Flash? There are no animations, no images, just hyperlinked text which is rendered too small... or not at all at first actually, as I normally use Firefox with adblocker.
With regards to the questions, wouldn't it have been more fun if they had asked B and K unprepared questions on science directly in person, without any speechwriters to hide behind?
"The HIV virus is a retrovirus. Can either of you tell us what that means?"
"Give us the strongest arguments pro and con for the existance of man-made global warming."
Yes... reminds me of a slightly silly and probably totally unoriginal idea I had way back (even before the Matrix or Dance Dance Revolution). I was thinking of having the player strapped into a full body feedback suit and VR goggles, hanging in one of those astronaut training things with three rings, so they could turn in three dimensions.
Then you could have the stats and behaviour of your characters in a MMRPG dependent on your own physique. Like paintball, only you could have more fantastic environments and far out plots. Trying to outrun the T-rex or that fireball? Then instead of pressing a button, start running! (Or at least wave your legs around in the air and hope no one is looking...). Since you are playing a hero, their speed would probably be two or three times your "real" speed, but still dependent on it. If it was possible to have resistance in the suit somehow without cables that the player would get tangled in, you could measure strenght as well. If you were in a swordfight with a pker, stamina, strength and actuall skill at something like fencing, kendo or iaido would matter. The reverse of today, where the best players only show their amazing ability to sit on their fat asses spawn camping and doing the level grind all day and nights.
Drawbacks - impossible or at least prohibitively expensive technology. A few gamers might start to exercise fanatically, but many more would just be uncomfortably reminded of why they are escaping into a fantasy world. All want to be sexy heroes, and most wouldn't want to play a game where they could be beaten up by a jock again, albeit in a virtual world.
Isn't Janus the name of the Microsoft DRM scheme?
:-)
:-)
No, it's the name of the two-faced Roman god of the middle ground, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings (since he is looking in two directions at once).
His face was often above the entrance to Roman houses, as he could look to the safety of both the people of the house, and to approaching guests. Kind of a well chosen name by Microsoft, as they are keeping a big-brotherly eye on the user himself and any potential "guests" to the system.
Not a bad name for anything "interface" related actually.
Silly anecdote - I was for a short while involved with an internal Java project at a company designed to evaluate and teach eXtreme Programming to the staff. The head developer said he had chosen Janus (he pronounced it "djanuss" of course) as the project name, since two teams were doing to the same thing in two different ways, and it was a new beginning and bla bla.
The boss, who is a big loud funny bear of a man, looked around for a few seconds and said -
"Hang on, if JUnit is pronounced 'djay-junit', musn't this be pronounce 'djay-anus?!'. Haha, it's perfect!" The head developer looked flustered, but from then some people kept referring to the project as J-Anus until he changed the name.
Oh the joy of baseless assertions, straw-men arguments, and ad hominem attacks.
Perhaps my sarcastic tone could be seen as an ad hominem, but I was truly trying to explain why. You asked for an explanation, remember? Please explain how the arguments in my post ware a strawman or a baseless assertion.
I love this place.
Well, posts on Slashdot often annoys me too if that makes you feel better.
Someday, the people of Slashdotworld will realize the Microsoft wars ended years ago.
Depends, define Microsoft wars. If you mean against Linux, Bill Gates himself disagrees since he has in some speeches labled Linux as their #1 threat and that they would fight to keep it off every single server. IBM, Novell and other technology giants also disagree considering how much money they are spending on Linux.
Cheers,
Lars
Slashdotters hate .NET because it's from Microsoft ("...unwillingness to throw any additional support towards the already-unmanageable 800 pound gorilla..."), and rather than saying so, they spew absurd "technical" arguments which merely serve to prove that they are completely unfamiliar with .NET.
.Net is probably a good framework, though I also think that from where I'm standing both the concept and most of the implementation looks like a straight ripoff of Java. I STILL won't use them unless forced by employers, because I dislike the proverbial 800 pound gorilla.
Ok then, here is one datapoint to support him. I think Windows from W2K and onwards are generally good operating systems. I think
The dislike goes back to around 1994 when I got my first PCs. I upgraded often in those days, and every time I had to pay for a new Windows 95 or 98 copy though I already had several legal copies. They also kept forcing things like IE down my throat though I wanted to use Netscape. They also killed off several companies and technologies I liked through methods I thought were unfair. For some reason, companies that try to treat me like their bitch though I have given them money pisses me off. They might be better these days, but I'm childish and carry very long grudges.
So, there you go. A Slashdot poster who admits being prejudiced against the company itself but admits the products are pretty good.
The parent also made the brain-dead comment that .NET is ripped off by Mono.
.Net supporter. You are so eager to flame you are attacking the wrong person.
