Do you know what Steam is short for? Steaming pile of shit. That is perhaps the worst piece of software I've used. Sorry to hear it. My experience, on the other hand, has been almost perfect. There's been some downtime, but never for as long as XBL was down, and in any case it's free so I can put up with a little less than five nines of reliability.
Never had any crashes, but there have been a few times when I've had to restart Steam because some of my games disappeared from the list. Each time, Steam has come back up quickly, loading faster than iTunes or Trillian.
Of course, I'm using XP, not Vista. Maybe that's your problem. Time to upgrade your OS!
Those countries are usually very small, with very homogeneous populations and very high standards of living. So, in other words, you were wrong before when you said an armed populace was the only thing that could lower crime rates; now you suggest it can also be achieved by making the population more homogeneous (which I presume means "deport the brown people") or, more promisingly, raising the standard of living.
Hmm, a country where crime is low because everyone's afraid of getting shot, or a country where crime is low because everyone is well-off? I know which one I'd rather live in.
A key aspect of computer science is understanding the history of computers and computer development [...] This would include understanding that magnetic core memory was a precursor to transistor based memory systems. If you look carefully at the end of my first paragraph, you'll see that I know what core memory is. I still don't know what a "core stack" is, as it relates to debugging a program. A stack trace that's stored in a core dump file? The stack trace of a running program?
I understand the concept [of core memory...] and would be able to either figure out what the old timer said from context, or be smart enough to ask the question in a way that he would be able to clarify it for me in reference to a modern machine. For all we know, that's what the young engineer in the story did. But the aftermath wasn't described; all we heard is that the old-timer thought it was a shame that this youngster didn't know the meaning of a term that, apparently, none of us on/. have ever heard either.
Yes, yes I know they provide a good service with Live and yes I know infrastructure isn't free but hey Sony's service is free. Before anyone says it, it is not even HALF as bad as people claim, it may not be as good as live but it's certainly not terrible (see: Wii) Compare Xbox Live to Steam, and it's hard to see what exactly Microsoft is providing for $50/year.
Friends list and notifications? Check. Clans? Check. Achievements? Check. Gamer profiles? Check. Voice chat and instant messaging? Check. Downloadable content store with demos, trailers, and full games? Check. Automatic game updates? Check. Instant access to network features during a game? Check.
But Steam does all that for free.
Oh, and Steam also lets you play on dedicated servers: more players in each game, less lag, no cheating by the host (the server admin can cheat, but you can find another server). And again, it's free.
So, what do you get for all that money you drop on an Xbox Live subscription? A gamer score and video/picture messaging. That's it.
But you're absolutely right: the only thing that can really bring down crime statistics is for people to stop allowing themselves to be victimized, which means taking up arms and defending themselves. That's funny. You need only look at other countries' crime statistics to see that you can have low crime rates without an armed populace.
I saw that too, and like the young engineer in the story, I also have no idea what a core stack is - despite the fact that I've been programming for nearly two decades, in environments from x86 assembly to.NET, and I know my way around a debugger. I assume he meant a call stack, maybe one saved in a core dump, but I can't help envisioning a pile of antique magnetic memory units.
This seems like an example of the "old people have funny names for things" principle, not "Java makes you a bad programmer". I bet the young engineer wouldn't know where to buy oleo or Prince Albert in a can either, but what the hell does that prove?
Touch screens are horribly unsuitable for use by the public at large. Tell that to Wells Fargo, with their thousands of touch-screen ATMs. Every one I've seen has worked just fine.
But for example here in Belgium Telenet (a Liberty Global Inc. company) asks money just to let the device schedule recordings with help of the EPG. I'm not kidding. It's the same with TiVo - I pay $12.95 a month for one and $6.95 a month for the other (multi-DVR discount). But I don't just get TV listings, I also get TiVoCast downloads (essentially video RSS), recommendations, and various online features.
I don't know if the friends codes are all that bad. I think in a way it adds to the "social" aspect of the Wii. [...] In other words we play games with people that we have real relationships with and not strangers online. You can do that with other consoles too... but you can also form new relationships with people you meet online.
I mean, that's a pretty common way to make friends: meeting people who share your interests. Why is it more "social" to meet people somewhere else, and then later invite them to play online (hoping they own a Wii and the games you like), than to just meet people online who you know have a Wii and enjoy the same games as you?
I dont think there's a laptop out there that even comes close to the Macbook Pro (or even the Macbook) in terms of "quality" even if you ignore OSX Really? I think there are plenty, and most of them cost at least 30% less than the MBP.