No, the *grandparent* made that "braindead" comment, the one who was also a
Please elaborate why it would be a negative to provide the very robust .NET Framekwork to Lego Mindstorms.
I hate to surprise you, but some of us don't like Microsoft. Shocking news, I know. You can talk all about standards and robustness all you want, but Microsoft is the company behind it. To me it is therefore not palatable, and therefore the comment, "may not be palatable", was correct.
If you didn't like our exams, then you're probably not going to like Linux+ at all. Linux+ is, or was, targeted at entry level Linux users and not system administrators. We actually recommend it as a starting point for people who are completely unfamiliar with Linux prior to moving onto our exams.
:-)
Actually I liked the 102 test better, though it was much more difficult than I expected (failed... first test ever I think). I'm not happy with all questions, but I can't go into specifics of course.
Yep, talked to a friend who had done a course in Linux+, she was very disappointed, said it was not what she had expected. More Linux user than administrator knowledge, as you said.
Do the LPI goals have to be standardised on Open Source products and languages? Otherwise I miss questions on running Tomcat and/or JBoss, something I've been required to do on all my sysadmin jobs.
Also ssh key management... but I should probably take this to the website.
Thanks,
Lars
I've passed the 101 test for LPI Level 1 certification, and in one hour I'm going to take the 102 test. The LPI certificate is a good general indicator of how much you know of Linux, but I must say I'm a bit disappointed in the tests. There is quite a lot of "sausage stuffing" knowledge, such as memorizing standard ports, location of files, lots of command line commands and worst of all, command line parameters.
Try to memorize what -d, -w, or -f means for 50 different commands. -f could mean first, force, fake (simulate), file....
You might be able to force it in your brain, but it will fall out again two days after the test unless you are constantly using the commands.
I don't regret paying for the certification and the LPI certainly fills its place, but if I would chose today, I think I would rather go for CompTIA Linux+ certification (which I believe is more up to date), or maybe RedHat Certified Engineer. Does anyone have any opinions on those certificates?
Just some random musings, don't try to find a coherent train of thought...
:-)
Some research suggests that people can't really concentrate well more than 6 hours a day (three hours in the morning, and three hours in the afternoon after a lunch break), if even that. Even so, try getting companies to let their employees off that easy.
Among my friends are some people who work or worked for international companies such as Ericsson, Volvo or Saab-Scania. They said when they came to the US they thought it striking how most companies either didn't allow proper lunch breaks, or had employess who were eager to show how efficient they were. Instead of 40min-1 hour time to go to a resturant, most of the employees remained in their cubicles and ate some sandwiches while continuing their work.
Also, while American workers stayed long, perhaps until 5-6 pm, there was a noticing slacking of pace in the afternoon. People pent more time talking around the water cooler, killing time by surfing or just staring into space. They were just mentally exhausted and couldn't do much efficient work, but they were still required to stay for several hours.
One of my friends held a presentation about Swedish working conditions. When he talked about the generous working laws and vacations, such as 4-6 hours paid vacation per year minimum (even with "vacation bonus" to your salary, since you spend more when you are on vacation), the workers were amazed and the managers started to fidget and make unhappy faces. He wasn't allowed to do that presentation ever again.
I really liked a recent article in the Economist, that suggested that European and American productivity was about equal, Europeans just choose to sacrifice income in favour of more free times, and Americans were willing to sacrifice free time in favour of more money. Perhaps the old joke that Europeans work to live, and Americans live to work has some truth in it. I'm not looking down on people in the US, but I think I prefer our system.
That's assuming that people wash their hands when they're done. If you've ever watched the people that finish up and leave, you'd know better.
As a Swede who have been an exchange student in Australia, I'd say my experience is that 95% of Swedish men wash their hands after taking a piss, compared to 50% of Australian men.
Hmm, thanks for that, a very insightful post. It seems I shall have to re-read them before talking about them with cock-sure confidence again. :-)
When I read the CS Lewis books as a kid, I loved them all up to the last one (don't remember the name of it). I was six or seven, but even at that age I reacted against the judgemental mean-spiritedness of it. Here the preceding books had showed the endless fatherly love of the Lion, and here he let the world end, and a huge number of living beings die. If I remember correctly, all living beings passed by him, and those who passed into his shadow faded away forever.
When I got older, I read that it was basically the End of Days/Second coming of Christ, for kids. The two evil and foolish characters the Monkey and the Donkey represented scientists (evolution, get it?) and disbelievers. This didn't make me like the book any better.