I don't consider features like a backlit keyboard or a FireWire 800 port to be necessities, so I have no problem comparing the MBP to competing models that have the same size screen, same CPU, same hard drive and optical drive, same networking features, etc. but a much lower price tag. For example, a configured HP dv6700t with the same basic specs as the low-end MacBook Pro costs $958.99 - less than half as much as the MBP.
By contrast, how many kids have been molested by people they know and trust - in real life? Teachers seem to be one of the biggest risks these days - especially when it comes to female teachers and under-aged (male) students. I can't help but notice that the safety measures they've come up do all of nothing to combat what appear to be more common vectors of predatory involvement. That's not "predatory involvement" or molestation.
I know people like to joke about that scenario ("ha ha I wish my teacher had done that"), but seriously, there's a huge gulf between a child being molested and a teenager having consensual sex(*): one is a victim, and the other isn't.
But overall you're right. If a kid is going to be victimized, the predator is much more likely to be someone s/he knows and trusts in real life -- a teacher, coach, priest, relative, etc. -- than a stranger s/he met over the internet. This is yet another example of people obsessing over unlikely, sensational risks while ignoring the substantial everyday risks that should take precedence in a rational mind. See also: plane crashes vs. car crashes, terrorist attack vs. falling off a ladder, etc.
(* Yes, I know the law doesn't recognize "consent" in anyone under the age of 16/18/whatever. Legal definitions, however, cannot change reality.)
Offtopic: WTF, Logitech? Last year my boss invited me to spend beaucoup monnaie on a keyboard and mouse. I *could not find* a rechargeable wireless desktop You must have overlooked the Logitech MX 5000 keyboard and mouse set, which uses Bluetooth. The keyboard takes batteries that need to be replaced (but not very often), the mouse has an internal battery and charges in a stand, and the tiny BT dongle takes up no desk space.
The system of copyright we have today is already voluntary. Any producer who wishes to release something from copyright can do so. That's not "voluntary", it's one-sided. Voluntary copyright would mean I get to choose whether or not to copy any particular work.
How many of you file sharers in this forum have produced creative works and released it from copyright? Do you walk the walk or are you just whining? Post your copyright free work URLs here. Right now please. Unilateral disarmament? Yeah, good luck convincing anyone that's a good idea. Just because the system grants creators too much power doesn't mean it makes sense for anyone to give it up unilaterally before the system has changed.
OTOH, you'll find plenty of GPL developers here. I've got some GPL software in my sig, and more on SourceForge. The GPL isn't technically "released from copyright", but it's as close as you're going to get to a simulation of a post-copyright world: it turns copyright against itself, giving back the freedoms that copyright takes away.
Does it? I see copyright being used quite effectively in the Free Software world to ensure the openness of GPL software. That's ironic, because the GPL essentially just gives back the freedoms that copyright has taken away. In a world with no copyright and no GPL, software could be freely disassembled, decompiled, reverse-engineered, and redistributed, providing essentially the same freedoms as the GPL does today. The GPL's source code requirement is nice, but not necessary for freedom, IMO.
It's interesting to me that the only post below mine that got modded up was essentially an ad-hominem, and not an attempt to point out why the loss of someone's productive efforts was good or bad. It's interesting that you chose to take it as a personal attack on the quality of your work (ad-hominem) rather than a statement about the abundance of creative effort that exists today, or the potential increase in overall productive efforts that would exist in a post-copyright world.
That is: sure, you can stop producing, but what impact will that really have? There are already millions of gigabytes of content for people to enjoy instead, and the abolition of copyright would not only make that content accessible to billions of people who wouldn't otherwise have it, but also make possible a whole new generation of mash-ups, fan-sequels, parodies(*), crossovers, and other derivative works. If it's worth worrying about the loss of your particular efforts, then surely we should also worry about the loss of all those other efforts that are currently banned by copyright laws.
(* Yes, parodies are considered fair use, but that doesn't mean you won't get sued for making them: see The Wind Done Gone. Even when you'd win in court, the prospect of having to go to court in the first place is often enough of a disincentive.)
NeWS is like a giraffe, but with PostScript instead of a long neck for eating, PostScript instead of spots for visual appearance, and PostScript instead of blood for moving nutrients around.
Exactly... if you think that computers only hold information you should try prying off the keys of a keyboard and giving it a clean sometime. OK, wise guy. They hold information, hair, and coffee.
Let's see, cheap entry-level hosting let's say with DreamHost is $6/month, and that includes 5TB of bandwith. The average song is aproximately 5MB, so this works out to a million songs downloaded for $6. So not only does it not cost -pennies- per track, infact it doesn't even get close to a single penny for a track. Your point is valid, but those numbers are a little off. Hosting packages like the one you describe are priced with the expectation that the average $6 subscriber won't actually upload 5 TB in a month. If you maxed it out on a regular basis, you'd surely be asked to upgrade or leave.
It's still pretty damn cheap, though. If you get a T1 for $300 a month, you can upload about 500 GB or 100,000 songs: that's 3 songs for a penny, and it'd be cheaper with a bigger pipe.
Well, the whole point is that this exception should not be necessary at all. Just have 2 ints on the stack... As another response pointed out, you can run out of stack space just as easily as you'd run out of heap space, and running out of stack is even less graceful.
With a modern GC, allocating on the heap is basically the same operation as allocating on the stack anyway: just advance the top-of-heap pointer. Not really a performance issue, unless you're running it inside a tight loop where you want to avoid triggering a collection.
And because it's like that, you have heap allocations for every non-atomic data type, which is really the opposite of performance. Need a simple int[2] for the pipe(2) syscall? (let's just assume it, even if Java does not have)?
try {
int fds[2] = new int[2];
pipe(fd);/* still check return value */ } catch (memoryAllocationErrorOrSo) {... }
Why does this need to be so complicated [...] It doesn't. You've made it more complicated than it needs to be, by putting in an exception handler. What are you going to do in the unlikely event that there is an exception, anyway - fix it somehow? Free up another 8 bytes of memory to make room? Just remove that try statement, and let the exception be caught by your top level handler.
And then there is this garbage collector that professors swarm about. Does it handle circles? Yes, it does. It's not a reference counter, it's a garbage collector. It collects garbage, i.e. any heap object that can't be reached by following a chain of references from a root reference (like a local variable, a static field, or an instance field of any non-garbage object). A modern GC won't be fooled by two garbage objects holding references to each other.
Restaurants that aren't good go out of business; restaurants that served poisonous food would be out of business in a day, even without health codes. We've got private certifications for quality in other arenas; I see no reason to believe they wouldn't work in food, as well. Here's one reason: we tried it before and it didn't work. That's why we have regulations now.
Regulation is a handy tool when consumers don't have perfect information, which they usually don't. How clean is the kitchen at your local Chinese restaurant? Who knows! All you know as a customer is that it tastes all right and you haven't gotten sick from it yet. But are they letting ingredients sit out just a little too long? Are they keeping their vegetables in a bin on the floor with raw chicken juice dripping down onto them? Are they smoking while they work and putting the butts out in the vat where the meat is marinating?
"First" most certainly does NOT function just fine! "First" is an _adjective_! Firstly is an _adverb_, "in the manner of something which is first", which is competely different! Wrong! "First" is an adverb (as in I was there first), an adjective (the first one), and even a noun (shift into first, who's on first?, etc.). "Firstly" means "first" but only functions as an adverb.
Slashdot Mirror
Never had any crashes, but there have been a few times when I've had to restart Steam because some of my games disappeared from the list. Each time, Steam has come back up quickly, loading faster than iTunes or Trillian.
Of course, I'm using XP, not Vista. Maybe that's your problem. Time to upgrade your OS!
Hmm, a country where crime is low because everyone's afraid of getting shot, or a country where crime is low because everyone is well-off? I know which one I'd rather live in.
Before anyone says it, it is not even HALF as bad as people claim, it may not be as good as live but it's certainly not terrible (see: Wii) Compare Xbox Live to Steam, and it's hard to see what exactly Microsoft is providing for $50/year.
Friends list and notifications? Check. Clans? Check. Achievements? Check. Gamer profiles? Check. Voice chat and instant messaging? Check. Downloadable content store with demos, trailers, and full games? Check. Automatic game updates? Check. Instant access to network features during a game? Check.
But Steam does all that for free.
Oh, and Steam also lets you play on dedicated servers: more players in each game, less lag, no cheating by the host (the server admin can cheat, but you can find another server). And again, it's free.
So, what do you get for all that money you drop on an Xbox Live subscription? A gamer score and video/picture messaging. That's it.
I saw that too, and like the young engineer in the story, I also have no idea what a core stack is - despite the fact that I've been programming for nearly two decades, in environments from x86 assembly to .NET, and I know my way around a debugger. I assume he meant a call stack, maybe one saved in a core dump, but I can't help envisioning a pile of antique magnetic memory units.