Indeed... I was browsing some eyecandy at kde-look.org and suddently things started going slow as molasses. Eventually I gave up and went over to Slashdot instead, and I found the reason straight away. :-)
People are doing some fantastic things with KDE themes and especially Superkaramba. There are Os X themes, Lain themes and more. Superkaramba is a nice way of learning Python too. I'm looking forward to seeing what is new once the Slashdotting is over...
No, not that sort of adult. Sorry to dissapoint.
Go to Garage Games and check out Bridge Construction Set, available both for Windows and Linux.
With many Linux distros that use KDE, you can get several "edutainment" games such as Kiten (Japanese), KVerbos, Klettres, Ktouch, KFlashcard, Kstars.... They are OK, but rather limited. I hope they will become better, one day perhaps KPercentage will have grown enough to teach (for instance) 9 years of basic school math to anyone.
The best educational game I have played though was back in Windows 95 days, a Swedish game developer from my home town Uppsala had made a geography game that fit on one floppy. You could learn names and locations of continents, countries, states, capitols etc, the quiz was usually by pointing and clicking on maps when presented by a name.
I believe they later went on to make the Backpacker series. I have never played any of them, but appearently they are great successes. The sort of game parents can pick up at any supermarket for their kids and not worry about voilent content and so on...
if I ever get the time I hope to do a similar geography game in Java on Sourceforge.
That is absurd... you seem to be arguing that increasing the syntax of a language is the only acceptable improvement. Why is that, adding to the language or adding to the libraries are both just ways to make it easier for programmers to accomplish things.
There are drawbacks to increasing syntax, though you get increased power, the language will take longer time to learn and programs risk being harder to read and harder to maintain, especially for junior programmers.
Also, if you add new symbols to a language you risk breaking old user code. That is why Sun have been very reluctant to add to the syntax of Java; and did not use foreach or for x in y, but rather for (String x: Collection y). People might have variables called foreach, but there is no variable called : anywhere.
You are correct in that improving the libraries and virtual machines is changing the Java platform rather than the language. However, that is no small feat in my opinion. If they improve the VM so that my program runs faster and becomes more secure without me having to change a line of code, that is an enormous increase in my productivity as a programmer. I take that before an increased syntax any day. I know, I'm lazy, I'm not hardcore, I don't have the hacker mentality, but I happen to think life is too short to be spending more time than necessary in front of a computer.
And J2SE 1.5 is just a frantic attempt to add some sugar into Java language.
Oh, so now increasing the syntax of a language is "just" syntactic sugar suddenly? I am very happy with the new improvements, since they finally get rid of many of the most annoying verbose things in Java that people have been complaining about for a long time. For instance, foreach and generics turns this:into this:Easier to read, and also removes a possible class cast bug since it prevents anyone at compile time from accidentally adding something other than TimerTasks to the collection.
1.5 has also taken the first steps to having one JVM for all java programs like in the MacOS JVM done by Apple. This will decrease loading times and memory footprints (for all programs except the first loaded) greatly. If they succeed in adding it to the platform that is....
Java language has stagnated in about 1999 with the release of J2SE 1.2 (dubbed Java 2)
.Java has become big enough to come in three different version, enterprise, standard and micro edition. The micro edition is extremely common in mobile phones, enterprise very common in banking etc.
Oh, what BS. Like that is the only thing that has changed
Some of the new things in Java 1.3:
Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI), 20% faster RMI serialization, improvements in AWT/Swing/JavaSound, security enhancements, HotSpot optimization of client and server VMs.
In Java 1.4:
Secure Sockets and HTTPS, IPv6, cryptography extensions, LinkedHashMap, NIO (FileChannel, Non blocking IO), builtin regexp and logging (though there are even better open source libraries for those), assertions, XML processing, hardware acceleration of Java2D, image I/O framework, java Web start, Unicode 3.0 Support, Currency class, Accessibility improvements, Math improvments, Itanium support
In Java 1.5:
Generics, enhanced for Loop (for each), autoboxing/unboxing, typesafe enums, varargs, metadata annotations, class data sharing (improved VM startup time), launching apps under inetd in unix/linux, loads of security enhancements, Unicode 4 support, hyperbolic transcendental functions (sinh, cosh, tanh), cube root, base 10 logarithm, AMD Opteron support....
Sun is not letting MS win without a fight.
It's strange how so many people say "Java is dying" or now that it patently isn't, they're saying "Java's back".
I think a lot of the people who keep saying that Java is dying say it because they wish it was true.
And of course, if you keep repeating a lie often enough, the sheep begin to believe it. Just like on CNN, turn it on and watch a "reporter" frown in mock gravitas and ask things like "A lot of people are saying that the Kerry campaign is floundering and the Democrats are beginning to feel desperate, we ask the experts 'can anything be done, or is it already too late?'"
No one had said any of those things, but since CNN keeps saying that people say it, it becomes truth...