This seems like an example of the "old people have funny names for things" principle, not "Java makes you a bad programmer". I bet the young engineer wouldn't know where to buy oleo or Prince Albert in a can either, but what the hell does that prove?
I was comparing that HP to the 15" MacBook Pro, which at 5.4 lbs is no ultraportable either.
I mean, that's a pretty common way to make friends: meeting people who share your interests. Why is it more "social" to meet people somewhere else, and then later invite them to play online (hoping they own a Wii and the games you like), than to just meet people online who you know have a Wii and enjoy the same games as you?
I don't consider features like a backlit keyboard or a FireWire 800 port to be necessities, so I have no problem comparing the MBP to competing models that have the same size screen, same CPU, same hard drive and optical drive, same networking features, etc. but a much lower price tag. For example, a configured HP dv6700t with the same basic specs as the low-end MacBook Pro costs $958.99 - less than half as much as the MBP.
I know people like to joke about that scenario ("ha ha I wish my teacher had done that"), but seriously, there's a huge gulf between a child being molested and a teenager having consensual sex(*): one is a victim, and the other isn't.
But overall you're right. If a kid is going to be victimized, the predator is much more likely to be someone s/he knows and trusts in real life -- a teacher, coach, priest, relative, etc. -- than a stranger s/he met over the internet. This is yet another example of people obsessing over unlikely, sensational risks while ignoring the substantial everyday risks that should take precedence in a rational mind. See also: plane crashes vs. car crashes, terrorist attack vs. falling off a ladder, etc.
(* Yes, I know the law doesn't recognize "consent" in anyone under the age of 16/18/whatever. Legal definitions, however, cannot change reality.)
OTOH, you'll find plenty of GPL developers here. I've got some GPL software in my sig, and more on SourceForge. The GPL isn't technically "released from copyright", but it's as close as you're going to get to a simulation of a post-copyright world: it turns copyright against itself, giving back the freedoms that copyright takes away.
That is: sure, you can stop producing, but what impact will that really have? There are already millions of gigabytes of content for people to enjoy instead, and the abolition of copyright would not only make that content accessible to billions of people who wouldn't otherwise have it, but also make possible a whole new generation of mash-ups, fan-sequels, parodies(*), crossovers, and other derivative works. If it's worth worrying about the loss of your particular efforts, then surely we should also worry about the loss of all those other efforts that are currently banned by copyright laws.
(* Yes, parodies are considered fair use, but that doesn't mean you won't get sued for making them: see The Wind Done Gone. Even when you'd win in court, the prospect of having to go to court in the first place is often enough of a disincentive.)
NeWS is like a giraffe, but with PostScript instead of a long neck for eating, PostScript instead of spots for visual appearance, and PostScript instead of blood for moving nutrients around.
It's still pretty damn cheap, though. If you get a T1 for $300 a month, you can upload about 500 GB or 100,000 songs: that's 3 songs for a penny, and it'd be cheaper with a bigger pipe.
With a modern GC, allocating on the heap is basically the same operation as allocating on the stack anyway: just advance the top-of-heap pointer. Not really a performance issue, unless you're running it inside a tight loop where you want to avoid triggering a collection.
try {
int fds[2] = new int[2];
pipe(fd);
} catch (memoryAllocationErrorOrSo) {
}
Why does this need to be so complicated [...] It doesn't. You've made it more complicated than it needs to be, by putting in an exception handler. What are you going to do in the unlikely event that there is an exception, anyway - fix it somehow? Free up another 8 bytes of memory to make room? Just remove that try statement, and let the exception be caught by your top level handler. And then there is this garbage collector that professors swarm about. Does it handle circles? Yes, it does. It's not a reference counter, it's a garbage collector. It collects garbage, i.e. any heap object that can't be reached by following a chain of references from a root reference (like a local variable, a static field, or an instance field of any non-garbage object). A modern GC won't be fooled by two garbage objects holding references to each other.
Not as hard as finding such a flaw in the first place. Why, have you found one?
Regulation is a handy tool when consumers don't have perfect information, which they usually don't. How clean is the kitchen at your local Chinese restaurant? Who knows! All you know as a customer is that it tastes all right and you haven't gotten sick from it yet. But are they letting ingredients sit out just a little too long? Are they keeping their vegetables in a bin on the floor with raw chicken juice dripping down onto them? Are they smoking while they work and putting the butts out in the vat where the meat is marinating?